A knight traveled beneath storm clouds.

Alone along a mountain trail twisting through the peaks, she walked the path in solitude in a pair of iron greaves. Chestnut-grey hair spilled down across her breastplate. A scarlet cape trailed behind her, fastened by a gold chain. On her face, resting just atop her nose, sat a bronze mask of spiraling sunbeams.

An orange ray of sun split the cloudy sky. The bronze mask lit up with a fiery glow.

The knight looked up towards the golden beam, shielding her eyes with a gauntleted hand. A bead of sweat dripped down her cheek.

As good a time as any for a break.

She cast down an enormous bronze shield and undid the clasp around her neck, letting the red cape fall to the dirt below. Then she sat upon it. The sunlight faded. The mountain peaks clouded to grey, rainy dark.

The knight smiled, and whispered a quiet thanks to the sky. With a rustle and clank of armor, she reached to her side and pulled up a leather cord, drawing up a large canteen from her waist. She pulled open the cork and held the bottle to her lips, tilting it back and reveling in the thought of the cool water to come.

Out came a puff of dry sand.

The knight spat.

She coughed out the dust, frowned through her sunbeam mask, and moved to undo the straps that fastened her gauntlet to her right wrist. The metal fell to the earth, and thin fingers replaced the glove. The knight held those fingers to the sky.

She whispered something quiet—a prayer of sorts to the clouds. She thanked them for their shade, for their cool breeze, and for the comfort in which, beneath their shadow, she so far had made her journey. Then she asked, very kindly, if they would do for her another favor.

It began to rain.

In a tranquil shower, the world grew misty and cool. The rain danced against the shrubs and rocks with a playful, twirling thrum. The stone began to glisten, the trees to sway. The air filled with the cloudy scent of wet earth and grass.

The grey world sparkled in a misty storm.

The knight smiled. She shut her eyes against the rain and reached out with thin fingers. Then, very nimbly, she wove them through the air.

The droplets stopped. They hovered for a moment, suspended in the air. Then, slowly, they began to spin, to twirl, to spiral together as though pulled by a hundred strings. The droplets rushed forward, gathered and turned, into a single flowing strand. That strand, in an instant, splashed itself into the canteen.

Soon it was full. The rain continued on.

The knight raised the bottle and took a long, satisfied drink. Then another, and another. Then she filled the bottle again, and took a final gulp. She smiled at the sky, and thanked it.

“My, what a wonderful trick!” a little voice came.

The knight jolted straight. Her head whirled around, looking far down the trail, then behind to see if she’d been followed. There she found the voice’s source.

Where a moment before lay only a grey boulder now sat a girl with straw colored hair. She propped herself up on a slender arm, with a fair face and bright, vivid blue eyes. She looked quite comfortable in the gentle rain: no cloak, nor cape, nor hat, nor hood. She sat with one leg crossed over the other. In a powder blue dress with a little white collar, she smiled on the stone in the misty rain. A crooked, eerie smile…

“Is it so that you have made it rain?” the girl chirped. “There aren’t many who can. How magnificent that you’re able to.”

The knight took a deep breath, calming her nerves and returning the smile. New company bothered her.

“Well, that is kind of you to say,” she replied, trying to sound kind. “But I am afraid I may disappoint you. I merely asked the clouds if they would not mind raining, and they deigned to grant my wish. I am thankful that they did; it is rather difficult to drink dust.”

“Oh, the clouds are fickle things,” the straw-haired girl said. “They grant a wish on one occasion and ignore another in the next. They loom above all fat and lazy, staring down with indifference; rather dull and useless, clouds.”

The knight pursed her lips; the clouds had been very kind to her today.

“Well, perhaps they are not always in the habit of entertaining requests” she said. “But today they have been generous, and for that I am quite thankful.”

“Yes, I suppose you would be,” the straw-hair girl said. She stood and tapped her boots on the stone to shake the mud loose. “I suppose when all one can do is ask, one must be happy with what one gets.”

Then the girl began to wring the water out of the bottoms of her dress. When she was finished, she pulled her wet straw hair behind her head. She sleeked it back and pulled a black band from the folds of her dress, centering it on her head. She pat it once or twice, made sure the hair was flat and neat, and smiled contentedly to herself.

The knight frowned.

“Well,” she glared behind the mask. “I myself should like to be both grateful and happy with what the clouds wish to give me. It so happens to have been exactly what I required. I should think asking to be a fine way to go about things, do you not agree?”

“No.”

A flat response: a strange, cold denial. The straw-haired girl moved from the stone. 

“You see,” she began. “I have wanted a great many things a great many times, you see, and as it happens not so many of them were given to me by asking.”

She lifted a hand slowly, raising her fingers up towards the sky.

The clouds groaned. They heaved somehow, as though burdened by a painful weight. The sky darkened, the air grew heavy, as the clouds above darkened to an ominous black. A groan of thunder rumbled deep within.

“No,” the straw-haired girl said again, looking towards the sky. “I have found that the best way to get something is, very simply…”

Her lips curved into a toothy smile.

“…to take it.”

The girl clenched her fist and wrenched her whole arm down.

A bolt of lightning split the clouds. It tore through them—cleaved through like a great, jagged axe. A thundering boom roared out through the hills, and rain spilled upon the earth.

The sky erupted in a thunderstorm. Rain poured over the mountains

The straw-haired girl laughed.

“You see?” she cackled. “What an easier way! Did you enjoy my trick, Knight of Demoros?”

“I most certainly did not,” the knight said, lifting her dripping shield from the mud. “That is disgraceful magic—painful and rude. The clouds are upset. I shall have no part in your games. Good day to you, maiden of agony.”

With that the knight turned, lacing her cask to her side and taking two angry steps down the dirt road. In a huff she apologized to the clouds.

A flash of lightning responded. The straw-haired girl stood on the road ahead.

The knight stumbled back a pace, raising the shield at her side.

“That may be a problem…” the straw-hair girl smiled. “I would very much like you to have a part in my games.”

A second bolt struck, followed by a crash of thunder. In the flashes and drenching rain, the girl’s grin seemed more twisted.

“Am I to assume you want something from me?” the knight asked. She took a single step backwards—in preparation, not fear. “You may request all you like, but I am afraid nothing will come of it. I am on a pilgrimage, you see. To discover something I once lost in another life. Aside from it, I have little. And even were I to have this most precious thing, I would never relinquish it to you.”

“But that’s the wonderful part about it!” the straw-haired girl gleamed. “When you do things my way, little trifles like that don’t much get in the way.”

The straw-haired girl moved forward.

The knight raised her shield.

“Oh, don’t be boorish,” the straw-haired girl said. “I’m not about to take something so valuable as your head. As it happens, I am on a pilgrimage myself. I am looking for someone, you see, and I’d like for you to help me find them.”

“I would help no one who steals the gifts of others,” the knight glared. “Have you no shame? No common human decency?”

“Human!” the straw-haired girl laughed. “What a funny thing to say! Have you been gone from this world so long, Lady Knight? To not know?”

The knight’s eyes narrowed beneath the mask.

The straw-haired girl lost her playful smile.

“You really don’t know?” she asked earnestly. Then she laughed. “Oh, how funny. How truly, pathetically, miserably funny!”

“Who are you, then, if I must ask?” the knight demanded. She stood staunch behind the towering shield.

The straw-haired girl laughed again. She spun around in the downpour, taking a moment to splash in a puddle.

Then she stood inches from the knight’s face.

She stood nearly touching the knight’s pale cheeks. So quick her movement, so sudden, there could be no riposte. She stared up with frozen, glistening, blue eyes, face beaming. Her lips curled into a wicked grin, and her hands moved up. She took each side of the sunbeam mask, and lifted it away.

The knight gazed, unguarded, into the eyes of Hell.

“We are called Demons, now,” the straw-haired girl whispered.

The knight thrust her shield forward. She slammed it into the straw-haired girl with terrible force, taking several measured steps back. But there was no impact, no gasp, no shriek.

The shield collided with air.

A fit of laughter rang out over the ridge.

The straw-haired girl stood far down the road.

“Oh my,” she cackled. “My, my, my! Hardly chivalrous, Knight of Mercy, Knight of Truth! To strike at a lady both unarmed and small. Whatever would your masters say?”

“I shall receive no chastise for striking against darkness,” the knight shouted behind her shield. She brought a hand to cover her bare face, spreading her fingers, mimicking the mask. She glanced out from behind her shield, eying it in the enemy’s hand.

“You compliment me, lady knight,” the straw-haired girl said. “But I grow tired of banter. You have something I want: will you give it to me, or shall I take it?”

“I shall give nothing freely to the likes of you,” the knight said, moving back behind her shield.

The straw-haired girl sighed.

“Are you so sure?” she asked. “We needn’t be enemies, after all. Perhaps I’ll ask again.”

“Then you shall hear onc answer twice.”

The straw-haired girl frowned. For a moment she seemed genuinely, earnestly displeased. Then she took a step forward.

“Well,” she mumbled. “That really is too bad.”

Her body fragmented. It blurred, distorted, and transformed into haze. Like a shadow beneath water, like countless rain drops in the figure of a girl, her body burst apart. It shot forward.

The knight leaned into her shield. A crash rang out through the mountains and valleys, a sound like a cannonball clear through stone.

The bronze shield cleaved in two.

The knight flew backward. She soared across the mountain trail and crashed into the rocks and mud. Four times she rolled across the dirt before slamming a hand to the earth and forcing herself to stand. Her hazy eyes focused. She looked towards her broken shield.

The straw-haired girl’s body returned.

“Oh, ho. Oh, hum,” the straw-haired girl sighed. “Not very entertaining for a warrior Heaven-sent. Are times so dire that they must dress girls in armor and say that they are knights?”

“I am no warrior,” the knight spat, steadying her sway. “No heaven’s sword, nobody of consequence. Only a lost girl. Yet you’ll find this girl still has a trick or two in her.”

The knight snatched a pair of daggers from her boots, holding them close as she braced herself to fight.

“I have no wish to injure you,” she shouted.

“But I you!” The straw-haired girl laughed. The phantom form surged forward again.

This time the knight struck down. She drove a dagger deep into the hazy blur, whirling to the side as the specter sped past. The blur pulled the knife along with it, tumbling to the ground, as the straw-haired girl rolled out across the mud.

She laughed.

She laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Her arm hung limp, and her body sagged. The dagger rested snugly, up to the hilt, embedded in her shoulder.

“A good strike, Lady Knight,” the girl suddenly whirled around. “But not the last.”

In a dizzying streak, the straw-haired girl struck again, appearing behind the knight like thunder. With a maddened sneer she ripped the knife from her bleeding bone and thrust it down.

The knife clanked off of armor, but bit through. Blade split flesh and plunged into the knight’s thigh. She shrieked and collapsed against the mud and soil.

The straw haired girl stumbled backwards, clutching her shoulder.

The two took breaths.

“Why?” the knight panted, pushing up to a knee. “I have done nothing to you. I have nothing of value. What could you possibly desire from me?”

“…nothing of value?”

The straw-haired girl heaved a breath. She glanced over with narrow eyes, taking a moment to understand.

Then she laughed.

“Oh my,” she cackled. “My, my, my, my, my, my, my! Are you so humble, Knight of Sun, that you believe something such as your life to be nothing of value? Many of my kind would leap at the chance to take it from you.”

She stumbled forward through the wound, blood staining the wet blue dress.

“But no,” she whispered. “I do not want for that. You have something precious—something immensely, immeasurably valuable. The scent of death lingers on you. You are a woman who has died before. And that means that you have met him. You’ve seen him. Where did you find him? Tell me where he is.”

“I do not know of what you speak,” the knight said. She reached down, summoned her courage, and yanked the dagger from her thigh. A sharp, shrill shriek followed as she pulled it from her flesh. 

“I remember nothing,” she panted. “ Not who I am, or where I am from. Not even my name. Only that I am looking for someone precious to me. Only that I am here to find him.”

“And so we are the same!” the straw-haired girl cried. She lunged forward, reached out with nails like claws. She grabbed the knight’s pauldron and shoved the woman against the earth. Her nails bit down and the armor surrendered. It bent and broke and snapped, and the demon-girl’s fingers reached bone.

The knight screamed. She raised her hand and shoved the dagger into the straw-haired girl’s side.

No move. Not even a cry. Only manic, wild blue eyes.

“You know him,” the straw-haired girl smiled. “You reek of him, I’ll bet you taste like him; where is he? Where is the Man who Waits Beyond the Door? Tell me—tell me!”

The knight looked up helplessly as the straw-haired girl gripped her shoulder, placed the other hand flat against her breastplate. 

The straw-haired girl pushed into it. The steel shattered. Small fingers touched the knight’s warm flesh.

“Give him to me,” the demon-girl said. “Tell me where he is, or I’ll take the answer from your heart.”

The knight struggled, reached up, grabbed the straw-haired girl’s wrist and tried to pull. She writhed, strained, as the nails bit into her skin. With her other hand she raised the second dagger and drove it into this straw-haired girl’s leg.

It slid through cleanly, silently, without response.

The straw-haired girl dragged her nails in deeper.

“Where is he?” she screamed. “Where is he!”

The knight’s vision blurred, her breath trembled in ragged bursts. Her shoulder burned, and hot needles pierced the skin above her heart. She reached against the dirt with desperate fingers…

…and found her mask by the demon’s heel. A glimmer of sun in the thunderstorm.

“If you wish to see him so badly…” the knight choked, clutching her mask. “Then I shall send you to him!”

She lurched up.

With her last ounce of strength she snatched the straw-haired girl with both arms, and pulled them both to the muddy earth. She jammed the mask onto her own face, reached up towards the sky, and made a wish.

The knight asked the clouds to move. They replied.

A ray of sunlight burst down from on high, a blinding, roaring beam. Down from the heavens it tore through the clouds in a ray of brilliant orange-white. It consumed the mountain side, surging over the figures, enveloping both in a pillar of flame. 

The straw haired girl screamed. Heat scorched her clothes and her flesh and her hair. Burning, blinding, blistering light set her skin aflame, torching her body and boiling her veins. The sunlight howled, the flaming pillar bellowed, in a deafening, maddening cacophony.

Beneath, the knight held on with all her might.

Then the beam ceased. The light vanished. The sun disappeared, and the clouds folded over the wound.

The sky turned grey again.

The knight pushed off the singed carcass above her, throwing it to the side. She lay there, panting, as the rain began again. She raised a hand—a tired, trembling hand—and cupped her shoulder. She touched the biting nail marks on her chest, and ran a finger down the gash in her thigh. She coughed, sucked in a gulp of air, and traced the wound with a finger. A small ray of white light sprang out from her fingertip, burning, and singed the wound shut.

The knight gasped in pain, let her arm fall, and breathed. For a moment, she let herself breath. Weak relieved, panting in the puddling mud, she breathed.

The straw-haired girl began to chuckle.

“A clever trick, lady knight,” her voice cracked. She lay in a heap, charred and blistered with blackened skin, and did not move. “Then I take my leave of you. But do not worry—I’ll find you again.”

Then the straw-haired girl burned away in a plume of black flame. Her body vanished, her embers drifted off, and she scattered to the wind.

The mountain grew quiet and still.

The knight lay alone in the muddy earth. After some time she sat up, staring over the mountains and the valley. She cast off her broken armor, threw her splintered spaulder to the ground, and reached to her side. She drew up the canteen and sucked the water from it.

Then she looked up, through her sunbeam mask, towards the sky.

“Thank you,” she said.

 ***

Alone in the rain, against a cloudy sky, a knight in shattered armor roamed the winding hills. A tattered red cape trailed out behind her, and a gold chain fastened it around her neck. Covering her face was a mask of sunbeams, branching out in spiraled rays. It sat just atop her nose, masking her eyes and cheeks from view. When the sunlight touched it, it glowed a fierce, fiery bronze.

Down the trail, beneath the rainy sky, she continued on a road she didn’t know, searching for a thing she could not remember.

Wearing the smile of her first victory.