The curdled purr of a crazed beast seared shivers across Mouse’s neck and spine. It spoke to him in a gurgled tongue Mouse couldn’t comprehend. The words held no meaning except of a darkness and pain not in existence.

“Why are you here? Go back to your home!” Mouse strained, his voice clawed from his throat. But the beast, far from the Guardian Spirit it once was, no longer understood him, as he couldn’t understand it. “Please, go back…”

Mouse pulled himself to his feet, struggling in a fog of corruption leaking from beneath the beast’s bloodied claws and black feathers. He wobbled only for a few moments before catching himself against a burning house. But the fire wasn’t a concern, the inhabitants either long dead or lucky enough to have fled.

Mouse slid his wooden sword from its holder, swinging it lightly between his fingers. “Go back, or I will force you to.”

But not even he believed in his own words. For who would dare to kill a creature far older than humans, and one tasked with healing the world from the very corruption now seeping from it.

“You are knight’s of Lanria, are you not?”

“Mouse!” Taiga ran to him just as quills of the beast’s tail shot out from the fog. They missed, and he jumped beside Mouse, his wooden sword drawn and raised. Before Mouse reacted, the long, quilled, and feathered tail of the beast slammed against the thin piece of wood with a force stronger than Taiga’s guard. The impact knocked Taiga off his feet and crushed him into Mouse, pinning them both against the crumbed stone wall of the burning house. They dropped inward, debris coating them.

“Not by choice.”

Mouse’s eyes blinked open nearly as fast as his body hauled itself off the smoldering planks and house bits. His hand caught, and made him hesitate. Shifting his weight, he tried yanking his sword and hand out of fallen bricks and stone. Just beyond his sword, Taiga lay sprawled out on stones festered in flames. His eyes asleep, his body unresponsive to the flames. But the smell of burning wood and flesh filled Mouse in fresh terror.

“Taiga!” Mouse yelled over the roar of the beast and growing fire. A puff of black smoke enveloped his face, and as he shouted Taiga’s name again, the smoke choked him and singed his eyes shut. Gritting his teeth through the pain, he yanked on his wooden sword.

“While we are your knights, Your Majesty, we will dare to ask why you’d have us commit such forbidden atrocities?”

The beast did not wait for their recovery, and the roof shook and crumbled as three bright orange claws sunk into the ceiling and dragged it downward. Stone and wood crashed over Taiga’s body. Mouse threw up his free arm over his head, letting a large beam of wood crack into his arm. Mouse yelled out, using all his strength in a final pull of his sword.

It swung free of the stone, its wood aflame and burning the thing to ash. With the deepest burn already sinking into a center crack, Mouse clashed it against the wall, in a meager attempt to put out the flames.

“Taiga!” He screamed again, his voice and throat cracking and burning on the embers he breathed in. Pulling his own leg out of its encasing stone, Mouse climbed over a pile of burning rubble and latched onto Taiga’s arm. “Taiga!”

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The beast roared, deep and barely audible, yet with a pressure drumming against his ears, and shattering his focus. His body lost strength and he fell to his knees. His eyes fluttered shut a few times before his mind managed composure again. Small flames burned away at his tunic.

Mouse slammed down on his chest, smothering it with his hand, ignoring his own skin sizzling beneath it. Then, he yanked Taiga off the debris, and hauled him from the ground. Mouse’s limbs trembled with every sound, touch, movement, and Taiga’s added weight nearly buckled his knees.

“Come on, Taiga! Wake up!” Heaving Taiga further onto his back, Mouse scooped his legs into his arms and made a quick break for the door.

But the beast awaited them.

Just beyond the doorway, Mouse froze in his steps, his eyes trailing up to the beast’s broken mask, bright pink liquid oozing from the deep, shattered crack, breaking the mask in two. Beyond the mask, only darkness lay, a tunnel to the nothingness before the Abyss. His body numbed, and his feet melted beneath him.

“You would have us wander through the corrupted lands, slaughtering the Guardian Spirits?”

“I would.”

His knees buckled onto the ground, and Taiga slid from his back. To the left of them, Taiga’s sword lay only meters away, but too far out of reach. The beast gurgled in front of him, its face swiveling around him towards Taiga. It's great neck of thick feathers and purple and blue furs and spines tickled Mouse’s arm. The beast’s heavy foot stepped closer and past him, three claws digging into the grass half a meter from Mouse’s leg. Its muscled neck arched back, head hovering a meter over Taiga, turning like an owl, watching him.

In a meager attempt to pull the beast’s attention away, with his burnt sword in his right hand, Mouse raised his arm over his head. Its head swiveled around faster than Mouse’s eyes could process, and the gaping hole of its face screeched the echoes of dying souls centimeters from his face. Burning drops of ooze flicked across his face and neck, spit mixed with decaying flesh strewn over his cheeks and chin. The screech stiffened Mouse’s nerves and rang his ears, acid sapping his will and he slumped to the ground.

“The Guardians that once purified the land are now rotting the earth and spreading corruption in their wake. I suspect a sickness of a sort, some internal cause for such a change in a number of them.”

“Liar!”

But it was no lie.

His sword slipped from his hands, and he fell towards the beast, his body succumbing as his mind did. The clever beast drew out his claws and scooped them towards Mouse as he fell. From behind, an arm wrapped around his chest and pulled Mouse back just as the claws clashed together in a sheer slice of a sound.

“Hold on.” Taiga’s voice; like rain against a window. As Mouse’s eyes slid shut, his half burnt sword flew past his head and beyond the beast. It clacked against the base of the bell tower.

The beast whirled around at the small noise, its head cocking up and down, swiveling in every direction for the source. Not finding it, the beast scurried away, screeching again. The end of its great tail smacked across Mouse’s chest painfully, but Taiga’s hand clasped over his mouth, muffling any sound he may have made.

“Wait a moment.” Taiga released Mouse carefully, keeping him from falling, before silently and cautiously stepping towards his sword a short distance away. Just beginning to fade into the mist, Taiga carefully picked up his sword, glancing over it once before turning back towards Mouse.

Behind him, the snaking tail of the beast slithered by.

“Taiga!” Mouse yelled out, broken and strained. The fast pounds to the right of Mouse made him spin around, the beast sprinting towards him, pink sludge freely spilling from its face, ruffled feathers and fur puffed around it. It screeched again as it came upon him, stunning Mouse in his place. Its mouth rushed towards him in less than a blink.

From beyond them, Taiga jumped onto the beast’s back, and grabbed at the feathers to heave himself up to the base of the neck. Taiga raised the burnt sword up above his head, before slamming the point down. Pink blood gushed from the fresh wound. The beast screamed an echo of shattering thunder and swung away from Taiga. But Taiga held tight on his grip, the sword deeply entrenched within the beast.

The beast smashed its head into a burning house, and Taiga yanked down on the sword, dragging it through its neck with as much strength as he could muster. Blood splashed over Taiga, and smoke sizzled off bare flesh, but Taiga held steady. The screams of the beast withered as its strength did, and it swung itself around once more, trying to throw Taiga off. But failing and weakened, it collapsed against the bell tower, sliding down against it, unmoving.