Ike spent the night looking up at the ceiling. Sleeping on the floor didn’t exactly make it easy to forget that he was basically just a blood sacrifice. Or was he?

He was so confused. He was always so confused, lost in his own traitorous thoughts. With Nerinai missing he didn’t even have her to root him down. A mission of any kind would have been a godsend. A goal, a purpose, work, anything to keep his mind off the unsolvable question of what the journal meant and why he had been so stupid as to have it read.

Around the time the moon passed his window, he heard a thump. Nothing big enough to stir him from his half sleep, half conscious state. Over the entire night he’d managed maybe an hour of sleep overall, either being interrupted by his own thoughts pushing up in the way of sinister dreams or the sore spots on his sides seething in pain.

Then there was another thump. Louder.

And again. They started turning into a general ruckus from somewhere Ike couldn’t place, but they’d finally managed to break him out of any sleep he’d managed to make. Did they not know how hard he’d been working on resting? Somebody was going to pay.

He grabbed his robe and just barely put himself inside of it. God, did he really smell that bad? With a grunt of disgust, he grabbed his shovel and shoved himself through the door, down the steps, and out onto the second floor.

Nothing had changed from yesterday. Same rust red carpets, same lilting music coming from a machine in the corner of the room. Maybe he didn’t notice that before. But- where was the thumping? He couldn’t see a damn thing out of place and nobody was near enough-

There was another, and this time it was a lot more like a crash. On the other side of the room he finally spotted the missing piece: That door that was locked before was now hanging open, pale light pouring out with the sounds of a fight. He didn’t think about caution then, or how ridiculous he must have looked, or what could possibly be on the other side of that door before he started to sprint.

Barely through the doorway he tripped over a collapsed metal frame table. The bright light from overhead poles blinded him, so all he could really make out was three things. On either side of the room, thick rows of something green and lush breaking up the flat gray of everything else. In front of him, one figure in black and another in brown. Brown, white, red- demon.

Ike leapt over the spilled table and threw his shovel square at the beast's head. It squealed, a song like death that turns your throat into a bile spitter, and Ike knew he’d made the right move.

Somehow between the drowsiness and shock of adrenaline he managed to close the distance between them before it could react. Ike grabbed the shovel sticking out of its fleshy head and shoved down, then ripped out.

Squealing.

Automatically, his feet and body worked themselves into place. He blocked a swipe from a frail bony arm and smacked out with his own shovel, then kept going. Battered the demon into a corner and ignored the strain on his right arm.

It charged into him, diving headfirst into his chest that landed them both squirming on the ground. The demon for leverage, Ike for the desperation of not having his body mauled by its claws. He could see the claws now. He wished he couldn’t.

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“Ike!” He heard his name screamed out, voice breaking.

With his left arm he managed to pin one of its arms to its neck so it kept scratching at its own throat. Problem was that all the spilt ichor from its rotting corpse spilled into Ike’s mouth, and it still had three more legs/arms.

When the demon started stretching out of his hold he put every muscle in his body into throwing the damn thing across the room, where it spilled into another bundle of tables and plantline sending everything scattering across the ground.

His shovel was between them.

They both scrambled up, but only one was a born and bred demonic predator.

Just inches from that unbearably ugly face he heard a snap behind him. Something so little and sharp that nobody should have heard it in the middle of a fight like this, but he did. Snap.

Six arms of black ichor shot out from behind Ike, spearing the demon to the wall. Two of them ripped out and in again, over and over, tearing the dog like a beast to shreds of filthy flesh. Ike fell back on his ass to watch that beast spread out on the wall, to watch it die, while the rush of blood filled his ears.

He wanted to jump up and shout. “Woo! Gotcha, bitch! Ten points to the Raveness!” Really any number of celebratory noises over the death of this wicked demon would have felt right, but not long after it stopped dying he heard one last thump to the floor, of soft linens dampening the blow of a body hitting the ground.

He could only turn to his side and see her there. Lying on the ground, her iridescent feather cloak splayed out on the ground and covered in spurts of red human blood. Her hands were stained with ichor, and her eyes…

Focus, Ike. He pulled himself off the ground and basically crawled to her, kneeling down beside her trembling body. Cupping her face as gently as possible, he checked her for a pulse. Still alive. He checked her sides, her arms, her neck. Mostly just scratches and cuts that would heal soon enough. The worst of it was a trickle of blood dripping from her lips, that he had no idea how to help. He couldn’t exactly see the inside of her head.

For the moment though, she was alive. So was Ike. He needed a break, just to catch his breath while his body reeled from the shock of half sleep to full battle, but he was alive.

And he just saved her life, probably. That was something.

Maybe it was stupid to be congratulating himself at a time like this but he couldn’t help the little grin on his face. He saved the Raveness. No way she could leave him behind again now. But, maybe, no more stupid fighting with demons again, either. At least for a day.

While he waited for his lungs to catch up with the rest of his body he inspected the room. The walls were lined with tall windows that probably turned this room into a bakery in the morning. Dozens of pots and boxes covered every surface in the room filled with plants of every shape and design, flashes of blue and red sticking out of the emerald wall.

A green room, of sorts. On one part of the wall was a rack of tools. Apparently Ike tried to take out a hand shovel from the rack and dropped it before it could do any good. That made him feel just a little better about himself. Only one person in the world held a shovel like Ike, and that was Ike.

Whatever Nerinai found herself doing here before could be done in the morning, Ike decided. He hesitated over her body, though. Would she be pissed off if he moved her? Would it matter?

He slid an arm under her back and legs and lifted her up with him, stumbling just a little before he got his footing. She was as light as he expected, barely more than a sack of grain. He’d moved plenty of those, so what was a person? Right?

His brain was a scramble the whole way back to the room. Thankfully nobody else came to check the sounds, nobody came up to the room, and he spent the rest of the night happily worried.

Now he didn’t need to sleep. He just needed to make sure Nerinai was safe, and he could do that by sitting at the foot of the bed, keeping her safe until the morning. She’d know what to do then. They just needed rest.