Recollection 1 – The Blood Won’t Wash Off.

Recollection 1 – The Blood Won’t Wash Off. Announcement

Dark chapter ahead.

*SPLASH* *SMACK* *SPLISH* *SPLOOSH*

On a dark, dimly lit night, a lone girl desperately tried to clean her blade off in the crystal clear water of a nearby stream. There were few stars out, and the moons above, while full, were mostly obscured by the dark clouds above. Whenever the two bright balls managed to peak out and reflect some of the Sun's light down, one could see just how far gone the poor girl was. Madness shone in her eyes, and it was as if she'd completely unraveled mentally as she repeated the same phrase over and over again.

"It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off! It won't come off!" Halifax continuously splashed water on her shining blue blade. However, despite what she repeated to herself, it was completely clean of any blemish or dirt.

{The blood! Why won't it come off?!?} (Halifax)

"Please... Go away..." Halifax paused as she stared down at the blade which sat just below the water's surface. The dirty rags she was wearing were soaked and judging by how rough her hands looked, she'd been here for a long time. "It's not my fault... I... No... please... I'm sorry... They made me do it... I'm sorry... So please come off!"

{PLEASE!} (Halifax)

As she continued to scrub her blade of nonexistent blood, Elariel and Gale stood off in the distance, observing the mentally unstable girl from the treeline.

"She's been at this for days..." Elariel's face showed that she wanted to run to Halifax's side, but she held off from doing so. "We may have truly..."

"We did what needed to be done." Gale put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her. "Do not forget what she is, Elariel. A tool, nothing more." He never liked how close the two were and felt that Elariel was allowing her emotions to cloud her judgment.

"But she's my daughter!" Elariel spun around, glaring at him. “How could I do this to her...” Forcing Halifax to spill that much blood wasn't an easy decision, but Elariel had no choice but to acquiesce to Gale's demands.

"She. Is. A. Tool." Gale repeated his previous words with a fake smile. "Besides, you know what she really is, so why are you calling such an existence your child?"

{Don't tell me you've forgotten where she came from?} (Gale) for new novels

"But she trusted me!" Elariel exclaimed. "We should have found another way, Gale! This wasn't... This wasn't how we should've dealt with Dibora!"

{All we've done is tramatize the girl! I know that Dibora is dangerous, but I'm sure that we could've waited a few more weeks to come up with an alternative! Hell, I would've incarnated and done it myself if you'd let me!} (Elariel)

"What would you have had us do?" Gale asked. "Halifax is the only Divine weapon with the proven ability to strike down higher beings, and we didn't have enough time to come up with a suitable countermeasure that didn't involve us directly descending!" He wouldn't allow such a thing, not with an alternative so easily accessible. A God coming into the material world was a last resort, and Gale wasn't keen on authorizing such a thing, even at the cost of creating another problem.

{All's well that ends well anyway. Halifax will recover in due time and we've seen that being pushed even this hard didn't cause her to revert, so I see this as a successful operation.} (Gale)

"I know that... I know that, but did you really need to force her to..." Elariel stopped. She knew that the Dark Elves were close to reviving the Dark God Dibora and that they had precious little time to stop it.

"You know well that had we not done what we did, Dibora would've revived and this world would've been plunged into chaos of a level not seen since Vikes nearly killed us all." Gale replied with a scowl. "I simply used a tool for the job it was made for. Nothing more and nothing less." As God of Order, Gale didn't really have a direct sense of or understanding of morals. He only cared for two things, balance and his own survival. The feelings of others only mattered insofar as they were useful to either of these things, and some of the other Gods even questioned his dedication to the former at times. "If its any consolation, nobody outside the Elven Royal Family knows that Halifax was used in this operation, and Diva swore a divine oath that she would not reveal what she did. Halfiax's reputation will be saved, and once she calms down I'm sure that things will go back to normal." He didn't really care what happened to the blade and was honestly hoping that these events would result in her destruction, since he saw her as a threat.

{ARE YOU INSANE?!?} Elariel wanted to smack him but knew that it would do nothing.

"You may stay and watch her, but I would advise against approaching her. She probably doesn't want to see you, and it would only make things worse." Gale disappeared with the snap of his fingers, leaving Elariel alone to watch her broken daughter scrub nonexistent blood from her blade.

“Halifax... I'm... I'll...” Elariel couldn't find the right words to say and instead watched her for hours, then days, then weeks, and then months. Halifax needed no food or water to survive, and the magical energy around her sustained whatever needs she did have so it was entirely possilbe that she'd stay like this permanently.

"It won't come off... Mom..." Halifax stopped her usual pattern of scrubbing, her word causing Elariel to flinch. "Mom... Why did you do this to me..." She started to cry, and Elariel, who was still watching from the treeline, held back from rushing to her side. "Why did you make me dirty? Why did you force me to..." She stared at her reflection in the lake water, her eyes long having glazed over. "Am I nothing more than a tool? Was I made for no other reason than to kill people?" She'd been forced to nearly exterminate the Dark Elves, even those who had no connection to the ritual. Those who survived were enslaved, and the fate that awaited them was none none too pleasant. "Was I bad? Is that why... Is that why Mom made me do this?" She slowly stood up, sword in hand, and started walking into the forest. "Did I do something to make her hate me?" She sliced her way through the forest as she continued to ramble nonsense.

Anything that got in her way, be it trees, rocks, or animals were swiftly split in two as she wandered through the woods. Halifax was only semi-lucid at this point, and Elariel was worried that she might enter a nearby settlement and attack innocent townspeople.

"Diva!" Halifax screamed again. "I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking kill you for what you did!"

"Ah yes..." Diva smiled as she recalled her adventure with Halifax. "It was so much fun slaughtering all those fools. To think that I'd be blessed to carry a Divine Blade on a mission from the Gods!" She wheezed as she tried to laugh. "You were an excellent blade, Halifax. The best I've ever used, and you sliced through flesh like a dream!"

"You... You made me..." Halifax gripped the side of her head in pain as memories flooded back to her. "We... I killed... So many..."

"Yes, you did!" Diva laughed. "And I had fun doing it! It was the best time of my life!"

"Fun..." Halifax said as she still held the side of her head, pointing her blade at Diva with her other hand. "So many... The blood..."

{My... Head...) Halifax's head felt like it was about to burst as it was flooded with more and more memories.

"A glorious sacrifice to Lord Korex!" Diva smiled. “I couldn't be happier to give him such an amazing gift!” She was one of the Blood Lord's finest killers and was picked by Gale and the other Gods preciously because she had no problem with the kind of killing required. "Why, if these old bones could still manage it, I'd go into town, grab some nice young man, and-" Her words stopped as Halifax drove her blade into Diva's stomach.

"You psychotic bastard!" Halifax growled as she pulled her blade out of Diva, letting her fall to the floor. “How dare you! How fucking DARE you!”

"Ack!" Diva coughed up blood as she fell to the floor and started bleeding out. "Funny, and here I was worried that I'd die peacefully at home." She smiled, overjoyed that she would be murdered. "But here you came to deliver me to Lord Korex." She laughed and wheezed. "I suppose, in the end, you really are nothing more than a tool of the Gods." She cackled as she slowly died.

"A tool..." Halifax said as she stared at the now-dead woman. "Is that all I really am?" She looked around the half-destroyed cabin, her eyes locking on a wardrobe in the back. With her sanity restored for the first time in nearly seventy years, she felt the need to change out of her, by this point, nearly gone rags.

"I wonder if she has anything that would fit me?" Halifax opened the wardrobe and sifted through the countless dresses and cloaks before stumbling on a black bag that was sealed with preservation magic. Cracking it open was easy enough, and the article of clothing sealed within was a brown trench coat, one that she knew well.

"So you kept it... After all this time..." Halifax set it aside before going through the rest of the house and pilfering whatever clothing she could find.

{I suppose it makes sense that that psychopath would never want to part with the clothing she wore during her greatest blood-letting...} (Halifax)

“She really was fucking crazy...” Halifax sighed as she continued to rifle through the house, before eventually putting on an eclectic outfit with a tunic, woolen pants, and ragged shoes. She looked like a vagabond, and with her hair a complete mess, she figured that going anywhere would be tough.

"I don't even know how long I was out of it." Halifax said as she threw on the trench coat. "But I suppose that doesn't really matter at the end of the day." She fixed the collar before grabbing her blade and setting it at her side. There were no belt loops, so she used magic to make one, and as she stepped outside, there was a large gathering of villagers waiting for her.

"Y-You!" Dern pointed at her, his entire body shaking. "W-Where's Nana?!?"

"Dead." Halifax said coldly, as she walked toward the crowd, who parted as she approached.

"Dead?!? W-Where do you think you're going?!?" Dern yelled at Halifax as she walked past. “You... You killed Nana!”

"Where am I going?" Halifax stopped, repeating the man's question back to him as she thought of an answer. "I'm... I'm going to find the truth."

"T-Truth?" Dern had no idea what she was talking about, and frankly, neither did Halifax.

"The truth... The truth of what I am.” Halifax answered. “Am I just a tool... Or something more?" She continued, walking away from the shouting crowd. "I never batted an eye when M-" She shook her head, no longer able to call someone like Elariel her mother. "When Elariel told me that I had a new wielder... But now... Now I want to see what it's like to choose for myself."

{Are people even worthy to wield me? Should I even let them?} Halifax continued thinking. {And are the Gods... Are they even worth serving? Just... I need to see this world for myself... I need... I need to decide on my own what the future has in-store for me.}

Spoiler

Diva!

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