The Sword Saints

15. Chasing Nightmares

 (Melias)

The night is dark and filled with monsters. The shadows dance with evil, but the light always comes to guide us out of the dark.

- The Book of Peace: Ch. 11: verse 4.

The mountain peak crumbled and caused an avalanche of rock and snow and buried the demon. It was incredibly loud, and the cloud of dust and dirt was so immense that it darkened the sky. It was hard to see, and Melias covered his mouth to avoid the colossal wall of dirt that came his way.

His sword shrunk down to its normal enormous size. Abi said that the only way to kill a demon was with a magical sword like Bel-Mar, particularly by destroying its heart. If dropping a mountain on top of it couldn't crush its body and heart into nothing more than a paste, then he didn't know what could.

Melias landed in the snow rather roughly, the snow not so thick. His legs buckled, and he fell forward but he recovered quickly. He walked through the rubble and the cloud of dirt as it began to slowly dissipate. He found the spot where he judged the demon to have been. A literal mountain of debris now sat atop it.

He brought Bel-Mar to the size of a longsword and held it at the ready just in case. That was fortuitous because just then material that seemed like black ink rose up from the cracks of the rubble. It began to come together and coalesce. The demon was yet again repairing itself. Melias didn't see a heart in the mass, but he didn't need to. He climbed up the mountain and began slashing away at the growing form.

Slash after slash he went, his blade feeling as if it were striking water. Finally, after several tiring minutes, he hit something solid. The demon's liquefied body shuttered and whined and began to glow brighter and brighter. Melias covered his eyes just in time to protect them as the demon exploded. The blast sent him tumbling painfully down the debris mountain. He landed with a thud and a groan at the bottom, but he was nonetheless fine.

Where the demon's form had been, the mountain rubble was now black and charred by the blinding explosion. He smiled and put his sword in its harness. It was done. Melias knew that the heart was in there somewhere. It wasn't a conventional way of killing the demon, but it had worked.

Abigail arrived soon after that. She was panting. "Running down a mountain isn't as easy as I thought it would be." She put her hands on her knees and took a moment to catch her breath. "Are you all right?"

Melias was in pain, but it wasn't something that was unbearable. The wound in his stomach and leg burned and would require stitches. His body was sore from falling down the mountain. "I'm fine."

"You're bleeding all over."

"I'm fine. We need to find Gelion." He began to walk and winced. Abi stepped in front of him and put hand to his chest.

"Gelion is a Sword Saint. He can handle himself. You, however, are dripping blood like a leaky fountain."

Melias wanted to argue further, but Abigail's pouty glare gave him pause. So, he relented. She sat him down on a nearby log nestled between a few trees and quickly went to work with hastily stitching his wounds. They didn't have time to apply any numbing salves, so he had to grit his teeth and take the pain. It wasn't so bad, though Abi did remark that she would have to redo his stitches when they were in less of a hurry.

She finished quickly. He didn't remember her being as adept at anything relating to medical practice, but it seemed her hands had become quite practiced in the arts. He made a mental note to ask her about it later. Once she put her supplies away, she tugged his arm and lifted him to his feet. He felt an immediate sharp pain from the wounds as the stitches met their first round of resistance, but they held, and the pain was gone almost immediately.