As Arvel ran deeper through the caves, he encountered only nominal resistance. The occasional demon that sought to bar his path was quickly cut down, though he lost one of his meat cleavers in the rib cage of a demon and was moving too fast to recover it. He didn’t dare slow down. He began to catch up to, and even pass the crystals that had not yet been drained of their light, until he could no longer see them fading around him. His heart was pounding in his ears too loudly to even tell if Fidget and Frederik were still behind him, and he couldn’t spare a glance behind.
The steep slope of the cave suddenly bottomed out, and Arvel stumbled on the flattened ground, his feet sliding in the light scattering of gravel. As he staggered, he whipped his head around to collect his bearings. The room he had entered was filled with crystals on most surfaces, jutting out of the black rock, but the far wall was completely covered in softly glowing growths.
Between him and that wall was Melodia, her black feathered wings folded against her back, and her long, silky white hair falling between them.
“Melodia!” he shouted, venom in his voice as he lifted his one cleaver to point at her.
She didn’t turn, her head lowering a bit as she softly chuckled.
“Where is she?!” Arvel asked, “Give me back Lunette!”
“Not so much as a ‘hi, how are you’?” Melodia asked as she turned to face him, stepping aside, “Arvel, I’m hurt.”
As she moved aside, Arvel’s heart sank. He saw Lunette, affixed to the wall, her arms and legs encased in crystal. Her body sagged forward, head hanging limp. Her golden blonde curls were stripped of their color, dangling lank and lifeless, and much of the color had likewise drained from her beautifully tanned skin. She lifted her head weakly to look at Arvel from beneath the strands of hair that fell across her face, and through them, Arvel could see the deep purple veins pulsing beneath her pale, translucent skin, faintly glowing in slow pulses.
“A-Arvel,” she whispered, her emerald eyes faded to a soft mossy green, “R-Run... please...”
Melodia moved like a flicker. In an instant, she was upon Arvel. He lifted his hatchet to catch the incoming swipe of her claw, which clashed against her palm as if it had struck metal, while the force of her lunge pushed him back against the rock wall by the tunnel exit.
“What are you doing to her?!” Arvel shouted, grimacing as he strained to hold off Melodia’s pressure.
“Experimenting,” she replied, her darkly painted lips tugging into a smirk, “You know, she made some very compelling arguments for why I shouldn’t be putting my life on the line to facilitate the rebirth of the Pale Emperor. It was a remarkably ‘human’ point of view that I had not considered before. I should care more about my own wellbeing, shouldn’t I? My life should matter to me. But I wouldn’t care about sacrificing hers at all.”
“This is what you wanted all along?” Arvel asked, “You’re trying to make someone else sacrifice themselves for you?”
“No,” Melodia replied, smiling softly at him as she leaned nearer, “This was a pleasant diversion. A way to pass the time. What I wanted all along, my darling, was you.”
Arvel’s lip curled in disgust, and he raised his leg sharply to knee Melodia in the stomach, before roughly kicking her away from him. She skidded back a few feet, but she smirked confidently at him, before her eyes narrowed and she glanced toward movement coming from the cave.
“Unhand him!” Frederik shouted with all of the volume he could muster as he ran down the tunnel at her, his spear hoisted over his left shoulder, ready to throw. When he hit the bottom, his feet planted firmly on the dirt, and he launched the spear with every ounce of strength left in his body, hurling it at her chest. Melodia, however, simply tilted her body to the side, allowing the spear to sail past her before it struck the far wall and clattered uselessly to the floor.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she asked, raising an eyebrow quizzically, “Did you think that would actually do something.”
Though Frederik’s shoulders sank under her insults, he let out a heavy sigh, and cast a small smile at her, saying, “It did all I needed it to.”
Suddenly, Melodia screamed as she felt a searing pain in one of her wings. When she looked back, she saw a mop of dark hair atop the head of a little green goblin who’d sunk her teeth into the radius of Melodia’s raven-like appendage. Melodia flapped her wing hard, but Fidget sunk in her teeth and claws deeper, clinging for dear life as she ripped at the demon’s feathers.
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“RRrrhh!” Fidget growled as she gnawed on Melodia’s wing, before she finally let go, spitting out a mouthful of blood and feathers and shouting, “You don’t touch him! You never get to touch him again! RHHAAAAHH!!”
With a feral cry, Fidget clamped her sharp teeth down on Melodia’s wing again, and the demon let out a piercing scream.
“Keep it up!” Arvel shouted as he pushed off the wall. He raced forward, swinging his hatchet at Melodia, who had to split her attention between dodging his heavy swipes and the painful nuisance that had attached herself to her. After struggling between the two for a few moments, Melodia shoved Arvel away to give herself a moment to focus on Fidget.
“Filthy brat!” Melodia shrieked as she reached back and grabbed hold of Fidget, her claw sinking into the goblin girl’s back and yanking her off, before throwing her across the room. It was all Frederik could do to put his body between Fidget and the wall, as he slammed into the rock, absorbing much of the force of Melodia’s throw. Both of them sank to the ground, groaning.
“Fidge!” Arvel shouted, before a claw was wrapped around his throat. He lifted his hatchet, but Melodia wrested it from his grip and threw it to the floor on the far side of the room.
“This is the depth of your commitment?!” Melodia shouted in a rage, pulling Arvel closer to look into his eyes, “This is the depth of your fury? After all I’ve taken from you, this is all you have for me? You raise no armies. You form no strategy. You don’t even bring a real weapon to fight me. Do you truly think so little of me? Or is this how you punish yourself, by putting in the most minimal effort, hoping I’ll find some way to put you out of your misery?”
Arvel clenched his teeth, grabbing hold of Melodia’s wrist with both hands, hoisting himself up as best he could, though her grip on his throat only tightened more.
“I’m so disappointed in you,” Melodia said, “I didn’t think you’d be so... fragile. I thought with a little push you might find your strength again. You might find that noble, knightly soul that resides somewhere deep inside you. But look at you... You don’t love me enough to throw yourself at my feet. You don’t hate me enough to earnestly try to kill me. You can’t find the energy to feel anything that strongly. You’re a layabout now, wasting away the most divine of blessings, and even when you decide to ‘do something about it’, you still can’t bring yourself to put in the effort.”
“That’s not true,” Arvel whispered, his short and dirty nails raking at her arm as he kicked at her with his draining strength, “That’s not true...”
“How is it a lie?” Melodia asked, shoving Arvel up against a wall, “Tell me what you feel besides self-pity?”
Arvel whispered, too quiet to be heard, his hands shaking.
“What?” Melodia asked, her eyes narrow. She relaxed her grip on his throat, instead grabbing him by the jaw to hold him aloft, while he clung to her arm to keep himself from dangling completely in her grasp.
“I love my farm,” he whispered, “I love my home, and the life I’ve built.”
His bleary eyes glanced across the room, before settling on Melodia again.
“I know you think you tore up all the love I had left in my heart, but... but I love Fidget,” Arvel whispered, “I love her, even when she’s acting like a brat or making a mess of things by tryin’ to help. I love her even when she’s cryin’ so hard she might dump a whole ocean on us.”
“A nasty little goblin?” Melodia asked, her eyes narrow, nails digging into his jaw, “That’s what you save all your love for? A goblin?”
“She ain’t the only one,” he said, his eyes misting, “I love Lunette. I love her determination. I love the fact she won’t give up even when everything looks hopeless, even when she don’t think she can do anything else besides. I love that she ain’t too proud to lean on people. I love that noble spirit.”
Melodia’s hand was shaking even as she clung to him, holding him up.
Arvel slowly grinned, even if it meant digging her claw deeper into his jaw, and said, “Damned if I can help it... but... I think I even love that damn little camp of squatters that moved in on my front doorstep. I love... ah... in spite of everything... I love Rain...”
“ARVEL!” a voice cried out from the darkness.
At first, Arvel wasn’t even sure if it was real, or a figment of his imagination.
But, Melodia noticed it too. Slowly, Melodia looked over her shoulder, and as she turned, Arvel looked past Melodia’s bleeding wing to see a lone figure standing in the threshold of the tunnel.
Rain’s shoes were caked in mud and demon blood, and the hem of her dark dress was shredded and tangled with briars. Her carefully pinned up hair had halfway fallen from its bun, and strands of lilac were stuck to her face with rain and sweat. She was panting to catch her breath, and her knees quaked, but in her arms, she clung tightly to something wrapped in a linen sheet.
“H-How...” Arvel whispered, eyes half-lidded, “Rain... Run... You can’t be here...”
Rain swallowed her fear as she stared down Melodia, before she yanked the linen sheet back from the wrapped bundle. Hidden within was an old, halfway dry-rotted scabbard, and the dusty hilt of an ornate sword.
“Arvel, please,” she shouted as she held out the dusty sword, tears flowing down her face like a river, “I know that I ask too much of you. I know you never wanted this. I know... that I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for what I’ve done to you, but... Arvel... Please, save us!”