Anne had often wondered how she would die.
It's strange to say that she doesn't like to die cleanly. She once dreamed that she was dismembered and died miserably, but she didn't feel any panic or uneasiness. Once, she dreamed that she died peacefully in hospital, and people held a beautiful funeral for her. Michelle stood quietly in front of the tombstone and handed her a bouquet of lilies.
She woke up from her dream, dripping with cold sweat, tossing and turning and could no longer fall asleep.
Since meeting Michelle, it seems that all of Anne's dreams are related to her. She was chopped into pieces by Michelle, burned to death by the church together with Michelle, and strangled to death with a rope... There was even a time when she and Michelle had a rough and tumble affair in a dirty little hotel, but when she was awake, she never I had this thought.
Until she decided to betray Michelle.
The idea of betraying Michelle started when Michelle no longer believed in herself, but that was not the initial estrangement. Before Sally came along, Michelle was her faith, her spiritual support—Michelle was her god.
Michelle can kill anyone, Michelle can get anything.
Just like when she first met Michelle. In the small hotel late at night, Michelle fell from the sky like a god and chopped off the guest's head with a sword.
The scene at that time seemed like yesterday: the guest's headless body was still pressing on her, twitching and trembling like a stripped rooster. The head had a slightly funny expression and rolled on the ground. Blood sprayed everywhere, staining the yellowed quilt and sheets red, and diluting even the most stubborn musty smell on the quilt.
God knows how much she hated that musty smell.
Every time she receives guests, she can only focus on the ceiling of the hotel to forget the disgusting smell. No matter how bad the guests were, she could relax and ignore those bulging fats and greasy noses. There was just that musty smell that she couldn't bear no matter what.
It smelled like childhood sheets, sticky and damp, always reminding her of what a despicable person she had become.
To escape the smell, she would breathe with her mouth wide open. Sometimes customers would take her performance as a compliment and work harder, but she didn't care much.
Looking back on her five-year career, the only thing that left a deep impression on her was the abominable smell on the ceiling and quilt where she used to stay lost in thought.
Therefore, when Michelle killed the guest, Anne was not afraid. Instead, she felt a little relaxed and happy because the blood diluted the musty smell.
Then, Michelle put away the sword in her hand, looked at her expressionless, and said to her:
"Follow me and you will become a mage."
At that time, Anne didn't even know what the word mage meant.
But she nodded and kept these words in her heart. To this day, she can retell it verbatim. The scene at that moment was like a frozen oil painting. Every detail on Michelle's clothes, the angle at which the door opened, the position where the head rolled down, the shape of the stains on the wall... everything seemed to have just happened. The scene was so fresh. Fish fresh from the sea.
Michelle is such an incredible person.
Perhaps this is why Anne became so angry when she found out that Michelle no longer believed in her.
The turning point occurred in the third month of learning magic with Michelle.
That day, Michelle brought back a woman who looked like a bamboo pole. It happened to be dinner time, and the strange woman followed Michelle in. Without waiting for anyone to say anything, she sat down with a smile, as if she was the owner here, and took away the only sausage on the plate.
That was the dinner she left for Michelle.
Anne stared blankly at the woman, at her high cheekbones and mean eyebrows. Anne was shocked. She didn't know who this woman was and whether she should be angry.
The woman looked at her and grinned:
"Hello, my name is Sally."
Sally, what a stupid name. Only the stupidest peasant woman, who accidentally fell into a manure pit after drinking three barrels of ale and lost consciousness, would give her daughter such a name.
But she still didn't get angry or slap the shameless woman, but looked at Michelle cautiously. Michelle did nothing, just gave her a sentence or an order:
"From today on, she is our companion."
Annie seemed to have fallen into Pearl Lake in winter. It was cold, stinging, and her bones were sore.
This feeling is too familiar.
She seemed to have returned to her childhood, that ignorant and ignorant little girl.
When she was five years old, her mother came to her with a crumpled baby boy in her arms and said to her: "From today on, he is your brother."
How similar.
Her mother was a well-known abandoned woman in the village, and her father left on the day she was born. In order to find her husband, her mother sold her fields and cows and embarked on a journey to find her husband. Sometimes for three days, sometimes for five days, Anne could only rely on a little help from neighbors, waiting in the dilapidated home for her mother who returned disappointed again and again.
When she was five years old, her mother left for ten days and finally brought back a baby boy—her younger brother. It was said that it was the child her father had with another woman outside. As for where her father was, Anne didn't know, and her mother didn't mention it at all after she came back.
After that time, my mother seemed to have given up and no longer went out to look for her father, but became obsessed with ale. Anne's drunken mother frightened her. Sometimes she wakes up at night and finds her mother looking at her, not as if she is looking at her daughter, but as if she is looking at an enemy.
But the way the mother looked at her brother was completely different.
Even if she is drunk, her mother will only touch her brother with the gentlest arms, sing him lullabies, tuck him in quilt, and steal milk for him from the next village. Sometimes, Anne felt that her mother looked at her brother not like she was looking at her son, but like she was looking at her lover.
What's more, that's not his mother's son at all.
Anne hated her brother, but there was nothing she could do about it. She goes to the mountains to dig wild vegetables, she does all the housework, and she helps her neighbors with farm work. In addition to her mother's wine money, all the money she earned was spent on her younger brother, the best clothes, the best food... all just to satisfy her mother. Whenever she mended clothes for her brother, she could feel her mother's eyes softening when she looked at her.
This made her feel that her mother still loved her.
As time went by, her mother became more decadent and her attitude towards her became worse, and her attentiveness to her mother and younger brother gradually deepened. Eventually, it all comes to a head.
A turning point occurs, like maggots sprouting from a rotten corpse.
When she was twelve years old, in order to make money, she was taken to a hotel by a bald middle-aged man and experienced it for the first time in her life. For the first time, she fell in love with the dirty, moldy ceiling of the hotel. While looking at the ceiling, she thought about how much food she could buy for her brother with the money, and how happy her mother would be. This made her happy too.
But when she returned home with the money, her neighbor told her that her brother had drowned in Pearl Lake.
She would never forget the way her mother looked at her when she came home that day.
In fact, from beginning to end, my mother did not make any comment on her brother's death. As usual, she was sitting on the bed, half covered with a shabby quilt, holding a half-drunk wine bottle in her hand, looking at Anne coldly.
Anne read the words in her mother's eyes: "I hope it's you who dies."
So Anne didn't say anything. She silently walked to the bed, took out the small bag of money she had just earned, and placed it next to her mother's hand.
The mother looked at her again and finally spoke:
"Despicable."
The next day, Annie found her mother's body in Pearl Lake. Like his brother, my mother's facial features were deformed and her face was swollen like leavened bread. At the moment when she saw the body, Anne thought that her mother would be happy. Now that her brother and her mother looked so similar, no one would ever say that they were not biological children.
She shed a lot of tears at the funerals of her mother and brother. It was the first time she cried and she felt relieved.
After the funeral, she left the village.
She didn't understand how she felt about her mother and brother until she met Sally. She felt that she loved them and she had sacrificed so much for them. Their deaths made her sad, so she left her hometown and wandered around.
But the moment she saw Sally, she woke up - she hated her brother as much as she hated Sally in front of her.
She wished she could have slapped Sally, just as she wished she could have strangled the baby boy in the first place.
But she didn't. She maintained a dull expression, watched Sally eat the sausage, and said timidly: "Hello... I'm Annie."
She entered a new dead end.
Sally is smarter than her, Sally is more talented in magic than she is, Sally is more eloquent... Everything is just as Anne expected, Michelle's scale gradually tilted to Sally's side. No matter how hard she tried or how much she obeyed, Michelle would always pay more attention to Sally than her.
Every night, she wanted to get up quietly, slit the woman's throat with a dagger, and let the blood cover that disgusting fake smile. But she didn't dare.
Just as she was afraid to kill her brother, she was afraid to touch a hair on Sally's head.
This made her hate herself even more.
She also discovered that she was such a person: the worse others treated her, the better she could not help but treat others. This became a motivation for her to try and escape her own abjection. She wanted to change herself completely.
As a result, she became more and more aroused. She tortured all the hostages captured by Michelle, and she used the most brutal means to kill her enemies. This made her happy. She felt that she had changed and became very powerful. She was no longer the humble and silly girl before, and others were afraid of her.
But in front of Michelle and Sally, she still didn't dare to express her anger.
She wasn't the one who killed Sally.
Anne is shocked that Michelle doesn't believe this. How could she possibly kill Sally? How dare she kill Sally? Her dead mother and brother had long since turned into heavy chains, binding her in place. She could never take that step.
After Sally complained, Anne didn't even argue with Sally. She knew that Sally was such an unscrupulous person, and this was not the first time that Sally had spoken ill of herself. It happened several times in front of her, and there must be more in private. And she never resisted or even complained.
It was Sally who took the initiative to find her.
"Annie, don't be angry. I didn't mean to sue you just now to harm you."
Sally explained to her.
"Annie, don't you think Michelle is weird? She obviously knows so many things, but she never tells us. Until now, we don't know what good things are in the treasure house. Why should she suppress it? She is facing us. I really don’t think she is better than us... "
Sally complained to her.
"Annie, I heard that Michelle has a treasure that can double people's magic power in an instant. Let's go and grab it! Don't be afraid, Michelle is actually not as powerful as she looks. As long as we take advantage of it, When she was resting..."
Sally incited her.
"Annie, don't do this! Don't tell Michelle, no! Michelle will kill me! Please, don't tell Michelle that I want to betray her, okay?"
Sally begged her.
When Annie defeated Sally and bound her with magic, she discovered that she was already so much stronger than Sally. And the arrogance that Sally usually looks like is just pretending to be arrogant.
She still wasn't going to kill Sally. She was going to tell Michelle to take care of it all. Michelle hates betrayers the most. As long as she recognizes Sally's true identity, she will definitely kill Sally - how wonderful, this is something she wants to do but dare not do.
As long as Sally is dead, Michelle will definitely value herself again. she thought.
It's just that she underestimated Sally's determination.
With no way out, Sally made an even more tragic decision - although she was restrained by Annie and couldn't escape, at least she could still control her own life. So before Annie could react, she detonated her magic from within, killing herself.
"Annie, she will never trust you again."
These were the last words she left before she died.
Anne was pushed into the abyss of despair.
Sally had framed her for suicide, and she didn't know how to explain it all to Michelle. Compared to Sally committing suicide due to some tortuous reasons, killing Sally himself is obviously more reasonable and credible. In Michelle's view, she and Sally had a long-standing grudge.
Needless to say, there are traces of fighting in this place.
"Sally, Annie, it's time to go!"
Before Sally's lingering warmth faded away, Michelle started calling them. In panic, Anne found that she had done another stupid thing - she hurriedly disposed of the body and made up a lie to try to make Michelle believe that Sally was missing.
However…
"Annie, did you kill Sally?"
This was what the noble said, and it exploded in her mind like a thunderbolt.
Sally said everything, and Michelle would rather believe that incompetent noble than believe her.
She found that she had turned back into that cowardly and incompetent little girl, unable to do anything but keep repeating pale excuses. And Michelle's attitude made her feel like falling into an ice cellar. Although she said she believed in herself, the look in her eyes was exactly the same as her mother's when her brother died.
After many years, Anne understood that look again.
Michelle is going to kill her.
After repeated washes of despair, a strong idea finally emerged from her heart.
She wants to change, she doesn't want to go back to her old self, she can't make the same mistakes again.
Anne decides to betray Michelle.
She was going to surrender to the Reese family's pursuers, and she was going to tell them Michelle's plan. Although the church's ban on mages is very strict, many nobles secretly have severe ties with mages and seek the power of magic. She is willing to do things for the Reese family, and the Reese family will let her live and kill Michelle.
Kill Michelle…
Anne trembled all over at the thought of this.
Anne convinced herself that she was shaking with excitement.
After running in the woods for a while, Anne finally saw the group of knights. They must be members of the Rise family! She thought so. So she ran towards them quickly, waved to them, and shouted:
"I don't mean any harm, your family's..."
What greeted her was a ray of holy light.
Within the Holy See, there are actually many types of Holy Light. There is the holy light used to baptize knights, which is gentle and holy; there is the holy light used to torture pagans, which can burn people until they are worse than death; and there is the holy light used to kill enemies, which is so powerful that it can burn people in an instant. Purified cleanly, leaving no trace.
What Anne faced was the third kind of holy light.
The terrifying temperature evaporated her robe and skin in the blink of an eye, and the intense burning sensation made it impossible for her to even use the simplest protective magic. She couldn't see anything, there was a holy light everywhere that was too bright to look directly at.
Before she could betray Michelle, she was purified by the "Purges."
Fine ashes floated in the woods late at night, flying like butterflies, and like butterflies were trampled into mud by the iron hooves of the "cleaners".
Anne is dead.
At the moment before she died, she suddenly thought...
No, she didn't have time to think about anything. She didn't have time to comment on this way of death - was it tragic enough for her to be vaporized by the holy light? She didn't have time to regret betraying Michelle or anything else. There was no flashback of her life before her eyes, no childhood joys and misfortunes.
She's just dead.