Broken Chains

Luckily for Puck, it took a long time before another enemy got past Scarlet. For about ten minutes, there was only the constant battle between Scarlet and the horde of monsters.

Every ten or so seconds, Scarlet would take a deliberate step back, as the corpses of her slain enemies got in the way when swinging her axes.

Then finally, something got through again. It was made up of one single great body of rolling and stretching flesh, lashing out with hundreds of tentacles at once.

This abomination made it past Scarlet simply because of one of its special traits: It seemed to be able to live on even after half of its body had been hacked off.

Puck could see how its flesh and tentacles shifted to compensate for what was lost, but he had no intention of letting it do so.

Charging forward, Puck hacked down towards his enemy with all he had. Having learned from his last fight, he managed to evade the tentacle lashing out in turn.

When the tentacle flew by Puck, he saw a bone knife appearing out of a flesh fold.

Realizing the danger the attacks of this enemy posed, Puck backed off to gain more distance again.

Seeing how the monster started to turn towards Scarlet's back, Puck cursed and reengaged the abomination.

What followed was an intense brawl, where Puck tried to evade the attacks of his enemy at all costs, while slowly cutting it apart bit by bit.

The fight ended only after over three minutes of fighting, when the abomination had been cut down to an unrecognizable puddle of blood, bone, and flesh. At that time, a single great beating heart was exposed, which Puck promptly skewered.

For this enemy, Puck hadn’t had to use his special abilities as he had never been in truly mortal danger, but instead, he had accumulated a great number of shallow cuts that had penetrated the thick leather clothes Scarlet had provided for him.

Feeling the blood flow leaving his body through these small cuts slowly abate, Puck was thankful for his body's great ability to withstand punishment.

Far more troubling than these small wounds was the strain this fight had put on his body through physical exertion. Even minutes after the end of the fight, Puck was still gasping for air, his arms barely able to lift Zephyrian.

Still watching closely for enemies that broke through, Puck managed to react instantly as something seemed to get past Scarlet again.

Instead of waiting for it to come to him, he moved towards it while it still had to suffer sideway blows from Scarlet.

Leaning on Zephyrian's experience and knowledge, Puck managed to find a weak spot on the creature. Before it even turned its attention towards him, it was already dead.

Feeling triumph and pride rushing through his body, he felt like Zephyrian got lighter in his hands again.

Suddenly, hearing a scream from Scarlet mid celebration, Puck whirled around and saw that an abomination that had managed to get past Scarlet on her other side had left a deep cut on her upper back.

Cursing himself and his bad senses, Puck barely managed to prevent a second attack on Scarlet.

The fight against that abomination was long and strenuous again, but in the and Puck won without having to resort to his more special means. While fighting though, he became far more careful about not leaving Scarlet's back unprotected.

For the two abominations that next, Puck had to throw in everything he had again. Both the ideal of wind and Zephyrians power demanded a great price though.

Feeling himself growing more and more dizzy while his body grew increasingly numb and unreactive, Puck only managed to defeat his sixth enemy after it left a deep flesh wound on his right arm that made him unable to wield Zephyrian.

Gritting his teeth in the knowledge that the next enemy would likely be too much, Puck readied himself again.

Then, suddenly, as if somebody had turned a switch, everything went silent as Scarlet bisected the last abomination in one clean strike.

Seeing Scarlet turn to him, Puck managed to take one last look at her exhausted and wounded figure before he himself simply blacked out and fell over.

Feeling every muscle in her body protesting, Scarlet ignored them all as she jogged out of the domain of the heart of darkness with Puck thrown over her shoulder.

They would need to rest and recuperate before they could assault the heart itself.

More than needing to recuperate physically though, Scarlet needed the time to come down mentally.

Even though, by all accounts, this fight had been an easy one for her, she still could barely suppress a subtle shaking in her limbs.

This heart of darkness was far younger and weaker than the one that had cost her everything, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t woken up memories that she wanted to bury forever.

Again, she was slowly being pulled in by her own head. She felt the tendril around her ankle and knew her old fighting companions behind her back. They had been attacking the heart and then...

Naktum and Kallum... what would they have wanted for her, what would they have done if they were in her position?

They would have wanted for her to live on, to fight on, to focus her attention on her new and incredibly brave disciple instead of wallowing in the past.

Feeling the weight of the unconscious Puck on her shoulder, Scarlet tried to focus on that and tune out all the whispers in the back of her mind.

She would stay strong.

She would stay strong until she reached a safe resting place outside of the domain of the heart of darkness.

She would stay strong until she had erected their camp and tended to her and Puck's wounds.

She would even stay strong when she lay there in the darkness, unable to sleep for hours on end.

But then, finally, when she would drift into much-needed sleep, the nightmares would come and get her.