Stacy half-manifested onto the branch beside me. The upper half of her body was completely solid, but the lower half faded away into mist.

Gregory continued to stand alert, sword at the ready, eyes darting wildly around the scene but focusing on nothing. The mist which Bridget had spread across the field was quite thin, but somehow it seemed enough to blind him.

I had a brilliant idea for how to defeat him — to get him to leave us alone without having to kill him.

“About my plan,” I started, whispering into her pointed ear. “I don’t think he’ll give up on trying to save me from you, so we just need to make him think that I’m dead.”

Stacy narrowed her eyes.”By that you mean you want to actually die, don’t you?”

“Well, that isn’t possible though, so if you could just kill me in front of him—”

“I’m not going to kill you,” she interrupted. “Even if you would come back… It wouldn’t… Besides, he’d probably want revenge if I did that, so it wouldn’t solve anything.”

The mist that Stacy had spread wavered a bit as she spoke, and in that moment a flash of white struck out, severing the limb we both sat on and sending us to the ground.

My ankle rolled as I crumpled hard onto the ground, meanwhile Stacy simply dissipated into mist.

Gregory dashed to my side. “Lady Bridget, I’m so sorry,” he spat out a hasty apology, “I couldn’t see well, and that monster almost had its hands on you… I’ll heal you at once.”

“For a self-proclaimed protector you really seem to be doing more harm than good,” I grumbled through the dull pain in my leg.

He moved his hand into position and light emitted from the palm of his hand where it hovered above my bruised ankle.

Stacy emerged from the mist behind him, ready to strike with her dagger-like fingernails as soon as he finished healing me. But I saw something in Gregory’s eyes. He still held his free hand on his sword, and would soon launch into a counter-attack.

I braced my hands to the ground beneath me, ready to push myself up at a moment’s notice. They were about to trade blows. If I could get between them…

I pushed myself off the ground as soon as they started moving. Stacy drilled her hand toward the hold in the back of Gregory’s armor, and Gregory swung his sword around in an upward arc. I dashed in front of it, and while Stacy backed off, the momentum of Gregory’s sword couldn’t be stopped. It smacked me right across the chest and jaw, sending my body flying a good few feet as a wave of white light enveloped my body.

It hurt! Waves of searing pain burned away my skin, leaving everything I touched feeling like a hot oven. I thought I was getting better at enduring pain, but clearly I still had a long way to go.

After a few moments of agony, I forced my eyes open and looked at my body. While my skin wasn’t literally gone, it certainly felt that way. There was a red gash where the sword had hit me, though it wasn’t very deep, and a huge red burn bisecting the rest of the way across my body where the light beam had hit me.

I struggled, and finally managed to sit up through the pain, but somewhere behind me I could still hear the sound of someone screaming in agony.

I turned to see who it was, and saw Gregory sitting over the body of a girl, frantically trying to heal her, a panicked expression on his face.

Stacy stood on the other side of the body, watching the scene with a disturbed look on her face.

The girl herself, screaming and writhing on the ground, had long brown hair with many noticeable strands of white mixed in. Her eyes were shut tight as she screamed, tears falling from her white eyelashes. She had the same wound on her chest and face as the one I had just sustained.

This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but somehow I had trouble believing that the pathetic girl writhing in the dirt before me was me.

Gregory applied his magic and the screaming stopped, but instead the girl was left shivering on the ground, her eyes wide open with tears silently pouring forth.

“Look what you’ve done,” said Stacy with a dangerous glint in her eye,clasping and unclasping a hand filled with sharp nails, ready to rip out the man’s throat at a moment’s notice. “You’re a horrible excuse for a ‘protector’, you know that, right?”

“She’ll survive,” Gregory spoke to the ground, refusing to meet the eyes of either the angry vampire or the wounded girl on the ground. “I’ve healed her wounds. What she’s going through now… The judgment blade will purge any evil from her body. She’s a good person at her core, I can tell, so I know she’ll be fine.” His voice wavered as he spoke, as though he wasn’t completely sure what he was saying was true.

“I would kill you right now,” Stacy spat, red eyes drilling a hole in the back of Gregory’s bowed head. “If it wasn’t for her. You know, she’s the only reason you’re alive right now. And look what you’ve done to her.”

The sound of crunching leaves revealed the approach of another party, Leslie, who had been watching the conflict from afar. “Oh my goddess,” she swore, “What happened? Is she okay?”

Gregory rose at the succubus’s arrival, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “I’m a failure to Chercella,” he spoke to himself. “I need to ask my goddess for guidance and forgiveness.”

“No shit you’re a failure,” Stacy berated him as she leaned against a nearby tree, eyes staring daggers.

“Stacy, that’s not very nice,” Leslie quipped.

Gregory’s shoulders lurched forward. “If you wish to strike me down now, I fully understand.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Stacy or his goddess. “I have no right to call myself this girl’s protector.”

With that the paladin turned to leave. His eyes passed over the location I watched from, and he trudged off without looking back.

Stacy spat in his direction. “Fucking white knight, good riddance.”