It was ugly.
Ugly as the things she'd killed above, ugly as the stories she'd heard from her father. It was just as ugly as she'd ever imagined the demons might be. Scales, like those on the water snakes that lived in the river, reflected the light in tiny points now that she could see again. Its eyes were dark pits against the reflected light, much like its shadow was cut from the light that bounced off the smooth, squared-off walls of the cave.
Elan froze, sinking to a crouch as she began to look around.
Her eyes had adjusted quickly to the low light, and she could tell that the cave was immense. It was bigger then she'd ever seen, a huge block cut from the earth that dwarfed everything she had ever known.
And it was infested with the demons that had destroyed her life.
They hung from the walls, the ceiling, and were scattered across the floor. They were a multitude of nightmarish shapes, large and small, leathery and dripping with something she didn’t want to consider. In the darkness she couldn’t make out the details as well as she might have wished, but something deep inside her was glad of it.
Elanthielle froze then, staring as some meager form of intellect rose up against the cold rage that drove her.
There were so many.
She swallowed, feeling fear for the first time since she’d watched her parents die.
Not fear of death, though. Fear of failure.
Her hate and her mind warred then, each demanding a different action. Her hate wanted them dead. All of them, and right now. Her mind kept insisting that this wasn't the time. She had to live to get them all; she couldn't die here. Not now, not yet.
Elan froze then, caught between two powerful desires, and found that she couldn't move.
For long seconds turning to minutes, she crouched there in the darkness, staring at the monsters of her childhood, the objects of her hatred, and through it all she couldn't move a muscle. Frozen in the moment of indecision, Ela didn't hear the scuffle of claws on the smooth surface of the floor behind her until it was too late.
"Kor!" the demon croaked in its own language, the word more an expression of startled surprise than anything else. "Qen Kar Crakt?"
The moment of indecision died then as instinct rushed in to seize control from the mind and the heart. Where they had failed her, Elan's primal core caused her to spin as she rose, kicking off the ground as her blade lashed out and neatly, if not cleanly, separated the demon's head from its body.
The ichor and blood sprayed the room, inundating the air with a sickening, rotten odor and covering Elan with the sticky scent of death. She ignored it, letting the body and head slap to the ground in separate places as she pushed past them and ran for the exit.
She skidded to a stop when three more demons appeared from the darkness between her and her goal, warned by either the last words of their brethren or by his last breath. She didn't know which, and it didn't matter. Elan looked desperately to either side, then screamed as she saw others waking as well.
She lifted her blade then, and charged.
Her scream echoed through the cave, her instincts giving in to the demands of her heart as it became obvious that escaping undetected was no longer possible, and even escaping alive would require more than mere action now.
The three demons met her charge, the first falling to the swipe of her blade as her scream shocked and surprised the other two. The dying demon's body captured her sword, though, and drug it down as it fell, leaving Elan open as the other two tackled her.
The sword jerked loose as she was propelled back, but they were in too close and she couldn't get the power to hurt them with the blade as they fell. She grunted in pain and shock, air rushing from her lungs, as they hit the ground and rolled, but hung on to her weapon with a tenacity borne of desperation.
The scrabble of claws against the cold, smooth surface filled the air, along with her panting breaths and the hissing screams of the inhuman monsters with whom she fought. Their claws cut into her skin as Elan whipped her sword around, slamming the pommel into one demon's temple and driving it away from her.
It fell to the side, leaving only the one left, but that one grabbed for her arm and held the blade back, slamming her hand repeatedly into the ground until the blade clattered free. It hissed at her then, yelling something in its guttural tongue and spraying her face with saliva as she screamed back and continued to struggle.
Her free hand found the hilt of her small knife then, the one she used when she hunted or caught fish in the river. It slid from her belt with a familiar ease despite the terror of the situation, and then slid right into the demon with only a little more difficulty than through a fish.
The demon froze then, its weight above her as she stared up into the soulless black pits of its eyes, and became dead weight against her small form. Elan screamed again, pushing with all her strength, and shoved it off to the side, where it hit the ground with a boneless thud.
She slowly climbed back to her knees, eyes looking around intently as she saw the crowd of demons that surrounded her then. They were of all shapes and sizes, as far as she could see. Monstrous, some of them, in size and appearance. Black ichor glistened in the meager light as some hissed at her, white flesh on others appearing almost luminescent in the low light as their perfectly human features were twisted in a parody of a smile, their eyes gleaming black against the grey of the cavern.
Elan's hand found the pommel of her sword then, and she pulled it to her as she rose to her feet. Its scraping against the surface filled the silence then, and she drew it up until it was set before her in preparation for the defense, as her father had taught her.
"Well, well, well." A cold voice, sinister in the darkness. "What have we here?"
Elan turned to the voice then, blood running from her face as she recognized the face of the man who had killed her father.
He must have seen the change, somehow in the darkness, and he smiled at her, lips thin against the gauntness of his face. "Pretty girl. What brings you to my little camp?"
Elan's anger knew no coherence then, her lips pulled back until her teeth glistened against the wet black of her face. Only those shining white teeth and the glittering ice of her eyes really cut her apart from the monsters around her as she screamed incoherently and charged the man.
He met her blade with a flick of his wrist, a long curved sword appearing in his hand as if by magic and stopping her blow in its place with an ease that might have shocked her, had Elan had any faculties left to be shocked. She snarled again, yanking her blade back, and screamed as she pivoted and swung it hard at his side.
This time he stepped back in a single fluid motion, letting the point of her blade whistle past. He stepped in as her blow brought her arm well past. She felt him, then, pushed right up against her, his body touching hers as his clean, white face sneered down at her from the shadows above her.
"You don't have the muscles to match me with those pitiful moves," he hissed, sneering as he struck out at her arm with one hand.
Elan yelped in startled pain, and her sword clattered to the ground as her arm suddenly went numb and refused to obey her commands.
"You fight like an old friend of mine," the man sneered again. "I wonder now...did we miss someone last night?"
She screamed, still incoherent, and swung for the man's face with all the power she could muster. The blow cracked through the room, rocking him back in fury and surprise as he grabbed for his jaw in obvious pain. Then he snarled, and the last thing she remembered clearly was the pommel of his sword coming right at her.
The world swung around her as he connected with her face, throwing her back, and somewhere from far away she heard his voice again.
"Take her."