Melisande turned away from Emika and tightened the grip on her sword. It was a good sword — made up of several small segments one could only see up close. She’d drawn it out from her spine, where it was usually stored. Self-sharpening, self-healing, and reinforced through the magic in her leaves. She guessed that Durand’s sword must be similar, or it would have lost its edge from cutting Melisande’s steel-strength threads long ago.

A steadying breath — a useless gesture at first glance, but it let other parts of her body know what to expect. And then she charged back at him.

Emika’s arrival had changed things. For one, this fight wasn’t utterly hopeless anymore. Now, there was an actual way forward — to get him bleeding somehow, make him lose stamina, then stall out.

Another part that changed, however, was the burning forest Emika had brought with her. It could only mean one thing. Durand had taken his family’s summon with him. That flame creature that, a very long time ago, had cornered and captured Melisande. It was leagues above S-rank. A creature she could have never beaten, not in a million years.

Emika being here, in the state she was in, it could only mean that it was gone. What a feat. But here the tree girl was, battered and burnt, after eliminating a centuries old fire based summoning, as if that was even possible at all.

Emika was truly scary. Scary to the point where Melisande would have needed to forcefully shut down about a dozen subroutines to wipe that proud smile off her own face. All Melisande needed to do now was hold up her end of the bargain.

A few more clashes. She felt that she was slowly pushing through. Durand’s human body couldn’t keep up with her sudden movements, her strong swipes. And — there it was.

He pulled on the end of another one of his scrolls, and an iridescent honey comb bubble shield appeared around him, blocking Melisande’s attack that would have otherwise landed on his thigh.

She pulled on her neck, loosing a thread, and drew it out. It quickly condensed into another ball of thread. Jumping back, she threw it at the shield. The ball exploded with a sound of cracking electricity, the structure collapsed in a blast of smoke. Immediately, she went back in to apply more pressure, and Durand was losing ground. At least, that’s what it looked like on the outside.

A quick glance over his coat. There were still about a dozen scrolls left, though not all of them were shielding scrolls. He was waiting for her to run out of tea. No reason to take out the big guns — no reason to use one of the golden scrolls with the heavy hitting effects, way too expensive to use on a low tier monster like Melisande. She knew that he was still just toying with her.

And yet, every scroll she forced him to use would diminish his resources. For one, there was a limit to how many he carried with him, or how many he owned in total, because instant spell scrolls were not cheap to make. But also, when they were activated, they used up magical energy of the caster. Melisande couldn’t sense magic, so she had no idea how much life energy he had left.

All she had was this little sensor in her own fabric telling her that her reserves were at 39%.

39% that Melisande had to use optimally, in the most destructive way possible, to force energy and scrolls out of him, so that maybe, maybe Emika could kill him off afterwards.

“You realise that this is pointless, right?” Durand said, his breath ever so slightly unsteady. “Surrender now. Both of you haven’t killed anyone in your little escape attempts. Right? Maybe we can work something out still.”

Those words were empty, of course, but they still betrayed a little fact. Not killed anyone?

Was he not aware? Was the evidence of the growing forest fire around them, and Emika having arrived, not enough to make him realise that his familiar was dead? That idea must be so outlandish, so inconceivable to him that he didn’t even realise the position he was in.

Durand, Melisande thought. There is a creature here who beat your high-rank familiar. Even though you might still win, you are in trouble.

And yet, he asked his opponents’ surrender. No danger sense at all.

Melisande went in again, a little sharper, pulling the environmental threads a bit tighter, and she finally managed to break through with this sudden, unaccounted speed, when his reflexes had grown accustomed to the old.

And there it was, the slightest cut on his shoulder. Through his coat, through his other layers of clothing, a small infraction, and three scrolls damaged and lost. Not enough to endanger him, but enough to make a statement.

He grunted, falling back. Didn’t seem too perturbed, just slightly surprised, and started pulling on another scroll.

This one was different. Still colourless, but no shielding scroll. Melisande braced herself. She wouldn’t be able to stop him pulling the scroll in time with the distance they had.

Cursebreakers were immune to magic. Magical effects did not apply to them, so some types of scrolls he would not carry. Self-enhancement scrolls, healing scrolls, scrolls to bring himself afloat or teleport, were all out of the question. A shield worked because it used himself as a reference point to blow up the honeycomb bubble, without affecting him personally.

Of course, there were also scrolls that would hit opponents. But those were usually golden scrolls. Of those, he had four with him. But these caused strong magical effects. Would he be able to cast more than one or two?

He gently slipped his finger under the uncoloured scroll’s paper, and dragged it out. 

His sword, already healing from the damage it had received in the last few blows as it always did, now started glowing in a sparkly red sheen.

Instinctively, Melisande sent more magic into her own sword as well. She wouldn’t risk him simply cutting through her weapon and leaving her exposed.

He charged, slashing through the threads still spun throughout the clearing. Now, they barely offered resistance. When he stepped in front of Melisande to cut her down, she was ready.

One cut, two, three. Heavy clunking sounds echoed through the forest, but she managed to parry them all. The hits were strong. Her weapon was feeling the brunt, but her magic repaired the steel barely in time. Melisande ducked, trying to get a hit against his foot, but he withdrew just in time, then kicked her in the face. Staggering back, she parried one more, two more of his hits, but saw his smile.

That meant no good. Immediately, Melisande decided to lash out. It didn’t matter that she left herself open, didn’t matter that he’d be able to cut her up, she needed to get this one, final hit against his neck, just as he started pulling the golden scroll on his hip.

Too late. Just a centimetre from his skin, she stopped.

A low range freeze scroll. Melisande could no longer move. A tearing sound came from her belly as she felt his sword dart through her fabric, dried leaves flowing out.

Her remaining energy rapidly sank to almost zero.

“Can’t believe I had to use this much,” he said, matter-of-factly, but his breaths were deep. Shook his head, then walked away from her with a shrug. She still couldn’t move — the freezing scroll would probably hold for a few minutes. It must have been extremely high-quality.

He turned his back on Melisande, and with horror, she realised that Emika had been crawling towards them in desperation, too weak to cry out. She was growing proliferations, but they were weak, barely sustained themselves, had a small root in the ground, but it couldn’t compare with how much she needed.

And yet, with all her remaining might, Emika stood up. Stood up to face him, teeth clenched. When she looked at him, there was only one emotion on her brown-eyed, round face — a face that rarely betrayed what it felt, and even now, even in its most extreme, it was merely a stare.

For Emika, that meant pure, uncontrolled rage. She reached out her healthy hand, no doubt in order to touch him, or to launch something at him, but she was too weak.

Three quick cuts as Durand ducked and spun, and she fell apart like a card house. Parts of her fingers tumbled from her hand, severed away. One lash had gone almost vertically through her thigh, separating her leg. The last one, sideways through Emika’s waist, made her in two.

The parts of her slumped to the ground, partly in a wet thumping sound, partly through cracking wood. Blood gushed out from everywhere.

“You got a little arrogant,” Durand said. “You do realise surviving a few shots is nothing, right? All I have to do is cause enough damage. We are in a forest. What do you think you can sap from here? It doesn’t matter how large your radius really is. I will simply kill you over and over. Until there’s nothing left alive. God, this is exhausting. To think we could have skipped this. If you’d just been a little sensible.”

Melisande was screaming inside. Her body wouldn’t move. He was almost spent. She could feel it. She just — if only she could break out. There was sweat on his skin. The oxygen around was dwindling. The forest fire was around them. Smoke in his lungs. He was done. Just a little bit more. Just a tiny bit more. If only.

He left Emika to die and paced back to Melisande. “Let’s finish you before the freeze wears off,” he murmured to her in a tone as if talking to a patient in narcosis.

The sword had lost its glow, the effect worn off. And yet, it cut through Melisande’s fabric just as well. A few more tears, more leaves spilt out. The freeze wore off, but she was unable to move herself and just fell backwards to the ground, heaps of tea leaves flying around. He stared down at Melisande, as if pitying her, and gently shook his head. 

“A true tragedy. I did my best to make it clear, though.” He walked back, spreading out his arms in revelation, before starting to turn to Emika. “You just can’t—”

He froze.

In his turn, his forehead had bumped against something in the air. A little, tiny thing. A finger. A single, bloodied finger, floating in the air, attached to a long, thin, and wobbly juniper branch. It left a stain of red on his skin. With a quick jerk of his wrist, he cut the branch in two, and Emika’s finger fell to the ground.

Melisande could barely make it out. About ten meters away, Emika’s body parts were lying around in a pool of blood, connected by wild juniper growths, swirling like tentacles between them, connecting themselves back together. An amalgamation of blood, flesh and wood, interspersed with deadwood branches and juniper needle leaves. A few roots had dug themselves into the ground.

Emika was barely conscious. A void expression. A last-ditch effort.

Melisande swallowed, hard. Of course, she couldn’t fault Emika for trying. Emika didn’t know. She didn’t understand that Cursebreakers countering magic was one of the most fundamental truths of the world. She couldn’t know that there was no way forward with this attempt, that it was pointless. But for her, it still had to be tried.

It had to be tried.

And somehow, Durand started coughing.

He wobbled on his feet, held his side like it was hurting.

Quickly, he undid his coat to check on himself, and found a small seedling with red leaves protrude from his stomach. And another one. And a third.

Ripping them out did not help. Again and again, they came back. He glanced back at Melisande. His face was unlike anything she had ever seen. Not for the small blossoms crawling out from it, not for the dirt, the sweat, the small speck of blood on his forehead, or for the little, dark red leaves that came out of his ear. No, it was his expression. Surprise, with a hint of panic, as if searching for something. And then, a dark, foundational realisation. He closed his eyes for a moment, clenched both of his hands together as if steeling himself, and then, the growths slowed down. Slowed down, but didn’t stop.

Opening his eyes again and ripping the leaves from his ear together with a piece of flesh, he frantically stumbled over to Melisande. Step after step, still deteriorating, until he could touch her, and he did. Held her head in his arms, shook it gently. Then, put one hand onto her shoulder to grasp it.

“Are you still here?” he asked, his voice shivering. All his pride was gone.

As he spoke, he started shovelling tea leaves from the ground back into Melisande’s body. “Are you still here?” he asked again, his voice gravelly, no doubt already impacted by growths. “Listen to me, Melisande. Listen. Listen to me.”

He swallowed, his eyes wet. He was about to cry. “I’ll be gone in a second, Melisande. You have to promise me. Please, listen.”

Now, both of his hands frantically pushed the tea back inside her, pressed it in, as much as they could. He looked around to find more tea, one eye now enraptured by green sprouts, unusable.

Again, he swallowed, stared back deeply into Melisande’s eyes.

And then he said, “You have to stop her.”

He nodded, his body shaking. “You have to stop her. If it can kill me — if her curse works on me, then it’s not a — it means she’s… Do you understand? Understand what it means? Where it will end?”

His remaining eye quivered, imagining the horrors of a future he couldn’t put into words.

“P-Promise me. You have to—”

He coughed uncontrolled, his focus wavered. The transformation was no longer slowed down.

Out from his flesh burst a purple beech with dark red leaves.