The crypt was a labyrinth of dancing shadows. The Daemon Prince filled the narrow space with his suffocating presence. Without the sky above him, his physical size became an oppressive advantage. His horns scraped against the vaulted ceiling, knocking down centuries-old dust.
"Down here," hissed the Demon, his voice booming off the stone walls, "your light is weak. Down here, you are just a rat in a box."
He lunged forward. He didn't use the scythe to cut, but the shaft to crush. Geneviève raised Vesper's Light in a horizontal parry above her head. The impact drove her into the stone floor up to her ankles. Her knees creaked ominously. The Demon pressed down with all his titanic weight. Geneviève felt the muscles in her shoulders tearing. The Gromril armor, already compromised, began to buckle under the pressure.
The Demon's face came close to her helm. Acidic saliva dripped from his mouth, sizzling on Geneviève's visor. "I feel your faith wavering," lied the beast, trying to shatter her mind. "I feel you know the truth. Bretonnia will fall. The Lady will abandon you. Why die for a world that has always treated you like nothing?"
It was an insidious question. It struck at the orphan child, the woman forced to hide, the faceless warrior. But Geneviève did not answer with words. She closed her eyes behind the deformed visor. She focused her breathing. In the inner silence, she found the answer. She didn't fight for Bretonnia because it was perfect. She fought because there were people like Lady Isabella, like Tristan, like the dwarf smith, who deserved one more dawn.
Geneviève stopped resisting the downward pressure. Instead, she let herself drop. She fell to her knees abruptly. The Demon, caught off guard by the sudden collapse of resistance, lost his balance forward, stumbling over her.
It was the opening Geneviève had been waiting for. The one that costs dearly.
She released her left hand's grip on the sword. She grabbed a sharp fragment of a destroyed column from the floor. As the demon loomed over her, Geneviève drove the stone shard into the beast's only healthy eye.
The Demon roared, a deafening sound in that enclosed space, and struck her blindly with a backhand of his clawed hand. The claws tore into Geneviève's flank, ripping away the metal plates and the flesh beneath. Blood spurred, hot and red, mixing with the dust. Geneviève was hurled against a wall of sarcophagi, the pain so intense she almost lost consciousness.
But the Demon was blinded. One eye lost to the sword, the other to the stone. He swung the scythe in the dark, destroying tombs, screaming in a dark tongue that made ears bleed.
Geneviève stood up. She staggered. Her side was open, blood filling her boot. But her sword was still in her hand. And the sword pulsed. She heard the Lady whisper: "Now."
Geneviève didn't run. She didn't have the strength. She walked. The Demon heard her steps. He turned, snarling, locating her with supernatural hearing. He raised the scythe for the final blow.
Geneviève stopped. She joined her hands on the hilt of Vesper's Light. She did not assume a defensive guard. She assumed a Prayer Stance. The point of the sword aimed at the monster's heart. She channeled everything. Her life. The Grail blessing. The hatred for evil. The love for life. The sword became a star. The light in the crypt became so intense that shadows ceased to exist. The stone itself began to vitrify.
The Demon screamed in terror. For the first time, he understood what was before him. Not a warrior. A Judgment. "NO!"
Geneviève lunged. One last step. She launched herself into a thrust. She didn't aim for the skin. She aimed for the essence. Vesper's Light penetrated the Demon's chest. It crossed the obsidian scales. It crossed the iron ribs. It crossed the black heart pulsing with Warp magic.
Geneviève pushed until the hilt touched the monster's chest. She found herself face to face with the horror. "Go back to the abyss," whispered Geneviève, spitting blood. "And tell your master that the Iron of Bretonnia does not bend."
The Demon stiffened. From his wounds, from his mouth, from his blind eyes, blood did not flow. Light did. The holiness of the sword was incompatible with Chaos matter. The Daemon Prince's body began to crack like defective porcelain. Veins of white light spread over his entire massive body.
"I AM ETERNAL!" screamed the demon, his voice fragmenting.
"You are the past," replied Geneviève.
She withdrew the sword with a violent yank. The Demon exploded. It wasn't an explosion of fire, but of reality reasserting itself. A shockwave of purification swept the crypt, pulverizing the monster's physical body and banishing his screaming soul back to the Realm of Chaos for a millennium of torment.
The shockwave shot up through the hole in the ceiling, up into the cathedral, up into the sky. Above Carcassonne, the purple portal trembled. Without the anchor of the Demonic General, the wound in the sky could not sustain itself. With a sound like thunder in reverse, the portal imploded and vanished. The sky turned grey again. The purple clouds dissolved. The lesser demons remaining in the city, cut off from the source of their power, vanished like smoke in the wind or fell to the ground as empty shells.
In the crypt, darkness returned. Geneviève stood for a second, surrounded by dust falling like snow. Vesper's Light slowly faded, returning to being a simple, magnificent steel sword. Geneviève looked at the spot where the monster had been. There was nothing. Only ash.
Her legs gave out. She collapsed to the ground, back resting against a broken sarcophagus. The pain in her side was excruciating. Her breathing was a rattle. She took off the deformed helm with trembling hands. She let it fall to the ground.
Clang.
The fresh, dusty air caressed her sweaty and bloody face. Her short black hair was plastered to her forehead.
There was no applause down here. Only the silence of the dead.
Geneviève closed her eyes. "It is over," she whispered in the dark. And for the first time in months, she allowed herself to pass out, not as a hero, but as a tired girl who had carried the weight of the world for a mile too far.