Chương 17: The Defeat

POV: The Hero, Evelisse Ardentia I rushed out of the hut with the village woman in my arms. Outside, I saw Mel sprawled face-down beneath a tree, unconscious. Knocked out, most likely, by the Cerberus's roar. The Cerberus turned its three heads toward me. It paused for a moment, almost considering, and then its blue eyes began to glow. It must have sensed the woman in my arms, recognized her as something taken from the Dark Lord.

I guessed the blast would be similar to Ywain's ice magic, freezing whatever it touched. Earlier, back in the hut, I had cast a physical buff on myself to increase my speed. Now I bolted for the trees. The head tracked me as I ran, then fired. I threw us both sideways, leaping just clear of the blast. Behind us, a line of trees bloomed white with ice, frozen solid where the beam had passed. I kept running. The villager came first; I had to get her somewhere safe, fast, then double back for Mel.

Please don't let the Cerberus give chase. Without the Mooncleaver, I wouldn't stand a chance. The Mooncleaver. The image of Ywain holding it rose in my mind. The Holy Sword had judged him worthy. It was no more than I should have expected. Ywain was better than I was in every way. He had drawn up the plan; he had Milo cornered; he had adapted to every wrinkle while I had fumbled from the moment we set foot in the forest. Then I thought of Milo. He was almost certainly still inside the hut.

Ywain had been pressing forward when I ran, and Milo seemed untrained for proper combat. Ywain would freeze him eventually, and then he would use the Mooncleaver. He would kill him. I stopped running at a small clearing. For a few seconds I could only stand there, panting, my heartbeat climbing in my ears until it was the loudest thing I could hear.

"Hero? What's wrong?" the village woman asked. I set the village woman down on the grass and cast a repel spell over her, the soft blue light settling around her shoulders before fading. Low-level monsters would not approach her now.

"What's your name? Where are you from?" I asked.

"S-Shauna, from Mistros Village." Her voice was thin.

"Wait here, Shauna. With this spell, monsters should not come near you. I will come back for you. I promise." She nodded. I turned and ran back the way I had come. As I did, my mind kept drifting to the moment I had seen her in the hut. The whisper of I have been kidnapped. I did not know what had led to it, but I could guess. Refusing to take lives, Milo had reached for the next thing that could still frighten a village. Take one of them.

Let the rest spend each day wondering whether she would ever come back, and what was happening to her in the meantime. Fear without a body to bury. I had not been able to sit there and do nothing. He had taken her. Whatever his reasons, he had taken her, and in that moment I had felt something I had not let myself feel toward him before. Frustration. Frustration at him for doing it. He said he had to do these things to live, but I could not bring myself to call it right. And underneath that, something worse.

Frustration at myself. For feeling… something for him, when his only claim on me was that he had once stood between me and the Cerberus, and once said the kinds of things I had wanted to hear. Maybe getting Shauna out had only been an excuse. Maybe I had simply wanted to be away from him. Away from the fact that I was the Hero, and I could not bring my sword down on the Dark Lord, and the reason was a feeling I could not name with conviction. Seeing Ywain hold the Mooncleaver had been the final shove.

That I would not have to do it. That someone else could. That the world might still get what it needed without me having to be the one who gave it. So I ran. But here I was, running back. I did not know what I was running back for. Ywain had things in hand. He did not need my help. Did I mean to support him, then? To finish what I had failed to finish? Or was I simply... afraid for Milo? Soon, I reached the clearing. The Cerberus was nowhere in sight.

I rushed to Mel, who still lay unconscious in the grass, and shook her by the shoulder. She groaned and her eyes fluttered open. Then something burst through the wall of the hut and slammed into a tree behind me; It was a child. A small girl I had never seen before. She picked herself up and dusted off an oversized coat that hung past her hands. And then I saw her face. Three eyes. One red, one green, and the third one, on her forehead, glowed a faint, icy blue.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. She looked at me, and her expression was strange. Not hostile. Something closer to worry, the way a child's face goes when she wants help but has no words for it. Then she turned and bolted back toward the hut. I pulled Mel to her feet and followed. Inside, the smoke had thinned. Ywain stood over Milo with the Mooncleaver raised. Milo was almost entirely encased in ice; only his head was free. Ywain glanced back as I came through the wall.

"Ah, Evelisse." A smile. Composed, victorious.

"Don't worry, I was about to finish." The little girl with three eyes fired a fireball towards Ywain, but he simply deflected it with the Mooncleaver. Ywain then instant-froze the girl before turning his attention back to Milo. He leaned down and said something to Milo. I could not catch it. Then he straightened, set his stance, preparing to swing the sword for the killing blow. The door of the room flew open. A bolt of lightning cracked across the room and caught Ywain square in the chest.

He jerked, staggered, and the Mooncleaver tumbled from his hand and clattered to the floorboards. From the doorway stepped the demon girl. She did not look at me. Her eyes were on the sword. She lifted a hand, and the Mooncleaver rose into the air and shot through the bedroom doorway behind her, swallowed out of sight. Milo wrenched against the ice. It cracked, then shattered around him. Ywain caught his footing and his palm flared blue. Another spell. Instant-Freeze, almost certainly.

Before he could finish casting, the demon girl was airborne. She crossed the room in a single flap of her wings and slammed into him, driving him down to the floor. Mel rushed up beside me, staff lifting for a counter-spell. The demon girl did not even look. She pointed one finger, and Mel dropped to her knees with a startled cry. Immobilized. Pinned beneath the demon girl, Ywain thrashed and twisted, but she had him. She glanced up across the room at Milo.

"Do what you have to do." Milo's eyes found mine. He started toward me. My body moved before my mind did. The moment he was within arm's reach, I caught him, pivoted, and threw him clean over my shoulder. He went sailing through the broken doorway and landed somewhere on the grass outside. I straightened. I should help Ywain. That was what I was supposed to do. I ran for him.

Three steps was all I managed before the demon girl clicked her tongue, beat her wings hard, and lifted off the floor with Ywain still clutched against her. They blew straight up through the roof in a spray of splinters. I stopped, staring up through the fresh hole. They were already in the sky. I would have to follow.

Around my feet, I began gathering the air for a flight spell, but something caught me from behind; my feet left the ground, the world dragged backward in a rush of air, and when I twisted to look, I saw him. Milo. I was suspended in the air, drifting toward him without choice. Beside him stood the three-eyed girl, one sleeve raised in my direction, a small magic circle already glowing on her palm.

"Evelisse." Milo's hand was outstretched in a fist, pointing at me. His voice was low.

"I need to talk to you." He was the one doing this. I thrashed against the pull and got nothing for it. My limbs would not answer.

"Please." The word came out so quietly I almost missed it. I went still.

"What do you want to talk about?" My voice came out louder than I had meant.

"You want me to stand by and watch while you do these things?"

"I told you," he said.

"I have to. Or we—I die."

"That does not make it right, Milo. I am the Hero. I cannot just let it happen. You saying you do not kill does not make everything else you do, like, kidnapping villagers, become acceptable!" Above us, something crashed back down through the canopy. Branches snapped. Dust bloomed across the clearing. When it settled, Ywain was standing in the middle of it. The demon girl was in his other hand. He had her by the throat, her legs kicking, her wings flapping uselessly against his grip.

"Give it up, Dark Lord," Ywain said. Milo looked at him. Something passed over his face. Not fear, exactly. Something more pained. He looked back at me.

"Sorry, Evelisse." The pull tightened. I felt myself yanked forward through the air, fast, until I came to a stop with my face inches from his. Then I felt it. The pale violet mist drifting between us, faintly sweet, faintly wrong. Sleep Gas. My eyelids went heavy. The last thing I saw, before the world dimmed, was his face very close to mine, looking at me as though he were the one being hurt. I woke on a bed. I was still in my light armor, though my boots were gone.

I sat up slowly, the world swimming back into focus. The room was small. A wardrobe against the far wall. A low cabinet beside the bed. My boots were beside the door. Nothing else. No Mooncleaver. No Ywain. No Mel. A commotion came from the other side of the door. Voices, sharp and overlapping. I slid down from the bed and opened it. The demon girl had Milo by the collar of his robe, fist drawn back as if she were about to strike him. They both froze and turned to look at me.

Slowly, she let go of him and started toward me.

"Nyx, don't—" Milo said.

"I know," she said, without taking her eyes off mine. I dropped into stance, weight low. A faint smile curved at the corner of her mouth as she closed the distance. I threw the first punch. She slipped it cleanly. Her leg swept low and took my footing out from under me, and I went down. I caught the floor with one hand, used my own weight to flip back up, and landed on the balls of my feet. I lunged again, feinting at her shoulder before driving for the ribs. She read both of them.

She avoided me as though she had seen my muscles tense before I had moved them. Then I felt it. A cold, sudden stiffness on my limbs, locking my joints for the briefest instant. The immobilization spell…! Her foot took my legs out from under me a second time. I went down hard, face-first, the floor slamming up against my ribs and chest. Before I could push myself up or roll, she dropped onto the small of my back, sitting on me, which was… humiliating.

"It's pointless to struggle, Hero." Her voice was almost gentle.

"You have lost. Same as the rest of them." I lifted my head as much as I could, and I saw them. Mel and Ywain. Tied up on the floor against the far wall. Unconscious. The ropes around their wrists were ordinary cord, the kind that would not have held either of them for an instant if they had been awake. But they were not. We had lost. All of us. And it was because of me. I had hesitated. From the moment I set foot in this forest, I had hesitated.

If I had struck the Cerberus with the Mooncleaver when Milo had stepped out of the hut, we would have won. The plan would have held.

"Evelisse." Milo's voice came from across the room, low.

"I'm sorry, but…can we just…talk a bit?" I looked at Milo, eye to eye. Then I thought of what had been happening to me ever since we met. I had thought my previous visit would have made everything clear, but it did not. Will this talk even settle anything? But if I don't have it, will anything ever be settled? His eyes held mine, steady; there was none of the deflection or the panic I had come to expect from him. Just a quiet, open kind of waiting. There was something almost pleading in it.

"Fine," I said, eyes still on him.

"I'll listen."