The relentless tip… tip… of water dripping echoes in the deadly silent dungeon. Druvak and Julie move deeper into the gloom. Julie holds her daggers tightly, her eyes scanning every shadowed corner. Druvak's skeletal hand rests firmly on his sword hilt, his entire body coiled, ready to react.
"Grr…" "Grrrhh…"
A low growl rumbles from the darkness ahead. Then another. Julie glances at Druvak and nods. He nods back, his free hand lighting up with a flare of soul-fire.
'Soul Flare Burst.'
He fires the emerald bolt into the heart of the shadows. Its sickly green radiance briefly illuminates a massive, dark hide. The flare bursts against it, sticking and sizzling.
"GRRRR…!! ROAARRR!!!"
The cavern trembles as the creature bellows in pain. They see a hulking shape thrash, slashing at its own smoking flesh with jagged claws to tear the burning patch away. Then, it charges.
Julie braces to counter. As it erupts from the gloom, its form reveals itself: a chimera, with the scaled body of a drake, a bear's head snarling on one neck, a cave lion's on the other.
Both massive maws open wide to crunch them. Druvak and Julie sidestep in unison, then streak past on opposite sides, their blades scraping along the beast's flanks.
Clank! Clank!
Sparks fly, but the metallic hide repels their strikes. The chimera's whip-like tail smashes toward Julie. She leaps, using a pillar for leverage, as the tail pulverizes the stone to dust. A web of cracks spreads across the ceiling above.
Druvak takes a low stance, his sword erupting in soul-fire. 'Gentle Wind Sword Style.'
He steps. One moment he is there, the next he is three meters past the beast. The bear's head and one foreclaw thud to the ground, severed by a cut so clean blood takes a second to well. The lion head roars in agony, turns, and unleashes a torrent of flame at Julie.
She ducks and rolls. The missed jet of fire hits the cracked ceiling. Julie's daggers gleam with the dark red radiance of her Slaughter Divinity. She darts beneath the beast and slashes at its remaining neck.
This time, the metallic hide parts like parchment. The lion's head joins its twin on the floor, and the chimera's colossal body collapses.
CRACK!
The compromised ceiling gives way. A massive boulder shears off and plummets down. Druvak and Julie dash in opposite directions. The rock crashes onto the chimera's corpse with a wet, crushing finality, spraying gore and dust in a wide arc.
Julie throws a hand over her eyes against the debris. She is unaware that her own shadow detaches, rising into the form of Zaegarus, his long black hood and sleek smile emerging from the darkness. He extends a hand near her temple. A black haze drifts from his fingers, coiling around her head.
"When restraint is gone," Zaegarus whispers, "sanity soon follows."
Julie's hands drop to her sides, limp. She hunches forward. Zaegarus dissolves back into shadow.
A red haze begins to seep from her pores. Her heartbeat slows to a faint, sluggish thud.
As the dust settles, Druvak approaches. "Hey! Why are you standing there? Come on!"
He takes a step, then freezes. A wrongness pricks at his senses. His hand tightens on his hilt. He moves toward her cautiously. "Julie… are you okay?"
Silence.
He grabs her shoulder. "Hey! What happened? Look at me."
Julie lunges.
Her movement is a blur of mindless ferocity, a dagger aimed for his skull. Druvak, already braced, sidesteps just in time.
Clank!
Her blade shrieks against his sword. Her eyes are pools of solid crimson, her face an emotionless mask. She attacks without strategy, without finesse—only a relentless drive to pierce his vitals. Druvak parries, each block vibrating up his arms. 'She's gone. Something has completely severed her mind.'
As the fight stretches, her bloodlust intensifies. The red haze around her thickens, pulsating. Her Slaughter Essence bleeds into the cavern floor. Stones tremble, then tear free, reshaping themselves in mid-air into dozens of jagged, floating daggers.
Druvak's sword flares with soul-fire. He takes a low stance, glaring at the storm of stone. 'Gentle Wind Sword Style.'
His figure blurs. He reappears in front of her, sword held high for a vertical slash. But as he looks into those crimson eyes, a memory flashes, vivid and disorienting: not of battle, but of the training ground. The smell of dust, the sound of her frustrated grunt after a failed disarming maneuver, the stubborn set of her jaw that was so like his own. The killing intent in his strike evaporates.
Julie seizes the opening. Both her daggers slash toward him in a cross. Druvak brings his sword up in a desperate block, but her enhanced power, combined with his own hesitation, is overwhelming. The impact blows him backward. He crashes into a pillar, the stone cracking behind him.
She gives him no quarter. As she charges, he rolls and blocks another furious slash. He stabs forward; she parries, steps inside his guard, and drives an elbow into his skull.
CRACK!
A spiderweb fracture spreads across his brow. He responds instinctively, driving a fist into her stomach.
CRUNCH!
A tooth flies from his jaw. A sickening crack echoes from her ribs. Neither injury registers on her face. She assaults him again, daggers flashing, the floating stone blades hurling toward him. In desperate defense, he lashes out. His slash opens a shallow cut across her chest.
She stumbles back, the stone daggers faltering. Druvak steps forward, his voice strained with worry. "Julie! Are you—"
Her cold stare is his only answer. Before his eyes, the wound seals itself, flesh knitting together without a scar. Then, she vanishes.
The stone daggers launch. Druvak tightens his grip, gritting his teeth. "So that's your answer."
He takes a mid-stance. 'Raging Water Style.' His sword becomes a vortex of motion. Horizontal slashes tear through the air, creating miniature whirlwinds of soul-fire that vaporize the incoming stone.
'Vengeance Knight Sword Art.'
The sapphire core in his sternum ignites, radiating violent blue light. The soul-fire on his blade condenses into a searing, solid edge. The cracks on his skull mend with threads of blue energy.
'Sin Sight.'
His perception shifts. The world is overlaid with the hues of sin—the ancient violence in the stone, the fresh cruelty of the chimera's death. He scans the cavern. Nothing. Then he looks up. There, a burning, condensed orb of furious crimson sin hovers directly above him—Julie's essence. A small pebble clatters off his skull a second before she materializes, both daggers plunging down.
CLANK!
He blocks, but the force of her descent is monstrous. It drives him to one knee, the ground fracturing beneath him in a spiderweb pattern. He stares up into her crimson eyes, straining. "Julie! Wake up! I am your teacher!"
Her only response is a kick that sends him skidding back across the stone.
He concentrates, channels his power, and sends a crescent wave of soul-fire screaming toward her. Julie meets it with a radiant crimson slash from her daggers. But the power is too great. She grits her teeth, muscles straining, as the slash pushes her back, pulverizing the ground behind her in a wave of destruction.
Black ichor wells from fresh tears in her skin. Her emotionless eyes remain locked on him.
A word escapes him, raw and quiet. "…Julie."
She takes a step. Then she is simply in front of him again. He blocks her slash. She sweeps his legs. He jumps and brings his sword down in a devastating arc aimed at her arm. She rolls away as his blade digs into the earth, splitting the ground open.
Dust drifts like gray snow. Druvak's skeletal frame grinds against rock as he pushes himself up. His sapphire core burns with a deep, aching throb, sending cracks of blue light through his ribs.
Across from him, Julie walks.
Her bare feet leave shallow impressions in the stone as if the ground itself softens for her. Crimson mist coils around her legs, whispering. Every step is slow, deliberate—predatory.
Druvak lifts his heavy sword. "Listen to me."
She doesn't. Her dagger rises.
He steps forward, planting his foot hard enough to crack the floor. 'Gentle Wind sword style.' He focuses on defense—deflections, redirections, using her momentum against her. Her daggers screech against his blade, scattering sparks of crimson and blue.
He twists, locks her wrist, and slams the flat of his sword against her forearm. "Your stance is wrong," he says, the teacher in him overriding the warrior. "You're overreaching. You always did when you were angry."
Her head snaps toward him. For a single, fleeting heartbeat, her eyes flicker. Then she headbutts him.
CRACK!
The impact rings through his skull. Blue-white shards of pain fracture his vision as he staggers back.
She doesn't press. Instead, she spreads her arms. The entire cavern shudders. More stones tear free, grinding, reshaping into a new storm of jagged blades. The sound is like bones snapping.
Druvak exhales slowly, lowering his blade in a plea. "Julie. Look at what you're doing."
The floating blades scream toward him.
'Raging Water!'
He becomes a storm. His sword whirls, each swing a crashing arc of soul-fire that shatters stone into dust. The vibrations rattle his bones, each impact jolting his core.
A stumble. A moment of weakness.
Julie is there. Too close.
Her dagger plunges for his chest.
He pivots at the last instant. The blade scrapes across his ribs, sparks screaming as metal kisses bone. He hooks her wrist, twists, and slams her into the cavern wall. Stone explodes. He presses his soul-fire-wreathed sword to her throat.
The sapphire core in his chest flares, resonating with her violent, trapped presence.
"Control your divinity," he says, voice trembling with strain. "Don't let it control you. You are the owner, not it."
Her breath is unnervingly steady.
"I taught you restraint because I never had it," he continues, grip wavering. "A weapon without restraint is just a monster with steel."
Her knee drives into his abdomen.
The sapphire gem flares blinding blue as the force hurls him backward. He crashes through rubble, rolling to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Julie advances. Her wounds knit shut as she walks. Blood crawls backward into her skin. Bones realign with wet, sickening pops. Her crushing aura stains the very air red.
Druvak pushes himself to one knee. His sword trembles. The core in his chest pulses wildly, cracks of light spidering across its surface.
'Vengeance Knight Sword Art.'
The cavern howls with pressure. Soul-fire condenses around his blade in layers of devastating divinity. The smell of ozone and scorched stone fills the air. His fractures seal with burning blue light.
Julie stops. Just for a moment. He sees it—a hesitation.
He steps forward, blade raised not to kill, but to disarm. "You are not this."
She lunges.
He intercepts perfectly, sliding his blade along hers, his motion a flawless disarming technique. His sword moves for the finishing arc—meant to sever tendons, to end the fight.
At the final instant, he hesitates.
Memories flood him, specific and sensory: Her first, clumsy grip on a practice dagger. The fierce pride in her eyes the first time she landed a hit on him. The way she'd shout, "Again!" after every defeat.
His blade shifts. The strike lands shallow, slicing her arm instead of severing it.
"AAAAAAA!!!"
Her scream is raw, a fusion of rage and agony. Her Slaughter Divinity erupts in a crimson shockwave that annihilates the surrounding stone.
Druvak is thrown like a leaf in a hurricane. He crashes down hard, skidding, his soul-fire guttering to a faint glow. He tries to rise. His bones protest, locked in place by damage and exhaustion.
Julie stands over him. Her dagger lifts, dripping with condensed crimson power.
Druvak looks up, his core dimming. His voice is a whisper, stripped of everything but a final, desperate hope.
"…If you can hear me… then fight me. Fight yourself."
---
From the deepest shadows, Zaegarus watches the conclusion of the master-student duel. A faint smile touches his lips.
"A delightful struggle," he murmurs to the darkness. "But the main event awaits."
He turns and melts into the gloom, following the path that leads to the dungeon's heart. He steps from the shadows to stand before the imprisoned form of Morvud. A giant tunnel, freshly dug and large enough for the beast to pass, yawns behind him.
Zaegarus gently caresses the creature's rough, metallic hide. "Your patience ends, my ancient friend."
He moves to the final, glowing rune holding the heavy stygian chains. His hand radiates a corrupting black haze. He grips the rune.
CRACK!
A fissure splits the ancient symbol. The immense chains shriek, then brittle into rust-red flakes that cascade to the floor.
Morvud takes its first deep, free breath in millennia, stretching colossal limbs that scrape the ceiling. It turns a massive head, jaws lined with swords for teeth, and looks at Zaegarus.
"Grrr…" A low, grating groan of thanks vibrates through the stone.
Then it turns and lumbers into the waiting tunnel, its passage causing the very mountain to tremble. Zaegarus watches it go, his work complete, before he too fades into the shadows, leaving the dungeon to its silence and the two broken warriors within.