The Black Rose Strikes!

Dora’s claws tapped against the bars of the cell door. She kept looking at the bars and then to Lavender.

The rest of her number was down the hall, still recovering from being poisoned. Or rather, Hazel and Robert were still recovering. Balerifon had stared at her as she went down the halls.

“You are a strange one,” said Dora.

Lavender wiped her face on her shoulder and sniffled.

“It wasn’t until the Bee’s Knees that I understood it.” Dora pushed herself off of the cell door bars and reclined against the hall. “Why those three would kill for you. Why they would die for you. Even if the things you’ve promised them are impossible.” She took out a file and started working on her claws. “What is that thing you keep telling them? ‘Not impossible…’

Lavender finished the sentence. “‘Just insanely difficult’.”

“It’s stupid.” Dora continued to sharpen her claws. “But you actually believe it. And you make everyone else believe it, too. The way everyone looked at you in the Bee’s Knees! You were ready to take on fifty spellswords all by yourself like you were going to beat every single one of them in a straight-up fight, and they were so convinced you were right that they had Enfield pull that trick of his.” She admired her handiwork before adding, “Anyone can kill. But a woman who can inspire others? That’s rare.”

“…Why are you here?” asked Lavender.

Dora chuckled. “You know what they say about curiosity and cats. You interest me.” Her eyes darted around. The Adventurers’ Guild was thorough when it came to making sure people inside the cell couldn’t break out. But the spells they used to secure the cells depended on the cell’s size itself remaining constant. Any disruption to that would cause the spells to fail. Any at all… like say… opening the cell door.

“Of course.” Lavender’s voice cracked. “I’m not enough.”

Those words made all the hair on Dora’s ears and tail stand on end. “There you go again. ‘Not enough’. Lady, you were trained by a dragon! Your muscles have muscles! You won a Princess Knight Brawl! If you’re not enough, then what hope in the nine hells do the rest of us have?”

“If I was enough, then I would’ve had a knight in shining armor come through the door. I wouldn’t have spent ten years wasting away.” Lavender harrumphed. “No one’s coming to rescue me. No one ever will.”

That defeatist talk again! It was enough to make Dora want to climb up a wall. Something in her own mind snapped. Did she want a damned demonstration?! Fine.

Dora unsheathed a rapier from her side and lightly waved its tip. One yearning spell later, a black wide-brimmed hat appeared on her head with her ears poking through it.

The display did not escape Lavender’s sight. “What are you doing?”

“Alright. Maybe I’m a bit too chesty and I don’t have the shining armor. But if you’re too damn obsessed with this fantasy….” Another wave of the rapier and the claws in her free hand were enchanted with a metal desire spell. “You’ve waited ten years. Not a day more.”

"What?"

"I may not have the shining armor, and I may be a bit too busty to be a knight, but..."

Dora slashed her rapier against the cell door three times before swiping at it with her metal claws. As the metal bars fell to pieces, the magical rules of the cell immediately failed and rushed out the room in a gust of air. Dora stepped through where the door had been moments before and looked down at a stunned Lavender.

“I am the Black Rose,” said Dora with a commanding voice. “Mine is the blade that severs the threads of life. There is no foe I cannot defeat, no place they will hide I cannot reach.” She sheathed her rapier and scooped Lavender up in her arms with some difficulty – the metal locking Lavender’s hands in place was heavier than it looked. She brought her face within a hair of Lavender’s so she could look at nothing else. “And today, I have come to rescue you from your prison.”

Lavender immediately broke into tears and buried her head into Dora’s shoulder. All she could do was sob and cry, and ask a question. “W-What’s that noise you’re making?”

Dora blushed as she tried to stop purring and carried Lavender down the hall. 

-----

It wasn’t long before Dora found the others. Hazel, Robert, and Balerifon were all conscious now and surprised to see Lavender in Dora’s arms.

With a fluid motion Dora threw open the doors and – “Balerifon, what are you doing?”

“What?”

“Did they put you in that outfit?”

Balerifon ran a hand through his messy black hair. He was wearing a loincloth and a scrap of cloth that covered none of his arms and barely any of his chest. Every other inch of his body was smooth human skin. “No.”

Dora blinked. “You chose to wear that?”

“I didn’t want them to realize my armor couldn’t be removed,” he explained.

“You could have worn anything. And you chose that.”

“I was more worried about storing all of our things in my hoard for easy storage,” said Balerifon. “But I sense the magic constraining us is gone now.” He snapped his fingers, and a litany of things appeared on the floor.

Robert picked up his axe and Hazel her magic staff.

Dora nodded. “It’s a good thing you’ve all got your things. Because you’re going to need them the second we walk outside. Everyone in the Guild’s out there waiting for you.” She set Lavender down and looked at those metal restraints and jacket. “Mind you, they may not wait for us to work her free of all this and they’ve got a lot more than a lute this time.”

Lavender straightened herself out. “Music. Dora, can you reach into this jacket? There’s a pocket on my chest that’s got something.”

Dora winced. “Y-You want me to go reaching in there for your chest?!”

“Yeah.” Lavender leaned forward. “On my left.”

Dora looked to Hazel, who could only shrug. She slipped her hand into the folds of the tight jacket strapped around Lavender and started pushing her arm further in. She just needed to reach around and grab whatever was inside.

“G-Gah!” Lavender gasped.

Dora’s eyes went wide when she realized she’d grabbed something firm. She immediately let go and moved her hands up but Lavender’s breathing was ragged.

Hazel blushed as well. “Can’t you be a little more careful?”

“Not my fault this idiot has…” There. A flap in the tunic. Dora’s fingers reached inside and rubbed against something hard. She worked her herself free of Lavender, pulling out something small and unexpected. “…a kazoo? Lavender, you idiot! What good is a kazoo going to do us?”

Lavender grinned, still blushing.