A/N: /looks at poll votes... *pause* /naturally starts with least voted option 8D

Disclaimer: I don't own Elesis or Ronan D; I do, however, own this cave! - *points at collapsed cave*

Obituary 1: The Valiant and the Dogged

"What are you trying to say?"

"... And the rest?"

"They'll be joining you shortly."

The sound of Elesis' boots echoed loudly on the stone ground of the cave, a quieter echo coming from Ronan's boots several feet behind her.

"Elesis, with all due respect, can you please slow down and let me take the lead? It's too dark in this cave... If we keep going on like this we're just going to get lost." The indigo haired boy chided, waiting patiently for the carnation haired girl to turn around. She did so a minute later when she realized he was no longer following, and crossed her arms with a huff.

"I don't know about you, but I just want to get out of here and take a nice warm bath! Why did the Knight Master even call us for this mission after so long?" She muttered in complaint, allowing Ronan to catch up.

"Elesis, it's only been three years since the Grand Chase disbanded. You shouldn't be this surprised to receive a mission like this." He replied, waving his hand with a flourish as he summoned a ball of fire. At this the sound of scurrying bugs and insects was heard, causing Elesis to shudder.

"I know, but she has new little lackeys to do things for her! I mean, I don't mind the occasional adventure, but this place isn't really..." Sighing, she began to follow Ronan as he led the way, "I don't know. I trust the Knight Master's judgement, but this doesn't really seem like the type of thing she would call us for. There doesn't seem to be any danger in this mission at all... And she assigned me to do this mission with you, of all people." Glancing back at the exasperated knight, Ronan smiled.

"I don't mind. After all, it is really nice to see you again. Perhaps the Knight Master just wanted to arrange a reunion of sorts?" Elesis blinked, frowning as a blush lit up her face.

"I... I didn't think about you that much!" She denied fervently, "It's only been... One year..." Her voice quieted, and for a moment all that filled the air was the sound of their steps and the quiet crackle of the fire.

"I thought about you every day." Elesis gritted her teeth at the response, and found herself pushing past Ronan again.

"Well you shouldn't have!" She snapped, her hands curling into fists.

"Elesis..."

"I'm trying to concentrate, be quiet!" Ronan sped up his pace to match hers, a light frown decorating his face. Pressing his middle finger and thumb against the bridge of his nose as he thought for a second, he tried to glance at Elesis' expression. She had turned her head so he couldn't see, and the indigo haired knight sighed.

"Please don't be like this, Elesis... I don't know when I'll get to see you again." He pleaded, increasing his pace to catch up with the redhead.

"Well, if you hadn't decided your duty was to the Erudon household instead of your friends we wouldn't be facing this problem, would we?" She hissed back, looking at him scornfully.

"My father died, Elesis! They had no one else to-" Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes.

"I don't want to fight with you today, Elesis. Please don't do this..." The former Grand Chase leader continued stomping into the distance, and Ronan found himself nearly running to keep up with her.

"Elesis! Please stop running and let me talk to you!" To his surprise the girl did stop, and she quite abruptly turned to swing her sword right in front of him.

"I'm done wanting to talk to you! All you've been doing all this time is spending time working for absolutely nothing, while most of the rest of us have been working without even a name to work up to!" She retorted. Ronan took a deep breath as he righted himself, grabbing her wrist before she could stomp off again.

"Elesis-"

"Let me go! I'm going to finish this mission on my own!"

"Elesis, there-"

"Let go now, or I swear to Gaia I will stab you with this swor-"

"Elesis, there is no mission!" For a moment, the girl stared at him blankly. Her eyebrows had furrowed in confusion, and she ceased trying to tug her arm away.

"What exactly do you mean? Ronan, we're here to get rid of a monster in the cave-"

"There is no monster." He sighed, "The knight master lied." Elesis' eyes widened, and Ronan quickly continued before she could begin making assumptions.

"Well, not exactly! She didn't do it on her own. I... I can't leave the Erudon household at all without a reason any more." He admitted quietly.

"And that has what to do with this?" The fiery haired girl frowned.

"Elesis, I sent you fifty letters. You didn't respond to any of them. Not one." The redhead looked away, though she didn't appear to feel guilty.

"The last time I had to report to the palace I met with the Knight Master... She owed me some favours from back when I was in the chase, so I called on one. I begged her to send you a mission request." Crimson eyes widened- Elesis was beginning to understand what was going on.

"I know you were angry at me for leaving the castle, and I know you're probably even angrier at me now for arranging this, but... Elesis, I needed to see you." His grip on her wrist loosened, and he grabbed her hand instead. Bringing it to his forehead, he closed his eyes.

"You... You're so stupid..." Elesis muttered, directing her gaze to the ground.

"I know." Was the quiet reply. Silence filled the room, and Elesis was the next to break it.

"What now?" She whispered. Ronan didn't respond.

"What do you have to say for yourself now that I'm here? You'd better choose your words carefully... This is the last time I'm going to listen." The spell knight finally opened his eyes, releasing her hand.

"Well... To start, how many of the letters did you read?" He questioned. Elesis scoffed.

"None."

Every single one.

"Do you remember what you said to me the day before I left?" He whispered.

"How am I supposed to remember so far back?"

Of course I do.

"And... How do you feel about me now?"

"I don't- I don't know what you're talking about."

I love you.

Ronan sighed and ran a hand through his dark indigo locks.

"I suppose..." He chuckled quietly, "I should just walk away now. I should just pretend I don't know you better than that, and that I don't know everything you just said was a lie." Elesis' mouth fell open for a second, and she took a step back.

"What-"

"I'm afraid, however, that my pride won't let me do so." He took a step towards her, then another step when she backed off once again.

"You said I've been working for the last year for nothing... That wasn't true. I was working because..." Reaching out, he pressed a hand to her cheek, "I wanted to give you my name." Elesis let out a quiet gasp, and her cheeks began blazing to a dark red.

"I don't feel that way... I don't feel that way about you!" She protested, averting her eyes from his own.

"And if you were being honest about that I would turn, leave here and never come back, as an gentleman would. I'm not going to leave things like that, though, when I can clearly see your cheeks heating up, and when I can see you trying to avoid my gaze like you always used to... You haven't changed at all." Elesis frowned.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" She huffed, crossing her arms. Ronan smiled gently.

"It means, Miss Elesis Sieghart, that I would like you to become Miss Elesis Erudon." The pair fell silent, Ronan staring at Elesis in expectation. The redhead seemed almost lost: her face was frozen in shock and confusion.

"I haven't seen you..." She stated, "in one year." Ronan scratched the back of his head.

"I know... I apologize at how sudden this is, but it would be extremely difficult to arrange another meeting... Elesis, I don't want to lose you." There was a long pause between the two, in which Elesis stared at Ronan with a sceptical gaze.

Then, she punched him in the stomach and turned away. The spell knight kneeled over from the force, coughing out a breath.

"Ele-"

"How can you just say something like that and expect everything to be fine?" She snapped, beginning to run.

"Elesis! Come back! You're going to..." The darkness had stolen her from his view entirely. Using his tyrfing to help himself up, he quickly started into a run. All he had to go on was the sound of Elesis' footsteps: the light from his fireball wasn't enough to illuminate the entire cave.

"Stop following me!"

"No! Would you stop being so hard-headed for once?" He called back irritatedly. The footsteps ahead of him faltered for a moment, and as he approached, he noticed why. There were two branches of the path laying in front of him: a moment's listening allowed him the knowledge that she had taken the left tunnel. There was another sound mixed in with her footsteps, and it took Ronan a moment to identify it.

She's crying. He let out a quiet curse and tried to speed up. This didn't work very well: at the sound of his footsteps speeding up Elesis did the same. At least it explains why she's running... She never lets anyone see her cry.

This pondering had slowed him down for a minute: when he reached the next branch Elesis' footsteps had become too distant for him to hear clearly. I can't lose her! If she gets out of this cave and leaves I'll probably never see her again... Making a hasty decision to take the right path, Ronan tried to light the halls a bit more with the fireball.

"Elesis!" He called out again.

"Elesis-" Her distant footsteps had paused for a moment. The silence would have been comforting, had it not been pierced by an echoing scream. The abyss knight turned around as he realized he had taken the wrong path, rushing around the corner and in the direction of the scream. What happened?

"Elesis?" Her scream ceased after several moments, and was followed by a sickening crack.

"Where are you? Say something!" There was no response, and Ronan was forced to continue running without direction.

"What happened? Say anything!" He tried again, pushing himself to run faster. At this speed he was barely able to stop when something entered his gaze, and he pulled back before he ran into a dark hole. Kneeling down at the edge, he squinted as he tried to see further. It was pitch black... She wouldn't have seen the hole.

"Elesis! Answer me!" He screamed down. There was a grumble followed by several coughs from below, and Ronan bit his lip. Unfastening his cloak, he loosened the metal pin from the fabric and dropped it down. There was a lengthy silence before it clinked to the ground, echoing several times.

"Elesis? I'm coming down!" He called, gritting his teeth as he looked at his supplies. How, exactly? It was quite clearly too deep to just jump down, and too wide to use his back and feet to shuffle down. Elesis' coughing echoed up to him again, and the abyss knight glared at the available items, then back to the hole.

"Don't worry, I'll be down there in a second!" Grabbing his tyrfing, he began slicing his cloak into strips.

"Dnn..." He blinked in surprise as Elesis' voice reached him, and he paused to lean over the hole.

"What?" There was a rumbling from the hole, and Ronan leaned in closer.

"D—Don't come down here!" Ronan's eyes widened.

"What's down there?" He called in response as he tied the strips together tightly.

"I SAID DON'T COME DOWN HERE!" Her voice was shrill and frightened: hearing Elesis' voice in such disarray transferred the emotion to Ronan almost immediately. He observed the length of material before taking off his overcoat to add to the rope, and tossed the end down the hole.

"What are- Ronan, what are you doing? LEAVE THE CAVE RIGHT NOW!" There it was again: fear. There wasn't supposed to be anything actually in this cave! He thought angrily. Something's gone wrong. Stabbing his tyrfing through the fabric and the wall to hold it in place, Ronan grabbed the handle and quickly swung himself down. A foul odour had begun to fill the air, as well as a loud, guttural groan. Using the makeshift rope to ease himself down the hole, Ronan made his way down as quickly as he could while holding a flame in one hand and easing himself down with the other, and soon he could see Elesis.

"I told you to leave!" She whispered urgently from her spot on the ground. Red was seeping through the leg and arm of her already red clothing, making it look almost black.

"You broke your arm and your leg?" He questioned with a frown, reaching out to pick her up. With her uninjured hand she hit his away roughly, turning to the other side of the room.

"Listen to me for once and get out of here!" She sounded like she was almost pleading. Ronan followed her gaze, and soon saw why.

Gargantuan yellow eyes peered out of the darkness, and several teeth as tall as Ronan himself glimmered in the firelight. The creature was breathing and shuddering heavily: the shudders shaking the entire cave and the breathing filling the air with what, when noticed, was a pungent, nauseating odour. It was impossible to tell where it started or ended; the darkness veiled it too perfectly.

"What... Is that thing?" He whispered,wrapping his arm around her waist to try and pick her up.

"I don't know, but that rope is not going to hold us both up!" She hissed, pushing against him.

"It'll work well enough." He responded, moving as slowly as he could. The creature's eyes followed them as they moved, and Ronan grabbed onto the end of the rope tightly.

"Can you hold onto my back?" He asked as the creature let out a slightly louder breath, heaving itself closer. Elesis nodded, reluctantly tightening a grip around his shoulders.

"All right. Hold on tightly, all righ-" As he tugged on the rope there was a cracking sound, and the the material grew lax in his hand.

"!" Stepping back, he managed to narrowly avoid the tyrfing as it fell down and skewered the ground.

"I take it that's our escape route out?" Elesis questioned dryly, looking at her limbs in disdain.

"There's got to be another one around here... I'll fix you up as well as I can, then we'll get going." They both watched the monster warily as Ronan cast holy inferno over Elesis' wounds, and within a minute she was able to stand up on her own.

"How does it feel?" He asked, grabbing her arm and looking around for any sort of wall. There was nothing: a great expanse of darkness and the creature all that met his gaze.

"Numb, and like it's probably going to get worse if I move." She grimaced, "But in this situation, what choice do I have?" Ronan chuckled quietly, leading the way away from the monster.

"Ggggrahhhhahhh..." Ronan turned around and gasped in surprise as the creature's eyes got even larger, and it let out a loud groan. The knights took a step back as the area began to shudder, and the fang covered mouth stretched to let out an overpowering cry.

"Run!" Elesis ordered frantically, pulling him along with her as she began running in the opposite direction. The creature was making panicked, bellowing noises as it heaved itself after them.

"I thought the fearless leader of the Grand Chase never ran?" Ronan questioned with a fearful smile, glancing back at the creature.

"I don't. I make strategic retrea-" Before she could say what exactly she was doing the spell knight beside her screamed, causing her to stop and turn. A cord of thick black slime had slithered around his arm, and sizzled as it scraped against his flesh.

"Ronan!" The light went out abruptly, and Elesis tightened her grip on the handle of her sword. She swung it down as powerfully, and was granted by both a scream from Ronan and the creature. He managed to force a light with the hand he was holding the tyrfing with, and Elesis could see the damage she had caused. A fair layer of the back of Ronan's hand had been sliced cleanly off, and black strings clung to the raw flesh. There were severe burns trailing up his arms where the cords had wrapped. There was blood everywhere: not only Ronan's, but the creature's as well.

"I-"

"No time for apologies, let's go!" The flame in his hand had grown, but no matter where he turned he couldn't see a single exit that didn't have black ooze seeping out of it.

"Tch..." Before he could make a decision on where to move an onyx claw lunged out of the darkness, embedding itself in Elesis' back squarely.

"N-no..." Elesis let out a heavy gasp, falling to her knees as the ashen vines began wrapping around her limbs.

"NO!" The abyss knight wedged his blade squarely in the claw of the creature, twisting the blade as he manoeuvred it away from Elesis. The large, golden eyes recoiled with a scream of pain as he sliced through the vines, and he held onto Elesis tightly as she fell forward. Steam was rising from her arms and legs where the material had been entirely burned through, and she was hacking violently.

"Don't worry, Elesis..." He murmured, "You're fine." Running a hand through her hair with his bloodied hand, he kissed her forehead.

"Look around us, Ronan," She laughed helplessly, "Do we really look fine to you?" The indigo haired man brought her closer, trying to calm his shaking breath and cast another holy inferno.

"Y-yes. It will be fine. We- We've been in worse scrapes than this, I'm sure." He smiled, eyes watering lightly as he looked down at her bloodied body.

"Drop me." The command was sudden, and Ronan blinked slowly.

"Wha-"

"You heard me, drop me. You have a much... Much better chance to get out of here without me." She laughed again, pushing him away.

"After all, I can only be so long in a career like this before I die, right? Might as well be..." She took another deep breath, "Might as well be saving someone I... Someone I love." Why hasn't it attacked yet? Ronan couldn't be bothered to check.

"You're not going to die for this someone. I... I've always been trying to be your knight in shining armour, but... You've never needed me. Now that I-"

"Ronan, the tunnel!" Elesis choked, cutting him off. He turned to follow her gaze: it traced back to the monster. The mouth and eyes were no longer facing the pair, instead peering up at an odd angle.

"What do you-"

"The tunn- The tunnel we fell down! We can't let... We can't let that thing get out of here, Ronan. We cant." She said horrifiedly, hand wrapping around the handle of her sword. Ronan's eyes widened as he grasped the situation, and his grip on Elesis tightened.

"Damn it... Why does all of this have to happen right when I see you again? We were going to..." A single tear dripped down his cheek, landing on hers, "We were going to be so happy together. It was the only thing that kept me going each day: the thought of us together. And now..." Looking down at the Savior, he smiled brokenly.

"Though at the moment I really don't want to, I'll be brief. There's only one thing I can think of that can stop that thing from escaping now, and that's the Abyssal Valkyrie." Elesis stared at him in confusion.

"The Valkyrie? In a place like this, it'll-"

"Exactly. This place is far too small... if I summon the Valkyrie here, it will bring the entire cave down on us both." His forced smile was faltering as he looked down at Elesis, and more tears began falling.

"Ah... I see. Go ahead, then." She responded. The spell knight frowned.

"Elesis, this is your-"

"And that's thousand of other people's lives! Now do it before it's too late!" She commanded, reaching up to grab his free hand tightly.

"I-" Seeing the fear in Elesis' eyes, Ronan paused.

"I... All right." Elesis laughed again.

"There we go. At least we're going out in style. Who wants to get old and stupid anyway?" She continued, resting her head against him.

"Me." Ronan responded with a sorrowful smile, propping his tyrfing, "with you." Elesis' eyes widened, a last blush painting her cheeks as Ronan lifted the sword into the air.

"Heaven's Guardian."

Bright light filled the area, illuminating the expanse of the creature. Its substance filled nearly the entire room, and it was constantly moving.

The ceiling cracked as large wings burst from the light and pressed up against it, crumbling away.

"Ronan!" The knight turned back to her as the Valkyrie began to form, its large bow pulled taught and aimed at the creature.

"Hm?" He hummed gently, tightening his grip on her hand.

"That question you asked earlier. I..." She was cut off by a violent series of coughs, and Ronan pulled her closer.

"About it?" He asked, his voice considerably calm in the situation.

"I... Nothing." And then, before Ronan could question her any further, the world collapsed around them.

I wanted to say yes.

"And so it begins."

A/N: ... Wow, I actually finished something. I hope you enjoyed it, and this does actually have a plot~! I'm not very good with writing scary, but the next chapters are most likely going to be a bit freakier than this (if you found this at all freaky, even though it wasn't xD ) Yay for killing people~!

-Utsuro