“A-ahm….” I tried to speak, but my voice was completely gone. All I could muster was a quiet hiss.

Amelia was not breathing, and a growing panic began amassing within me again. With some mysterious reserve strength, I was able to push Amelia up. There was dark smoke everywhere, and some insect corpses were on fire here and there, twitching.

As I looked around, my attention was drawn to a blue glow in the midst of the mist. Instinctively, I started crawling towards it, while pulling Amelia along myself slowly.

A hole had opened at the back wall of the dungeon, and an unmistakable sound of water could be heard within. I struggled onward while straining all of my remaining feeble muscles to move and drag Amelia with me. To my surprise, there was a slippery slope ahead of us.

I pushed Amelia down the slope ahead of myself, then beginning to slide it after her.

The stone slide was quite bumpy and uncomfortable, but it was slippery due to water flowing into it from somewhere, and being a bit uncomfortable was about the least of my concerns at the moment.

We slid for a little bit, only to contact cold water. I gasped and splashed around shakily, wading my way to Amelia, making sure she wouldn’t drown.

Moving through the water made dragging the paladin a lot easier. I managed to pull her all the way to the edge of a glowing blue pool we had somehow ended in. Getting Amelia out of the pool was far too much to ask in my current physical state, so I just made sure she’d not have her head submerged, as I slowly began fading into darkness.

My slumber felt a bit deeper than before. I don’t know if I was awake or asleep. There was a cave ceiling before me, and it was covered in strange blue plants or maybe mushrooms. They looked a bit like hands with a few too many fingers, wiggling slightly.

To my left, I could see Amelia sleeping. She seemed to be breathing somehow, but the back of her head was black and charred.

Slowly, my line of sight trailed back to the ceiling. It all felt a bit familiar. Staring at a ceiling on the brink of death. Surely, the pale woman would soon fall down from there gently, to welcome me into her cruel embrace once again.

I waited… And waited…

But she didn’t appear.

Instead, suddenly my line of sight was covered by something. A distorted shadow with voices echoing somewhere far, far away. The voices began growing louder with each new one echoing through.

They started growing clearer.

“Vrn… RNA!  YVERNA!!” The focus returned to my eyes. Amelia was grasping onto my outstretched arm.

“… Ame… lia?” I croaked. My voice hadn’t still fully returned. I realized I probably tired it out while I was screaming inside the insect swarm.

“H-hha…! You lunatic…! I thought you died! You were just reaching for the ceiling with your eyes wide open when I woke up!!” The tears of the knight felt warm against my skin. Ahhh… Amelia really was a nice person.

Even after everything we had been through… I still don’t remember shedding a single tear through it. Seeing the noble knight sobbing uncontrollably and mumbling incoherent nonsense made me feel almost jealous.

I so… desperately wanted to cry with her, but my eyes simply felt dry and itchy, so I had to close them. I reached out to touch Amelia’s face. Her cheeks were warm, and the back of her head was burnt to a crisp… but she was alive.

As much as being unable to cry with Amelia pained me, I felt happy at the moment, knowing we were both still alive.

            “Your head… I’m so sorry…” I whispered as I pet her.

“DON’T YOU DARE APOLOGIZE ABOUT MY HAIR WHEN YOU SAVED US!!” Her voice pierced the mumbling at last. “This weird pond too… I think it has some sort of rejuvenating properties.” She began.

Upon thinking about it, I did realize my body wasn’t aching as badly as it did before. In a desperate rush, I tried to lift my missing arm… but it was still gone. I guess hoping for the water to cure my arm was a bit much.

“My wounds, the scratches and burns from my back are mostly gone from having soaked in here. I’m sure if I just soak in enough, the back of my head will be healed too.” Amelia tried to reassure me.

“But… but what about your hair…!” I huffed heavily.

“Hair grows back, you fool!” She laughed. Amelia was really cool. Like, seriously. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but she is so damn cool. I’m super jealous of her. I’ll do my best to become a cool witch she can rely on someday, too.

“I’m… I’m still sorry…” I sighed, but yielded.

A short silence followed. I heard Amelia slowly lowering herself into the water. The quiet splashing was somehow… serene. I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could guess she was laying on her back to ease the pain she was most likely still in.

“When I was young, my father would tell me stories of witches.” Amelia spoke quietly.  “Dark creatures that rise from the depths of the woods, bringing with them temptations which only lead to misery.”

“…”

“I actually became a knight… because I wanted to protect the people from witches and monsters. I thought, that if I could stay strong, people wouldn’t have to be as scared of such stories in the way I was as a child. A shining hero protecting the people from the darkness!”

I could hear the water splashing a bit. I want to imagine she swung her hand mimicking a sword swing, but I couldn’t open my eyes because they were stinging too much.

“I wanted to… become someone who can protect everyone. I used to tell Amy stories of witches being defeated by the heroes. They were her favorite… but Amy was… different.”

A moment of silence followed. I think Amelia had to take a moment to really think about it, or maybe it was simply painful to reminisce about Amy so soon after her passing.

“Whenever I told her stories about defeating witches, she’d grow progressively frownier.” I could hear, that despite the painful memories, she was smiling when she spoke. “She was always insisting, that the heroes, princesses and witches should just all be friends. She always said the witches just wanted someone to be with, to fill their empty hearts with friendship and love.” Amelia sounded like she was holding back tears.

Sometimes, a drop or two of water would fall from the ceiling, contacting the pond surface. A few fell on my face, gently trailing down to my eyes. I could gradually feel my eyes stinging less and less…

“I, of course, scolded her. Witches are dangerous… The last thing I’d want my child to do is get involved with them due to her naivety.” Amelia’s answer was blunt and swift. “But...”

A few more drops of water fell from the ceiling, trailing down my face slowly.

“After meeting you. I feel like… Maybe I might have been wrong.”

We both just floated there. I don’t know where Amelia was looking at or what she was doing… I couldn’t open my eyes. I felt a bit like there was some kind of piece lodged in my throat, so speaking felt more and more difficult by the second.

Silence followed for what felt like forever.

“I would have been… totally up for making friends with her.” I finally managed to whisper.

A sharp exhale of some kind was all I could hear from Amelia. I didn’t know for sure, since I could not see. The water from the ceiling was still trailing down my face.

It was cold, but also warm… in a different sense.