The truth of the matter was that Beatrice had no strong feelings about the current situation. She felt like it was required of her to do so. Someone important had lost her life and that was sad, apparently. Now people were cornered and that was worrying, apparently. They could die and that would be terrible, apparently. Fundamentally, Beatrice got all of that, but she really couldn’t muster any of the same emotional intensity that she felt flare up from her master. Ever since the news of Imerella’s death had broken, there had been a raging fire, occasionally compromising his usually calm thoughts. In comparison, she felt like the same block of ice as always.

What she did know, however, was that she wanted him to not be further saddened. This she was adequately certain about. A strange thing to have. A want, something that she could not let go without trying her hardest to attain it. Such a thing was normally missing from her mind, a void that she filled through whatever order given to her by someone else.

It made her wonder if she had always had this goal and it had just slumbered in her subconscious. Pretty likely, it was one of the fragments of Aclysia that was imprinted on her. Beatrice embraced it wholeheartedly, being like Aclysia did not strike her as a bad thing in most aspects. Her disability to keep her cool in certain situations aside, the eldest creation seemed content in her life.

Generally speaking, Beatrice valued her passivity. Although it made her feel somewhat alien at times, she didn’t have the care to be burdened by that. It was liberating in an odd way. As long as she still had people to attach herself to. The more experiences she shaped, the more she became her own sort of person, the more the idea of just standing somewhere with no purpose became horrifying. The outside dictate didn’t bother her, the idea to never have one again on the other hand, wasting away without any goal, that was something she was looking at with a bit of fear.

She lacked the capacity and, indeed, the patience to be envious of people who could dictate their own goals. Being told what to do was nice in its own way. Although she had never really known the alternative, so her opinion on the matter was rather uninformed. It was better to look at the words of others as guides than to just waste away emptily, that much she was pretty certain about. Didn’t they have a word for that?

‘Term: nihilism,’ Beatrice found the correct one after racking her memories for a bit like a computer requested data from a hard drive. ‘Definition: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless. Personal opinion: invalid assumption, life has the meaning I ascribe to it. The happiness of those I deem worthy to order me.’

The middle of a battlefield was probably an odd place to think about all of this. However, it did make Beatrice feel a bit better. With an emotional range as stunted as hers, that shouldn’t have meant too much, but in effect it felt like the last cog that her misshapen creation process had put into lockdown was finally oiled and the entire machinery was now ticking like the inside of a Swiss wristwatch. She felt whole in what she was, as stunted a thing as that had to be.

She kept following Nia, whose golden ponytail was currently curving through the air like a snake, despite them running at high speeds. As always, the pariah’s hair was currently being played with by whatever that odd creature in the nirvana was called again.

Beatrice could have passed her quite easily, but her order was to accompany the blank, thus keeping her in the field of view was important. Thankfully, she had inherited her creator’s lack of fear for pariahs, otherwise the knowledge that she wasn’t too far from a being that could eradicate her from the spark of magic down to the extensions of her thoughts would have made her a bit nervous.

Their charge was defined entirely by the methodical speed at which they quietly progressed. This was what had given Beatrice all that time to think in the first place. Nia was guiding them, the black visor in front of her eyes, half-liquid and half-solid, oozing out of the roots of her hair, in combination with the silver lines on her back allowed her to track magic like no other. Her kind was famed for the anti-mage abilities and the Maiden of Null was the peak of this.

What she had focused on was a mystery to Beatrice. Sure, the passive maid could have asked, but they were heading to the same destination whether or not she did, so she didn’t bother. One way or another, she found herself in a battle all of a sudden.

A sword was coming down on her head and she effortlessly knocked it aside with the Deathmetal spear. The design of the weapon didn’t quite fit her black and white maid aesthetic, with the red shaft and the entire skull decorations, and that genuinely bothered her. She would have much preferred a sleek and simple black and white spear with a green gem in the handle to match her colour pallet.

The first person was still recovering from her countering effort when Beatrice was assaulted by two more. Their swords were rather odd, curved forwards and thicker towards the tip. She blocked both of them, one with the spear, the other with her bare hand. “Sarcastic: congratulations,” Beatrice spoke out as she got the confirmation that none of them could really hurt her. “Your attacks deal less damage than I regenerate per second. I will now ignore you. Please flee or else perish. You have thirty seconds to decide.” She lowered her spear and just stood there as they came to attack her all at once. “Addendum: everything after the congratulations was not sarcastic. Countdown running.”

While she was being battered by inconsequential attacks, her green eyes danced from one person on the battlefield to another. Their place of battle was defined by plant matter that had been manipulated as weaponry and then discarded, leaving overgrown brambles and twisted trees everywhere. In the shade of distorted canopies and a ceiling of thorny bushes fought two groups easily discernible. One was uniformed and wore weapons that were if not all the same then at least all designed with the same themes, making them easily distinct from the rough tumble of outfits and weaponry that the group of presumed mercenaries represented.

Her active thoughts were creating a profile of the objectives she had to fulfil here to act in accordance to her master’s wishes. ‘Four factions of interest,’ she analysed mentally once she had scanned the situation deeply enough. ‘Ordering actions to be taken by importance: first, ensure Nia Fae’s survival.’ The blank had not stopped as the passive maid had, instead moving right into the fray. Her weapons of solid black cut through bodies without leaving wounds, only making her victims collapse on the spot. ‘Second, ensure general Ted’s survival,’ Beatrice had located the man fighting with his back against a wall one of the plant manipulators must have made, vines switching control back and forth and lashing on anyone in range. ‘Third, assist in the survival of as many allied troops as possible. Fourth, eliminate as many enemy troops as possible. Targets acquired.’ Beatrice suddenly began moving again, noticing that the three people around her had indeed vanished.

Some people still had enough brain cells to not fight the thing they couldn’t even hurt. Beatrice felt that humans were usually stubborn enough that this was a commendable trait. Although her order of importance put Nia on the top, the blank was fending quite well for herself as of that moment, therefore it was on Beatrice to put urgency first and go protect Ted.

As easily said as it was done. The passive maid simply started running and didn’t stop until she reached her target. Too quick for anyone to stop her, she simply weaved through attempted strikes. Only one person was standing directly in her path. They found themselves without a throat a blink of movements later, Beatrice thrusting her spear in full sprint and using Unsteady Limb to pull it back almost instantaneously. It lost her barely any momentum and only a few seconds later did she sheathe her weapon in the spine of another mercenary.

“Please allow me to alleviate your problems,” Beatrice courtly announced her arrival. Through a pull of her spear, she lifted the assailant off the ground and used him as a half-living projectile against one of his comrades right of her. Left of her, she made quick work by severing yet another throat with a simple thrust. A killing technique as boring as it was effective. “Common courtesy requires that I offer the following question: are you alright?”

Ted was stripped down to the black full-body suit that lay under his usual general’s attire. Even that was covered in tears, and his right biceps looked like it had been chafed away, almost to bone. It was a rather disgusting display of torn muscle fibre, exposed to the air. “Yes,” he still answered.

“Opinion: that is a lie,” Beatrice observed, tilting her head a little bit as Twist Position carried her two metres to the left, the dull end of her spear crashing into the guts of a person that tried to be sneaky, only to then be ended by a spear tip to the heart. “Observation: modern society says men should be more honest about their feelings. My personal feelings about that are inconclusive, but I feel like you should know. Reason: people that are fine do not need to be sent to the healer. Are you fine?”

“…No,” Ted admitted the second time.

Beatrice nodded rather robotically, fending of a lashing vine by cutting through it close to the base. “Update on answer received. Will send for healing aid.” Mentally reaching out to her creator, she informed him about the situation. ‘May Undine be sent over here?’

‘Sorry, not right now,’ John answered rather quickly. ‘You’ll have to come to me.’

‘Understood,’ Beatrice answered, noting the lack of connection to Aclysia. Normally, John allowed them to use his mind to communicate with each other by proxy. Evidently, things were happening all over the place. “State of affairs: Undine is not currently available for travelling. I will therefore have to carry you to her.”

“I can walk,” Ted grumbled, standing tall despite his many injuries.

“I mean carry in the sense that I will have to do all the work,” Beatrice explained in her semi-robotic tone of factuality, turning around. She was about to begin the leaving process when she saw the happenings on the battlefield. “Addendum: we’ll have to stand our ground until that fight resolves. Otherwise I risk being deleted.”

The battlefield had turned from a bunch of individual skirmishes into everyone avoiding Nia. The distinction between ally and enemy was forgotten, all trying to get away from the blank, instincts overtaking logic as she fought and used her powers, sending them all into alienated scrambles. The choice of her opponent only reinforced this.

Wearing simple clothes fitting for a summer day, jeans and a shirt, was a woman of twenty, with pale white skin and black hair. Like Nia, she wielded a weapon of non-existence, a pitch-black sword with a straight blade and no guard. Despite it being double-edged, the woman pressed her palm into the back without cutting herself, slowly pushing Nia down, who blocked only with the curved blade in her left.

“So, they call YOU the Maiden of Null?” the fellow pariah asked. The grinding of their blades caused not a single sound, only a slowly growing tear in reality. Unravelling the Illusion Barrier itself, their clash left behind only a gap that looked like someone had dragged an eraser over that spot in Beatrice’s field of view. “Guess I will have a fancy new title once I am done with you!”

Nia thrusted her lance at her enemy’s abdomen, who took a quick step backward and just out of range of the sleek weapon. “You can have the title,” the blonde blank spoke in her emotionless tone. “I didn’t pick it.”

“Where is the fun in just getting something?” came the answer with a wide grin. “You are Nia Fae. It’s only fair that I introduce myself as well. I am Rime, pleased to make your acquaintance.” She grabbed the handle of her blade with both hands and pulled it aside her body, “NOW DIE!” A lunging step forwards, the tip of her unforged sword ripped through the air and added yet more damage to the world around them. Nia blocked wordlessly, then a back and forth began.

This was exactly why Beatrice didn’t want to move. All her available paths sent her through that zone of engagement, and with the uncontrolled waves of magic eradication flying around, she would not risk it. The alternative route was to try and cut through the brambles, but whatever magic had created them still kept them healthy. Even if she managed to cut her way outside, the risk that they would close around Ted behind her was too great.

Rime and Nia were like two styles of dancers clashing to the same beat. Nia was moving elegantly and with precision. No wasted movements, just a steady flow of parries, dodges, counter-attacks and her own initiatives. Rime on the other hand was a relentless forward, always continuing to do something, much more like a dance at the club than in the ballroom.

When Rime missed another one of her attacks to Nia dodging with a narrow, calculated margin, the hired pariah clicked her tongue. “By the empty one, your fighting style is ugly,” she stated, standing idly to chatter for a moment. Surrounded by white tears in the air, Rime shook her head, “You are just running, how fucking dumb is that?”

Nia straightened her back and stared for almost ten seconds. Simply stared. Her blue eyes were trying to pierce deep into her enemy, at least that’s what it looked like from the outside. Then she opened her mouth. “You are annoying me.”

“Well that makes two of u-“ Rime stopped in her mocking response when the tears in the fabricated reality of the Illusion Barrier began to expand, like drops of watery paint on a piece of paper. “What the fuck…?” Even though she was a blank herself, Rime could not believe it when she realized that Nia’s seeping anti-magic was the cause of this.

The barrier eroded into a completely white space around her. Only black outlines indicated where things were, like a sketch made with a charcoal pen. In that nothingness was… a creature. Made entirely from layers of white and very light greys, it was a thing with four crooked legs, that only became even in their length when it stopped playing with Nia’s hair. It had five eyes, or something like eyes at the very least. Orbs that were plastered irregularly over its triangle shaped head, with slits that moved within. Horn and shapes that could have been ears were located between in no logical formation. It looked two-dimensional, no shadows falling over any of its features, even as it opened its maw, rowed with liquid teeth that stuck together like molten rubber, and cried like a mixture of crow and toad.

There were more things about the thing, but Beatrice couldn’t keep her eyes focused. Everything in that direction became blurry, a high-pitched sound ravaged her ears, and there was a constant pull on her soul as if it was about to be ripped out. Lesser golems utilized by mercenary and army alike began simply falling apart while weaker fighters bled from the eyes after staring too long.

The last thing Beatrice really saw before closing her eyes to save her psyche from collapsing was Nia reaching up and petting the enormous cat-like abomination. “It is just a Nevr’est.” She heard Nia’s voice in her ears like through a badly adjusted microphone.

“It isn’t the reason for my… ah, whatever,” Rime sounded a lot happier now. “You have something interesting to show after all, Maiden of Null!” It sounded like the two of them were fighting more. Beatrice honestly wished they would stop. Nia seemed to be more gifted in their otherworldly craft, but her opponent was physically more able. Those two strong blanks made it impossible for anyone else around to do anything. Something of a powerlevel equal or higher to the two of them combined had to come along and also not be entirely based on magic. Basically, only somebody like John could intervene right now. Until one of them won, this front would be a complete stalemate. They would just have a duel in this rift of magic.