Ástríðr’s estimate was correct; reaching the mouth of the mine was the work of only a few hours of travel, less than three, and by just past midday, the adventurers dismounted their raptors and looked into the cave’s yawning maw. The depths of it extended past their ability to see, and they knew that no passers-by would think this was, in fact, a mine, the existence of which was a closely-guarded secret of the state. Frankly, if not for her instincts, Katsumi herself would harbour immense doubts about having come to the correct place; yet, the aura of dread was strong in her nose, and the Beast writhed, rousing itself from slumber in preparation to be called upon should things go poorly.

Sonja was the first to move in, being the most capable of taking punishment with not only the highest HP but also the highest Defence values of the five of them. Her spatha slid free of its scabbard, accompanied by Ástríðr’s xiphos, Kagura’s tachi, Kyomi’s quill and grimoire, and finally Deatheater, the blade finally tasting open air as it frothed with twisting shadows and dancing darkness.

A spectral chill swept forth through all five of them, the biting cold soul-deep. None of them hesitated for so much as an instant in their forward advance, though Katsumi’s eyes caught Sonja’s grip adjusting on her shield and sword, with the slight tensing of her limbs. The drahn supposed that perhaps Sonja was moving forth believing that unknown danger lay before, and a wildcard danger followed behind her, in which case, Katsumi supposed she had reason. In light of that, the dark knight resolved to keep an eye on the paladin, to step in if she hesitated for a fatal moment in battle, was just a hair too slow in reacting.

The Beast’s ebon scales slipped along her insides, and infernal eyes seared into the back of her own, seeing the world as she did. Its dread wings flexed and began to stretch, and she swore they would have encompassed the entire cave were they physical things sprouting from her back, but at the same time, the unfurling revealed a swirling pit of death and pain that she remembered tapping into once before, three or four days or an eternity ago.

…Listen…

…Can you hear it?

This is our power.

The writhing mass that was the Darkside surged forth, and she surrendered to its grasp; and in her surrender, as she felt herself approaching the brink of annihilation, she seized it, clutched it in a strangle-hold about its proverbial neck. She remembered what Frey had told her. The Darkside is of no greater magnitude than you yourself… It came when she called, and like an eager hound, would heel or bay at her command, if she only kept her wits about her long enough to command it.

Deatheater surged to greet her, now that she could feel its presence and hear its cries in her mind. The keening resolved itself into something. It wasn’t much, not yet, a spark on an endless mound of kindling, not yet caught, but moments away from doing so.

Mankind has always feared the dark, and so they learned to chase it away with fire.

But we know differently, don’t we, my Master?

Deatheater’s words and thoughts were different from the Beast’s. While the Beast’s cries resounded into the depths of her mind, these were whispery suggestions, sentences branded and still flaming on the backs of her eyelids.

The world flickered for a moment, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw an indistinct figure cloaked in black, shifting and nebulous, not fully there, but resolving further and further.

Fire burns. It consumes. When the time comes, we shall feed all that which stands between us and our horizon into the flame, and when all that is purged, we shall embrace the Void. It shall yawn wide, and we shall drink deep of its power, for the Void is the origin and end of all things, and through it, all things are possible.

My strength is thine, and the strength of thine arm shall put truth to my blade. Flesh shall tear, blood shall weep. The chains and shackles that bind us shall be undone, the laws that crafted them unmade.

Be ready.

That incredibly cryptic series of events aside, Katsumi was at last allowed to once more focus on the world around her, the Beast, the Darkside, and Deatheater all present at the back of her mind, content to sit, observe, and obey. Darkness and shadow surrounded them, and Katsumi found that though she was aware of the dark, it did not obscure her vision. She could see just fine through the cloak of shadows that enshrouded the cave’s interior, more easily, even, than she could in bright light. The hues were softer here, which perplexed her, as there ought not to be hues, rationally speaking. She tossed the question in a bin she had just created called “Magic”, and moved on.

“Fuckin’ hate walking in the dark like this…” Kagura muttered.

And suddenly Katsumi was once more aware of who she was with. “Can you not see in the dark, then?”

The vii shook her head. “Blinder than a man without eyes, really. Me and Kyomi both. We have sharp noses and great hearing, and Kyomi has a very strong sense of the ambient magic of an area, but the elves have this nifty little thing called infravision, so they can see just fine in this blackness, and we kinda can’t. It’s unnerving.”

“Then maybe we should light a torch…”

“Not on my account,” Kagura said. “We’re trying to be discreet here, remember? All sneaky-like. It’d kinda defeat the purpose of this if every monster in this whole mine saw us light up like we’re begging to be ambushed and devoured. Kyomi’s got a spell that’ll let us see in the dark when we run into mobs, but until then, we’ve just gotta pay attention to our other senses.”

Katsumi nodded, realised Kagura couldn’t have seen her do so, felt silly for a moment, and then replied, “Noted.”

She walked ahead of the vii, drawing closer to Ástríðr and Sonja in an attempt to be closer to the former; yet, with every step she took closer to Sonja, she could see the tension in Sonja’s body ratcheting up higher and higher. Dismayed, but secure in the belief that it wouldn’t really matter in battle so long as she was within a certain proximity, she slowed and distanced herself, watching the tension evaporate little by little with each span of distance that she placed between herself and the paladin. This perplexed her—could the paladin sense her presence? That could well be it, and did in fact make sense, after a fashion.

Ástríðr looked around as she conversed quietly with Sonja, but with the sudden spiking and subsiding of tension in her twin’s body, her low remarks took on a quizzical tone. She looked back at Katsumi, then back to Sonja, her own body suddenly wound tight enough that Katsumi feared she might fray and snap. A few muttered words later, and Sonja nodded hesitantly, leaving Ástríðr to turn about and wave her forward, a coy smirk on her face that was completely at odds with the rage radiating off of her moments ago. Ordinarily it’d be worrisome, but Katsumi just assumed that the she-elf was putting on a mask so as not to make her think she was angry at her. An…uncommonly, uncannily accurate…mask. Still, she knew better than to disobey the nonverbal command, especially since it brought her into doing what she wished to do and would have already have done if not for Sonja’s painfully obvious discomfort.

She could see Sonja attempting to hold herself in a state of langour, though the building tension was still obvious to her eyes as she drew closer; still, she would not think to preserve Sonja’s comfort if it meant defying Ástríðr’s or—request. Maintaining herself as someone who wasn’t troublesome to the bard was more important by far than indulging Sonja’s unnecessary wariness of her, especially as it seemed as though it was not going to subside before affecting team cohesion and synergy, and so she was thusly killing two birds with a single precisely aimed and carefully lobbed stone.

That was, until several long, pregnant moments passed, marked only by their complete silence save for the footfalls of the company as they went deeper and deeper into the earth. Soon enough, the darkness yawned wide in all directions, and though Katsumi herself did not find the shadows obfuscating, she did find the fact that Ástríðr had not made a motion to address any matter with her yet somewhat troubling. To someone who had never before found silence of any sort in any way unwelcome, the feeling of anxiety that roused as the moments passed without a remark was extraordinarily peculiar. She had never cared to be spoken to before, never really cared about what anyone was going to say. If she needed to, she acted upon it, but there was always this disconnection within her, a stillness, a lake frozen solid, dense and strong enough to turn aside the blow of a pickaxe. Now the lake had thawed, and all sorts of unfamiliar currents ripped through it, rending the peace that had come with the deadness of moments prior, and the anxiety was winding tighter and tighter and oh why did she call her forth? What did she want to speak of? Why was she not already speaking of it?!

Coming across a creature, a grinning black furry creature with luminous sulphur-yellow eyes and rows of sharp teeth, sprouts of thick, stiff fur that looked like rabbit ears sprouting from the sphere that not only constituted its head, but its body as well, sprouting small, spindly arms and legs, was almost a relief in and of itself. She struck forth, blade wreathed in dark fire before the others, Sonja too tense and Ástríðr too distracted somehow, Kagura and Kyomi having no way of discerning the exact location of the creature at this distance, and with a single slice of Deatheater, silent but for the rapid incoherent jabbering of the creature and the unheard scream the sword made as its blade rent the air with speed and force, the creature separated into two halves, before erupting with blood.

The surge of life force, called ‘experience’ as a term of art, was apparent when she knew that it was happening. It was a feeling quite unlike any other, a sort of simultaneous surging, withdrawing, swallowing, and vomiting, all just a hair more than the psychosomatic recollection of any of those sensations.

“A gremlin,” stated Ástríðr as she drew close. “Well, that’s the first one. We’ll have to go deeper if we’re going to find the real quarry.”

“Alright! This is where the fun begins!” Kagura replied, not yelling, but her impassioned jubilation was readily apparent all the same.

Kyomi sighed, the grimoire snapping open in her grasp as she began speedily scrawling a line into a page, her quill hand coming away with a flourish as Carbuncle came forth, bursting from the parchment with a sound like glass shards tinkling on the ground and an eruption of bright blue light. “I had hoped to avoid this until it was absolutely necessary…”

“Most monsters can smell blood. Our cover was blown when that first gremlin fell,” Ástríðr stated dismissively. She then looked to her sister. “Sonja. Loosen up.”

The level of implied threat in that command sent a shock through Katsumi’s spine.

“What—” Sonja began.

Ástríðr rounded on her. “Don’t think I didn’t see you hesitate. You’re the paladin. You hold the line! And yet Katsumi here was within striking distance before you even started moving! Get with the program.”

“It’s fine,” Katsumi interjected.

Ástríðr turned back to her, surprise clear and etched into her face, but the suddenly very real danger of the situation they were in allowed Katsumi to take the surging torrent within and push it aside for a moment.

“I saw she was tense, and I was prepared to step in to act if she hesitated,” Katsumi explained. “Hesitation is defeat, after all. If she died because of me, because my presence made her uneasy to the point where it made her worse at fighting…”

The implications on her relationship with Ástríðr that Katsumi foresaw went unsaid, though from the furrowing of the she-elf’s brow, the drahn suspected it did not go unheard.

“Be that as it may,” Ástríðr said with a sigh, her voice softening quickly. “Sonja, sis, you’ve gotta do your job, or else we’re all dead. I can keep all your blood in your body, but the others… I know Kyomi’d bleed out way faster than I can seal her wounds. So please, don’t make this experience harder than absolutely necessary.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry, Ástríðr. It’s just…she’s distracting…”

“What do you mean?”

“It means she can sense me,” Katsumi supplied. “I noticed it earlier, that even should I move with absolute silence where she cannot see, she got more tense with every step closer to her I took.”

Sonja nodded. “It’s…this feeling, like at any moment I could be fatally wounded. It has me on a knife’s edge.”

Ástríðr shook her head. “Fuck. How are we going to fix this?”

“I suggest we do as I prepared for. Go forward, and I’ll step in when she locks up. Hopefully she eventually learns to block my presence out of her extrasensory awareness,” Katsumi said bluntly. “Deatheater thirsts. Shall we continue?”

“I suppose we must,” replied Ástríðr with a sigh.

“Are we sure about this?” asked Kyomi, exasperated and annoyed, but also concerned. “Sonja?”

“Yeah. That’ll work. It’ll have to.”

“Alright then. Let’s go,” bade Ástríðr.

Katsumi nodded, and started walking swiftly deeper into the darkness. Sonja rolled her shoulders to adjust her shield and get moving, followed swiftly by Ástríðr and the vii twins as they plunged into the depths that gleefully swallowed them whole.

There was no speaking after that point. Merely flashes. The unnatural yield of flesh as Deatheater’s edge bit deep, seeming quite a bit sharper than two days prior. The gentle melodies of Ástríðr’s flute as she played songs to knit their wounds closed, and the warm embrace of the subtle vibrations, the soft energies that settled into her at the sound. The feeling of Kagura’s bloodlust at her back and the vertigo that triggered whenever she went to execute a weaponskill, striking specifically or multiple times in the space of a single moment before collapsing that pocket and making her actions real. The low gekkering of the Carbuncle as it leapt and attacked. The bestial thrum in the air as Kyomi’s spells flew through the space. The rush as Sonja let her shield lead the way as she steadily found her footing and started beating Katsumi into the fray more and more often. There were no words, nor even really thoughts beyond the constant adjustment and readjustment to each other’s motions. They were really starting to get each other’s movements and rhythms when the last of the expected monsters fell dead, and they walked directly into a large, open chamber, fraught with dancing lights and shadows in full frolic. In the centre of the arena was a large creature, standing upright but on legs bent almost like a bovine’s, a decidedly inhuman musculature, and the head of a bull, its horns quite prodigious.

Like Chirin at the end of the movie, in minotaur form…

Katsumi shoved that odd thought away as she waited for Sonja to challenge the savage beast, large enough to wield two identical hafted labrys in a dual monkey-grip. It bayed loud enough for the very air to seem to shake, throwing its head around and carving furrows into the stone with its cloven hooves.

The minotaur looked at Sonja, its gleaming blood-red eyes devoid of a pupil, insensate, feral, practically unseeing, as it clanged its axes together and howled. Sonja stared right back at it, waiting for the right moment.

The monster and Sonja charged as one, Sonja’s shield covering her body as she put her weight and power behind it. They clashed, and the minotaur actually stopped and staggered, falling to one knee, its primal, savage animal brain clearly beyond confused as to how this much smaller creature could possibly stop its oncoming charge.

Right behind Sonja was Katsumi, tearing through the air in a front-flip that brought Deatheater’s blade descending rapidly into its head. The minotaur’s instincts, to maim, to slaughter, to rape and rut, were strong, however, and the axes were crossed above its head, their blades catching hers even as Deatheater sheared into the metal heads and bit deep into the thick, crude iron of which they were crafted.

Pressured, the minotaur didn’t have time to realise what was happening or react as Sonja switched out, and Kagura sped in, rearing back her tachi, and thrusting forward with a decisive phrase that set her aura to roaring.

“Ikken Hissatsu: Seiten.”

Katsumi had heard of shinsoku before. Godspeed, a speed surpassing that of a normal human, a theoretical concept that all swordsmen were meant to emulate and pursue even if they never achieved it. Kagura, however, was gifted, and swiftly enough that she could only catch a blur of the sword’s afterimage, she plunged her tachi into the minotaur’s chest up until there was no more blade left, and the kissaki, the pointed tip, was just emerging from the monster’s grotesquely muscled back.

The minotaur was still alive, though, and the pain would have it approaching a frenzy, so Kagura put her foot against the thing’s chest and wrenched her sword free in a gushing spray of blood, splattering on the stone a few metres behind Kagura, before she sped back, retreating from the zone of danger and letting Sonja come in to block the incoming strike with one, now severely chipped, axe. Katsumi sprung off of the parry, so as to control where she landed and not be thrown wherever the minotaur pleased with no way to affect her flight. She landed in a crouch behind it as Kyomi’s spells flew forth, Bio, a potent poison that was applied directly to the wound Kagura had opened, followed by Miasma, which formed a deep violet cloud of magical toxins around its head. It snorted and breathed them in, and immediately the spells were set to corroding the creature’s lungs to cause them to fail. Carbuncle dashed in and out, lashing the monster with weak blades made from wind, doing only surface damage, but still parting the flesh and allowing the Bio spell to spread more and more quickly.

Miasma and Bio were both spells classified under the umbrella of the Dark Arts, these for their viciousness and the nature of the energies drawn upon to realize them, she knew; she also knew that Deatheater could part flesh so affected more easily, even, than in recent encounters. This in mind, she gripped the hilt more securely and sliced the creature from shoulder to hip across its back, the umbral flame ensorcelling the blade of the dark sword leaving a wound that looked as though it was seared into the creature’s back for but a few moments before blood sprayed from that wound as well. Katsumi was struck somewhat dumb by the shock of just how much blood this minotaur must have to continue spraying out ichor like that, and from two wounds of that depth as well. After all, it wasn’t as though Deatheater had merely parted skin; through the haze of blood, she saw a hard surface also stained with blood, that could only be bone. But before the window of her advantage snapped closed, she followed up with another attack, slashing across the minotaur’s waist and then slashing down the centre of its back, Deatheater scraping and sparking along the hard bones of its spine even as the vertebra were penetrated and the nerves brushed with the point.

The moment the second hit passed through the first, bisecting the wound, a spurt of vigour flowed through her, not quite healing, more akin to fuel that was tossed onto the writhing black flame of the Darkside.

The power surges within, the stolen vitality of fallen foes forfeited to our use…

Shaking off Deatheater’s pronouncement, she was just quick enough to recover and dance out of range of the minotaur turning to her and swinging both axe blades at her. The strike was powerful enough that blades of wind tore through the air towards her as she retreated, before she planted her feet and slashed her dark sword up and through the approaching impact, parting it around her with her own strike.

The Darkside devours your pain to feed itself. It is ravenous, and leaves none for you. Be wary of its gluttony, or it will be your undoing…

Katsumi checked herself for a brief moment, before registering an irritation in her eyes. She blinked, but it stayed, and so she brought a gloved hand up to touch it, and found it sticky, its smell like iron fired in a charnel pit amidst the bodies of the dead. A head injury, then. Those bled more than the severity of the wound ever really warranted.

Kagura dashed back from the monster, the vii’s hand resting on her shoulder as the samurai drew close enough. “You alright?”

“I’ll live,” Katsumi said grimly.

“Not what I asked.”

“It’s the answer you’re getting. No need to fret over me while the enemy stands before us and I can still fight.”

Kagura grinned. “That’s what I like to hear. Don’t worry. I’ll keep your remark away from the boss’s ears. I have a feeling she won’t react well to them.”

Katsumi cocked her head, perplexed. “Why— No. I suppose it doesn’t matter. We have a fight to win.”

“Alright. I’ve got your back.”

The drahn smirked. “Why would you have my back? You’ve got your own glory to win, your own strength to chase, don’t you? Go get it.”

Kagura nodded sharply, dashing in to start slashing at the minotaur’s skin, which, once tough as tanned leather, was now parting more and more easily as Bio caused its wounds to fester, its flesh discolouring and sloughing off of it, more liquid than solid as it rotted free. This didn’t exactly slow the minotaur; rather, the pain had it fully in a berserk frenzy, swinging its axes about haphazardly, trying desperately to hit the things that were killing it, the smell of its own rotting flesh flooding its nostrils and dampening its sense of smell, as Miasma’s fumes started devouring its eyes as well.

Its bovine snout flared and snorted, trying to dislodge the poison in its lungs, though the effort was futile. It bayed itself hoarse, putting every last vestige of its strength into fighting an enemy it could barely sense. Yet, its swings were faster and faster, and the fact that they were more haphazard meant that they were more difficult to predict, the margin of evasion narrowing by the moment to a hair’s breadth. She could see that if this continued, someone would get hurt.

She knew what she had to do.

“Kagura! Switch!”

Kagura looked away, evading an axe strike through sheer luck, the weapon passing the width of a finger over her head with a whoosh of air that surprised even her. She nodded curtly and dashed back again, and Katsumi replaced her instantly.

“I don’t have any fancy moves with a sword I’ve been trained with. I’m not that kind of fighter. But here’s something I do have.” She reared Deatheater back, and in the flash of a moment, spoke.

“Soulsunder.”

The blade lashed forth like an adder’s head, burying itself through the minotaur’s bestial heart and fully out the other side of its chest. It screamed and thrashed wildly, but Katsumi felt a smirk form on her face as she let the Darkside surge through her, pouring into her enemy, fuelled by a mixture of her life force and her intent to kill.

Wincing as the Darkside took its price in tribute, she planted her feet and dragged the kriegsmesser out of her foe, out and to the side in a flood of ichor as it was stained black.

The minotaur gasped, fell to its knees, and then onto its horned face, what remained of the flesh withering away to black-red tendrils of energy that rose like smoke, flooding into Katsumi’s sword, twisting around it before submerging into the blade entirely, even as the increasingly familiar feeling of experience gain stole upon her in the darkness of the arena. Deatheater pulsed scarlet once, illuminating an arrangement of strange symbols down its length for a moment, and then subsided fully.

The spirit of the sword spoke again, its words still written like a brand, but now with a sort of indistinct whisper to it.

Our road to the horizon is paved with corpses…

“Did your sword claim its soul?” asked Sonja, wariness once more bursting forth from her frame.

“If it had done that, none of us would have gotten any experience,” Kyomi scoffed. “You’re starting to sound paranoid, Sonja.”

Sonja huffed and sighed, nodding herself; yet, Katsumi, too, echoed the paladin’s discomfort. The technique sprung to her mind, her body moving into it a split moment before she even knew what she was doing.

What is this power with which I have been branded…? She looked at her free hand, flexing her fingers as she tried to grasp the nature of her abilities. No wonder dark knights were so feared in the past. This is so strange that even I’m getting more than a little worried.

“Regardless, we need to press on,” said Ástríðr, her authoritative tone ringing out loud and clear to Katsumi and the other three. “We have a tight deadline here, and every moment we’re not moving to kill is a moment of daylight wasted.”

Katsumi was about to ask about her wounds, but then realised she was unharmed, even as the lingering vestiges of Ástríðr’s healing song dissipated from her mind and body. Even the gash on her head was sealed, as she found when she touched her fingers to it. Huh.

Ástríðr passed her, holding her flute in her hand even still as she led the way to the other side of the arena, where a rock face barred her path. Bringing the flute to her lips even as the other members of the party drew closer to her, the she-elf blew a single, shrill note into the instrument, leading the rock to crack and shatter, falling into rubble. “Sympathetic vibrations. Easy enough to make. The trouble is in finding them, and, of course, being pitch-perfect enough to hit them precisely and consistently whatever they are.”

Katsumi wasn’t certain that was exactly how sympathetic vibrations worked that they could be replicated by a flute of all things, but as with her ability to see colours in complete darkness before, she tucked that away into the “Magic” bin, now with two items, and nodded, continuing forth, though feeling silly that in the wake of all that’s happened until this point, including the multiplying presences taking up space in their own little corners of her mind, the sympathetic vibrations explanation is what she’s questioning first. That was a special kind of ludicrous for her to turn to, even on reflex.

The others followed suit behind them, Carbuncle running to catch up to its summoner with a sort of distinctly canine glee.