I considered my options for a few moments and then finally I started on down the left hallway towards where this young lady should be found. Even if she was as deadly with a blade as Isabella said, I still had to go see for myself. Everything has its limits, much like all the rats I’d pulled out of their room. Since they weren’t respawning, all I had to do is work their numbers down until I could deal with them. Limited, finite numbers.

This girl had to have some sort of limit as well. The Crackening had occurred two weeks ago. If she’d stayed in one room, how did she get water? Food? No matter how powerful a gun is, it’ll rust and fall to ruin unless it remains well-oiled and taken care of.

What if this girl was starving or dehydrated and on the brink of death? I could beat her then easily enough. It might take us a while to nurse her back to health, and we might have to resort to eating lunchmeat to do so; but when she got well we’d have one heck of an ally on our side.

Saving a survivor. Building our strength. It was worth the risk to my way of thinking, so I went down the left passage.

“You stay out of this and make certain she doesn’t think you’re a challenge to her,” I told Isabella. “If worst comes to worst, she might kill me and then we’ll have to leave. Give time, I could probably die repeatedly, and wear her down just by sheer stupid persistence, but we can’t do that now. We only have a few hours before Jello-Muncher finishes his meal, and I certainly don’t want to be trapped in here when the goblins notice their guards dead again. We don’t know how many of them remain and they might do a whole tribe search and overrun everything in a swarm.

“One shot. I’ll give it one shot to see what type of shape she’s in, and then win or lose, we’ll have to move on for now. But you make certain to stay out of it. I might come back from the dead, but you can’t.”

Normally Isabella giggles at me, but this time she just nodded solemnly. It was obvious that she was on edge, and that put me even further on edge. Add in the fact that this whole hallway seemed to be completely empty and void of anything, and that put me even more on edge.

Slowly we went down the hall, and I made a point into looking into the classrooms on either side of us. I saw signs of battle; broken things, splatters of blood, stuff like that; but I never saw any signs of dead people. No corpses, no little islands of rot. This area had been stripped of anything of value in it – including the dead bodies – and was now silent and dark like a tomb.

Here, we were away from the outer walls of the building, and none of the classrooms had windows or such things to let the sun in. The solar panels were on the roof, so there weren’t even skylights. These halls and rooms relied on the luminance from our artificial lights, and since we weren’t connected to the main power grid any longer, they weren’t working. The only glow that lit our way was the small patches of emergency lights. They gave staggered circles of light that flickered and only heightened the tension.

Isabella was correct. The goblins didn’t like this area, and they’d cleared away from it. Honestly, I was feeling like doing about the same thing now as well. The silence in these halls was so thick it was almost stifling. It was so heavy that I didn’t even speak mind to mind with Izzy for fear of not hearing the tiniest little pip in the darkness around us.

After passing several of the classrooms on this hallway, we chose one at random on the right side of the hall and went into it. The room was even darker than the hallway and Isabella created a small flicking lifeflame that floated and hovered several feet in front of us, dappling everything in bluish-white white as the shadows danced merrily on the walls all around. Broken teacher’s desk. Broken, splintered chairs. A black-red streak smeared across the floor as if someone might have been crawling away while losing mass amounts of their life’s blood.

I swallowed down a lump of fear in my throat. The hallways and classrooms we’d been traversing before didn’t have this same dark oppression to them. I could hear my heart beating up in my ears as we slowly worked our way across the room. Part of my mind was telling me that this room didn’t seem very different than any of the countless others which we’ve seen, but yet another more primal part was simple screeching at me to run. Run. For the love of God – RUN!

By the time we’d made it to the connecting door that led to the next classroom, I had to stop before I could turn the handle. My hands trembled visibly on the door handle, and I couldn’t seem to generate a strong enough grip for several moments until I reminded myself that I had to be strong for Isabella. She was depending on me. I was a man. I am a man. I needed to at least pretend to be a man, if nothing else.

Forcing my hand to grip the handle tighter, I finally pushed the door open into the other room. Something on the other side of it made a tiny “screeeeeeeeeee…“ sound as the door pushed open, and I nearly soiled myself. In fact, if I’m completely honest, I think I may have dribbled a little in my coveralls.

The adjoining room was pitch black at first, before Isabella could float her hellish flame through the door to cast its disharmonic cacophony of flickering light and shadows to illuminate around us. The stench of death was lightly wafting ripe in this room; a stench that I’d grown much too accustomed to on our own hallway, but was lacking on the last one we passed.

Telling myself that a man has to do what a man has to do, I forced one heavy and unwilling foot to move in front of the other. As I slowly moved away from the door and into the room, Isabella followed behind. Her tiny hand reached out and gripped the back of my coveralls, and I could feel the slight tremble in her grip. She was as affected by the miasma of fear and darkness that blanketed this place as I was.

Still, we continued on. Call it fortitude, stubbornness, whatever you wish, we continued forward.

Glancing back, I could see it was a tattered book of some sort, which had been dragged and pushed by the door as I forced it open. It was the menace that scraped dryly along the ground and had made my heart skip a beat. Perhaps it really was just my nerves getting the better of me. I tried to muster my courage by telling myself, “Be a man. You have to be strong for Isabella. Be strong. Be a man.”, over and over, and even though my mind took courage, my heart couldn’t.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, bad-dum, ba-dum went my heartbeat, pounding so hard inside my chest that I could feel the reverberation inside the back of my throat. Slowly, (ba-dum ba-dum) I picked my way (ba-dum ba-dum) across the classroom (ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum) floor and I (badumbadum) pushed open the door to the second hallway (badumbadumbadumbadum) and glaring back at me was a minotaur!

BA-DUMPT went my heart. “AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!” A soul wrenching screech billowed forth from my throat. The darkness got even blacker as my eyelids threatened to shut in a faint. It was only Isabella’s jerk on my coveralls, and her own scream from behind me that made me respond.

With a mind gone blank with fear, I reacted on instinct and leaped forward into the minotaur and I slammed my spike into its torso as I barreled it down onto the ground. I straddled its massive frame and jabbed, jabbed, jabbed at its thick chest, unrelenting in my attempt to defeat the beast, but no matter how many times I poked it, I never heard the ding or had a notification that I had slain the beast.

The reason being? It was already dead.

Someone, or something, had already killed the beast and it was simply leaned slumped against the wall and facing the doorway as I opened it. My fear stroked mind saw the creature’s glassy eyes and massive face there as the door opened, and all sense of reason ran shamelessly down my leg. My primal brain took over, I lashed out at the beast repeatedly, and it wasn’t until I heard Isabella’s muffled sobs intermingled with hiccups from behind me that I slowly regained my sense.

My hands finally unclenched from the tail-spike where I’d death- gripped so tightly just seconds ago, and the rat’s tail made a soft thumping sound as it fell to the floor. In matrix-style slow motion, I crawled back into the room where Isabella has sitting on her knees with a puddle spreading around her. The blue flame floated and flickered near the door where it had been when this all happened and the flickering shadows it cast made her look whiter than I’ve ever seen her before.

Completely ignoring the wetness on the ground, I crawled over and wrapped her in my arms and pulled her tightly against me. We just held each other and trembled together for several long moments. Finally, past its limits, the blue flame flickered and died out and we were left in complete darkness with only the sound of her piteous whimpers and hiccups around us.

For an eternity, we sat huddled in that class-tomb together. By the time Isabella had finally quit hiccupping and sobbing, I too had managed to pull my own thoughts somewhat back together. My brain felt drained. My arms felt heavy. It was almost as if I was in that exhausted state you find yourself in after wandering in the blazing desert sun for several days. My throat was parched, and my voice still didn’t want to work.

Finally, Isabella made another blue flame to illuminate the area again for us, and without saying a word we finally released each other. We’d had each other’s warmth. We’d shared each other’s fear. We held each other until we could get ourselves back under control. Why speak empty words? They could do nothing better to convey the feelings that had transpired between us in the dark as we comforted and strengthened each other just by our presence alone.

Slowly, I crawled back outside to where the ruined minotaur’s corpse was I grabbed up my spike and then forced myself to my feet to look around. This hallway wasn’t much different than the previous one we’d just came from, except there was definite signs of death and carnage here. The minotaur was only the first of the dead monsters littering this hall. Goblin corpses were scattered up and down the hallway in disarray, and from the look of decay, some had been dead quite a bit longer than others had, but none looked fresh.

Glancing back to make certain Izzy was still with me, I started down the hallway and past the slew of bodies scattered around. If this was the work of one girl, she had slain more goblins in this one hall alone, than me and Isabella had combined. Long deep penetrating slashes smeared across the corpses, and nearly every beast looked as if it had been dispatched with but a single devastating blow. Several had their heads separated from their bodies. Several had a single gaping hole through the center of their chest. More than a few had been sliced across the eyes, but not just with enough force to blind them, but with enough force to shave away the whole top half of the skull itself.

I had heard the words from Isabella, but now I was seeing the truth of those words myself. There was no way I could defeat a monster capable of producing such single-minded carnage. Isabella may be a demon now, but whatever did this was a multitude of times more frightening to me than she ever could be.

As we passed the bathrooms on this hallway, my mind stopped and focused on the water fountain for several moments before it could puzzle out what was different about it. Blood lined the wall to the left of the fountain, it was puddled around the fountain, but the fountain itself was surprisingly clean. I couldn’t imagine any goblin or minotaur trying to clean such a thing, so I was left with the only conclusion that made sense to me: “The Blade” was still in the darkness.

And we were almost to her lair.

“Which room, do you know?” I finally asked Isabella. From the carnage, we had to be close.

“Just a few more rooms, down and to the left.” Came her reply.

The way I saw it, there was no possible way I could beat the person who had did this in a fight. All I had was my overwhelming health, and nothing else. I’d never trained to fight. I couldn’t dodge, parry, block. I did decent enough hitting a goblin or a rat with my weapons, but I doubted I could even connect a single blow on the beast that did all this. My chance of fighting her and wearing her down was almost as great as my chance to wear down Jello-Muncher by mindlessly charging it with my fists. But still…

Still, I had to go. A man does what a man has to do, nothing more and nothing less. If I was going to be a man, I had to conquer my fear, face the blade in the darkness, and at least make a try at what might very well be impossible. Beside, I did think there might be one way to beat her. At least, I was hoping I’d thought up a way. Truth is, I might die before I could try anything, and just end up looking hopelessly outclassed and wussy in front of Isabella, but I still had to try. At least once.

Bucking up the last dredges of my courage and resolve, I (tried to) bravely stride down the hall and look into each of the next few classrooms on the left. I’d only traveled two doors down from the restroom and the water fountain, when I saw a figure sitting cross-legged on the teacher’s desk. At first, the silhouette and position made me think of Isabella, but as we entered the room and the blue lifeflame illuminated the darkness around us better it was obvious this was someone much different.

Silently, the girl in front of us slid off the desk and stood proudly before us. In her left hand was a long curved sheath and hilt that resembled a katana like I’d seen depicted in various shows and magazines before. Slowly she drew the blade with an unnerving “shink” sound, and then she held it and pointed it in our direction with both hands around the hilt. If the flame floating in thin air seemed odd to her, she didn’t give any indication.

The girl in front of me was taller than Isabella, with much longer legs, and a smaller chest. I’m not saying she was flat or anything, but she just didn’t have the same oomph of cleavage that Isabella bounced around with. She was dressed in tight black pants that looked like a combination between sweatpants and jeans, and had a tight shirt with long sleeves covering her top. She was barefoot standing in front of us, and her hair was pulled up and in a ponytail behind her.

And the most shocking thing of all? She was drenched in the stain of old blood. Her clothes were matted in it, streaks of crusted blood smeared across her face, and she stared endlessly towards the two of us, never blinking. I had thought that I may have been able to talk to her, to reason with her, but all it took was once glance at the coldness in her eyes, and I knew this girl would never hear reason.

She had went from wielding a blade to becoming a blade, and one can’t reason with a weapon!

Slowly, I placed my spike down on the nearest desk, then drew my club out of my belt, and placed it beside the spike. There was an almost absolute chance that this girl was going to kill me, and I didn’t want to ruin my clothes any more. I didn’t want to die either, but I had an idea and had to try it once. We should have three hours or so before Jello-Muncher finishes his meal and starts wandering the hall and randomly blocking it again. An hour to die and come back, if I died, still gave us time to leave here and look around a little more for the goblin’s location in the other tunnels.

Slowly, trying my best not seem threatening, I took off my belt and laid it beside my weapons. Then I started to remove my coveralls. Brandr’s gaze never left me, but she never made a move to make the first attack either. She simply watched me strip, and never blinking, she held her blade pointed directly towards me.

It wasn’t until I was fully naked that she moved and laid her sword across the desk beside her. I was wondering if she saw me as harmless now, but then she started removing her own clothes without taking her eyes off me.

“What the hell is she doing?” I party-asked Isabella.

“She’s following the old ways,” was her reply. “For a duel of honor, both opponents need the same type of armor and their chosen weapons. Knights would often wait for another knight to get dressed in their armor and ready their weapons before they would battle them. The fact that you’ve chosen to fight without even clothes as armor, is something that she is going to match. Apparently to her, someone may see her outfit as an unfair level of protection; or she may simply see it as a sign of you looking down on her as a warrior; but whatever the reason, her code makes her want to have, what she considers, a fair duel with you.”

Now, honestly, I’d like to say I’m a completely honorable guy, but I have to admit there was a moment there where I was tempted to try and charge her with her pants down around her knees. If I was just going to try to fight her and beat her, I really would have leapt at the moment – honorable or not – but I was still wanting to get her to join us still. Somehow I didn’t think that breaking a warrior’s code of honor and then asking them to follow and trust you was the best of ideals, so I waited as she silently stripped before me.

To be honest, I couldn’t tell you if Brandr was a beautiful girl or not. Even nude, she was almost covered by the blood that had dried on her already. I could tell she was very firm; there was no sign of fat upon her, but there was also no sign of softness to her like there was with Isabella. Her legs were long, her hips slender and well defined, and her stomach was firm and tight.

Once she’d stripped fully, she bent over, picked her clothes up off the floor, and sat them on the teacher’s desk behind her. Then she picked up her blade and resumed her ‘ready’ stance once again. Knowing I was at the point of no return, I swallowed down the lump in my throat and picked up my spike in my right hand and my club in my left. I’d never tried to duel wield ever before, but in this case, I’d probably need both weapons.

Slowly, she bowed her head and nodded at me. I assumed this was her way of telling me she was ready, so I nodded back at her and then I released my most powerful roar in her direction! There was always the chance, no matter how slim, that I’d succeed and frighten her for just a moment with my skill. Holding both weapons high in the air so I could try and take advantage of any opening, I dashed forward as quickly as possible.

Only to be met with a burning sharp pain from the blade that had instantly buried itself in the center of my chest.

I blinked at her, she smiled back at me, and then I stubbornly dropped both my weapons and forced myself up the remaining two steps to where she stood as I slid ever deeper upon her blade. I couldn’t see her face as I finally closed the distance and wrapped my arms around her. “Your blade couldn’t stop me,” I gasped as I coughed blood onto her shoulder. “I made it past it. Now, give me your heart.”

I’d remembered what Isabella had said her father’s words were. There’s no way I could beat this monster in a fight; not the way I was now. All I could do is make certain that she didn’t take my head instantly and then trust that my overwhelming health would hold out enough for me to take her shot to my heart. I’d seen how she’d killed the creatures in the hall, and I took a gamble that she’d do the same to me. I also gambled that she’d never met an opponent with as much stubborn tenacity and pure life as I had, and that by sheathing her sword in myself, I could catch her by surprise.

It was a gamble I had bet my life on, and as the message told me:

You have been slain!