"Behind ya!" a painfully familiar voice startled Allen to life again.
Allessa stood, per her taunt, behind the enemy knight, who turned around in what Allen could only expect was surprise to the girl, armed with only a devilish grin. Allessa's armored gauntlet met the knight's dark helmet, resounding with a dreadful clang enough to deafen whatever poor soul resided therein.
The strike, however heroic, seemed only to enrage the ancient knight, at least as far as Allessa could perceive in its welkin-eyed, faceless demeanor.
In hardly a moment, a blade burst from its chestplate, spattering Allessa in blood.
The lazuline rifts evaporated, its entire suit of armor crumpling in resignation.
Allen panted, withdrawing his blade with an agonizing slit. He had raised the visor of his helm, likely attempting to conserve what little breath and vision he had. His silvery hair, accented with blood and sweat, clung to his forehead, the usual fiery gleam in his cerulean eyes replaced with a frightful dullness Allessa had never witnessed.
That worried her.
"Let's... let's go." Allen took a step forward, nearly collapsing.
Allessa caught him in a clamorous meeting of steel, wrapping his arm around her shoulder to support the injured knight. "Mird, Allen! You'll be the death of both of us!"
Even he, in his dazed state, could see through her veiled scheme of blatant provocation meant to keep him together—to fuel his wistful snark that had thus far proved her sole affirmation he was alright. "Can we just get out of here?"
He had not the energy, patience, nor a list of other sentiments, to play along.
The calm response, foreign to her ears and unexpected in face of the harsh words, induced a twinge of guilt and only proved to validate her concern. "Okay..." she acquiesced, unsure what more should—could, be said.
They at last came upon a curious wall of fog, obscuring what Allessa made out to be a room behind it. At least there was something behind it.
"Well, guess we've got no choice." Allen said, as though still in the lead.
Requiting to his apparent charge, as she had increasingly often found herself doing, Allessa toted them through, the fog's passing grasp leaving them devoid of all sense for a few, unnerving moments of somehow blissful terror.
As the numbness fled, she felt Allen's weight once more.
...And once the blindness passed, she immediately regretted taking them through.
A beast of utterly brobdingnagian proportions, a hulking embodiment of terror, towered over them, his intentions, in all probability—not honorable.
"Vanguard..." Allessa whispered, as if by distant memory.
"What?" Allen attempted to stand himself, achieving only a groan of pain, falling back on Allessa and jarring her back to reality.
The tricloptic creature was a spike-mottled mass of bulging grey flesh and malaligned limbs, offensive horns protruding from its head and tiny wings hardly capable of sustaining its bulbous folds stubbing from its back. Its grotesque paw clamped tight to an axe, which in itself was larger than the both of them.
The grey fog closed in behind the two, densifying, and sealing with it any hopes of escape.
"I really wish you had your halberd." Allen shifted, again testing his ability to stand upright, failing even more so. "Just get out of here, Allessa, he'll squash us both if you don't."
The painful realization dawned upon him that this wound, begotten from his own stupidity, would quite fittingly herald his demise. But perhaps he could at least buy time enough for Allessa to somehow escape... Somehow.
Allessa's protective grip only tightened. "I'm not leaving you, Al-"
Ignoring the selfless stupidity he had come to expect in her, Allen shoved away from Allessa, splitting the two of them scant seconds before the great axe of the Vanguard hammered into the ground, the sheer force knocking them even further aback.
Lunged into a rather convenient position against some rubble, Allen squirmed to a posture of relative amenity; if he was going to die, he'd at least do so comfortably and on his own terms.
Well, at least he'd gotten the comfort part.
"Hey, fatty!" Allen decried, black spots now speckled his ebbing vision.
It wasn't his finest insult, he admitted, but his comedic prowess was hardly an issue in face of certain death.
Correcting his drooping visor, he finally cast aside the helmet altogether. Not like it'd be much use now. The lugged creature lumbered its way toward him, an avarice for his flesh and soul reflected in the blare of its pallid yellow eyes.
Allen chuckled to himself, aggravating his gaping injury. "What's a matter? Too much stew in yer gut? Come on, don't draw this out so much." He cursed to himself for his continual inability to mock his soon-to-be killer proper.
Vanguard seemed almost insulted, baring its labyrinthine jaws as it raised the colossal axe that foreshadowed Allen's demise.
"Sorry... Allessa..." Allen coughed under his gasps for breath. His vision had long faded to black, all semblance of warmth fleeting, replaced in turn with the skirting fringes of death's abyssal cold. It was too late. Why, then, could he not help but to smile...?
The hammer fell, the axe cleaved—the guillotine now left Allen bereft of what little life remained.
Allessa looked back, just in time to witness Allen's sacrifice. Her heart stopped with his as his form was devoured whole by the axe.
Vanguard's head crept to face Allessa, the axe digging deeper into where Allen once lay with sickening crunches. Her amber eyes widened, tears of sorrow streaming down.
As its heartless eyes rest on hers, it extracted its axe from the ensanguined earth—slowly, painfully—torturously.
It had the gall to taunt her after murdering her closest companion—her only companion. It even seemed to take some perverse pleasure in it, its features twisting into a toothy grimace.
Allessa's eyes of amber sparked ablaze, her tears to overflowing embers of her brimming anger. Vengeance would be hers, and the slightest semblance of any self-preservation had been extinguished with Allen.
The Vanguard's ungainly form heaved in one solid motion towards her, the bloodied axe ripping the air asunder on its journey to meet Allessa's demise.
She stood her ground, closing her eyes.
"Yield to me this once, Death, that vengeance might be mine." she prayed, her chest burning with fervent sincerity—knowing, feeling somehow, that it would be answered.
Her eyes, golden catalysts to the vengeance—the justice she so thirsted for—opened.
"Umbasa."