I Followed Fires

XLII. Adèle

Blood.

There was blood on her hands, blood on her neck, and blood on her dress. She was covered in the deep red liquid, and she could not have believed it. Adèle was so close to killing him, to take the life out of him, and stop him from poisoning the world with evil..  but she had not realized that the Darkness was a clever creature. "Your dagger cannot help you now," he said, and grinned. She watched her blood cover his teeth.

Adèle would have fallen on to the ground and died that very evening, when she felt a stranger's arms stop her from doing so. She was beginning to grow unconscious due to the pain, but she could hear that this stranger was a man. He laid her on to the ground near the lake, and let water wash off the blood on her neck. The stranger now turned to the Darkness, and fought him with a steel sword the glinted in the moonlight.

She stood up, not wanting to let herself appear to weak, and fought again. She picked up the dagger from the ground, to protect herself. The stranger held up his sword to the Darkness, clearly threatening him, as they were having a conversation.

"Leave the Blood Wood alone," said the stranger. "You have no right to spread evil here."

The Darkness simply laughed again, and snatched the sword off the stranger's grasp. The edge of the steel sword pierced the stranger's stomach, and when it came out, blood dripped from the steel. The stranger attempted to stop the blood from pouring out by covering his stomach with his hands, but she knew that he could not, and that he was in pain. Adèle watched as this occurred, and now stood before the Darkness. Although she could not help the stranger's wounds now, at least she could kill the man who caused his wounds, and hers as well.

"You are a monster." she spitted every single word out of her mouth with pure bitterness and disgust, tightening her grasp on her sword.

"You call me a monster and yet you seem to forget who I am. I was a friend of yours, don't you remember?" he asked, still clutching the sword in his hand. "I was another face in your golden childhood, but you know exactly who I am."

"I know who you are. You were the father of one of the stable boys that worked in my home, until you left unexpectedly," she spoke now. "You left a wife and a son behind. You disappointed them, my father, my family and me as well. And in the same month you mysteriously disappeared, one of the stable boys was found murdered. They never found out who did the crime, but I knew, even though then I was just a young girl. I also knew that you were a man of evil, and to think that my family has let you corrupt our home with your radical religious mindset.."

"Very good," the Darkness replied. "Now are we finished reminiscing of old times?" He laughed, and then slashed Adèle on her arm twice, making her howl with pain.

But she did not want to let the Darkness run free. She snatched the sword off his hand, just like the stranger did. "Why do you sacrifice so many innocents? Why do you slaughter them? What do you want to achieve?"

"Foolish girl, if I do not sacrifice them, the plague will come and corrupt our lands. I am the man who truly prevents the plague from taking away the lives of the people of France."

"You are mad," she uttered. Adèle turned to look at the stranger who now laid on the ground, covered in his own blood, and then back at the Darkness. "I hope your very last thought will be of your wife and your son, for you will suffer in the afterlife, knowing how much you should not have left them behind."

She breathed a heavy sigh and tightened the grip on the handle of the sword. For a moment, her eyes were closed, as she breathed in the momentum, but as they opened, her stare cut through the heart of the Darkness.

Without saying another word, Adèle charged the sword into the Darkness's heart three times. His blood spattered across her face as she watched him die, weak and defeated, on the forest floor. Then, she turned to the stranger in pain that was lying on the ground, and washed his wounds with the waters from the lake, just as he did with her.

"Bash?" Adèle said, utterly shocked.

"You defeated the Darkness," Bash replied, as he gazed at her, and gave a small smile. "Well done, lionheart."