Chapter 41 – Light Doesn’t Quit
We had to wait a full day before Ed was available for summoning again.
Still, here we are.
Kobold Caverns looms before us, its jagged mouth breathing out the stench of damp earth, old blood, and rusted iron. Dim torchlight flickers somewhere deep inside, casting shadows that skitter across the stone like rats, while the familiar chittering echoes back from the dark.
Perri swallows hard. Her ears flatten for just a moment before she forces them upright again, small hands clutching the Ashwood Prism Staff tightly. She’s trying to stand straight, trying to look ready, but the trembling gives her away.
The Ring of Sanguis warms on my finger.
I plant my feet and speak the command.
“Sanguis.”
The ground cracks open in a perfect circle.
Several low-level adventurers hovering near the cavern mouth go still at once. One of them mutters a curse. Another takes two quick steps back, hand half-drawn to a cheap sword.
Then Ed rises from the soil like some macabre flower blooming in reverse, white bone unfolding through black thorns as blood-red roses twist along his ribs and shoulders. His claws flex once. Vines rustle softly over him, alive with that patient, horrible grace.
Perri sucks in a sharp breath.
Ed turns his skull toward me, hollow sockets glowing faintly red, and goes still.
Silent, wrong, and beautiful.
He doesn’t bow, not exactly, but the tilt of his skull feels like acknowledgment.
I meet that empty gaze and nod once.
“Thank you.”
The words come out heavier than I mean them to.
Perri’s reaction is immediate. Fear flickers across her face first, sharp and instinctive, before something warmer pushes through it.
Relief.
Her ears perk, and for one wild second, I almost think she’s going to hug him. Then she notices the thorns coiling along his arms like vipers and stops herself, cheeks flushing pink.
I kneel beside her and rest a hand on her shoulder, steadying the tremble I can feel through the bond.
“You know the rule, Perri. This is your fight. You earn every step forward.”
Her throat moves as she nods.
“But…”
My gaze shifts to Ed, and my voice hardens. “Same as before. If she takes more than a cut, more than a scratch, you get to her first. You tear those kobolds apart. Understand?”
For a long heartbeat, Ed is silent.
Then a sound slips from him like dead leaves dragging over stone.
“…Yes.”
One word, low and final.
Perri turns back toward the cavern mouth. As she steps forward, Ed moves silently behind her, a looming shadow of roses and bone. Death wrapped in thorns, sworn to guard life.
The kobold whispers grow louder.
Closer.
The test begins again.
Perri steps into the cavern’s throat.
Her tiny frame seems even smaller in this place of stone, shadow, and old blood. She grips the Ashwood Prism Staff firmly, trying to look ready. Her armor is already dusted from the road, the purple skirt she insisted on wearing catching faint torchlight against the darker layers.
The first kobold comes skittering out of the shadows with a hiss and a rusty dagger.
Perri gasps, but she doesn’t run.
Her voice trembles, but the words are there.
“Radiant Shield.”
Light bursts around her like a fragile dawn. The dagger clangs against shimmering gold, sparks scattering across the cavern floor. Her next breath shakes, but her mouth tightens into something close to defiance.
She thrusts one hand forward.
Sacred Flame.
Gold fire drops hard through the dark, searing the kobold from skull to ribs until it screeches and collapses in a smoking heap.
Her eyes flick toward me on instinct, seeking approval, needing an anchor.
I don’t move. Don’t help.
But I nod once.
Just once.
Perri gathers the small bit of loot with shaking hands, tucks it away, and moves on.
A short time later, the cavern gives her the second test.
This kobold doesn’t rush. It waits. Watches. Then two more join it from the dark, spreading out in a loose circle like hungry little wolves.
Perri swallows hard and murmurs a prayer under her breath. Radiant Shield flickers around her, thinner than before, the gold light trembling with every step she takes.
They lunge together. The shield holds against two, but not three.
A dagger slices across her arm, and blood beads red against pale fur. She cries out, stumbling back, but then something changes. Her ears flatten. Her jaw sets. Instead of retreating, she plants her feet and thrusts her staff forward with a shout that cracks like glass.
“Sacred Flame!”
Gold fire spears down through the cavern gloom. One kobold screeches as radiant heat catches it full in the chest, collapsing it in a burst of smoke and sparks.
Dead.
The other two keep coming.
Perri swings her staff in a clumsy arc and catches one across the skull with a crack that echoes off the stone. Not elegant. Not clean. But hard enough. The kobold drops in a twitching heap and doesn’t get back up. Her chest heaves, eyes bright with terror and fury, and for one heartbeat, she looks scared and furious, but still standing.
Then the last kobold darts low, too fast.
Its blade punches into her leg.
Perri screams and drops, knees hitting stone. Blood smears across the pale fur of her thigh, dark and ugly in the torchlight.
I bite down hard enough to taste iron.
Stay still. Stay grounded. Don’t move. I tell myself.
Ed shifts in the shadows, thorns whispering.
“Not yet,” I say through my teeth.
Perri’s little hands shake as she drags the Ashwood Prism Staff close. Her breathing comes in broken gasps, but she forces the staff upright between herself and the closing kobold.
“Radiant Shield.”
The words come out ragged, but the light answers.
Gold flares around her in a trembling shell just as the next dagger strikes. Steel clangs against radiance, the shield buckling hard enough to make her cry out, but it holds. Barely.
Perri pushes up on one knee behind the barrier, blood still smeared across her thigh, eyes wet and furious now.
Her voice trembles, then steadies.
“My turn.”
She lifts the staff. Sacred Flame.
Radiant fire crashes down, hotter this time, catching the last kobold full in the chest. It shrieks once and collapses in a smoking heap.
The cavern goes quiet except for her ragged breaths.
Her jacket is torn. Her arm and leg are smeared with blood and dust. Her tiny shoulders quake, then square.
Ed steps from the shadows, silent as a grave. He towers behind her, roses blooming faintly along his bones. For a long moment, he simply stands there, thorns and petals, death and beauty.
Then his voice brushes the air like wind through briars.
“…Brave.”
Perri startles, turning to look at him, then at me in the shadows.
Tears shine on her cheeks in the torchlight, but her lips curve upward, trembling, into a smile that makes something in my chest ache.
The smile doesn’t last long.
Nothing in Kobold Caverns ever does.
We pull back before she gets reckless, before pride turns into stupidity, before the cave punishes us for thinking one good fight means she’s ready. Perri gathers the little bit of loot with shaking hands, tucks it away, and keeps moving.
The rest of the day becomes blood, torchlight, and repetition.
Short fights. Ugly fights. Sacred Flame in the dark. Radiant Shield buckling under rusty blades. Sometimes a kobold reaches her already limping, one arm hanging useless where Ed touched it first.
He shifts at the edge of every scream while I force myself not to move.
Now and then, a vine snaps out too fast to track, not killing, just opening flesh or wrenching a blade arm wide so her next cast lands clean. He never steals the kill, but he ruins plenty of them for her. Ed learns the line faster than I wanted him to.
Don’t finish. Just soften.
By the time we finally pull back, Perri is still standing.
Barely.
Outside, the air tastes almost clean.
Perri doesn’t say much on the walk home. Neither do I.
That becomes the shape of the next few days.
Back to the cavern. Back to the dark. Back to blood, fear, torch smoke, and the ugly little sounds kobolds make when they realize the soft-looking rabbit girl is harder to kill than she should be, especially with a Thorn Revenant haunting the edge of every fight.
The next day, she still flinches every time claws scrape stone. A kobold rushes her from a side tunnel, rusty blade low, and her Sacred Flame comes too late. It catches the creature across the shoulder, but not before the dagger opens a red line across her ribs.
She gasps.
Ed moves. So do I, almost.
But Perri sees him shift, sees the thorns flex, and bites the scream down before it can leave her throat.
That stops me cold.
She knows.
Her little hand clamps over the wound, eyes wet, breath ragged. For one horrible second, I think she’s going to fold.
Instead, she plants and fights on.
Radiant Shield, Sacred Flame, then Prayer of Healing.
Shield. Strike. Heal.
Not clean yet.
But chained.
At the edge of the torchlight, Ed stands with roses shedding one slow petal at a time. When Perri finally looks up, pale and shaking, his skull turns toward her.
He says nothing.
This time, he doesn’t need to.
She’s getting better.
But when her chain falters, Ed is still there in the margins, turning clean fights into wounded ones she can actually win.
[Perri — Level 9]
It comes quickly.
Too quickly.
By the day after that, she starts raising Radiant Shield before the blades land.
Anticipating.
Not always. Not cleanly. But more often.
A kobold darts from behind a broken crate, and the shield blooms before I can shout the warning.
Sacred Flame.
Dead.
The kobold was already favoring one leg, thorns still jutting from its calf.
She stares at it for half a heartbeat, lips pressed tight, then keeps moving.
Later, I catch her humming under her breath while she preps the next spell.
Not happy.
Not fearless.
Coping.
That’s what it sounds like, a tiny thread of melody wrapped around terror to keep it from swallowing her whole.
By the third day, Kobold Caverns stops feeling like a test and starts feeling like punishment.
Not for her.
For me.
Every scream cuts through the bond. Every wound lands somewhere under my ribs. Every time Ed shifts, I have to decide whether to let him loose or force him still. By now, he knows how to hurt without ending it, and that knowledge is buying her levels.
Kit and Raka wait outside most runs now, close enough for the bond to hold but far enough that the fight remains Perri’s. I feel them pacing. Feel Kit’s anger sparking bright and sharp. Feel Raka’s protective fury grinding like teeth behind a closed mouth.
None of us likes this.
None of us stops it.
She kills again.
The HUD blooms.
[Perri — Level 10]
With Ed at her side, she’s leveling faster than she should be.
He’s not breaking the rules.
He’s bending them until I can nearly hear them creak.
Perri feels the notification, then looks at me.
For a second, she smiles.
Then she throws up behind a rock.
I hold her hair back and say nothing.
Another day passes and we’re at it again.
The chamber opens around us in dripping stone and bad air, a single torch guttering in an iron bracket while water taps from the ceiling like a countdown.
Then the cavern gives us something worse than another kobold.
This one steps out slowly. Not rushing. Not shrieking. Watching. Its robes are torn, but runes still glow faintly along the hems. A staff carved from black wood and obsidian teeth scrapes over the stone as it moves, and its eyes burn sickly green in the dark.
The HUD flashes.
[Kobold Warlock – Level 11 (Elite)]
Perri’s breath catches.
She’s already hurt. Sweat and blood cling to her skin, armor torn, purple skirt ragged at the hem. The Ashwood Prism Staff trembles in both hands. Behind her, Ed stands silent, claws slick with kobold blood, roses dark against white bone.
The warlock hisses and flings a shard of emerald light. Eldritch Bolt. Faster than anything she’s seen so far.
It hits Perri full in the chest.
She screams as the blast throws her backward across the cavern floor. Her staff spins out of her hands, clattering away into the dark before coming to rest against a stalagmite.
For one second she scrambles after it.
Then she stops.
Just stops.
She ends up on her knees in the dirt, ears drooping, chest heaving, eyes glassy with pain and fury. When she speaks, her voice comes out jagged and small and full of hurt.
“I don’t want this,” she chokes. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”
The warlock advances.
Ed intercepts it.
Immovable. Unavoidable. Death itself wrapped in thorns. The warlock is an Elite, but Ed could end it in a breath, and that’s the problem.
Perri’s fist slams into the stone. The sound is tiny in that huge chamber.
Tears streak down her cheeks, cutting lines through soot and grime. “I’m not like you,” she spits, glaring into the dark where I’ve been forcing myself to stay back. “I’m not strong like Kit. Or fierce like Raka. Or... or you.”
That one lands harder than the spell did.
“You throw storms and fire like it’s nothing. I’m just...” She sucks in a hitching breath. “Just a stupid little rabbit.”
I move before I can think better of it.
My boots crunch over gravel as I step out of the shadows and into the edge of the torchlight. The warlock snarls behind Ed, but the Thorn Revenant shifts with a creak of bone and a whisper of vines. His empty sockets lock on the kobold, waiting for my nod.
I don’t give it.
Not yet.
I kneel in front of Perri instead, close enough for her to feel the heat rolling off me, the low electric hum under my skin, but I don’t touch her right away. I let her look at me. Let her see I heard every word.
When I finally speak, my voice is low. Not gentle. Not cruel. A vow.
“You’re right.”
Her breath hitches. Her ears twitch upward in shock.
“You’re not meant to fight like us. You never were.”
I reach out slowly and lift her chin until those tear-bright green eyes meet mine.
“You’re not Kit. You’re not Raka. And you’re damn sure not like me.”
The bond throbs between us, hot and aching.
“When Kit falls, when Raka bleeds, when I burn myself dry trying to keep this pack alive...” My thumb brushes the line of her jaw. “You’re the one who will bring us back. You’re the one who will keep us standing.”
I swallow hard.
“You’re the one who will save us.”
I hate myself for saying it, because it means admitting what I’ve known for a while now.
She was never supposed to be killing.
I reach back, grab the fallen staff, and press it into her hands.
“You don’t have to fight like us, Perri.”
Her fingers close around the wood.
“You’re our light.”
I lean closer, forehead almost touching hers.
“And light doesn’t quit.”
For one suspended heartbeat, the whole cavern goes still.
Then something in her changes.
Not comfort. Not peace.
Resolve.
Her little body trembles, but it isn’t fear anymore. Her ears rise. Her breathing steadies. When she looks at me again, her eyes are wet and blazing.
“Then I’ll save you,” she whispers.
Then louder, teeth clenched, voice breaking into a raw, shaking war cry:
“I’LL SAVE YOU ALL!”
She surges to her feet and spins toward the warlock, staff flaring gold in her hands.
“Sacred Flame!”
The chamber explodes with light.
Holy fire floods the dark hard enough to turn every wet stone gold-white. The warlock shrieks and throws up its own spell too late. Ed moves with the blast, vines snapping wide, Thornlash ripping the kobold off balance just as Perri’s radiance crashes into it.
The thing barely has time to scream.
Light hollows it out from the inside.
Then Ed is there, roses and thorns and bone, tearing through the collapsing remains as petals spiral in the holy glow like some dark, twisted benediction.
The HUD blooms.
[Perri — Level 11]
She sways once, then collapses into me.
I catch her before she hits the stone, staff pinned between us, her whole body shaking with the aftermath. She clutches the Ashwood Prism Staff like it’s part of her now, breath coming in ragged little sobs against my chest.
Her voice is hoarse when it comes. Soft. Certain.
“I’ll never let your light go out, Master.”
I’m afraid of what I’m doing, but I care about them too much to stop.
My arms tighten around her.
“Good,” I whisper into her hair, even though my throat barely works. “Because I’m counting on you.”
Above us, Ed stands watch in the fading gold, silent as always. But in the hush that follows, with petals drifting down through torch smoke and the bond still burning warm around us, I swear I hear it.
“…Love.”