Arvel, Fidget, and Frederik gathered what tools and weapons they could from the abandoned battlefield. The goblin raiders were so terrified of Fidget’s thunderous rage that most of them had dropped their armaments in their panic. Or, perhaps they knew better than to hold onto chunks of metal at the time.

The weapons, however, were in rather poor repair. Frederik armed himself with the most sturdy looking spear he could find, which still featured a number of small nicks and chips and an only barely sharpened tip. Fidget elected to put two swords on her back and carry a spear in her hands. She covered her right shoulder with a leather pauldron she found, which sat awkwardly atop the puffy sleeve of her blue dress.

Arvel considered his shovel, which had a notch chopped out of the side by Tork’s cleaver, and decided to abandon it in favor of those cleavers left lying by a pool of the grizzled goblin’s blood.

“There ain’t so many demons about right now,” Arvel said, “on account of the fact we wiped out a whole bunch of ‘em yesterday. But demons multiply fast, so we ain’t gonna waltz right in without some resistance.”

Fidget scrunched up her face in disgust and said, “Demons multiplying... how long until their babies can fight?”

“It ain’t exactly like that,” Arvel said, “They ain’t up there makin’ babies like humans or goblins would. Y’see, there’s all these lil’ cracks in the world that open up to the underworld, where all the demons live. When one of the Pale Emperor’s kiddos amasses enough power, they can wedge that crack open more and pull more demons through to serve them.”

“That’s what Melodia is?” Frederik asked, “A daughter of the Pale Emperor?”

“Yeah,” said Arvel, “The apple don’t fall far from the tree. She was born selfish, not a care in the world for who she hurts to get what she wants.”

“Except you,” Frederik said, “From what I’ve been told, she had every opportunity to capture you or at least have you taken far away from here, but she let you be when you were vulnerable.”

“Are we on that again?” Arvel asked, eyes narrow, “Jus’ what are you getting at?”

“It wasn’t an accusation!” said Frederik, waving his hands to try to calm Arvel’s ire; “I just... Well it seems clear that she has feelings for you. Those feelings could, perhaps, be... manipulated.”

“I can’t talk her into not killin’ people,” Arvel muttered, “She might be sweet on me but more like how someone might really like a blanket or a particular teacup... I’m a thing that makes her happy, not a whole, real person with feelings that matter.”

“Can she be killed?” Fidget asked.

“Yeah,” Arvel answered, “It ain’t easy, as powerful as she is... She can heal up from a whole lot. But she can definitely die.”

“Good,” she replied, “Because I’m gonna kill her.”

The winding path up the mountainside grew narrower, until Arvel, Fidget, and Frederik had to travel single-file between the rocky outcroppings, while Tim meandered behind them. But as the sun sank lower in the sky, nearing the horizon, Arvel caught sight of a sizable fissure in the rocks.

“Up there,” he said, “There’s a cave.”

“You think she’s hidden in there?” Frederik asked.

Arvel nodded and said, “Well, if we try to go in and a whole bunch of demons try to stop us, we’ll know.”

“We should’ve brought lanterns,” Frederik muttered, grabbing hold of the rocks on either side of the footpath to help hoist himself up the steep trail.

Arvel climbed up to the opening in the rocks, and peered into the darkness. At first, it seemed pitch black, but he closed his eyes to let them adjust, and when he looked again, he could see a faint purple glow deeper in.

“It’s dark,” he said, “But not completely. Fidge won’t have a problem but we’ll be on the back foot.”

“On the back foot?!” Frederik asked, “In demon territory?!”

Arvel looked back and winced at the setting sun behind Frederik, before glaring at him sharply and asking, “You got solutions or just criticisms?”

Without waiting for an answer, Arvel climbed up into the mouth of the fissure, before beginning to make his descent into the darkness. Fidget followed him immediately, without hesitation, and Frederik paused to scoff before following them in. Tim paced back and forth at the entrance, watching them vanish into the darkness, before sending only a mournful bleat after them.

The tunnel was steep and winding, and Fidget hurried to the front, taking Arvel’s hand to lead him down the trail descending into the heart of the mountain. At first, the pitch-black cavern was sparsely dotted with small growths of crystal that let off a faint glow, but as they traveled further, the crystal became so prevalent that it covered nearly the entire rock structure of the cave except the floor.

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“What is all of this?” Frederik whispered, “It’s beautiful, but... strange.”

“A demon’s pantry,” Arvel muttered, “My pa told me... Demons can absorb energy from living beings, but they can also put it into other things to store it. Hold onto it for later, you know?”

“For what purpose?” asked Frederik, “If power is the ultimate pursuit, why not make use of it?”

“To not become drunk off it, I guess?” Arvel asked in reply, “That, and to make sure they got plenty for later. Don’t squander it, unless they need it to crack open a path to the underworld and bring through a whole bunch more.”

Fidget froze mid-step, and squeezed Arvel’s hand tight. Without that squeeze to notify him something was amiss, he might’ve walked right into her. But instead, Arvel stopped, and Frederik bumped into him with a quiet grunt.

“What’s wrong?” Arvel whispered.

Fidget’s large ears twitched.

“Bats?” she murmured, leaning forward a bit and tilting her head to better catch the echoes from deeper in the cavern. Her eyes narrowed, before snapping open wide, and she shouted, “Demons!”

They rushed up from the depths like water pouring from a spout. Arvel threw himself over top of Fidget and all three of them hit the ground, covering their heads as the wave of demons washed over them, filling the cavern with a cacophony of flapping and screeching.

“Damn!” Arvel groaned, gritting his teeth as he felt the scratches and scrapes of demon claws and wings across his back. For a mercy, they were too densely packed in the cave to mount a proper attack, instead crashing into one another in their rush toward the cave exit, “Didn’t think she’d muster an attack like this already...”

“What do we do?!” Frederik shouted, yelping as one of their claws snagged the cap from atop his head, and he folded his arms more tightly over his scalp.

Fidget growled, before shouting, “We fight!”

Scrambling out from underneath Arvel, Fidget leapt to her feet and stabbed up wildly into the mass of demons. She couldn’t see what she hit in the chaos, but from their screams, she knew she hit something, or several somethings. She swung the spear back and forth, batting at them, before one of them grabbed hold of the pauldron on her shoulder and yanked her off the ground, flinging her back and forth.

“Fidge!” Arvel shouted as he sprung to his feet. He wrapped one arm around Fidget’s waist while the other hand drew a cleaver from his side, and he carved through the demon’s leg, freeing her from its grasp.

Not once did Fidget stop swinging her weapon, and as soon as Arvel retrieved her, he sat her back down again to make sure he wasn’t counted among the collateral damage of her counterattack.

“We’re gonna get tore up if we don’t fight back!” Arvel yelled, drawing his second cleaver and hacking away at the demons that surrounded him. Though in the back of his mind, he thought to himself, ‘They’re only gonna get deadlier as the crowd thins.’

Frederik whimpered, and swallowed his fear, before throwing himself to the side to roll over on his back, and stabbing up into the darkness. A gout of purple blood splattered down on him and a demon fell heavily over him, and Frederik let out a scream, before he began swinging his spear as wildly as Fidget was, beneath the shield of a demon corpse.

“Well that’s one way to do it,” Arvel muttered.

The cleavers he scavenged from Tork were not weapons of finesse. They were heavy in Arvel’s hands, and his muscles strained to swing them, though his slices hit deep and were capable of shearing wings off of bodies and hacking straight through limbs. He sunk a squared blade deep into the skull of a demon, knocking it to the ground in front of him, before he climbed over it, pulling the blade back out by holding the body down with his boot.

“You said there wouldn’t be so many!” Fidget shouted.

“I said there weren’t so many!” yelled back Arvel, “I also said they multiply fast!”

“Don’t yell at me!” she snapped.

“IT’S LOUD IN HERE!” he replied, raising his voice even more.

The butt of Fidget’s spear gave Arvel a sharp tap on the shin before she resumed her attacks on the demons. For a moment, Arvel was shocked, pausing to stare at her before he resumed swinging at the oncoming demonic masses. She’d hardly had a cross word for him since their relationship began, but then again, he’d never seen her in the midst of a battle rage like this either.

“Bloody hell, Fidge,” he said with a smirk, “When this is over, I ought to put you over my knee.”

Fidget grinned through a droplet of blood that trickled down her face from beyond her hairline, and said, “Don’t threaten Fidget with a good time.”

“SIR and MA’AM!” Frederik shouted, “This is hardly the time for... flirting, if that’s whatever you call this!”

Fidget responded only with a cackle as she leapt into the air, spearing into another demon and pinning it down to the cavern floor. Their numbers were thinning enough that the few who remained were keeping their distance, being picky about when they made their attacks.

“We’re making the fancy boy uncomfortable,” Arvel said, kicking the corpse off of Frederik and reaching down to grab his good arm, helping to pull him up to his feet.

“Fancy boy,” Frederik muttered, “I’m not sure if I like that better or worse than ‘skinny writer man’.”

“Fancy man!” Fidget shouted, “Fancy man!”

“Fine!” said Frederik, “I’ll take it!”

The last of the demons screeched as it leapt on its opportunity, lunging at Frederik, before Arvel cleaved it out of the air with a single swing.

“Didn’t think the close quarters would benefit us,” Arvel said, “But they ain’t so good at fighting right on top of each other.”

“They lack strategy,” Frederik said, wincing as he adjusted the bandages on his right shoulder, before fixing his grip on his spear, “You trained us to fight shoulder-to-shoulder and back-to-back. But they don’t fight together, they just hunt in close proximity to one another. It’s their greatest tactical weakness.”

Arvel eyed Frederik, lifting a brow.

“What?” Frederik asked, straightening his messy, stained, and torn shirt, “You think I just write things down without thinking about them?”

The cave began to dim.

“Huh?” Arvel asked, looking around at the softly glowing crystals as the light began to drain from them. He slowly lifted one of the cleavers to lightly bump one of the muted crystals on the wall, and it cracked under the gentle tap, before beginning to fall away as a fine dust.

“What’s that mean?” Fidget asked, looking further down the tunnel as she watched the light fading from more of the crystals, cascading deeper into the darkness.

“She’s callin’ on that power,” Arvel said, turning to head deeper into the cave. As the light began to slip away faster, he broke into a run, chasing it into the depths.