So, I promised this awhile back. Now here it is.

Valor
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"Can your men hold the portal?"

Guardian Kristina looked with worry at the dark knights arrayed before her; all two dozen of them were armed and armored, with thick shields and cruel swords blackened by fire and blood. Their discipline was good, there was no doubt about that, but -

"You don't trust them," the erinyes next to Kristina said simply. "Or me. Which is perfectly natural, considering our respective positions. Guardian, I know your worry, but you can trust my word. You saved my life, when you had no call to. That debt must be paid."

"Mercy doesn't need requital," Kristina protested quietly. "I told you that, Mirishka."

Mirishka gave Kristina a crooked smile and put a hand on the Guardian's shoulder. "Neither Hell nor the Black Thorn Knights have any interest in seeing this world overrun by demonic hordes. Go, and summon your Guardians. We will hold the portal."

Kristina gave one last uncomfortable look to the assembled knights and took off her necklace; her skin softened visibly, as though losing several thick layers. The Guardian placed it around Mirishka's neck, causing the erinyes's skin to harden against assault. "Come out of this alive. We have business to finish between us, Mirishka the Fallen."

Mirishka smiled wistfully as Kristina mounted her horse and galloped off, leaving her alone with the Black Thorn Knights she had roped into helping her fulfill her oath. Wordlessly, Mirishka turned and marched into the cave mouth standing before her and the knights, trusting them to follow behind her. With hours to go before the portal was due to appear, she ordered her men to their ease and squatted down on her heels to wait.

* * * *

The first stirrings of the portal sounded in the shallow cave like a gunshot. Mirishka stood calmly while her knights arranged themselves into a defensive formation, two men deep with their shields locked against each other. The air sizzled and spat, loosing smoke that reeked of brimstone and fear.

"The Abyss bays at your world like the wolf at the door," Mirishka called over the sound, her voice edged with ancient hate. The erinyes strapped her shield to her left arm and drew her blade, made of blackened bone stolen from a thousand butchered sons of Chaos. "They think themselves assured in their victory. They laugh at you from the darkness of their pit and mock all that you hold sacred! Will you let this stand?"

"NO!" thundered the reply from two dozen lips.

"They think they can drown you beneath the tide of their mindless fury, but you will be the rock upon which their courage breaks! Scatter them like the rabble they are and when the day is won we will bathe in blood, for we are the true servants of Hell. For the Lord Below!"

"FOR THE LORD BELOW!"

The portal opened with a scream of sorrow and pain, and the hordes of the Abyss came pouring out of it in their hundreds. The wave of dretches emerged only six abreast - there was not room for much else - and broke against the shield wall of the Black Thorn Knights. Blackened blades swung in pristine arcs, parting flesh from bone and filling the shallow caverns with the shrieking sounds of death and suffering. "Push!" Mirishka commanded, and the knights stepped forward as one and shoved the wave of demons back. Black blades stabbed forward and the knights advanced again, until their wall blocked the portal.

"Hold the line," Mirishka called over the gibbering hordes of demons. "It's going to be a long night!"

For hour after hour, the dretches came and died just as fast as they could appear, until the mound of corpses before the knights was such that the berserk demons could barely even climb it. The trickle of dretches slowed, and then stopped.

“Switch!” Mirishka ordered; the front line of knights stepped apart and let their comrades in the rear through, swapping places in the formation. The new back line took a moment to uncap vials and flasks and take long drinks of fortifying potions, wincing as cuts healed over and cracked bones knitted back together. The dark knights raised their shields once more, falling back into tight formation and gazing grimly at the mountain of corpses before them.

“Come on, you wretched filth,” Mirishka muttered to herself, pacing behind the Black Thorn Knights. “I’m not through with you yet.”

A hush descended over the battlefield. Instinctively, the knights raised their shields – just in time to protect themselves from the mound before them exploding outward, showering them with sizzling demon flesh. A wall of claws and fangs hit the line of knights, who set their feet and pushed back. The hezrou demons on the front lines of the Abyssal charge staggered back and then howled in pain as their flesh was rent by black blades. Mirishka opened her mouth to give an order, only to be interrupted; a small, sizzling spark hurtled at the shield wall and then exploded into a roaring flame that filled that shallow cavern.

The demons paused their advance to stare in astonishment at the unbroken line of knights, each sheltered behind the others’ shields. The Black Thorns rose from their covering formation, shields smoldering, and attacked in defiant silence. Behind them, Mirishka scanned the demonic advance. Where was – there, above the battlefield, was an airborne succubus preparing another spell. Almost casually, Mirishka took the rope from her waist and threw it at the she-demon.

“Strangle,” she commanded idly, and the rope obeyed. The succubus fell from the air and was soon trampled beneath the onslaught of her own troops.

The valor of the Black Thorn Knights could not make them invincible. As the minutes and then hours dragged on, they began to fall one by one. The back rank stepped forward nearly instantly, each hole in the front line replaced with a smooth motion that left the wall of shields unbroken. Mirishka paced behind her men with one hand on her bone-hilted blade, watching the corrupt blood rise past their ankles and smirking cruelly whenever one of the charging demons tripped over the corpses of its fallen kin.

“Hold the line!” Mirishka called over the din of slaughter. “Reinforcements are coming! Hold –“

The marilith burst out of the portal in an eruption of death, her blades flicking out like frogs’ tongues to puncture the throats of three nights. Mirishka leapt forward, raising her shield to block a rain of hateful steel from slaying one of her men. “Close ranks!” the she-devil snarled, her bone-hilted blade leaping into her hand to parry a pair of twin slashes from the marilith. Her men stepped in around her, shields moving deftly to pin the marilith’s swords. Mirishka stabbed at the demon’s exposed gut and laughed when she felt her blade crack ribs and sink deep. The marilith screamed in agony.

“You demons,” Mirishka began, kicking the serpentine demon off of her blade, “have no idea. You think you know pain? I come from a place where suffering is a sacrament and every scream is a hymn.” The she-devil swatted aside the marilith’s blades and then stomped on the prone demon, making it howl in agony.

“Pray with me,” Mirishka hissed in hateful glee, before slicing the demon’s head from its body.

Silence reigned over the battlefield, and for a moment the Black Thorn Knights let themselves believe they had won. Then, in the darkness on the far side of the Abyssal portal, an outline of fire appeared. Mirishka’s lips curved downward into a frown, and she spared a glance at her men.

“Retreat,” she ordered. “Hold the surface and don’t let them through. This foe is mine.”

The knights spared a glance to Mirishka, some in admiration and a few in genuine worry. She nodded curtly to the entrance to the shallow cave, and they finally broke ranks and retreated to the surface, reforming their formation in the misty light of the dawn outside.

“Come at me, filth,” Mirishka muttered bitterly, her grip tightening around the hilt of her bone blade. “Come pray with me.”

* * * *

The Empyreal Guardians and their allies pulled their horses to a halt when they saw the formation of Black Thorn Knights outside the cave. Kristina dismounted and approached swiftly while the reinforcements with her raided their saddlebags for wands, spell components, and other supplies.

“Report,” Kristina demanded, and the Knight before her actually saluted first.

“Field Operative Mirishka continues to do battle below,” the Black Thorn Knight explained. Kristina could hear the ring of steel against something, which sounded remarkably like striking lightning. “Our orders are to hold the entrance to the cave, Guardian.”

A priest loyal to the Guardians approached Kristina from behind. “It’s a balor down there, Guardian. We can’t seal the portal with that thing in there.”

Kristina sighed and nodded. “Form up with the Black Thorns. The confined space is just going to get us torn apart if we try to reinforce Mirishka.”
“Do you truly believe this devil can fight off a balor?” the priest asked skeptically.

“I…have no idea.”

* * * *

The balor’s massive longsword crashed against Mirishka’s shield, swatting it aside in a burst of electrical energy. The erinyes lashed out with her bone blade, slicing the whip in the demon’s other hand in two and arcing past it to rip a chunk from the balor’s flesh. The demon roared in anger, but his furious counterattacks were met over and over by Mirishka’s shield, filling the air with the stink of ozone and the demon’s hateful screams.

“Why do you fight?” the balor demanded. “You gain nothing here, little devil! You will die here!”

Mirishka sidestepped a cleaving, two-handed blow and drove her bone blade into the balor’s arm. The demon howled in pain as Mirishka’s blow first clove his body and then tore through his mind. The devil’s grip on her sword was not enough to stop his thrashing from tearing it from her hands, but Mirishka stepped forward anyway.

“Nothing to gain?” she snarled, her shield beginning to glow with red-and-violet light. The sound of rattling chains filled the shallow cave. “Opposing you pleases the Lord Below, and that is enough!” The erinyes smote her foe with the edge of her shield, where sharpened metal tore into his profane flesh.

“Even if it did not, opposing you fulfills my sworn word, and that would be enough!”

Behind the balor, the hordes of the Abyss waited with baited breath, watching in mute fear as their champion desperately parried the devil’s vicious shield strikes.

“Even if opposing you fulfilled no vows, watching you suffer would be enough,” Mirishka snarled in fury, ducking under the balor’s counterattack to smash his groin with her shield. The demon hit his knees, his vision blurring in agony.

Mirishka was shouting now. “And if you could feel no pain, my hate alone would be enough!” Her shield slammed into the side of the demon’s skull, sending him sprawling with blood pooling beneath the ruin of his face.

“You can never kill us all,” the balor croaked.

“Good,” Mirishka answered quietly, before stomping the balor’s head in with her armored boot. “That means I never have to stop hurting you.”

The demon erupted in an explosion of profane flame that seared Mirishka’s flesh and poured from the shallow cave in a gout of blasphemy. When the smoke cleared, Mirishka was picking herself up from one knee, still clutching the broken ruin of her shield. The devil glared through the portal to the Abyss.

“Who else is ready to pray with me?”

The demons ran.

* * * *

Some weeks later, Mirishka found herself unexpectedly called upon; Guardian Kristina found her in an inn, where the devil had been reluctantly granted a table and was being glared at by a squad of local guards that stood lined up against the far wall. Kristina had a long bundle in her hands, which she set on the table.

“I never returned this to you,” Mirishka noted, reaching for the amulet around her neck, but Kristina shook her head. “Keep it, Mirishka. The Empyreal Guardians are very grateful for what you and yours have done for us. Your valor prevented a major catastrophe.”

“I am a woman of my word,” Mirishka answered humbly, but the devil smiled. “Truth be told, I made out like a bandit. Three more nations agreed to permit my presence, so long as I did no violence within their borders.”

Kristina did her best to look enthused about this news. “Open it up,” she suggested, gesturing to the bundle. Mirishka cut the twine that held the cloth around the bundle and unrolled it, revealing a gleaming adamantine longsword with a plain grip, its blade inscribed with symbols sacred to the powers of law.

“Its name is Oathbinder,” Kristina said softly. “Our gift to you, to replace the blade you lost.”

“You did not owe me this,” Mirishka answered quietly, her brow furrowing in confusion.

“Consider it…consider it a gift of friendship, Mirishka,” the Guardian replied, reaching across the table to squeeze the devil’s shoulder. She rose to leave. “Use it well.”

“Wait,” Mirishka asked; Kristina paused on her way to the inn’s door and turned, a curious look in her eyes. “Meet me here again, in a year and a day, as the sun sets. Dinner will be on me.”

“Whyever for?”

“Well…we have busy schedules,” Mirishka began. “But I’m told friends spend time together.”

Kristina grinned. “It’s a deal.”