The golden light around Gazel surged a second time, running over the blood on his armor until Didi could not tell where the plate stopped or where the man underneath started.
When it settled he stood there like a shape cut out of light, while the ground under him hissed from the heat coming off his skin.
She stared with both hands shaking, then forgot to breathe when he took one slow step forward.
"Gazel?" Didi whispered, the word coming out of her without any weight behind it.
The monster lost its grin for a moment, then found a wider one while it watched the guard stand up from a wound that should have finished him.
'This one keeps getting better,' it thought, lifting one hand toward the clearing, 'so how many tricks did a house guard hide?'
"You're full of surprises," it said, pointing one finger at his face.
A purple orb formed above that fingertip, small at first, then tighter and denser until the air around it started to bend.
"I had fun," the monster said without any hurry in it, "but I'm done playing for today."
Its finger twitched, so the orb crossed the clearing faster than Didi could follow.
The impact punched through the middle of Gazel's head, then burst behind him in a flash of purple.
"Gazel!" she shouted, the sound tearing out of her while she stumbled forward with both hands reaching.
The monster clicked its tongue, turned, and moved before she got a second step in.
"That voice of yours is quite annoying," it said, bringing the back of its hand across her neck in one clean hit.
She dropped where she stood, out cold before her shoulder reached the ground.
"Just lie there quietly," it said, already looking past her toward the guard, "and wait for me to be done with your knight."
Gazel was still upright, with steam pouring off him in long golden trails.
The monster narrowed its eyes, then smiled again when it found that steam rising out of every new hole in the body.
"I see," it said, taking one slow step closer, "you're burning your soul."
Gazel answered nothing, only tightening his grip on the lit sword while his arm shook from shoulder to wrist.
"What a fool," the monster said with its head tilting over, "burning your soul ends with you locked out of the cycle of reincarnation."
Three purple orbs spun into place above its claws, then another, then two more, each one carrying pressure that shook the ground under their feet.
"Desperation truly makes humans do the strangest things," it said, and the orbs fired in a chain.
One tore through his shoulder, another through his chest, a third opened his side, yet he only rocked back a step before forcing himself upright.
More blasts came, steam burst out of each new wound, but he kept moving toward it on ruined legs.
'Keep moving,' he told himself, dragging one foot forward over the shaking ground, 'do not stop moving no matter what.'
"Why won't you just stay down?" the monster asked, the smile going out of its face at last.
Gazel answered by running straight at it.
He crashed into its torso with both arms, locked his grip behind its back, then drove his feet down through the loose surface until cracks opened around them in a ring wide enough to swallow a horse.
Before it could tear loose, he twisted his whole body through the hips and threw it away from Didi.
The monster went through the air, then through a line of trees that came apart in splinters, while Gazel stayed on his feet between the wreckage and the unconscious princess.
The dust settled slowly along that broken path.
He could not tell whether the thing had stopped moving, since dark spots kept swimming across his sight while the burning in his soul ate into his mind.
It felt like his skin was coming off the bone, the golden light stuttering while his life ran out of him fast.
'If this is sufficient to keep her safe,' he thought, locking his ruined legs under him, 'then I do not care.'
A slow chuckle rolled out of the treeline, then the monster walked back into the clearing without a scratch on its scales, brushing wood chips off one shoulder.
"You pushed yourself to the absolute limit for a human," it said, its grin coming back up, "so I have to admit that I am impressed."
"You earned the right to see a neat trick," it added, raising one claw.
The air around it warped under sudden pressure, a dark crystal coming out of nothing to orbit its wrist with a low hum.
Gazel stared at the single Shard while what it meant landed on him.
'It was fighting in base form the whole time?' he thought, the golden light thinning as the real gap between them settled over him.
The monster gave him no time for the swing he had been saving.
It vanished, then stood in front of him before the sword came up at all, its claw going cleanly through his chest one last time.
The impact cut his connection to the Brand, so the golden light broke apart while the monster pulled its hand free.
He went down onto his knees, his body finally refusing him, his blood running out into the ground.
'I see... this was hopeless from the start,' he thought, the black closing over the last of his sight, 'sorry, princess.'
His body pitched forward onto the ground and never moved again.
The monster stood over him and flicked the blood off its claws.
"I didn't expect someone without a drop of the bloodline to force that skill out," it muttered, looking down at the body, "but it was still a poor imitation."
"If you had the actual blood behind that resonance," it continued, rolling its shoulders, "you might have given me a hard time."
"I would have loved to see how long you could burn that soul," it said, turning toward the place where the princess had fallen, "but she comes first."
It stopped, because the crushed grass in front of it was empty.
A metallic clink came down out of the canopy, so its head snapped up.
Hajin crouched on a thick branch with the unconscious princess under one arm, his other hand closed around the lit golden chain, his eyes already on the monster.
He snapped his wrist and sent the loose end across the gap to bite into a tree deeper in the forest.
Then he dropped off the branch, pulled the chain tight, and let the swing carry them both into the leaves.
The monster did not follow, since it only stood in the ruined clearing while its grin spread wider.
"He's stronger than before," it said, the sound of it rumbling through the broken ground, "and he smelled so weak earlier that I was planning to kill him."
"This turned out quite well instead," it added with something close to fondness, "so I suppose my pet boar was good nourishment."
It laughed until the sound moved through the ground under its feet.
"Good," the monster whispered into the empty clearing, "continue to grow just like that."
"When you are perfectly ripe," it said, closing one claw slowly, "I will rip that divine power out of your chest and offer it to the King."
Hajin let the chain go slack four ridges out, then set the princess down against a trunk with more care than he had planned on using.
The forest behind them stayed quiet, which he did not take for a good sign.
'It let me walk off with her,' he thought, checking the girl for the kind of wound that would matter inside the next hour, 'so it wanted me gone with her under my arm.'
She had a bruise coming up along the side of her neck, though her breathing kept a steady shape.
"You are heavier than you look," he said, working the feeling back into the arm that had carried her, "which nobody warned me about."
The chain went out of his hand and back into the inventory.
'That thing could have taken us both off the branch,' he thought, watching the trees for anything that moved, 'so it left me alive on purpose.'
He did not much like reasons he had not been told.
The princess made a sound against the trunk, so he crouched to hear it.
"Gazel," she said without opening her eyes, her hand closing on nothing beside her.
"He is not here," Hajin said, though her eyes stayed shut, "so you can stop reaching."
Her hand kept moving over the ground beside her anyway.