Convinced the Duke of Winchester sought to settle the debt between them, once and for all, Amelia felt a nightmare must have escaped into the real world, when the tip of her grand-father’s cane pointed at her father. The assistive tool by his will now a weapon, as all but the handle burst into a malevolent blue that burned white hot at its core.

“W-What are you doing?” Amelia asked the duke, as the crackling auras of flame emanating from him and his knights began setting the hall alight, “It’s me! I’m the reason my mother died. Please don’t blame anyone else!”

She tried to get closer, despite the heat. Grace, disagreeing with this choice, caught Amelia by the waist, lifted her up, and began sprinting away from the fight that was about to break out.

“Let me go!” Amelia begged, as more of the Duke of Winchester’s knights marched into the hall. Fully prepared for a confrontation, they began pushing away any bystanders too foolish to realise the stifling dome of temperature surrounding the baron and duke was quickly expanding.

Creating a dead-zone, wherein only the strong might survive.

“Are you going to run back towards them?” Grace asked, slowing her pace. “Because you’re not fire-proof! Hell, I’m pretty sure you’re not even fire-resistant!”

“I need to stop them!” Amelia said, raising her voice to shout over the blazing inferno, “Please, would you be able to help me get close? I’m sure I can resolve this if I can explain myself and calm down my grand-father.”

Grace cursed. Like a sailor. But her feet screeched to a halt, and she set Amelia down. “Just… Just give me a minute,” she said, moving behind Amelia to place both hands on her back, where a shiver of frost began spreading out. “I’m going to try cooling you down… Just… Just think about ice-cream. Won’t you?”

Immensely grateful the princess had not denied her request, Amelia let Grace work her magic while she focused on the silhouettes in the haze. She was barely able to make out where each figure was. Though the duke’s words were strident enough to easily hear.

“Bastard,” the Duke of Winchester said towards Havoc, “What sort of twisted lies have you told, to place your own sin on a child!”

He swung his blade, sending a crescent, burning-white wave of fire towards Havoc who raised both arms in a guard to withstand it.

“Two spears, handle him!” the duke ordered before his attack had even subsided, causing a duo to break out from his line of knights and charge in as one. Keeping low as they stabbed at the Baron from opposite sides.

Amelia screamed for her father to notice. Worried he might not see the twin spears wreathed in flames, trained to pierce below his rib-cage. The same weapons which were limply dropped upon Havoc’s arms snapping out to seize both knights by their throats. Bypassing their molten defenses, the armor they wore seemed utterly ineffective in dissuading the Baron.

“Away with you,” Havoc said, without looking at either. He threw them behind him as if they were a pair of toy soldiers.

The Duke of Winchester’s body flared brightly in anger. The radiance of his weapon sweeping down to cover an arm, continuing still until his entire body was encompassed in an armor of hellfire. Now a creature who could have been born from the deepest depths of the sun, each step the duke took towards Havoc, left a blazing blue footprint behind him.

“Answer me!” he roared, and Amelia grew dumbstruck upon seeing, for an instant through the flames, her father, who turned towards her with an expression of loss. His mouth only partially open as if unable to figure out what needed saying.

Not that he had time enough to speak even a sentence. The Duke of Winchester’s form flickered like a candle in the wind, vanishing to cross the remaining distance between himself and Havoc in a blinding flash of light. Where he delivered the wounds his men had failed to inflict in a flurry of movement. Carving intersecting lacerations into Havoc’s chest deep enough to splatter the hall with his blood.

“I had thought you a protector,” said the duke, surmising the smoke which hissed as Havoc’s regeneration worked to instinctively heal, “Had I known you would have twisted Ophelia’s passing in such a way… I would never have let you take my grandchild from her mother’s house.”

Once more did the duke vanish. He appeared in front of his knights. “Ten swords, delay him!” he barked. And ten knights answered the call to throw themselves at the baron who began to dispatch them like ragdolls, one after the next.

“Still playing dumb?” the duke asked, as he finished casting a spell. Transfiguring his elemental cane even further, the shimmering sword’s length grew twice as long as Havoc was tall.

“I’m trying to think!” Havoc answered, and he ran a hand down his own face, clawing at it like he was dementedly trying to solve the answers to life.

“Then I’ll help clear your head!”

The knights between the duke and Havoc crouched down in tandem, avoiding the immense cane-sword which like plasma, seared through the hall’s walls as he held it behind him. Like a batter on base, the Duke of Winchester swung, exploding with his greatest display of magical mastery yet, sending a horizontal tidal wave of burning catastrophism towards the baron.

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Amelia saw her father’s upper body catch fire. She watched his skin begin to peel off and turn into soot. And she witnessed the judgment hall, start to collapse.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, these pieces of shit!” shouted Grace, taking one hand off from Amelia’s back to solidify a shield’s worth of air between them and the gale which blew past. “The hell are they thinking? We’re still bloody here!”

Cowed by her friend’s anger, Amelia whispered. “M-Maybe they think you took me outside?”

“I wish that I had!” Grace replied, creating a second shield of air over their heads, forming an umbrella against the glass of a window that rained down as it crumbled.

“He’s still moving!” shouted one of the knights who had gotten his legs broken by Havoc, “Lord Winchester!” he cried as he crawled away from the Baron howling in pain, “You’ve but charred him half cooked!”

“Five, get them out!” the duke said, allowing for his knights to dash in and begin helping their injured or unconscious comrades get towards relative safety.

When Amelia heard her grandfather then yell, “Now get in position, we’re doing the thing!” the alignment the knights took up gave her a bad premonition. She knew the damage inflicted on her father so far wouldn’t leave anything lasting, but the longer the conflict continued, the more likely it appeared something permanent would eventually happen.

“A-Almost done?” Amelia asked Grace, now able to see her breath hang in the air while her teeth chattered about due to the cold the princess seemed to be pumping her with.

She hoped it would be enough for the sea of fire devouring the hall. Amelia couldn’t even see those inside it anymore, nor guess what might happen if she didn’t manage to stop them from fighting.

“Finished!” Grace said, and Amelia pushed off the ground to begin running. Relying on the princess’s magic to hold, as she broke past the wall of super-heated air with great effort. Just as the duke’s voice found her once more.

“If Havoc wants to be as mute as a dragon, we will put him down like one! Ready the formation, on my command!”

“W-Wait!” Amelia shouted, unprepared for the hot air that singed the inside of her lungs, even while shielded. “D-Don’t kill my daddy!” she gasped, stumbling forwards towards her father’s outline.

“Fire!” shouted the duke of Winchester, so utterly focused on Havoc, that he and the knights who helped channel his latest spell, failed to notice the young woman, whose thoughtless desire to stop the bad-blood in her family from boiling over, had led her to go where she should never have gone.

Little remained of the roof at that point, having melted like wax or disintegrated. But Amelia’s worry, focused on navigating the rubble at her feet, found itself looking up, upon feeling an influx of warmth in the air, fast approaching from on high.

There did she witness a miniature sun. Which like a comet broke apart to reveal the knight’s spears hurtling towards earth. A series of thrown stars, now propelled downwards on the orders of a duke and his magic. Their speed bending even the air as they unleashed a terrible sky rending sound.

Wherever they landed, Amelia knew she would be caught up in the blast.

“I’m… I’m sorry.” She said, to the duke, to her father, to the princess, to herself, and…

To the shadow which protectively placed itself above her?

“Close your eyes, and do not move” Havoc said, as he stomped down hard with a foot, splitting the earth. Sending Amelia, falling down into a basement whose new entrance found itself shielded by the Baron’s own body as the duke’s spell of bombardment began beating down all around.

In the dark, Amelia held her hands over her ears. Warding away the noise of the falling spears as she endured the splintering fragments of the wooden objects which shattered around her as the earth tremored and shook.

“D-Daddy?” Amelia called, when the heavy perforating noises finally finished abating. “Are… are you okay?”

No answer. She felt something warm drip onto her head. Followed soon by more droplets, which caused her to quickly close her mouth upon recognizing the taste.

“No!” Amelia shouted, before she began climbing up the rubble inside the store-room. “You’re fine! You always are!” she said, endeavoring but failing to push her father away from the hole he silently blocked.

All of a sudden, Havoc shifted as if he were rolling onto his side. But the reassurance Amelia felt from this quickly vanished when a knight reached down and lifted her up. Revealing it was they who had been the one to move Havoc. Whose back now resembled a pin cushion of needles. Some barely hanging, others completely inserted.

Amelia crawled to her father, intent on helping pull the spears out to help with his regeneration. Believing if she could remove even just one, it might help him a little.

The princess’s hasty protection of cold shattered against the red-hot metal she touched, knocking her back.

“Not a chance!” Grace shouted, ready to pull her lady away when Amelia tried to grab a spear, with her bare hands. Unable to struggle past Grace, Amelia searched for her grand-father. She found him standing nearby.

“Please, don’t hurt my dad,” Amelia said to the duke, who, having let fall his armor of fire, appeared very conflicted at the idea he had almost killed his grand-daughter.

“Are you happy?!” the duke said loudly, approaching to slap the Havoc’s face with his cane, “Are you happy to have brainwashed her? You pathetic excuse for a man! Quit laying there, and get up already!”

Placing herself between her father and his, Amelia held out both of her arms. Her grand-father, bewildered, threw away his cane in frustration. “Someone, for the love of god get me a mage versed in indoctrination!” he ordered, as Amelia heard a familiar groan.

“Amelia…”

“Y-yes!” Amelia answered, holding the bloodied palm Havoc raised in search for his daughter, against her face. “Yes, I’m here! And I’m only a bit bruised! How about you? Why didn’t you fight back! It’s Grand-father who’s been—”

“Do… Do you blame yourself for the passing of your mother?”

The question struck Amelia as absurd. “Of course, I do!” she said, growing nervous when the men in her family opened their eyes wide in bewilderment.

“Is… Is that the reason why you’ve avoided me for so long?” Havoc asked, his healing far enough along now he could manage to sit, “Because you were frightened, that I blamed you for Ophelia’s death? Were you worried I would… take out my anger on you?”

“I… I n-never thought you would h-hurt me,” Amelia answered, uncertain why something felt so terribly off.

Havoc drew in a body-shaking, trembling breath.

“Then there has been a horrible mistake which needs correcting.”