The courtyard was wrong.

  Cletus felt it before he even stepped through the archway—an itch between the shoulder blades, the sense that something essential

  was missing.

  Then he saw it.

  The wide, sun-beaten square where Kotetsu usually sat, gleaming like a smug metal bull, was empty. Not “someone moved it.” Not “maybe Tom borrowed it.” Empty in a way that made his jaw lock and the vein in his forehead start its familiar throb.

  He blinked.

  Then blinked harder.

  He pointed at the nothing in front of him.

  “Tom?”

  Tom, who had been mid-sentence about the economic impact of fireworks on local trade, stopped. “…Yes?”

  Cletus took a slow, dawning breath. “Tom,” he said again, voice rising like a storm front. “Somebody…” His eye twitched. “…stole…” Another breath. “…my. TRUCK!!!!”

  The word truck echoed across the quiet courtyard like a war horn.

  A pigeon two rooftops over took off in fear.

  Tom sighed. “Ah,” he said with the quiet despair of a man who had predicted this moment to the king an hour earlier. “And so the chaos begins.”

  Cletus turned a full circle, hands on his head.

  “It was RIGHT HERE! RIGHT—HERE! Parked exactly where I always park it!”

  His voice climbed into the upper ranges of country panic.

  “WHO IN THE NINETY-SEVEN HELLS STEALS A F–”

  “Ahem.” Tom cleared his throat loudly and glanced at the King.

  Cletus corrected course. “—STEALS A TRUCK?!”

  The King, who had been examining a decorative fountain with royal disinterest, finally looked up. “I… take it this is unusual?” he asked.

  Cletus rounded on him, arms outstretched in pure indignation. “Your Majesty—THIS IS A DECLARATION OF WAR.”

  Tom pinched the bridge of his nose. “Before the declaration of war, perhaps we should… revisit how we arrived at this moment.”

  Cletus froze.

  Then groaned.

  “Oh. Right. The fireworks. The stupid firework thing. The insanely dangerous firework thing.”

  He gestured at the empty courtyard again. “And now my baby’s gone!”

  

  Three Hours Earlier…

  The city of High Meadow was supposed to be calm that morning.

  Instead, it sounded like a goblin warband discovering percussion instruments.

  Cletus had been leaning against Kotetsu’s hood, sipping a lukewarm mug of Hank Underberry’s “Morning Glory” brew, when Mayor Roderick Strongarm marched into the center square dragging a wooden crate that clanked ominously with every step.

  “Citizens!” the Mayor bellowed, puffing out his chest like a rooster with something to prove. “Prepare yourselves for the FIRST-EVER HIGH MEADOW FIREWORKS DEMONSTRATION—sponsored by the Adventurer’s Guild and approved by absolutely nobody of authority!”

  Hank popped out of the inn door, horrified. “Roderick, by the gods—NOT now! Later!”

  But the Mayor was already prying the crate open with a crowbar and a level of confidence that implied he had never once read instructions.

  Cletus squinted. “Tom,” he murmured, “You seein’ this?”

  Tom, standing beside the King, whispered back, “I was hoping we were all collectively hallucinating.”

  Inside the crate were sticks of fireworks—long, unstable, over packed cylinders with labels like and . They radiated the exact energy of devices made by someone who knew what explosions look like but had never actually survived one.

  The King, who had been enjoying a polite conversation with a farmer, turned just in time to see Roderick pull a fuse out with his teeth.

  “What,” the King asked calmly, “is that man doing?”

  Hank groaned. “He’s doing what he always does, Your Majesty. Something profoundly stupid.”

  Roderick held up a firework. “BEHOLD! The future of municipal celebration!”

  Tom whispered urgently, “We need to intervene before someone—”

  Roderick struck the flint.

  Sparks hissed.

  Everyone stared.

  Nothing happened.

  Roderick shook it. “Hmm. Might be a dud.”

  Then he held it up to his ear.

  Cletus’s eyes went wide. “Oh no—”

  The fuse ignited with a sudden, furious .

  People screamed.

  Hank dove behind a barrel.

  The King shouted, “Is it supposed to do that?!”

  “Oh it’s doin’ it, all right!” Cletus yelled, sprinting forward—

  But the firework slipped from Roderick’s hands.

  It pinballed across the square, whistling like a drunken banshee, ricocheted off a statue, shot through an open window, and—

  BOOM!

  Half the square filled with smoke.

  A second firework lit itself from the sparks.

  Then a third.

  Then the whole crate caught.

  Tom dragged the King behind the fountain for cover. “My liege—this appears to be escalating!”

  Cletus stared in horror as the fireworks launched in every direction—upward, sideways, directly into Hank’s laundry line.

  The sky filled with colorful chaos.

  The ground filled with running villagers.

  Roderick Strongarm yelled, “THIS WAS NOT IN THE DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS!”

  Cletus yelled back, “BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS!”

  The fireworks kept exploding.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The King coughed through the smoke. “Cletus… at what point does this reach

  level?”

  Cletus pointed as a firework bounced off a the blacksmiths’ anvil and shot into a chicken coop. “Uh… I’d say about .”

  Back in the Present…

  

  Cletus pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “And then,” he said darkly, “once the fireworks stopped tryin’ to murder everybody… I came out here to check on Kotetsu.”

  He gestured at the empty courtyard.

  “And THIS is what I found.”

  Tom nodded solemnly. “So the theft happened during the chaos.”

  The King stroked his beard. “A cunning move. They waited for a distraction.”

  Cletus cracked his knuckles.

  “Well. Joke’s on them.”

  He stepped toward the street.

  “Because I’m about to find the sorry son of a—”

  Tom coughed loudly. “Ahem.”

  “— who stole my truck.”

  He spat, eyes blazing. “And I’m gettin’ my baby back.”

  The forest road curved like a ribbon into the hills, and the Duke rode atop the cart as though it were a royal chariot. Kotetsu — the mighty metal beast — was lashed to the flatbed behind him, its tires secured, its suspension groaning with every bump like it resented being kidnapped.

  The Duke didn’t care. His heart was swollen with the golden warmth of

  “Ah, yes,” he announced to the trees, lifting his chin to catch the breeze in exactly the right dramatic angle. “History will remember this day. The day Duke Falanrackthresis Beuragardio Starcrest outwitted a barbarian, rescued a princess, and secured his rightful place among the great heroes of the age.”

  He paused, savoring the shape of his own name in the open air.

  “It is truly remarkable,” he continued, voice swelling like a man conducting the soundtrack to his own legend, “how effortlessly I embody nobility. How naturally the mantle of greatness sits upon these shoulders. How—”

  A muffled groan sounded behind him.

  The Duke blinked, then turned with exaggerated dignity.

  Princess Liraeleth glared at him from inside the wagon, arms tied neatly — almost politely — behind her back. A length of silken rope (the only kind the Duke would his men to use on royalty) held her ankles. Her hair was immaculate because even kidnapping dared not muss it.

  Her expression, however, was murderous.

  “Untie me,” she hissed.

  The Duke smiled warmly, like a benevolent idiot.

  “Ah! You’re awake. Excellent! I was worried the sedative cloth might have been a touch too gentle.”

  “It wasn’t gentle,” she seethed. “It ”

  He nodded proudly. “Imported.”

  She attempted to kick him, but the ropes turned it into more of an aggressive wiggle.

  “Duke Starcrest,” she said with a voice sharp enough to fell a lesser man, “this is kidnapping.”

  He scoffed. “Semantics. I prefer ‘preventative royal safety relocation.’ Very common in noble circles. Practically tradition.”

  “Untie. Me. Now.”

  He straightened, hands clasped behind his back, and let the road carry his words like an audience’s applause.

  “When the town sees that their precious metal beast has been liberated by a man of my vision, and that I—Falanrackthresis Beuragardio Starcrest—have safeguarded the princess from imminent peril, they will weep with gratitude. The King will be forced to revise his estimate of me. Poets will inscribe my name on—”

  A soft sound at the wagon flap cut through his self-address like a clean blade.

  Sallientheria slid inside as if she had always belonged to the curtained darkness. Her dress whispered; her eyes glittered like a promise of trouble. She didn’t bother with theatrics. She stepped to the Duke, folded one long-fingered hand, and stared like one inspects a particularly amusing insect.

  “We are being pursued,” she said plainly.

  The Duke’s smile faltered into a polite question. “Pursued? By whom? The entire town? A particularly zealous bard?”

  Liraeleth’s head perked so fast her bound wrists rattled. “Cletus?” she asked, hope and venom braided in the syllable.

  Sallientheria’s mouth quirked with something like pity. “Not he, my dear. Your other companion.”

  The Duke blinked. “The other—companion? You mean—”

  “Raven Blackthorne,” Sallientheria supplied.

  For a moment the Duke simply absorbed the sound of that name, trying to fashion it into a threat that suited his sensibilities. It did not fit.

  “Raven?” he said, tasting the word like it might be a new spice. “They are but one, are they not? A solitary dramatist? My men can—”

  Sallientheria’s gaze locked on his face. “They are more dangerous than they look. Subtle. Unpredictable. And admittedly fond of theatrical routings. I will deal with them.”

  Her hand brushed the Duke’s sleeve in a gesture that did not warm him so much as entertain the notion that someone of her talents was acting on his behalf. He straightened, puffed with regained certainty, and nodded with the sort of bravado that must be pinned to a cape.

  “Excellent. Then proceed, my dear. Dispatch your delicious little machinations. I shall remain composed and prepare my triumphant return speech.”

  Liraeleth’s jaw tightened; her eyes tracked the wagons’ progress through the trees like a hawk watching a fox. “If you so much as scrape Kotetsu’s paint, Duke—”

  “You’ll what?” the Duke preened. “Cry? Protest? Demand a duel with improvised cutlery? My dear princess, you wound me with your proximity to reality.”

  Sallientheria watched the exchange with patient amusement. “You will keep her secure,” she told the men outside, voice cool and commanding. “And you will not harm the machine beyond what is necessary.”

  “Yes, mistress,” a rope-hand replied, voice small.

  The mid-afternoon was warm, but the shadows were cold.

  They suited just fine.

  They slipped through the treeline like a rumor with boots. The wagon tracks carved a fresh wound into the dirt—heavy wheels, frantic rhythm. Someone in a hurry. Someone foolish enough to think the dark belonged to them.

  The dark belonged to .

  Wind. Leaves. The faint groan of metal protesting captivity.

  Kotetsu.

  They’d stolen the barbarian’s iron beast. And something else—something weightier—because the air thrummed wrong. A gap in the world where a presence should’ve been. A silence shaped like a missing heartbeat.

  Then her scent cut through the shade like perfume spilled on a blade.

  Lilacs and corruption.

  The succubus. Sallientheria.

  The Raven’s fingers curled around the hilt at their hip.

  Someone was about to have a very bad afternoon.

  “From the moment I saw you dispatch those assassins,” Sallientheria purred, stepping from the shadow as though it had been painted there for her benefit, “I knew my whip would meet your blade.”

  Her wings unfurled in a slow, luxuriant stretch—membranes catching the light like stained glass dipped in sin. Her eyes gleamed with anticipation, hungry and amused in equal measure.

  drew their sword. Slowly. Reverently. The steel whispered, a lover’s sigh unsheathed.

  They stepped into an elegant stance—precise, balanced, theatrical enough to shame a court duelist.

  “We are shadows,” the Raven murmured, voice soft as snowfall on a grave, “born of different light. You, a flame that devours. Me, the night that condemns. Where you seduce, I sever. Where you corrupt, I cleanse. Our destinies—” they tilted the blade in a salute that shimmered— “were always going to collide.”

  Sallientheria laughed—a warm, rolling sound that threatened to melt the bark off nearby trees.

  “Oh, darling,” she cooed, sauntering closer with hips that could cause diplomatic incidents, “if you wanted to tell me I excite you, you could’ve just said so. All this poetry?” She dragged a claw along her bottom lip. “You’re trying hard to be the brooding hero I want to ruin.”

  The Raven’s eye twitched. Just once.

  “Your corruptive charms will not—”

  “Sweetheart,” she interrupted, wings folding behind her like a throne of temptation, “I could your pulse quicken when I said ‘whip.’”

  The Raven lunged.

  Steel flashed; her whip cracked in reply—lightning meeting lightning. Sparks burst as blade met leather-laced demon magic, shockwaves rattling the leaves overhead. She danced back, laughing; he pressed forward, silent and deadly.

  She snapped the whip—he slid beneath it, carved upward. She pirouetted around a killing stroke, tail lashing with wicked grace. He kicked off a tree trunk, came down like a falling star; she caught the blade on her bracer, grinning with too many teeth.

  For a heartbeat, they locked eyes.

  Predator and predator. Fire and night.

  Then the forest exploded again as they collided—steel, claw, whip, and shadow in a flurry that sent birds fleeing for miles.

  The Raven struck first. Sallientheria struck harder.

  And then the forest forgot what peace sounded like.

  Whip and blade clashed in a storm that shook branches overhead. Neither gave ground; neither to. She lashed from impossible angles—over, under, behind. slipped through openings like a shadow that had studied the same dance. The fight became its own rhythm: crack of whip, ring of steel, the hiss of breath, the thump of boots on earth.

  Minutes bled into more minutes.

  Then those became hours.

  The sun crawled across the sky, burning into late afternoon—then toward the edge of evening—while the two of them tore a private warpath through the trees.

  Sallientheria panted, hair clinging to her cheek, wings flicking embers of fatigue with every movement. “You… are durable,” she groaned, blocking a strike that should have disarmed her but only dug her heels into the dirt.

  The Raven’s shoulders rose and fell in sharp, disciplined breaths. Their cloak hung in tatters, one sleeve sliced open from shoulder to wrist. “Darkness,” they rasped, parrying a whip strike that cracked inches from their throat, “does not tire.”

  “Oh please,” she snarled, swiping sweat from her brow with the back of one clawed hand, “you’re sweating.”

  “I am… ,” they corrected with strained dignity, lunging again.

  Hours more slipped by, measured not by time but by exhaustion.

  The forest floor became a patchwork of gouges, slashes, scorched earth, shattered branches. The whip’s magic left glowing scars across the soil; The Raven’s blade carved holy lines through corruption.

  Twilight settled in, soft and purple.

  Both fighters stood swaying.

  The Raven’s breath came ragged now. Sallientheria’s wings drooped, trembling at the edges. Neither could land a decisive blow; neither would retreat.

  Finally, Sallientheria staggered, catching herself on a tree.

  “Well,” she wheezed, wiping a streak of blood from her lip and tasting it with a surprised blink, “I haven’t had a workout like this in a century.”

  The Raven—leaning heavily on their sword, chest rising and falling like a forge bellows—answered:

  “Your sins… are many.”

  “And your cardio,” she snapped back, “is better than advertised.”

  Their stares locked again, both furious, both begrudgingly impressed, both too tired to deny it.

  A tense silence stretched… then the approach of horses.

  Sallientheria heard it first.

  “We’re done here,” she said with a smirk that barely hid her exhaustion. “My idiot Duke needs me to keep him alive until he inevitably does something catastrophically stupid.”

  The Raven straightened, blade lifting weakly. “I will stop you.”

  “Not today, sweetheart.” She flicked the whip once—more for form than threat—then dissolved into a swirl of violet flame and shadow.

  The Raven tried to give chase.

  Their legs disagreed.

  They collapsed to one knee, breathing hard, watching the last embers of her exit fade into the trees.

  “A stalemate…” they whispered to the darkening woods. “Unacceptable.”

  But unavoidable.