Seraphina Pov

I ran, careful to avoid stepping on any of the bones or larger piles of ash that littered the hallway. Mr. Beuforlos was slightly ahead of me, for a moment the flames that turned the hall ahead into a furnace faded and I could see him panting as he ran, in the sudden silence left behind from the roar of flames my voice seemed unreasonably loud.

“What is the plan?” I dodged a thrown spear from a humanoid night beast, something with a birdlike head, that quickly evaporated as a fireball replaced it.

“We will be assisting Germaine” Mr. Beuforlos said between pants.

I nodded, my sword lashed out as a night beast leapt from a dark doorway as we ran by, a splash of black fell upon the ashes below. I didn’t even break stride, Dawnbreaker seemed to pulse with joy in my hand, happy at being wielder.

“How do you know which way to go?” I asked as he took a left that didn’t seem to make sense.

“I’m following the candles” He replied, while a whip of fire wrapped around a tower of…meat, and then seared through it as he yanked backwards. “And the destruction”.

The candles was, interesting, the destruction made sense. Behind us the sound of gunfire was endless, but somewhere off to the left there was another sound competing with the endless thunder of gunfire. The sound of collapsing stone and rubble. The number of enemies on this hallway was less compared to our fight to the main hall. However, by this point most of them were undead, melded and melted together by magic and then warded by the eye. Dawnbreaker could cut them, but I was just slicing hunks off, killing even one of these things would take forever without Mr. Beuforlos.

I glanced sideways at him again, making sure he was still moving, he had been using magic constantly and it was clearly straining him. That was when I saw it, a gaping maw driving towards him. I swung, my stride changing in an instant into a spin.

“DUCK!” I screamed, and Mr. Beuforlos dove for the floor, and what felt like a wall of flesh flew towards me with him out of the way. The doorframe exploded into splinters and Dawnbreaker flashed as it slammed into a red aura, whose appearance both prevented Dawnbreaker from slicing the creature, and the creature’s fangs from reaching me. Even so I felt my feet leave the floor as I was flung back into the wall, I screamed again, this time in pain, not panic, as my shoulder slammed into a sconce.

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Mr. Beuforlos had lashed out with fire, but it was too late, whatever had attacked had already retreated, now without it in the way I could see the room where it had attacked from was not actually dark, it was well lit by the lights in the hallway across the way. Easily visible now as whatever had been waiting in that room to ambush had ripped the entire back wall of the room down when it retreated.

I stared in horror at the destruction, and tried to remember, WHY HADN’T I HEARD IT? Mr. Beuforlos grabbed me and did something to my shoulder. I screamed again, but the pain I had been ignoring went from a sharp ache, to a dull one.

“What, what was that?” Now I was the one out of breath as he scanned the hallway.

“Some kind of undead” He answered grimly.

“That was an undead?!” I could hear the panic in my voice.

“Let's go, we need to hurry” He ignored my distress and started down another hallway.

I took a shuddering breath and followed. Trying to forget the blood red maw that I had nearly entered. The sounds of destruction grew closer, close enough for us to make out words, the bellows of the demon.

“Ha ha! Come on Saint! When will you grow serious? Let this one see your true power! Ha ha!” The demon's voice, though clear, made me feel like I was listening to the roar of a fire, the crack of stone, and the bellowing pain of a cow in agony. All at the same time I heard simple words. If Mr. Germaine responded I did not hear it, but we had finally reached the banquet hall that we had left not so long ago. It felt like the trip back had been far longer than the battle to the main hall.

Mr. Beuforlos had pulled ahead of me again, and he did not slow as we entered the room. Heading straight towards the back window from which we saw…devastation. The rear of the castle was rubble, and the terrain beyond the walls was clearly exposed. The walls themselves rubble strewn across the sheer cliffs or cast down into the lake below. On the cliff a demon stood, lashing out with claws, charging with his horns. A whip of fire would sweep out one moment, the next a breath, a pillar of lava arising from molten stone to dive down upon his target.

Through it all Mr. Germaine CUT. His blade was a silver line behind which he always stood. He never met the demon head on, but a swing of his blade would deflect blows, or carry him through attacks that clearly were inescapable, somehow the thin line of his swords slash cutting a space through which he could escape. It hurt my head as what I was seeing was clearly impossible, my brain unable to process what it was seeing. People don’t fit behind a sword slash, then again sword slashes don’t usually send out silver lines that carve through pillars of lava.

Mr. Beuforlos grimaced beside me “Of course it has to be a fire aligned demon.”

“Can we help?” I asked doubtfully.

Mr. Beuforlos stopped for a moment and looked at me “It is not a question of if we can, but that we must.” He looked back out to the outside, his eyes tracing along the circle of night beasts and shambling undead. “You are the wielder of the Dawnbreaker, your ancestors have ensured that blades potency vs such creatures only grows as they stand closer to the Night. Cut him, and he will bleed, cut him enough, and he will fall. And though I am best known for my fire, I am not without other options”

I shifted my grip on Dawnbreaker, trying to remain calm. I knew Mr. Beuforlos could see it. His eyes were steady on the reflection in the window. My heart was beating in my head like a drum, and outside the window winged figures growing larger against the moon as they dove. From the front and the back, at a second story window.

Mr. Beuforlos turned his gaze back to me and smiled grimly “Fear is important, it is a warning and reminder that we are but humans, you wield that blade now, but I hope you never forget that”. And then the undead that had slithered into the room behind us, filling the entire room behind, lunged with a dozen mouths. And with a blast of magic and fire sending the glass before us, we jumped.

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