Chapter Text
She ran.
She ran as Ban had told her to, and her steps echoed with an eerie sound whenever her boots hit the empty cobblestone road. Her lungs ached for more oxygen or for a pause, but she didn’t stop and willed her body forward instead. She fought to tighten her grip around the hilt of the weapon, her fingers slippery from blood.
Blood that wasn’t hers.
Every turn revealed another street of Liones’ capital, deserted or destroyed down to the foundation stones. No one was around to see her stumble and lose her footing, no one to help her climb back to her feet with quivering muscles; the surviving civilians had long been evacuated, and the Knights of the Round Table didn’t show themselves either.
But she knew they were here, in the city, eager to carry out Mordred’s every command.
The open square in front of the southern gate was empty when she reached it; Meliodas was nowhere to be seen. With brute force of determination, she sealed the panic away. It would all come to haunt her soon enough.
A sound from her right snatched her attention towards it, and her eyes went wide at the sight of the Colossai closing the short distance between itself and the southern gate, directed by an inaudible instruction. Every step the massive stone creature made was accompanied by a quake of the earth that made her teeth smack against one another. Its featureless head didn’t bother to turn towards her. As it stood, she was no threat to the creature or to its master’s plan. She had already played her part.
Short on time to waste, she silenced her concerns regarding Meliodas, slipped through the tiny door next to the gate, and turned towards the well-hidden trap door that marked the entrance to the passageway out of the city. A passageway she knew all too well, and the first thing her mind had clung onto after Ban had sent her away.
The rusty hinges screamed, loud enough to drown out the blood rushing into her head, no doubt loud enough to alarm all the enemy forces roaming the city.
After dropping down into the narrow tunnel, she picked up speed to hurry past the path to her right that would lead her back to Liones’ castle. The last place on earth she wanted to return to.
She pushed the surging thoughts and memories aside, but not before the definitive sound of a spear dropping to the cobblestone flashed in her ears. Her chest was cramped. And all she could do was to keep heading forward, through the dark tunnel she had used to play in, in what seemed like ages ago.
And so, she reached the end of the tunnel right when she thought she should, where a tiny beam of light seeped through the ceiling. Her breath unsteady, she lifted the trap door equivalent on this end of the passageway and was endlessly relieved to feel grass beneath her hands, as she heaved herself out of the hole in the ground. The chirping of birds nearly sent her into paralysis with its uplifting tune, their song in such stark contrast to what was happening in Liones. She could still smell the acerbic smoke, the crumbled stone, the metallic taste of blood.
Once she regained control over her muscles and stumbled to her feet, she followed the way through the sparse grove of chestnut trees that had clenched itself into her memory. The round shape of the house came into view quickly thereafter, unmistakable by its pointy rooftop rising above the canopy. It looked too peaceful to be true.
She had yet to reach the steps to the porch when the door swung open, and Lance rushed over with a yell, only to trap her in an embrace.
“Ivy! Heaven, Ivy, are you okay?” he asked. His voice was too supportive for her liking.
But she was glad for his arms that prevented her from falling victim to her trembling legs. With sheer force of will, Ivy choked the necessary minimum of her tenseness and allowed Lance to guide her into the Boar Hat’s main room.
Inside, more questions assaulted her as Elaine floated closer. Worry clouded her expression. “What happened? Where is Ban?”
Ivy managed to shake her head at the second question. She didn’t know, hadn’t seen him since he had headed to the castle, his steps controlled by worry and anger. But if he had wanted, he could have caught up with her long ago. If he had ignored the castle, he could have offered explanations to his family.
“Mom, stop it for now.” Lance made an effort to shield Ivy with his arm. But his mother ignored him to lock Ivy’s gaze with a commanding stare that failed to suppress her fear.
Elaine proceeded with a single word question.
“Harlequin?”
Ivy was frozen in place. The answer to that, she did know. With crushing certainty.
Ivy, go now! Get to Ban and don’t stop! You hear me?
Elaine had to have seen something in Ivy’s gaze, something horrific enough for her to float a few feet back. Maybe the truth.
Lance’s grip around Ivy’s shoulders tightened as he witnessed his mother’s reaction. “It’s okay, Ivy. Everything’s okay,” he said in a low voice, to calm her or himself, Ivy couldn’t tell for sure.
And that was when she broke, the grip around her weapon went loose, before she flung her arms around Lance and cried into the shoulder of her cousin without restraint.
Helplessly, he patted her back in an effort to calm her, but the images in her head repeated with no remorse, tortured her until numbness covered her mind. Ivy hadn’t seen every horrific act Mordred had done to betray her family, but it was more than enough to get a grasp on the extent of his crimes.
While her tears dried out, Ivy regained enough composure to bring a bit of space between herself and her cousin. She cringed at the sight of his green tunic covered with her tears and the blood from her hands. Wasn’t she supposed to be the collected one of the two? Didn’t she have the responsibility to spare him the sight of her weakness?
Lance’s eyes darted sideways as Ivy tried in vain to bring her hair back in order, only for him to glance at her with this terrible, compassionate look that almost sent her over the edge again. Ivy surrendered to the mess of her hair; all determination and strength was used up.
But she had to concentrate on something, anything else, or she would fall victim to the images in her head. So she avoided the scrutiny of Lance’s scarlet eyes as far as possible and looked around the room, feeling betrayed by how usual the inn presented itself in the afternoon sun. The coarse-constructed wooden tables and chairs, the glass windows, tainted from a lack of recent cleaning, the richly stocked booze shelves behind the counter – all of it bared the illusion of normalcy. As if her parents and siblings had gone to town and would be back any minute.
Her aunt, Elaine, took up position at a corner near the window with the best view at the capital of Liones to wait for a sign from her loved one or any of the other Sins. The sun painted vivid patterns onto the floor as the light filtered through her Fairy wings. And at the feet of the staircase leading to the upper rooms stood Katrina, her eyes wide in shock as she took in the scene.
Ivy couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds. She had no idea how long Katrina had been standing there, but the thought of breaking down in front of her, for her to witness, was even worse than losing her composure in front of Lance.
As he followed Ivy’s line of sight, Lance turned to give Katrina a hardly convincing smile. “Hey, Katrina. Ivy just came back from the capital and—,” he started his comfort talk, undoubtedly peppered with soothing lies, but Katrina interrupted before he could present her a coherent excuse for Ivy’s breakdown.
“Something happened.” It didn’t sound like a question.
“We don’t exactly know what happened, but our parents will surely tell us when they get back here.”
Lance’s words convinced no one. Not even himself.
Katrina shook her head and focused on Ivy with a look that seemed absentminded and all too concentrated at the same time, as if she intended to read right through her thoughts. Ivy at least had the willpower to hide her blood-soaked hand behind her back.
An earthshattering sound suddenly filled the room, a hundred drums to signal the end of the world. All heads snapped towards the window next to Elaine, and beyond the glass, a cocoon of dark, demonic magic rose over the walls of Liones’ capital, its sheer presence able to consume every living thing in proximity. But as quickly as it emerged, the darkness disappeared, wiped from the face of this earth.
Fear submerged Katrina’s face. A whimper escaped her lips. Her green eyes threatened to drown in a pool of darkness, and Ivy reacted just in time to prevent her from storming out the door.
“DAD!” Katrina cried into Ivy’s ears while she struggled against the fierceness of Ivy’s grip. Lance tried once more to calm her with words, but received no reaction from Katrina other than more forceful cries for her father.
After a while, Katrina went limp in her arms and Ivy let go of her just enough to seat her at one of the unoccupied tables. The younger girl looked like she had walked through Purgatory and back, and Ivy realized she probably had the same hollowness plastered onto her face.
In need of help, Ivy turned to Elaine, the only adult near and far, but her aunt held the look of the broken, her frail form still curled up next to the window. Lance stood at the center of the room emptyhanded, unsure of what to do with himself or how to even begin to tackle this disaster.
“I suppose that means Escanor and the backup from Camelot didn’t make it in time,” he said. “We can wait a few more hours, but then we should leave. We have to assume that Mordred will get here next.”
“It’s pointless,” Ivy said. She needed any ounce of strength left to get her words out.
“What?”
“The waiting part. It’s pointless.”
Lance looked at her in sincere confusion. “Ivy, we have to give Aura and the others a chance to meet up with us here. You can’t give them up like this.”
“It’s pointless, you hear! Aura, Cynthia—” Ivy heard her voice break, but she couldn’t find the courage to continue. Lance had no idea what had happened, what Mordred had done, what he was willing to do to the rest of them.
At a loss for words, Lance stumbled a few feet backwards in an effort to bring physical distance between himself and Ivy’s words. Denial made him shake his head. Then, his voice of reason regained the upper hand. Defeated, he sank down into a chair next to Katrina.
“We have to fix this.” Ivy raised her head to look at the owner of the voice and was surprised to find Katrina on her feet. A surprising amount of strength spread from her small form. “It doesn’t matter what it will cost, but we have to fix this. We can get to Camelot for help.”
Ivy couldn’t help but huff. “And what plan exactly do you have in mind?” Too late did she realize how much poison she had injected into her tone. Katrina flinched but remained steadfast.
“I don’t have a plan. But that’s not the point. We have to do something. Right, Elaine?” Katrina turned towards Elaine, but the latter gave no response other than a continued stare into the middle distance.
Lance, desperate to reach for any lifeline they would throw at him, supported Katrina with a little too much élan. “Camelot is as good a place as any to look for help against Mordred. Mom, we can go to Camelot while you get back home to the Forest and—”
“I’m not letting you go!” Elaine shouted, as Lance’s words had reignited a spark of life that the grim reality of the day had buried. “Do you realize what will happen if Mordred gets a hold of you? HE MURDERED THEM! Ban, my brother, Diane, my nephew, my nieces… Helbram and Aura… they were just children. I… I can’t read their hearts anymore.”
Ivy clenched her hands, eyes fixated on the floor. She had known all this, had felt it with almost absolute certainty.
Blood on the marble tiles. Blood on the ridge of Mordred’s sword. Blood on her father’s clothes as he stood up one last time.
Almost reluctantly Elaine continued to speak, at first fixated on her son, but then she included Katrina and Ivy with a stern look. “I’m not letting you go, Lance. None of you. Otherwise your parents would end me.”
Elaine’s words failed to ban the images out of her head, and her pained but determined look failed to make her forget. But Ivy still made the necessary steps to close the gap between them and let herself be hugged right after Katrina.
The Seven Deadly Sins were dead.
But they wouldn’t give up hope.