Fire.

It was everywhere, scattered across the surreal, snowy landscape like pyres of the underworld.

Kaede watched as the flames burned away the pure-white snow. They consumed the bodies of fallen allies which laid all around.

But most of all, they sprayed over still living men through a blazing jet -- flames that pumped endlessly from her own hands.

A human wave of Northmen charged straight at her. Their zweihanders glinted with bloody, razor-sharp steel. However Kaede felt her arms pivot towards them as though moving on their own. Her finger held the trigger of the flame projector down, and the scorching fire that shot out from her hands landed squarely on those men's faces.

Rimefire dripped from their melting eyes and sizzling flesh. It burnt away their chainmail-and-hide armor to reveal only civilian tunics. Their weapons dropped away and left only outstretched hands that sought help. Their lips and chin were consumed by the liquid fire, exposing jawbones that began to wail more terribly than any banshee.

"KEEP FIRING!" She heard someone cry out from behind her.

The voice sounded desperate but it was nevertheless an order. The torrent of liquid fire continued unabated from the weapon held in her hands. Yet the burning corpses did not stop their advance. They shambled through the torrent of flames with agonizing shrieks.

"KEEP FIRING!" Kaede heard again. This time just before an officer of Weichsel charged past her flank to intercept the approaching corpses.

A major with long, wavy red hair, slashed through the approaching foes with her bloody swordstaff. Though instead of falling down, the pieces of those bodies seemed to fuse together into a four-armed giant.

This abomination grasped an even more massive sword, which he brought down upon the Major without mercy. It cut straight through the haft of her swordstaff as well as her right shoulder. Yet the Major did not flinch as she drove the remains of her polearm into her foe with her remaining arm.

However even as the giant fell to the ground before Kaede's savior, the familiar felt no relief, only apprehension.

The Major's body convulsed for a brief moment. She seemed to grow taller while her wavy-red hair shortened and went gray. The remains of her swordstaff changed into a marshal's baton just like the one Kaede had seen in Pascal's family painting. But as the figure turned about her face was no longer human.

Kaede felt frozen with trepidation as she gazed upon the woman who had just saved her. Instead of eyes, the figure had hollowed out sockets with ghoulish embers glowing in them. The officer looked upon the snowy-haired girl and decreed:

"Diieeee."

But... why?

Confusion and terror filled her thoughts at what she was seeing, right before an inexplicable wave of seething hatred crashed into her mind. Her body seized control once again as she raised her flame siphon. And with a press of the trigger she sprayed liquid fire straight into the officer's face.

Stop! What am I doing? She saved my life! Kaede's thoughts screamed.

Yet her lips spoke a very different message as she felt herself cry out:

"<You fucking traitorous PIECE OF SHIT!>"

However while Kaede could feel her lips moving, the voice she heard wasn't hers, but Pascal's.

A fresh deluge of searing rage cut through her anxiety like a hot knife through butter. Her chest was pounding while her eyes narrowed with disdain at the world. Then in that one moment Kaede realized that the nonsensical anger, the hatred, the betrayal that she felt. They weren't her own.

They were Pascal's.

His anger wasn't directed at her. However he also didn't spare her from the outpouring of raw indignation and malice. Kaede felt like her own thoughts were being consumed by a wildfire that now raged all around her -- a conflagration that burned with an all-devouring desire to destroy, to murder, to take revenge.

This outpouring of hatred was more intense than anything she had ever felt, anything she could imagine.

-- And it absolutely terrified her.

"<P-Pascal?>" She muttered both aloud and in telepathy, as her world faded to black and her eyes opened inside a dark cabin.

She had been asleep. It was all a dream, a nightmare. Except...

The flood of enmity and malice continued unabated.

It took a moment before Kaede realized that these emotions were flowing into her through the familiar bond that she shared with Pascal. The empathic link was supposed to be one way, from her to him, yet somehow it had reversed?

The familiar wasn't sure what was going on. She knew only that the murderous rage which overflowed her master was downright frightening. It felt like he was ready to burn down the world, kill anyone whom he encountered, anything to satisfy his thirst for retribution.

-- And by extension, Kaede couldn't help but feel the urge to kill in her own emotional state.

She wasn't even sure whom this anger was directed at. All she knew was that she couldn't stop this raw desire, and it terrified her.

"<P-Pascal? W-what's going on?>" Her wispy voice was shaking as she tried to reach out to him.