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 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 finally 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 forgotten on the side.
"What do you mean by wrong? It is an opinionated question that doesn't have a true or false answer."
The man just shook his head again, 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, she looked up at her mentor and spoke in a serious voice.
"The thing that is most important to me is my magic."
Unlike before, the brown-haired man stirred, stroking his beard thoughtfully.
"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 what lay behind her answer.
Having thought about it previously, she was immediately ready to reply in one final burst of energy as she crushed the last remnants of the lollipop in her mouth.
"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 short, 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 eternal suffering.
"Ashen flame doth consume thee."
Only usable 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, she could bypass the requirement.
The halfling's corpse burst into flame before getting torn apart in an explosion of blood that covered the room in crimson.
Both remaining monsters shouted out their own chants and spells; however, Eleanor countered them right away.
「Holy Shield」
Their low-level strikes formed out of Dark Magic collided helplessly with the barrier, making them 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 about her actions here or not, she would not let herself forget their crimes—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 lips close to his ear and whispered in 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 soiled surface.
As if finally registering her words, the halfling prostrated himself at her feet, his idea being that no priestess would ever kill someone who had already surrendered.
There was a long pause during which he stared at her white shoes, a smile slowly creeping onto his face as he awaited the mercy 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 into darkness filled with a warm, metallic smell.
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 left the chamber quietly, looking back at the exit that emitted a faint light from the path leading back to the surface above.
Frowning, she turned away from it, moving in the opposite direction and deeper into the darkness.
She continued at a steady pace 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 around her.
A shiver ran throughout her body, the surroundings eerily familiar to a scene she had seen not too long ago.
The nightmare.
The vision from weeks prior came to 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 were covered in deep lashes, 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 long descent led her 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, led her 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.