Black Rose

Chapter Four:

Recap:

After a moment of it continuing to fly around her, it suddenly pulsed with power pushing her hair and clothes back away from her body. Startled, she covered her face as the book opened on its own while covered in a deep, dangerous-looking blood-red magic color; while it did so something that resembled a long sword began to rise out of its pages. Surprised and confused Elizabeth squinted, trying to see through the grimoire's extremely bright light; she had never heard of a weapon magic before, at least not one that produced such a heavy-looking object from the grimoire itself. The wind suddenly started whirling around the street she had been walking down causing her hair to whip around even more than it was before; a dark feeling of terror filled her being, one that she couldn't describe.

After another moment of the sword exposing itself, it flew up into the air swiftly making Elizabeth marvel at its elegance; the weapon itself was anything but elegant, its hilt was tattered and stained and the blade was chipped though it looked sharper than anything she had ever seen before. The sword heavily thudded into the ground at her feet revealing that the blade itself was strangely long; it came up to her shoulder.

"A claymore?" she whispered to herself while taking in the extent of the large two-handed weapon. Elizabeth marveled at the weapon in front of her ignoring the way the wind now parted around her body but still swirled around the air at dangerous speeds. Reaching her hand out slowly she paused when her hand brushed against the hilt; it was silver, originally she had thought it was just a rusted basic metal, her guess was iron, but she had never heard of a sword being made solely of such a precious metal. Rubbing her thumb against the eye of the hilt, the stained metal began to shine showing off a strange design Elizabeth had never seen before; she immediately fell in love with the delicate carvings shown in the soft metal.  Slowly sliding her hand down from the eye she grasped the hilt with one hand, feeling as if she had done it a thousand times.

Traditionally claymores were swords that required the wielder to use two hands, however, the object itself felt as light as a feature in her single hand; so light in fact that she swung it around with ease. 

"It's beautiful," she mumbled while continuing to marvel at its blade; she seemed as if she was almost caught in a trance.

....

A dark shadow appeared behind her which replaced her original one; this one, in particular, had deep black markings, and large bat-like wings to match its sinister, yet beautiful appearance. Power surged through her body as she continued to swing the sword around, she was marveling at the way the light reflected off of the claymore's rusted blade. Something about the feeling brought out a delighted chuckle from Elizabeth's lips, only this chuckle sounded dark, unlike her normal cheerful laugh. The mere sound of it was enough to bring her back to her senses; she had no idea what this mysterious power was, but something told her it connected to a deeper, darker part of herself. 

The power she felt was dangerous, dangerous, and controlling; not to mention draining. Almost all of her mana that had been saved up from countless years was just gone. Feeling weakness spread through her body, Elizabeth stabbed the long sword into the ground while she desperately huffed in the air trying to regain her composure.

As soon as the sword cut into the soft earth, the crazy winds that had surrounded her dissipated until there was nothing left. The Black Rose grimoire floated steadily beside her while she used the sword to support her body weight and tried to breathe. Pain rattled her body as the remaining amount of magic she had left, rapidly began expanding trying to replenish her mana pools. That was also something that her strange abilities could do. She believed since she could take, and copy others' magic, that it would require massive amounts of magical power, which her body did produce naturally.