The princess who was married to the sword stood in the empty field, amidst the wreckage of yesterday’s battle. Her gaze was blurred and her posture tense. This would be an even more disadvantageous battle. Through the long and dreary night, her heart had softened with doubt, and her resolve for battle waned. But even so, she took her place in the great tapestry of fate, and faced the enemy.

The fortifications meant to stop that day's assault had yet to be repaired, but the monsters weren’t willing to wait that long. Soon, the wave of bodies, led by the Dragon of Calamity, would rear its ugly head over the horizon.

            The fog seemed denser than it did a day ago, and phantom shapes danced at the corner of the humans’ fields of vision. Images of terrible monsters, and their dark fate, painted in blood and black mud of Nagan-Tal’s waste.

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            Princess Marielle of Granfell, the Transient Blade, grit her teeth and lightly bent her legs, preparing for the dragon’s arrival. But instead of stampeding wildly, like the day before, it moved slowly forward, dragging its gruesome, whip-like body across the plain.

            The sole eye that rested in its forehead, emerging from a steaming wound, glowed subtly with otherworldly light, poised high, like hell’s beacon. And, as she looked at it with trepidation, Marielle noticed a strange kind of aura that enveloped the monster’s scales, most evident around its head, where hot air distorted around it.

            “This…”

            It was a technique the royal family’s heirs could recognize anywhere. The fourth to be learned, and the most vital art that required great volumes of power, and extremely fine control. It was a technique that allowed one to exude a defensive barrier from their skin - Body of Effervescent Fulcran.

            It was originally invented by one of her ancestors as a means to protect inexperienced scions from assassination, and kept as a guarded secret. In the first place, it was inconceivable that such a giant, brutish being could steal the royal family’s hidden techniques. A dragon couldn’t possibly use blood power, in the first place. What in the world was happening?

            For a moment, the princess felt confused and hopeless, but then, realization struck, and her heartbeat quickened.

            “If it’s using such a cost ineffective technique to face me… Maybe, just maybe, I could do this!”

            Marielle Granfell gripped her sword’s handle tightly, as battle plans ran through her head. Instead of fighting the dragon like it were an animal, she judged, it would be wiser to think of it as a swordsman, scaled up to the size of a giant.

            ‘GIYAAAAH!’

            A cry of immense magnitude erupted, flattening the nearby terrain, and scattering the fog that obscured their field of battle. The princess could finally see the sheer scale of her opponent, stretched out at the center of an inch deep circle of levelled ground.

            Its snake-like trunk and winding tail spanned more than a hundred yards in length, with four sprawled limbs, each longer than a horse carriage. A head large enough to safely fit two of the tallest warriors in Granfell gazed hatefully down at the world from the tip of its neck. Three rows of ox-like horns protruded from it, and wicked fangs stuck out from its lipless jaws, curved and serrated. Strangely, ears, like fish fins, erupted from the back of its head, and some manner of scaly dewlap hung beneath its jaw.

            Breaking out in cold sweat, the swordswoman deluded herself into seeing this abomination as a tall, crimson knight. His entire body, except for his eyes, ears and throat, were covered in impenetrable maille. A knight who had six fingers on each hand, all of which were hardened steel falchions. The thing had yet to breathe fire. And so, she bet on its inability to do so, and rushed forward.

            ‘GUA!’

            The Knight of Red swung the swords in his right hand horizontally, while raising his left hand. Dodging by a hair’s breadth, the princess slowed her charge enough to let them pass in front of her stomach, and sparks flew between the blades and her armor.

            An overhead diagonal slash. The Knight of Red twisted impossibly, spinning like a dervish to cut her from her left shoulder to her right hip on the recovery swing. And so, she poured blood power into her legs and shot forward, out of the narrow range of his sickles. An opening.

            With a flourish, she leapt, assessing the enemy’s movement. The Knight of Red twisted his body hideously, falling on his back and causing the earth to quake violently. The right hand lashed, again, with its six glimmering swords, aimed at her torso.

            “Urk!”

            She spun in the air, perspiring blood power to increase her momentum. Using the trick she succeeded in a day prior, she poured out a great amount of lifeforce into her sword, and ricocheted off of his strike, falling rapidly towards the crimson knight’s unprotected throat.

            ‘THUD!’

            The palm of his left hand smashed into her shoulder with the force of a collapsing mountain, dislocating an arm. But even that couldn’t stop her descent. Bubbling up beneath the surface of her dented armor, a dense aura of blood power absorbed the force of the blow and dissipated. The Body of Effervescent Fulcran, properly applied, and with true mastery.

            Marielle Granfell’s heart beat at superhuman speed, and her vision sparked with explosions of light and color. It was the result of rapidly circulating blood power. The raging vitality oversaturated her brain, allowing her to perceive time at a slowed rate and perform far beyond the limits of a living being, but at great cost.

            “U-urp! Ga-gh!”

            Black bile and thick blood bubbled out through her nose and mouth, compromising her breathing. The princess spat and voided her stores of blood power at once, until nothing remained, in a single downward slash aided by gravity. And like so, she, together with her blade, became a guilliotine made of blinding light.

            | S T A R F A L L |

            The technique landed where the beast’s head connected to its neck, causing great storms to erupt across the plain. Mud and withered vegetation flew through the air and a great deal of fog condensed suddenly, falling as a spray of rain.

            And then-

            The world fell silent, as dawning horror seized the hearts of the monsters and men alike.