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It’d been a while since Arroh and I had fought together. The animated had calmed down a bit, with our help, and things weren’t quite so… chaotic.

He leapt and slashed at the creepy dolls, dodging their bladed fans. For tiny little porcelain dolls, they took quite the beating.

“Amallia!” He said, slashing. I raised my hands and cast the buffer spell, Divinity- to keep his fatigue up. A puff ball appeared, and I jumped in, slashing at it with my blades.

Finally, the boss doll appeared.

“I will never die completely!” She screeched. Arroh and I looked at each other, nodded, and leapt forward. He whipped out his ice blade and crossbow, and I cast Fireball, full power. As fire rained down on her, I also pulled out my newest weapon- a gunblade- and started slashing away at the doll.

Arroh dodged under her bladed fan, ignoring her shrikes of fury. I leapt back again, seeing her distracted, and aimed another good spell-

Hit. The thing was drowned in a wave of water!

She fell into “darkness” once again, and Arroh and I took a well-deserved rest in the now-peaceful meadow.

“Good fight,” I said, heaving. I’d gotten a bit out of shape.

“Yeah,” Arroh chuckled, pawing the ground lightly. As always, his fighting spirit was high and proud, and he wasn’t the least bit tired. I pretended to not notice this.

“Just like old times,” I muttered, grinning at the fond memories. Good times of running from baddies, of Arroh shouting he wasn’t scared but in fact was turning tail…

I realized, suddenly, that he was the reason I was able to fight the animated for so long. He was my brother, my family, and my fighting partner. Were I to enter a fight without him, I wouldn’t be quite so successful.

Looking at his tall stature, I realized he didn’t need me quite so much. I wasn’t a tank, and I wasn’t much of a healer either, frankly. He could’ve entered a battle of a hundred and torn them down easily, perhaps laughing while he did so.
He looked at me, pain in his eyes.

“It’s been a year,” he said quietly.

“Arroh?” I said, puzzled from the change.

“Since my clan was… Destroyed. And I came to this part of the world. I fight for the humans, and I fight for whatever the Animated attack… But I feel as though I have forgotten my people.”

“You will never forget your people,” I reminded him. “The fact that you know think of them now is evidence of that. The day you set down your blade, you will have forgotten. And I know you will never set down your blade.”

Arroh looked at me before bending down to sit on the grass beside me. A light breeze rustled the tops of the trees.

“I am still the only survivor… This was surely not why I live,” he scoffed.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” I said, laughing, “But you will always be one of your Clan. Me…” I looked up at the sky. I could feel the life around me, in the grass, in the trees, in the wind. I could feel the life in the blood of the animals. “I am still part of my clan… But only in blood. They’ve by now rejected me. To them, I am nothing more than a monster.”

“Never a monster,” Arroh said, making a face. “You protect life. You save people. You fight with me. You protect me. You are my sister.”

I looked at him, and I realized something that made tears come to my eyes.

“Amallia?” He asked, completely taken aback.

“We’re a clan,” I sobbed, bringing my hands to my eyes. He stared, shocked still. “We’re a clan… You and I. We have lost both out people in some way… We are a clan.”

He looked up slowly into the sky as the wind shifted his long, silver hair, and he unconsciously reached for his ice blade. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I could almost hear the words he heard on the wind. The words of his clan, from the lands of Ela.

"Yeah," he whispered, so softly I almost didn't hear. “Yeah. I guess we are.”