The Princess of Wrath

Chapter 8 - Part VI: The Divine Blood

"NO! IT CANNOT BE!"

Diana's soul-breaking screams showed Asura that she was capable of being corrupted by extreme fear and pain.

The knightess' instincts carved by her traumatizing experience when she was a child made her jerk back, stumble, and fall backward to the ground. She crawled back, wanting to get away from the irrefutable evidence of the curse of Wrath as the memories of the Night of the Demon very surely started to play in her head, reliving the unspeakable horror she witnessed.

"Please, I-I can explain. I didn't want to...," with her best effort, Asura stood up and tried to approach her beloved, but with only taking a step in her direction, the knightess huddled against the wall, closing her eyes and covering her face like if she had regressed to when she was that girl who witnessed the evil and sadism of Zaros's acolytes. That hurt Asura terribly in the heart. "I'm going...I'm going to fix it! Roland has been helping me, and...and...I'll make you understand me! Wait for me here, you'll see!"

Naively believing that she could fix what was already broken, Asura turned around and almost jumped off the platform to start running as fast as she could, leaving Diana alone to face the torture of her memories and totally doing the opposite of what she had sworn in accepting responsibility for the Shadow Wolf.

She ran blindly, guided simply by the memory of her subconscious. The corridors had become blurry tunnels, and the surprised Guards and servants were monochromatic stains that moved out of the way but yelling her name to make her stop.

When she took a corner at the intersection with the corridor that led to the path to the Iron Graveyard, the heel of one of her shoes broke and caused her to fall, hitting her head and opening a wound that began to bleed rapidly. Ironically, she laughed out loud and took off both her broken and intact shoes to keep running without difficulty.

She could not stop laughing and crying in agony. She was aware that she was a liar, selfish and a coward... But even so, a slight optimism lingered in her mind, so focused on the image of a small vial kept jealously in that box under her bedside table, that it was not able to hear the alarmed men and women who had come to follow her.

She was confident that she could still fix everything; that Diana would understand and forgive her. She had no doubts.

Upon reaching the corridor where her room was located, the scandal she had generated was so great that Frida had left her room in her nightgown prematurely to see what was happening.

"MOVE!" Asura did not give the maid time to react and pushed her aside. Ignoring the screams behind her, she entered her room and quickly locked it.

Her desperation made herviolently threw the nightstand in the direction of the bathroom; she felt exaggeratedlyrelieved to see that the box was where she had left it. She opened it and found that miraculous tonic hidden among several old papers and mementos.

Her forearms had begun to be covered in a series of dark spider veins and her hands were shaking frantically. On the other hand, the knocks on the door and the shouts of the Guards and servants that sounded incoherent in her ears exponentially increased her nerves, making the task of uncorking the vial difficult.

"Leave me alone, damn it!" she screamed, fury flooding her body thanks to the dangerously growing influence of the curse. When she managed to uncork the vial, she heard the sound of a key being inserted into the lock.

Her mind, which had now reached a severe level of irrationality, made her go into the bathroom and lock herself up; there was no way to open the door on the other side unless it was brought down.