[center][h1][color=00aeef]Link[/color][/h1][/center]

[center]Word Count: 917 [/center]

[center][color=00aeef][b]Level 5[/b] [/color] - (100/50) + 2[/center]

[center]Location: The Lady's Chambers [/center] 

[hr]

The butcher hadn't been enough. He had overestimated his weight and the stubbornness of the boards underneath them. Despite his and the demons impromptu wrestling match the floor failed to buckle, break, nor even tip the wardrobe over onto them. He should have been more specific, but from his experience Strikers weren't in the habit of following your exact will and he doubted one could pull off a complex plan especially with the limited time they had. Time that was, in Larry's case, rapidly reaching its end. So what should he do? Did he find a place to hide again, or press what little advantage he had while the monster was distracted? As the butcher faded out and the monster dived for where Link had been he stepped forward knife drawn. This had been his risk to take, and his idea to fail. Ms. Fortune and Ace could escape while he kept the thing busy.

Fortunately for him, those same two were there to un-bungle his plan. A pair of red and blue lights latched onto the metal parts of the wardrobe and pulled the whole thing over onto it. With a deafening crash the wardrobe slammed into the monsters back, straight through the unsteady floorboards. Link rushed forward toward the hole as the monsters screech faded away as it dropped into the...darkness.

Where was the floor?

He had expected another floor. That was how buildings worked, there were floors. He was friends with a few carpenters, he knew how buildings worked, there should have been another floor under this one. Why wasn't there?

No. No no no nonono, this was fine. He could get down. There was bedding here, there were clothes, he could make that work. 

Ms Fortune was talking, he voice cutting through his thought process like a razor. A first he agreed with her. Yes, of course they had to go! Obviously they couldn't stay here. They were on the same page. She should stop interrupting him and let him think for a minu-

What the heck did that mean, "can't go down"? Of course they could go down, that was a point he was prepared to argue. "No, no." Why was his voice shaking? "We can tie this stuff together, make a rope. Better, we can make a glider out of her cloths and sail down after him. I saw how it was done back in lim-"

She continued, heedless of his objections. They had to get the mirror to the others. That was the key to beating the lady. Of course, that was important, but they couldn't just leave. They couldn't just run out of the Maw and leave Glenn down there.

Down there?
Was he down there?
Why did he think that?
He knew that wasn't true.

As the current crisis faded further and further into the past, as the adrenalin pouring through his veins ceased to flow, his mind began to consider the previously unconsiderable. With no monster breathing down his neck, with no one currently in danger, he began to feel in his heart what his brain already knew. What it had known since the boy had been devoured, and simply kept from him for as long as necessary. He looked back down. Down into the darkness of the hole, into the very darkness of the ship itself. Glenn was gone. Devoured by the Maw. Now just one more haunted memory. 

He was silent for a long moment, a familiar despair rolling over him like the tide. A feeling he knew from one of his few memories, one that had almost overtaken him before back on their friendly pirate ship. This time there wasn't any golden lifeline, manned by cats, to drag him out of the sea. There was just the cold, bitter reality of it. The frog knight's quest was over, just after Link had convinced him to believe it could be fulfilled. 

"I was the second furthest back..." He started in a voice like glass, remembering how they had split up to search the room. "It would have been me. If he hadn't been here, it would have been me." Except he would have been more careful. He would have been watching his back. He would have seen it coming. He would have survived, like he always survived. Like he [i]always managed to survive[/i] out of everyone.

He felt a warmth in the palm of his hand, looking away from the hole for the first time to spot the cat girl gripping it in her own. He didn't so much run with her as let her pull him along away from the place. He moved on autopilot, breath shaky, eyes distant, suddenly feeling every ache of the day all at once. He remembered this feeling too, of being at his limit. He couldn't afford to stop, though. Not now. Not when calamity was still breathing down their necks. 
 
He didn't say a word as they arrived at where Sakura had decided to hunker down. He didn't say anything about Glenn, didn't add anything to the explanation of what happened in The Lady's quarters, didn't object when the Princess handed off their secret weapon to the despondent Sakura. He was half living in a memory and was sure the girl would shine like a diamond at the very end of all this. That was the way this played out, so long as he kept her alive enough to do it. His body remembered how to do that much.