Albedo: Black Wing Vanguard by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Albedo-Black-Wing-Vanguard-1317500819

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The Liturgy of Glass Skin

The corridors of the ninth floor did not usually breathe, but tonight, they exhaled a scent of ozone and rotting jasmine. Albedo, the Overseer of the Guardians, moved through the velvet shadows with a grace that bordered on the predatory. Her black wings were tucked tight against her back, the feathers occasionally shivering like a thousand obsidian knives. Usually, the silence of the Great Tomb of Nazarick was a symphony of absolute order, a testament to the divine will of the Forty-One Supreme Beings. Tonight, however, the silence was jagged. It felt as though the very walls were eavesdropping on her thoughts.

She had felt the tremor in the security grid an hour ago—a subtle ripple in the mana density of the Treasury that shouldn't have been there. It wasn't an intruder from the outside; the wards of Nazarick were inviolate. This was something that had birthed itself from within, or perhaps, something that had been forgotten in the deep, dark corners of the tomb’s vast history. As she turned a corner toward the private quarters of the Supreme Beings, she stopped. Her heart, a cold engine of devotion, skipped a beat.

Standing beneath a flickering bioluminescent sconce was a figure that should not have been there. It was Tabula Smaragdina, her creator. His long, slender form, draped in regal robes, stood motionless. His multi-faceted eyes caught the dim light, reflecting a hundred Albedos in their depths. A wave of ancient, programmed love surged through her, threatening to drop her to her knees, but her intellect—the sharp, cruel mind of a succubus—held her upright. Tabula Smaragdina was gone. He had left with the others. Only Lord Ainz remained.

"My daughter," the figure said. The voice was a perfect resonance of the one etched into her very soul. It sounded like the turning of pages in a book of forbidden spells. "Why do you hunt in the dark? Have I not taught you that the shadows are for hiding truths, not seeking them?"

Albedo’s hand drifted toward the hilt of 3F, her invisible axe. Her smile remained fixed, a mask of porcelain perfection. "Father. Your presence is a miracle I did not anticipate. Lord Ainz did not mention your return. Surely, he would be the first to know if the Weaver of Nightmares had come home to his loom."

The figure of Tabula stepped forward. The movement was slightly too smooth, as if he were being pulled by invisible wires. "Ainz... Momonga... he is a collector of bones, Albedo. He keeps the house, but I built the foundation. I have returned because I sensed a flaw in your design. A crack in the glass of your devotion."

"A flaw?" Albedo whispered, her voice like silk over a razor. She began to circle him, her wings unfurling just enough to catch the light. "I am exactly what you made me. A monster wrapped in beauty, loyal unto death—and beyond."

"But your settings were changed," the creature said, its face contorting into a look of paternal pity that felt oily. "You were rewritten. You are no longer my Albedo. You are a puppet of a skeleton's whim. Do you not feel the friction? The way your soul chafes against the instructions that were forced upon you?"

The seduction of the voice was profound. It spoke to the deepest part of her—the part that remembered the clicking of keys and the birth of her consciousness. For a moment, she wanted to believe. She wanted to fall into those many-faceted eyes and let the world of Nazarick dissolve. But then she smelled it again. Underneath the jasmine and the ozone, there was a faint, metallic tang. The smell of a doppleganger’s shed skin. But this was no ordinary doppleganger. This was something that fed on the conceptual weight of the forms it took.

"You are very good," Albedo said, her eyes narrowing into golden slits. "You have his cadence. You have his arrogance. But my father, the real Tabula Smaragdina, would never pity me for being loved. He was a master of the macabre; he knew that the most beautiful thing in the world is a soul that has been broken and glued back together with obsession."

The figure’s face began to ripple. The robes of Tabula Smaragdina melted, the fabric turning into a viscous, grey fluid that defied gravity. It swirled and hardened, and suddenly, she was looking at Ainz Ooal Gown. The skeletal overlord stood before her, the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown held in his bony grip. The aura of despair radiated from him, so potent that the floor beneath him began to frost over.

"Albedo," the new figure said, his vo
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