Alexander fell to his knees, the last of his strength running out of him. He remained there, panting, as a howl shattered the silence, as the sound of great wings rose all around him, as the gate behind him burst open, and as every torch illuminating the courtyard where he and the Mage had fought was blown out, leaving him in darkness.
He could not think; he could only feel. Hammered by the pain of his injuries, fighting for each breath, with sweat running over his face and down his back, he was barely aware that there were people swarming around him until two of them seized his biceps and hauled him to his feet, pounding his back, which he barely felt through his armor. That blessed, blessed, blessedly light and strong armor that had saved his life over and over again in this fight —
"Alex! Alex! Is that really you in there?"
It was his brother Julian's voice. He tried to get enough breath for an answer (the Mage had struck him a blow towards the end of it that had knocked him off his feet and left him with, at the least, a bruised chest) but someone was already fumbling with the straps holding his helmet on. The straps came undone, the helmet came off, and he gasped in great, glorious breaths of cool, clean air, and looked bewildered, into Julian's battered face.
Which he could see only because the other person holding him up, that same grizzled old man who had raised so many doubts during his rallying-speech, was holding a torch in his free hand and peering at his face as if he did not quite believe what had just happened.
"Jules?" he gasped.
"Alex?" said Julian. "My God, man, you've saved us, you and that weird army of yours — "
"Army? What — "
"Let me take him, friend Julian," rumbled a deep voice, like thunder on the mountains.
Then he was scooped up, as a gentle child would scoop up a toy, and he was staring into the face of the sheepherding giant. "Champion," the giant said, slowly and carefully. "Where is the Godmother? When last we heard, she was in the guise of a squire, going in through the Princess's tower. But we cannot find her."
"I don't know," he replied, gathering his wits about him. "I — "
"Aaaaaaaalexanderrrrr!"
It was his name, in a long, feline wail, like a cat calling her kittens.
"Aaaaaaaalexanderrrrrr!"
He located where it was coming from; the top window of the tower nearest him.
"Take me to that window! Please!" he shouted to the giant, who obligingly stretched out his arm.
There was a small, black shape in the black of the open window. A cat.
"Aaaaaaaalexanderrrrrr!"
"That's me!" he called to her. "I am Alexander."
"Tell the mountain to hold still!" came the reply.
"Hold still!" he shouted to the giant. "I think a cat — "
A cat flew out of the darkness to land on his chest and slide off the slick surface of the armor into the palm of the giant's hand. She spat and cursed at them both for being fools.
"I'll put you both down, then?" said the giant, hastily, and he carefully lowered Alexander and the cat back down beside Julian. By that time, Alexander had picked up the cat and was cradling her as carefully as his armor would allow. Her claws slipped and scratched on the metal of his armor, and she mewed her irritation until he managed to place her on the stones again at his feet.
"The Godmother said, if she did not appear, to find you!" the cat said when she had all four feet on solid ground again. "Come! Now!"
She ran off; he ran after her, pausing only long enough to snatch a black sword out of the hand of the dead man who had been holding it.
The cat kept glancing back at him over her shoulder to make sure that he was following. There were still knots of fighting men and monsters in the rooms that he passed; he and the cat dodged around them. They emerged into an enormous room that held more fighting; a few of Julian's men with enchanted boar-spears, but also three Unicorns, an armored Elf in elaborate armor, and a bleeding, enraged Gryphon, all fighting hideous spider-men that glittered blackly as they moved and shed black blood from their wounds.
The cat rushed past them. He followed.
And stopped dead in the final doorway.
It wasn't the piles of gold and gems that arrested his attention, although that might have, under any other circumstances. It was the terrifying black spider thing bending over Elena's unconscious body.
He had thought that he had no strength left. He had been wrong.
Terrible strength and energy coursed though him, as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning that had energized him instead of killing him.
The creature was only just starting to turn as he leaped upon it with a scream, sword in both hands, attacking like a mad dancer, a threshing-fiend, a man-machine of death.
His first blow sliced the thing's right arm off. His second took the left, and the third cut the head cleanly from the body, sending it to the top of one of the piles of treasure where it remained, eerily staring out into the room with its sightless, unblinking black eyes.
Its body fell over sideways as all four legs collapsed beneath it.
He did not even look; he threw his sword aside, staggered to Elena, fell to his knees beside her, and saw with a relief so intense that it made him weep that she was still breathing and outwardly unhurt.
And that was all he knew from that moment until the moment when Julian and some of the strange army of magical creatures found him again, lying beside her, holding her hand in his, the cat standing over both of them, hissing, as if she was guarding her kittens.
Elena tried to keep herself calm as she sat in the hall outside the library of the Keep on Glass Mountain. No matter what the convocation of Godmothers, Wizards, and Sorcerers decided, there was one thing they couldn't change; she and Alexander were married. It was the first thing that had happened after the castle had been cleaned up, and it might have happened sooner than that, except that no priest could be induced to come near while the place reeked of evil magic.
They can't separate us, she told herself. No matter how hard they try. They can't unmake him a Champion, and I don't think they can take my magic away from me if I'm not willing to give it up.
"How much difficulty do you think we're in?" Alexander asked her, soberly.
"I'm not sure," she replied, yet again, and smiled wanly. "At least we've broken the Traditional paths so completely that there isn't a scrap of Tradition to give them a hint of what to do."
The doors opened, and a servant beckoned them inside. They stood up together, and followed him into the Library.
There were about a dozen people at the long table in the center of the Library, and at least one was a genuine Fairy Godmother. Elena didn't know any of them — which was probably on purpose. And if she didn't have any friends here, at least she didn't have any known enemies, either.
"Champion Alexander and Godmother Elena," said the Fairy Godmother in the center. "Have you any idea what you have done?"
"Um — " said Elena, flushing.