Arknights : the broken fate

Chapter 17: Eternal Peace, Eternal Suffering

Once again, the scent of death merged with the dusty air. The screams of the surviving guards blended with the voices of the shadow which grew louder and louder, no longer speaking comprehensible words but merely pleading for help that will never come...

As the depressing scene cleared out with the mist gradually dissipating and coming back from where it came, the cause behind all of this suffering stood mesmerized by what she had just witnessed.

"Amazing...to think that it was this powerful!" Behind the dissipating mist appeared Galena. At a mere glance, one would think she was excited, perhaps even happy and proud. But what she truly felt was none other than pure dread.

This was the second time she did it on the same day, the second time she committed a massacre. 

"Are you not satisfied...?" The hollow voice whispered in her ears.

Her eyes widened in disbelief. "Satisfied?! With what? With all this killing! I am everything but satisfied." The words left her mouth with barely any confidence in what she was saying, Galena knew that she was lying.

"This was your wish, your desire, and you achieved it with our help. Why do you deny it...?" She did not want to acknowledge it, she feared to do it for they were saying nothing but the truth. And for that reason, she tried to deny, escape from, the truth.

"But-but even so...even if I wanted to do it, that doesn't give me the right to do it." She continued trying to defend herself from the words of the voice but seemed to struggle to believe her own words.

"Nothing decides right and wrong other than power, and now you have that power. You have already chosen, haven't you? What is wrong and what is right..." The voice's tone suddenly changed, from being hollow and quiet, it turned into a deep and vicious one. 

The sudden change was followed by a sharp pain through her arm reminding her of her situation. Galena quickly snapped back to reality as she observed the new state her arm, and not just her right hand was in.

As the black mist flew around her protectively, Galena seemed to have lost interest in those who had survived her attack. Instead, she put her attention fully on the different parts of her body trying to figure out the changes that had occurred.

Her hair grew longer, reaching past her waist and her eyes were still as bright as ever in that bloody red. Looking at her from afar, she did not look human, but something else, something that made the guards who saw her feel disgusted.

The mist had already devoured most of her right arm, turning it completely black. The darkness in her hand was trying to push more into her body but somehow was held back solely by the white cloth wrapped around her arm. It made her wonder how she got it.

'Is it perhaps from the Watcher? ' She wondered.

'There should be no other explanation...Oh shit-' Faster than she could even process, a huge fireball exploded right in front of her face.  The explosion was big and loud, it was hard to believe that anyone could survive it head-on, but Galena wasn't anyone.

"This is our chance! Regroup and ATTACK!" One of the guards screamed, and a loud battle cry followed. The elite guards did not waste the time that Galena had given them while she was still not looking.

Even with how devastating the mist was to the guards' ranks, it only took down just a tenth of the guards's force, but even that was more than enough to freeze them behind cover. There was no one willing to get himself killed like that.

The once-a-moving wall of discipline and authority was scattered and rooted everywhere. They didn't need to know what the black mist was, just to know that getting close to it meant death.