"Let's go and kill the monster", Nephis said.
She didn't have a hint of doubt that they could do it. It was their will and they were the strongest cohort of sleepers currently in the Dream Realm. They would not fall prey to a mere Fallen Monster...
... but they could fall prey to their own pride, of course. Nephis reminded herself of that fight against the two carapace centurions earlier. It had been a close call, as had been their stay in the mystical chamber the Builder's statue resided in.
Becoming prideful was the devil's bargain.
They left the First Lord and continued towards the next big cave, where they would meet their adversary. Only, the word big did not do justice to the scale of the place. The gargantuan hall could have swallowed the Bright Castle whole; the unfinished statue standing at the center of it looked tiny in comparison.
They didn't have much time to gape at the landscape, though.
"Here it comes!"
The spire messenger was just as she remembered. It was like a tortured, mutated version of a hippogriff, with large feathery wings, white body of a lion and six clawed legs protruding out of its chest. Its eyes were full of malice and its beak was long and sharp. And it was coming straight at them.
The spire messenger did not scream, which made it all the more deadly. Had they not been expecting attack they might have reacted too late and died then and there. Being clawed alive was not a pleasant death by any means even though it was one of mildier ones the Spell had to offer for its unwilling benefactors.
Luckily, everyone of them had come in prepared, and so they met the fury of the monstrous creature with a fury of their own.
Saint was the one who took the brunt of the attack. It had evolved after killing the Black Knight and was now appearently called Marble Saint. As an awakened demon it was technically the strongest fighter in their whole cohort — save maybe for Nephis herself.
The Shadow put itself directly onto the line of fire and collided with the charging messenger like a dark wrecking ball. There was a sickening crunch when the beak of the Fallen Monster met the shield of its opponent and Nephis hoped the beak had snapped. But whether that was the case or not, not even Marble Saint could withstand the impact completely. The difference in mass was just too great.
Saint was pushed backwards and for the first time Nephis saw the graceful stone knight actually stumbling. As the Shadow was trying to regain her footing, though, the rest of the cohort attacked.
Effie and Nephis advanced at the front. Effie shouted and thrust her spear towards on eye of the messenger whereas Nephis did the same with Blessing. The weapon could change its shape at her will and even though Nephis dearly preferred her longsword, the reach of a spear worked better for her now. This was the battle ground of mortals after all, and things like physical size, weight and reach played much more important role than in the clashes between demigods. Not to mention she could not turn into a kilometer-tall flame colossus or shoot rays of plasma across unreasonable distances anymore.
How stifling...
But she had found, during these past months, that it was somewhat refreshing, too.
Immediately after Nephis and Effie made their assault, the second wave was already coming. Kai rained his blood arrows from above and Cassie had commanded Quiet Dancer to attack. The rapier was flying around the messenger, pestering it from all sides. Cassie herself was hiding safely in the tunnel they had come through. The entrance was too small for the messenger to get to her, so Nephis was not worried about her friend.
Sunny was running. His task was to get to the statue first, touch it and come back. After that it would be Effie's turn to go. One by one they would gain the ability to deal a killing blow to the shard memory's guardian, and then it would be just a matter of time before the monster succumbed to its numerous wounds.
The problem was, the spire messenger wasn't an ordinary monster. Or even if it was, it had a specific task always at the forefront of its simple mind: to protect the statue at the center of the cavern.
When it spotted Sunny, it took off.
Neither Nephis nor Effie could fly after it and while Kai could, he wasn't a fighter enough to stop it without taking a lethal risk. And none of them, despite being as powerful as any sleeper could realistically get, were fast enough to reach Sunny before the monster did.
That's bad... But Nephis had a solution already in mind.
She was still just a demon - as she gained more and more soul cores, saturating them became slower and slower — but even a demon was substantially more powerful than any sleeper had right to be. Sunny was currently using his shadow to gain more speed, but that was not going to be enough. With Nephis's help, though...
She suddenly felt empty. All her flames left her in a rapid rush, flowing onto the ground like a river of fire. The black floor of sand melted under the heat and the river left an afterimage of black glass in its wake as it rushed towards Sunny. No matter how fast the spire messenger flew, it was never going to be faster.
The river reached Sunny and flared up, wrapping him in a glowing armor of fire. Underneath that armor sharp shadows were flickering like dark eyes of a Daemon of Fate, cold and unfathomable. Sunny looked to Nephis for a split second, an expression of amazement showing on his face. Then his speed quadrupled and he was running again, this time clearly ahead of his competition. At the same time, the Marble Saint disappeared from Nephis's side and appeared again just behind Sunny. She looked coldly at the spire messenger and raised her sword.
"I had no idea you could do that!" Effie exclaimed. Nephis glanced at her and took of running.
"Don't speak. Move."
They raced up the gentle slope of the cavern's floor, going after the other participants of the battle. Kai and Saint were now slowing the spire messenger down to the best of their ability with the help of the Quiet Dancer. Sunny had just reached the statue and turned around again, eager to join the fray.
Together they put the spire messenger on the back foot. Sunny could not be stopped; he had most of the combined power of shadow and flames with him and Nephis decided to keep it that way, since Sunny was currently the only on of them who could actually try and kill the monster.
Of course, that was not for long. Soon Effie had touched the statue as well and she took her position again with renewed vigor. Nephis didn't quite make up what the huntress was shouting, but she had a feeling she didn't really want to know.
Next was Kai — he quickly flew over to the statue and signaled it was Nephis's turn. She turned around and sprinted upwards. The time was coming to claim the kill.
The seconds passed painfully slowly as Nephis reached the base of the statue and planted her hands firmly against the stone. It felt deathly cold under her touch. Then she turned around.
What?
It took Nephis a second too long to make sense of the situation.
Sunny had somehow made his way to the top of the spire messenger and the monster was currently spinning around in the air in murderous frenzy, trying to shake of the annoying passenger. Sunny was continuously hacking its wings with midnight shard — in fact, one of them had somehow caught fire and was now blazing, the bone and sinew melting under the immolating heat. The spire messenger shrieked and turned into a downwards spiral —
Towards her.
It was coming for her like a flaming bullet. And most of her power was currently with Sunny.
"Neph! Watch out!"
Sunny's shout made Nephis snap out of it. But she only had a fraction of a second to react. She dove to her left just as the spire messenger hit the ground, spinning in the air and slashing with Blessing. It was an impossible strike... but it somehow worked. The blade buried itself on skull of the abominable creature, just above —
Then the world exploded. There was a massive sound and she flew backwards. She flew much further than she should have. Something flew with her, something had torn off... she was in a world of pain. Her bones were on fire as was her blood, and her lungs...
[You have slain a Fallen Monster, Cursed Herald. Your soul shines brighter.]
[... You have received a memory.]
For a second, everything in her vision went white. She clutched her hands to fists and felt the metallic scent of blood fill her mouth. Then it was burned away.
After an eternity she opened her eyes again — though in some far away reality where time flowed in a normal pace it had been only a few seconds.
She saw Sunny walking up to her, carrying her left leg.
"We've won?" Nephis creaked out.
"Yes."
Then he pressed the leg against Nephis's stump and Nephis let the fire consume her.
*******
"It was my fault."
Sunny looked over his shoulder, checking where rest of the cohort were. They had gathered some distance away from the two, inspecting the corpse of the grotesque creature. Effie had wanted to harvest the soul shards but neither Sunny nor Nephis needed them and so they had remained where they were.
Sunny looked to the ground and grit his teeth.
"When I was on top of the monster I had this idea that if I just made it turn to your direction... I could be rid of you, you know? Once and for all." He smiled grimly. "You see, I know I'm not strong enough to kill you myself. But I'm not above harvesting the power of other creatures to get what I want."
And is that what you want? Nephis thought. The thought made her unbearably sad. After all she had done to try and remedy her mistakes...
But then she frowned. Why was Sunny telling this to her? She was glad to know, maybe, for knowledge was power and ignorance was dangerous, and she respected him for being honest. But what was his motivation?
Maybe he just felt that she had already guessed what his intention had been and didn't bother hiding it. But truthfully, Nephis was little shaken.
Although... Sunny had warned her, in the end.
Sunny shook his head, looking tired. "But then when it was happening I found out I couldn't go through with it. I had to warn you, no matter if it cost me my freedom again. Make of that what you will."
He was about to walk away when Nephis took his hand. Her touch was light, enough so that he could easily break away. Nevertheless, Sunny turned around.
"What?"
Nephis searched for right words.
"I just wanted to thank you. I know you have every right to hate me, but I'm glad you don't."
Sunny regarded her silently for a moment.
"I talked to Cassie some time before we left the Dark City", he suddenly said. "She's an oracle, so of course I asked her what she made out of our peculiar Attributes. But to be honest, she didn't have much to say. She did say something about breaking Fate, though — that doing so was equivalent to going against ones own nature. It seems to me now that I'm not strong enough to do that."
That was an interesting piece of insight from Cassie, Nephis thought. She inclined her head a little. "There are different ways of going against ones nature, though."
Sunny shaked his head.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Well, it doesn't meant much of anything, I guess. But this saying by Cassie seems to make sense considering all that's happened after I came back. It puts things into new perspective... "
*******
Kai was also shaking his head, but in his case it was because of deep bewilderment.
"We did it. Not that I really doubted it, not after all that's happened."
"It still feels amazing, though", Cassie said. "To not only kill a Fallen Monster but also kill it so... "
"Easily?" Effie offered.
Nephis had joined the group again and was currently looking at the final wound she had dealt with Blessing, a deep cut above the right eye of the Cursed herald. She smiled faintly.
"It should be easy — it's just a Fallen Monster. Although, I think you forgot that I lost a leg." And not just a leg but almost half of my stomach, too.
But it had still been quite easy. The whole affair had lasted only for a few minutes and no one else had been seriously injured. Nephis herself would have been fine as well if not for Sunny's plan he had discarded at the last moment.
Effie clearly didn't share her nonchalance, because her face went immediately white. "Oh. I'm sorry... "
"Don't be. It's part of the experience." Nephis finally unsummoned the Blessing, which had been left behind when she was thrown through the air. Then she turned around, facing her friends.
"Huh? Why are you all looking at me like that?"