Two years before Eleanor Lynn's travels within the Great Beyond, she, alongside her mentor, spoke quietly to one another.
"What is the most important thing to you?"
Godrick Lewis stood near the altar of a small cathedral in the southern district of Sea Fallen, his brown hair gently falling over his face.
Lying on her side on the closest wooden bench, the blonde-haired girl held a lollipop in one hand and a miniature version of the Sea God Bible in the other.
"Must I answer the same question again?"
She groaned, placing the candy back in her mouth.
The priest near the altar sighed slowly while rubbing his forehead aggressively without any care for the irritation it would cause his skin.
"Humor me and answer it truthfully."
Clasping his hands together, he leaned against the ceremonial table and watched the girl's eyes flicker to life as she answered the question.
"The most important thing to me is protecting the people I care about and my devotion to my faith."
The 13-year-old Eleanor looked up at Godrick, waiting for the regular grunt of approval; however, this time, he shook his head.
"Wrong."
Her blonde eyebrows furrowed as she sat up, lollipop still in her mouth and bible left off to the side.
"What do you mean by wrong? It is an opinionated question that doesn't have a true or false answer."
The man beside the altar continued shaking his head, a sigh of fatigue escaping his lips.
"For one, because it's cliché... But more accurately, it can be wrong if you aren't honest with yourself."
He paused, taking a deep breath.
"For once in your life, Eleanor, think not about others but about yourself. I'm not asking about anyone except the girl I took in after the war, the one who loves reading, the one who brings spiders out into the yard instead of crushing them, the one who places a portion of her food aside for the sick and elderly."
Godrick spoke in a way that was unfamiliar to the child, yet she understood him completely.
Within her chest, it felt as if a knot had been unfurled, a burden weighing her down suddenly lifted into the stars.
"What's important to me…"
There was a long pause as she stared at the ground, contemplating the question far more deeply than she had ever done before.
Then, after her silence, she looked upward at her mentor and spoke in a deadpan voice.
"The thing that is most important to me is my magic."
Unlike before, the brown-haired man stirred, his hand stroking his beard gently.
"Why is that the case?"
He wasn't judging her in any way, a fact that Eleanor could tell by his tone; rather, he was curious as to her answer.
Having thought about it previously, she was immediately ready to reply in one final burst of energy that coincided with the ending of the lollipop.
"My magic is pure and holy, which represents my own traits and personality. Thinking of it as a conduit, I'm able to help myself and so many others with only my own power."
She stopped herself, her eyes falling onto Godrick's shoes.
"But it is also important because it is a tool. A dangerous, powerful tool that can be used to hurt others, and it must be treated as such. Always. Forever."
…
Present day, Great Beyond.
The dagger within the hand of the young girl pierced the chest of the handsome man who bore shorter, but still prominent, horns.
He looked down at her with dilated pupils, bloodied lips, and a look resembling something she had seen on the faces of the dying elders on Sea Fallen.
Under her breath, as the man began to collapse, she uttered words that she had never thought she would dare speak.
Taught to her by Lady Prudentia in one of their most recent lessons, a chant of damnation, of an eternal suffering.
"Ashen flame doth consume thee."
Only able to be used by those who bore the Divine Authority of Death, the incarnation should've failed in that moment; however, drawing upon the power of the emblem borne into her neck, such a requirement was fulfilled.
The halfling's corpse burst into flame before bursting outward into an explosion of blood that covered the room in crimson.
Both other monsters shouted out with various chants and spells; however, Eleanor countered with ones of her own.
「Holy Shield」
Each of their low-level strikes formed out of Dark Magic collided helplessly with the barrier; the two remaining creatures were forced to watch in horror as their demise walked towards them slowly.
Reaching the first in four large strides, she struck beneath the jaw, ripping through into the mouth and straight into the brain stem.
"Ashen flame doth consume thee."
The chant was uttered again, forcing the soul that would normally reincarnate into a new Spore to enter the third realm of the Great Beyond, Hell, where they would face eternal torment.
Whether the Angelic Order cared for her actions here or not, she would not allow herself to forget that, in the end, even if the world was against her, she would still have herself.
And as she retracted her blade from the burning body and moved towards the man whom she had followed into the catacombs, she sighed.
Moving her left hand onto the man's shoulder, she positioned her head close to his ear, where she spoke in fluent Ancient Nordic, regardless of whether he could understand it or not.
"May the Sea God have mercy on your soul."
He looked over at her with horrified eyes, yet in the end, he was never able to fully take in the sight, as the moment she finished her words, she dug the ceremonial dagger into his bulging stomach.
His body buckled, his hand clasping onto the long sleeve of Eleanor's robe, a bloodied handprint sticking to the unclean surface.
As if finally registering her words, the halfling prostrated himself at her feet, his idea being that no priestess would ever kill a surrenderer.
There was a long pause as he stared at her white shoes, a smile slowly creeping onto his face as he awaited the mercy that his comrades did not receive.
Yet, there was one critical flaw in the man's thinking, that being the rules of surrender in the eyes of the girl.
"Ashen flame doth consume thee."
He felt the dagger in his chest tremble for a moment before the world vanished in a flash.
All that remained in the room was a young girl dripping with blood and an aura of death that not even the god himself could cleanse.
…
Eleanor exited the chamber quietly, looking back at the exit that emitted a faint light from the surface above.
Frowning, she turned away from it, moving in the opposite direction and deeper into the darkness.
Such a pace continued for kilometers, a steep trail of crimson blood left in her wake as she moved in short limps.
Only as she felt the ground begin to shift, and the density of the mana around her strengthen, did she pause, staring upward as if drawn to something invisible.
「Divine Light」
A ball of solid mana appeared in her palm, illuminating the corridor that she now found herself placed within.
Throughout her body, a shiver was felt, the surroundings eerily familiar to a scene she had seen not too long ago.
The nightmare.
The vision from weeks prior seemed to place itself in the forefront of her mind, commands that she didn't recognize beginning to fill her head.
Go straight.
That was the first directive, one that she followed faithfully and with as much haste as she could muster.
Similar to the images that floated within her dream, the walls had deep lashes into them, each filled with a liquid resembling bronze.
The sound of water droplets hitting stone echoed like drums, and the groaning of the non-existent supports all struck the girl at once.
Yet she wasn't certain, not entirely.
That changed after a large descent led into a labyrinth of twisting corridors, each path bearing another thousand choices that could doom her to a fate worse than death.
Go left.
The memory seemed to call out to her, urging her to follow its commands.
Doing so, she heard another, then another, then another, until she could perfectly retrace the path taken in her nightmare.
Right. Right. Left. Left. Right. Right. Straight. Down. Up. Left. Left. Left. Left. Right. Down.
There, at the end of the journey, a wooden door sat propped open, a chilling aura leaking out from within.
Her memories were hazy, no longer guiding her through the motions but rather only prompting emotional cues.
They told her when to be happy, when to be sad.
When to cry, and when to cheer.
Now, they told her to run.
Run as far away as she could and never look back.
Yet, that was no longer how she lived her life: the mistakes of her past, her urge to run from danger instead of facing it head-on, leading down a path of death and despair.
Eleanor would overcome it and reach her goal without losing a single thing.
She was selfish, but perhaps that was what she had needed to thrive.