Alice ran across the wall while chasing a thug. Launching up, she thrusts her blade against the thug’s back. She pushed her blade up the thug’s spine, placed her foot on the spine, and started to absorb the memories of the thug. She saw visions of the enslaved being called to their cages.

She threw the thug who then got devoured by the earth-mother of this land. Alice had been roaming the Empire, and the cases had not stopped. Alice had thought that once she finds the ringleader of the cases she’d be able to find a way to stop the crimes.

“I was wrong,” she thought while looking at the remaining blood. “The scope of this is beyond me. I have no power or influence and I cannot take over so easily.”

Alice had hunted the vilest. Because of the earth-mother and the Hominy spell that she was unable to show the results like the Deadman had done. Fear was a tool that could be used to exploit weak-minded hearts. Superstition was one of the keys. She recalled him plowing his way through an enemy state. He wounded his way against an enemy state and hanged a few people.

She held no remorse against such methods. In her time she was forced to enact violence upon those who would pursue it.

The streets of the Empire was broken. The great scorching happened when they provoked an Ancient One. This land was riddled with Ancient beings that Alice could tell how strong are they just by the suppression they were doing. Her main body was blockade by the power she was unable to control.

She could hear running steps below the floor. Alice vaulted out of the window and cat leaps to another building, following it with a sprint that matches the wind. She could go further, but she didn’t want to attract more attention than she had been doing.

The building she was in was one of the many abandoned ill-maintained structures. She barely needed food as long as the energy in the air continues to exist. Alice had noticed that this world was constantly being drained by the Hominy Spell that was cast by the heroes. The spell was designed to make use of the energy of the world for two thousand years, which means that when the spell runs out most of the world would have to develop a way to sustain the technology they are running.

“I had seen so many civilizations like this, and they always end up the same.”

She could see that the designer of the spell has hopes that the people of this world would be able to succeed past the hatred. That the thousand years of peace would be enough. As far as Alice could tell, people, living sentient beings, as long as they have their ideologies and beliefs, there will be a time where they will disagree, and resentments lead to anger.

Alice had enough of seeing that cycle repeat. Ideas are hard to kill and even greater power does not scare those who are willing to grab hold of their freedom. She had seen that man in her memories fight despite having no power greater than the ones he had taken for himself. He fought her for so many times that she had seen him die again and again in front of her.

“For the greater good,” she said always. “What a load of garbage.”

How could she say that with a crying face? How could she tell herself that with her tears-ridden face reflecting on the shine of her blade? Or when she sees him dead with his blade plunged inside of her? He had come close to killing her, and if it wasn’t for her abilities she would have been killed.

Alice was lost. She was lost to this despair of losing him. She had turned to manipulation and charming in hopes to prevent his resistance. It took many years of using him that she had enough after a billion times he had tried to stop him.

There was no way she could be forgiven so easily. The worst part about encountering him was that each time he lost the rage burning inside of him. What was left was a cold fury. Alice recalled the memory of the war maiden. The memory of that fragment of her dancing with her beloved. The memory of that woman failing to kill her. She had sent her to the cycle of reincarnation.

Alice, no, the war maiden inside her head had been fighting for so long that the steel coating her heart had slowly melted. She could feel the stare of that man again. The stare of the unbroken bleak walker that had walked many miles.

“Ah,” she thought. “Those eyes were the ones that made me unable to stop.”

She could recall the eyes of determination of the unbroken bleak walker. The eyes that looked forward. Daring eyes that would look upon the jaws of death without flinching. The stare that made those who have seen it would have made their knees grow weak.

He might have died unfairly. But he had faced his every death with the same stare. That unflinching stare that did not stop. When a human that had not been blessed could repeat the same actions because of his own beliefs. Then what about a war maiden that has been blessed with power? How could she dare falter when even those who are unblessed could have a single-minded grim determination that could not be changed?

“I cannot back down,” she forged her resolve. “I’ve promised that I won’t be stopped. As long as people need help then I shall continue to exist. That has been my way.”

But the hammer that forged her heart seems to have grown weaker. She could not get the throbbing pain out of her chest and soul, perpetually burning like a poison. She had power and the will yet she found no one by her side. Alice, no, the war maiden called the burnt woman wondered.

What was the point of this power? What was she fighting for in this reality that she did not belong to?