“Arvel, please,” Rain 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!”

Melodia’s eyes narrowed at Rain, her claw gripping Arvel’s jaw tight as she pinned him back against the wall. Slowly, Melodia smirked, a sharp fang peeking from between her darkly painted lips, as she said, “Oh, now she finds her conviction. Such manipulation! It might’ve worked, too, if you hadn’t waited until he was at rock bottom to ask him to be your knight—”

Arvel gripped Melodia’s arm tight, kicking his feet off the wall behind himself. He pulled his body up with all of his strength, wrapping his legs around her outstretched arm. She was strong, but she wasn’t anticipating all of his weight suddenly pulling down on her shoulder at once, and her elbow buckled. Arvel slid down the wall and Melodia stumbled, cracking her horn against the rock wall where she’d held him moments before, while he hit the floor with a heavy thud. The instant he was free, he scrambled on all fours to push to his feet and run toward Rain.

“How the hell did ya get here?!” Arvel shouted as he ran toward her.

“I followed Tim’s sounds,” Rain said, holding out the sword.

Quickly, Arvel snatched the sword from Rain’s hands and spun around, drawing the blade from its leather cover and discarding the dry rotted sheath on the ground. The moment the sword was uncovered, its brilliant silver gleaming blade caught the gentle glow of the crystals that filled the cavern, and the blade itself began to glow white.

“What is that?” Rain asked, lifting her arm to shield her eyes from the light, stark in its contrast against the dark cave’s interior.

Frederik slowly opened his eyes, slumped against the cave wall, and looked toward the glowing light. Before he could even tell what he was looking at, a green hand covered his face as Fidget used him like a piece of furniture to pull herself up with.

Melodia groaned as she pushed herself up from the wall, and squinted as she looked back toward Arvel and the glowing sword in his hands. Though Arvel winced through the blinding light, he wrapped both his hands tightly around the hilt, his muscled arms tensing as he brought the blade to bear in front of him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Melodia hissed.

Arvel took a deep breath, and a slow exhale, saying, “I’m no immortal knight. That was my pa. I know ain’t the most noble person around... I ain’t even the most knightly folk in the room right now. But even if I only had one life to give, I would still put it between danger and the people who matter to me.”

Arvel felt Rain’s hand softly touch his back, before gripping the back of his overalls. He looked back, to see her clutching her other hand over her heart. Her eyes met his, and she gave him a small but resolute nod.

Fidget scrambled to her feet, drawing the two swords off her back as she ran to his flank, staring down Melodia from Arvel’s side.

“I had hoped you’d give up, like every other time before,” Melodia muttered as she steadied herself on her feet, “I hoped you’d realize the futility of hanging your hopes on mortals... that you’d give up again. I hoped... I hoped you wouldn’t have anyone left but me. But even if I kill them all, it still won’t fix anything, will it?”

Arvel set his posture, digging his feet in against the ground as he readied for her attack, but it did not come. Melodia lifted her head, tears rolling down her cheeks as she gazed across the room at him.

“It’s my own fault, isn’t it?” she asked, smiling through her tears, “Damn me, for thinking that I could find some comfort with a human. The only way either of us are ever going to find peace is if I tear you to shreds and scatter them across the wastes.”

“You’ll have to go through Fidget first!” shouted the small goblin.

Melodia was so taken aback by the threat that she stopped crying long enough to scoff.

“Rain,” Arvel whispered, “You gotta get Lunette free somehow.”

“I’ll try,” Rain replied.

“You’ll do it,” he said, “She needs you.”

Rain looked at him a moment, before nodding, and turning to run toward the back wall where Lunette was affixed.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Melodia snapped as she lunged off the wall, racing across the room to intercept Rain.

But instead, her steel-like claw struck a brilliant white blade, the sword sizzling against her palm. She grimaced as she pushed against Arvel, but instead of beginning to overpower him, she could feel her strength slowly sapping, her arms shaking while Arvel’s remained steady.

“Hurry!” Arvel shouted.

“It’s too late for her!” Melodia barked, before she let out a sharp yelp of pain.

Purple blood splattered across the floor as two dull, chipped blades raked the back of Melodia’s calf, leaving her with a pair of jagged cuts. Fidget swung with all of her momentum before she skidded on the ground and quickly changed direction, racing to try to land another strike on the back of Melodia’s legs.

Melodia extended both her wings, and the gust of wind that whipped through the cavern was enough to throw Fidget off her feet, but it only barely buffeted Arvel. He let out a roar as he pushed forward, knocking Melodia back enough for him to take a swing at her, but it glanced off of one of her claws. Another slash, and another, each deflected by her own strikes, but he was beginning to push her back across the room.

“Not again!” Arvel shouted, “You ain’t takin’ away anyone else!”

Rain rushed to Lunette’s side, and began to look over the crystalline growths that had encased her arms and legs.

“H-Hold on,” Rain murmured softly, “I’m going to find a way to get you out of here.”

“No,” Lunette whispered, “You need to run.”

“Foolishness!” snapped Rain, “We all came here for you. None of us are leaving without you.”

“There is naught that can be done for me now,” Lunette replied, slowly lifting her head to look at Rain, “Look at me, my lady. Look into my eyes. I beg of you... Please, do not sacrifice your life for a corpse.”

Rain paused, looking at Lunette as her eyes welled with tears, before she grabbed up the discarded cleaver from the ground nearby and began to hack at the crystals beneath Lunette’s left arm.

“What are you doing?” Lunette asked, “You need to take the others and go...”

“I h-heard what Arvel said,” replied Rain, wiping her tears away with her forearm before taking another swing, clanking the shoddy metal blade against the crystals awkwardly, “I heard what he said about you... When everything looks hopeless, when you don’t think you can do anything besides give up, you still keep moving forward. That’s what he loves about you... So don’t ask me to give up on you in your stead.”

“You heard that,” Lunette whispered, “Then you heard...”

Rain took a deep breath and swung again, chipping away a few small shards of crystal, but making almost no headway. Suddenly, she felt another body beside hers. Frederik was next to her, with a broken spear head in his hand, stabbing at the crystals above Lunette’s arm.

“I beg of you, hold on, Ser Goldmane!” Frederik said, “The settlement has been an absolute mess while you’ve been gone. A mess! I’m not sure how any of us will get by without you if you don’t come back to us.”

Lunette stared at the both of him, before lulling her head forward, and beginning to sob.

Arvel’s arms burned as he pressed the attack, but he didn’t dare let up. He could see that Melodia was wavering. There were shallow cuts on her arms from near-hits, each of them faintly sizzling from the burn of his blade, but none had truly found purchase. Her sharp claws were gnarled and twitching, losing much of their dexterity as her palms were covered in nicks and burns.

‘Wish I’d paid better attention to pa’s lessons,’ Arvel thought to himself as he pushed on, swinging the sword like a meat cleaver rather than a honed martial weapon.

Though Melodia only regarded Fidget as a pest and not a legitimate threat, Fidget was slowly whittling down Melodia’s mobility, slashing at her legs at every given opportunity. Every time the goblin was thrown aside with a wing or knocked down by wind, she got back up and attacked with renewed ferocity. Out of the corner of Arvel’s eye, he saw Fidget coming in for another swipe at Melodia’s calves, and Arvel gave a hard push of his sword at the exact same moment.

“No more!” Melodia shouted, going with the momentum of Arvel’s push as she leapt from the ground and out of the way of Fidget’s attack. She sailed through the air before landing high up on the cave wall, perched on a narrow, jagged outcropping. She panted hard, trying to catch her breath, before reaching back to grab one of the glowing crystals on the wall beside her. The demoness snapped the chunk of crystal off, and its rich purple energy began to flow into her until she was holding only a dull, fragile chunk that fell to dust in her hand. Slowly, her wounds began to close, but she still winced as they sizzled and stung.

“Ya can’t run forever,” Arvel said, “and it don’t matter how much energy you got saved up here to try to revive your pappy. I’ll keep cuttin’ ‘n cuttin’ until I hack away every piece!”

“You couldn’t manage that if you had a hundred years,” Melodia replied, peering down from her perch as she curled her wings around herself.

Arvel looked down at Fidget panting at his side, but still clutching to her two jagged swords. He then looked over his shoulder at Frederik and Rain desperately chipping away at Lunette’s confines. He looked down a moment, and murmured, “...spend the rest of my life making up for what I’ve done...”

“What?” Melodia asked, eyes narrow.

Arvel looked up at her, and lifted his sword to point toward her, shouting, “I don’t know if I could’ve stopped you back then. I don’t know! Maybe if I wasn’t so damn head-over-heels I might’ve known the person you really are. And I don’t know if I could’ve done anything to stop a whole damn demon army. I’ll never know. But I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t follow in my pa’s footsteps, even if nobody else in the world could, and other people have paid the price for that. And I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making up for it... Starting right here.”