Gazel went in before the creature could set its feet, so his sword came around into an obsidian arm in a burst of sparks.
The recoil ran back up through both arms, though he twisted with it and kept swinging until the barrage pushed the monster across the broken ground.
Didi had walked behind that back for ten years without once seeing it move the way it moved now.
'That is not the guard who corrects my posture,' she thought, both hands shut on the hilt, 'that is something the palace never told me.'
A claw came around at head height, so he dropped under the arm, opened a gash across the ribs, then came up on the far side with the gold still burning in the wound behind him.
"Interesting," the monster said with something new coming up into its face, "you refined the frequency of the Brand, then tuned your soul to the royal resonance."
"Tell me whose blood you took that from," it continued, the claws opening while it circled, "since a guard dog comes by no crown honestly."
Gazel answered by putting the sword through its shoulder, so the shockwave flattened the grass out to the tree line.
"Ask my king," he said, with his breath already coming short, "he enjoys that question."
'Could he actually win this?' Didi wondered while the hope came in under her terror without shifting any of it.
The Brand burned straight through his exhaustion by spending reserves he had kept hidden for years, so every strike carried more oath than technique, sworn long before he learned what it would cost him.
Gold and obsidian ran together while sword met claw.
The monster kept testing the fluctuations in his output, but Gazel pushed past every limit he had shown her.
His breathing went ragged as the lines across his face burned brighter through the sweat.
A last run of thrusts drove the wounded creature back toward the edge of the clearing under a web of golden scars.
Didi counted the wounds because each one proved the thing could bleed, though Gazel knew what her borrowed confidence would be worth the moment his body quit.
"Keep it there," she called out to him, her voice cracking on the second word, "the trees are at its back, so it has nowhere left to give."
"Stay where you are," he said without turning his head, "because the moment you step forward I have two people to keep alive."
Then the amusement went out of the face above them, replaced by something so flat that the air in the clearing seemed to set.
"Enough," it said.
The monster blurred, so Gazel turned his shoulder into it while a claw missed his throat and scraped across the Brand.
He answered at once, driving the sword back into the wound on its ribs before it could pull the arm away.
Purple blood ran down the blade while the eyes above him narrowed for the first time since the fight started.
'He got it again,' Didi thought, her fingers tightening on the hilt, 'so keep doing that, please, keep doing exactly that.'
Gazel ripped the blade free and kept pressing, chopping low at the knee before he turned the same motion up into a slash that opened the chest from hip to shoulder.
Gold ate through more obsidian, so the monster gave ground again.
Steel and claws kept ringing over the clearing while Didi lost the ability to follow any of it.
She had the gold arcs of the blade, the dull thud each time the thing gave a pace, then the sound of his breathing.
'Since when does he fight like this?' she thought, staring at his back, 'and how much of it was he sitting on?'
It swung at his head, so he ducked under the arm, cut the wrist on the way past, then planted a foot on its thigh and kicked himself up over the shoulder.
He landed behind it and buried the sword at the base of its neck, then rode the shock of it down before he slid clear of the elbow that came back at him.
More blood came out with the blade, so the monster touched the side of its neck, looked at the purple on its claws, then smiled a little.
"Good," it said, and the voice had dropped a register, "this is finally worth my time."
Blood ran from his mouth, though Gazel stepped in again before the thing finished straightening.
'He is pushing too hard,' Didi thought, getting one step forward before her legs locked, 'but if he stops now then we are both dead.'
The fourth Shard flared around his wrist until the light hurt to look at.
He took the sword in both hands and brought it down, splitting the ground under the creature so it had to catch the blade on both arms.
Then the knees bent under him.
Nothing had bent that thing since it came out of the road, so Didi drew a breath she forgot to let out.
'He pushed it down,' she thought, with the disbelief arriving a second behind her eyes, 'he actually did it.'
"Now finish it!" she shouted at his back, both hands up around the words, "do not let it stand again!"
Gazel went for it at once, dragging the blade free and stepping inside the guard.
Three thrusts went out fast, at the chest, then the throat, then the eye.
It turned off the first, took the second across the shoulder, then stopped the third between two black fingers.
Didi went cold, since the eyes that came up to meet Gazel had nothing left in them.
"That is enough," it said again, much more quietly this time.
The other hand moved before he could pull back, so the claws went into the center of his chest, where they burst the armor apart around them and kept going.
Didi heard the wet crack from where she stood, then Gazel jerked around the arm lodged through him.
"Gazel!" she said, and the scream took his name apart in the middle.
The monster lifted him off the ground with one hand while the blood ran back over its wrist.
The sword slipped out of his fingers and hit the ground, then the gold around it came apart a second later.
It pulled its hand free and dropped him onto his back, where he stayed with the blood going out into the ground under him.
The monster looked at the purple on its claws, then licked one knuckle without taking its eyes off her.
She screamed again and got two steps forward before her legs stopped taking her weight.
Memories arrived without being asked for, Gazel tying the grip on her first practice sword, Gazel carrying her out of the library asleep.
She remembered him standing outside her door the whole night after her first nightmare about monsters.
'No,' she thought, watching the blood spread out under him, 'no, get up, please get up.'
Her own sword went out of her fingers while the tears came up until she could barely see him.
"Gazel," she said, then louder with the name breaking under her, "Gazel!"
The monster watched her, then gave a low laugh that put the cold straight through her.
"So this is what breaks you?" it asked, looking from her tears down to Gazel, "I kill one servant, and the little princess falls apart."
She shut her hands until the nails went into the palms.
"He was a servant with a sword," the monster said, taking one slow step closer, "so why are you crying as though you lost something that mattered?"
"He has a name," she said, and the words came up out of somewhere under the crying, "say it."
"They rarely keep them by the time I am finished," it said, and it did not stop walking.
Gazel heard the taunt through the ringing in his skull while the dark kept narrowing what he could still see.
Every breath crushed something in his chest, and the cold had already reached his hands.
'The princess,' he thought, forcing one eye open a little wider, 'is she still standing?'
His vision found her after a second, shaking and crying a few steps away with that thing walking her down.
'No,' he thought, trying his arm and getting almost nothing out of it, 'not yet.'
The oath sat a long way off under the pain and the blood loss, though he went after it anyway, because there was nothing else left down there worth reaching for.
Golden light came up out of him and scorched the ground under his back.
The monster stopped where it stood.
Didi got a hand back onto her fallen sword.
'My duty is not done,' he thought, 'the princess is not safe yet.'
'Rise, Gazel, you shall not leave this world until she is safe!!!'