Challenge

Silvia twisted away from the first flurry of goblin strikes, her initial movements awkward and unsteady. The creatures' rusted blades whistled past her - one grazing her sleeve, another nearly catching her thigh. But with each passing second, her footwork grew sharper, her dodges more precise. The princess of Cremia moved with increasing grace, her body adapting to the rhythm of combat faster than most trained soldiers would.

Yet Axe remained unmoved, her massive frame still propped against the dungeon wall. "Focus on your stance!" she barked, her voice cutting through the chaos like a whetstone on steel. "Stop dancing like you're at a damn ball!"

Even as she shouted, her arms stayed crossed, her battle-axe resting untouched against the stone. This was a test, and Silvia knew better than to expect intervention. The lesson was clear: elegance meant nothing if it couldn't keep you alive. 

"I am trying, okay?!" Silvia shot back between ragged breaths. Just then, a wiry goblin sprang at her, jagged dagger glinting.

Not this time!

Her blade erupted in golden light, pure magic crackling along its edge like liquid sunlight. With a battle cry, she pivoted—

SHIIING!

The goblin's snarl froze mid-air as Silvia's radiant slash cleaved it clean in two. The halves tumbled apart, dissipating into foul smoke before they even hit the ground.

For the first time, Axe's eyebrows actually lifted. "Not bad," she admitted, clapping twice with mocking slowness. "But you're still telegraphing your swings like a court herald announcing dinner." The corner of her mouth twitched—almost a smile, if Axe were the type. 

Axe's mocking tone sent heat flaring up Silvia's neck. The princess gritted her teeth, sweat tracing glistening paths down her porcelain skin. "Stop mocking me!" she snapped, her voice rough-edged—an echo of Axe's own growl, if diluted by royal upbringing.

Then she moved.

Her glowing blade became a streak of liquid gold, weaving through the chamber with lethal grace. Every step was measured, every pivot exact—like the court dances she'd mastered, but rewritten in blood and steel. She lacked Axe's brutal efficiency, but her precision was surgical: a needlepoint strike to a goblin's throat here, a flick of the wrist to sever a spine there.

By the time she stilled, the floor was a tapestry of carnage. Some goblins lay halved at the waist, others headless, their expressions frozen in snarls. The afterglow of her magic lingered in the air like golden contrails as she stood at the epicenter, chest heaving.

Axe uncrossed her arms. "Huh."

"Impressed?" Silvia panted, swiping the back of her hand across her sweat-slicked forehead.

Axe's arm snapped up faster than a crossbow release. Her fingers closed around the arrow mid-air—just as its fletching grazed her scalp. Without even looking, she whipped it back the way it came.

CRACK!

The force sent stone shards raining from the ceiling. A goblin archer tumbled down with them, its chest obliterated where the arrow had punched clean through—the projectile now embedded in the far wall, still vibrating.

"You forgot one," Axe said, stepping over the twitching corpse. She strolled past Silvia, hands laced behind her head like she was on a morning walk. "But hey. B for effort, Princess."

Silvia's teeth sank into her lower lip hard enough to taste copper. She'd been certain—certain—that the Moonlight Waltz of the Royal Guard would impress even a battle-hardened monster like Axe. Every pivot, every flourish had been perfected through years of drilling in gilded halls under the watchful eyes of master swordsmen.

Yet Axe had watched with the same disinterest as street urchins gawking at a back-alley conjurer making coins disappear.

The princess's knuckles whitened around her sword hilt. Her family's sacred combat art, reduced to parlor tricks in those warrior eyes. 

The dungeon corridor opened into another circular chamber. This time, Axe was the first to unsheathe her weapon—a grotesque, notched thing that looked more like a butcher's tool than a proper blade. "You get some rest," she said, the words dripping with enough condescension to make it clear: This is how it's really done.

"Pah, take your time—" Silvia began.

BOOOOM!

The shockwave hit first. Stones rained from the ceiling as Axe's single swing connected, the force liquefying the goblins before they could even scream. Where Silvia's strikes had been precise, Axe's was annihilation—the creatures weren't just killed, but unmade, reduced to pulpy smears across the walls.

Silvia's throat tightened. Her blue eyes tracked the gore sliding down the cracked stone in thick rivulets. In moments like these, it was impossible to reconcile the woman before her with anything human. Axe stood amidst the carnage, steam rising from her weapon, looking for all the world like some primordial force of violence given flesh.

"Axe."

Silvia's voice cut through the dungeon's gloom with uncharacteristic gravity—sharp enough that even Axe halted mid-stride.

"What?" The warrior didn't turn around, but her fingers twitched around her axe's grip.

"How… how are you doing this?" Silvia gestured to the carnage around them, her voice dropping to a hushed tremor. "The force behind your strikes—it's not human."

Axe went unnaturally still. When she finally turned, her emerald eyes burned with a fury so raw it seemed to warp the air between them.

"There's someone I have to kill," she said, each word a blade being drawn. "And I'll carve through every hell, every dungeon, every monster—" Her gaze locked onto Silvia's. "—and every living thing that stands in my way."

The promise in those words coiled around Silvia's ribs like frost.

"Someone? You mean... a person?" Silvia pressed, despite the primal voice in her skull screaming at her to stop. The air itself felt heavier now, thick with the unsaid.

Axe's spine stiffened. Then, without a word, she pivoted on her heel and strode forward—her footsteps hammering against the stone with deliberate, punishing force. Every step screamed what her lips wouldn't:

This conversation is over.

The next chamber opened before them, its far wall dominated by the shimmering golden gate that marked a dungeon's end. But between them and victory slumbered a nightmare given flesh—a hulking, green-skinned abomination with limbs thicker than tree trunks and ears that twitched even in sleep. At first glance, it might have been mistaken for some grotesquely overgrown goblin, if not for the telltale intelligence in its clawed fingers and the rune-carved club resting against its thigh.

Silvia's breath caught. This wasn't just a monster.

It was a boss.

"Axe, we should be careful—"

CRUNCH.

The monster's skull exploded beneath Axe's boot like overripe fruit, greenish-gray matter spraying across the golden gate. The impact sent fissures racing through the stone floor, spiderwebbing outward from where she stood—one foot planted on the creature's ruined head, her axe still untouched on her back.

"Hurry up."

All traces of her usual mocking tone had vanished. What remained was something colder, sharper—the same glacial malice that had turned Silvia's blood to ice earlier.

And just like that, the second dungeon was conquered. 

But somehow... it didn't thrill Silvia the way it once would have.