Whereas I would have preferred to sit and talk, face to face, and save our union until we were safely back at the nearest inn, Lyra was having none of it.


    “I remember what you looked like, when you first found me,” she said. “A scrawny boy from the Valley.”


    She danced her fingers down my chest and pulled off my pants.


    “But you are a boy no longer.”


    “Lyra, I-”


    “Shh, no more talking. We have talked for so long. It is time to do something else.”


    “I wanted to give you something first,” I said, and I scrambled away to my pack, withdrawing the silver locket. I undid the clasp, and showed her the drawing nestled inside, before closing it once more.


    “May I?” I asked.


    She nodded, and I placed the locket’s chain around her neck.


    “Thank you,” she said. “After all you have done for me, I will always remember this first gift you gave me. Now let me give you something.”


    She pushed me to the ground and pressed her lips against mine once more. I returned the kiss enthusiastically, but this time something was different. Her lips were slightly coarse, but that was to be expected after being trapped for centuries.


    I ran my hand through Lyra’s hair and down her neck. It was still surreal to me that she was here, in the flesh, and not a disembodied voice reverberating out from my sword. There were so many times where I questioned whether there actually was a Lyra or whether the whole thing was a product of the harrowing fall into the cave where I found the sword. But now I knew-


    “You are lost in your thoughts, Mati,” said Lyra, pinching my cheek. “Be here, with me, in the now.”


    And I was.


    Eventually our bodies parted. I do not know how long we spent together, but I remember at some point the moonlight faded. However, as I lay on my back, staring upwards, its glow had returned. I looked over at the sword, which had tumbled off of the Circle at some point during the previous day and was now lying unceremoniously in the dirt. It had been my only companion for so many years, and it was weird to think that a part of it was gone forever.


    After wandering down to the water to wash her hair, Lyra fished a small bolt of cloth out of my bag before snuggling on one side of me, and I instinctively gripped the sword with my other hand.


    “We are going to have to get you some real clothes,” I said, pushing the cloth off of her chest, as I drank in the sight of her body. “As much that pains me.”


    “One night with a woman and you are already like every other man,” she said with a chuckle.


    “I think Sultrana will have the best gear for the trek across the desert,” I said, ignoring her comment. “Not looking forward to that, but at least I will have real company this time.”


    “Hmm, what?” asked Lyra, who had rolled across my body so she was now resting on top of me, her fingers running through my hair.


    “The final leg of the quest. We need to take the sword to the Hellforge. To destroy it and all of the demons inside for good.”


    Lyra pushed her head up slightly, so she was staring directly into my eyes.


    “Oh Mati, why would I want to do that?”


    In a flash, she pulled Hauteclere from my grasp with one hand, and with the other, she grabbed my ankle and began pulling me toward the Circle.


    “Wh-what are you doing?”


    I tried to wrench free from her grip, but she was having none of it. Before I knew it, she had shoved me inside the etchings of the Circle, and had begun whispering something into the sword’s blade that was just beyond my hearing.


    The air suddenly shifted, and for the second time in recent memory, I found myself unable to move my body.


    “What’s happening? Are you really Lyra? Or did the succubus consume the real you inside the sword?”


    “She wishes,” said Lyra, as she bent down and began drawing symbols in the dirt around the Circle.


    “And what I’m doing is simple. The sword needs a new center, now that I’m free. It was crafted by your great-great-great-great-I-forget-many-more-greats grandfather to trap the demoness who had been terrorizing the Valley every night for generations. Mattias was a clever smith. Without the demoness knowing, he collected traces of her. Scabs of skin here, broken fingernails there, and over many years, he gathered enough to create the necessary linkage in the sword’s core. To capture the demoness and bind her soul to it. Which he did, amazingly enough. The sword became a part of me, just as my horns or my tail.”


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I stared at Lyra, the blood draining from my face.


    “You … you don’t have horns. You’re not a-”


    “-a demon? Of course I am, my love. Why else do you think I was trapped inside the sword?”


    As Lyra spoke, two small red horns sprouted from her forehead, and red waves suddenly rippled through her tan skin. A moment later, and her face was completely scarlet, save for a silver sliver shaped like…


    “That feels so much better! The moon is so bright tonight, isn’t it?” she said, her smile now bearing a mouth full of sharpened teeth, as her non-sword bearing hand played with the tail that had sprouted from her backside. “It waxes and wanes each month, but during some cycles, it comes much closer to our little rock, weakening the boundary between this world and the home of my people, and strengthening the souls of those who pledge fealty to the lunar goddess.”


    “No,” I said, desperately trying to get my body to respond. “This isn’t right. This isn’t you. I know you. You’ve been corrupted by all of the demon souls trapped inside of the sword. We can purify them, if you’d just-”


    “That’s so cute,” said Lyra. “Even now, when the truth has been revealed to you, you are still playing the part of the daring hero, who wants so much to save the helpless girl. Well, congratulations! You played your role to a T.”


    “But the girl in the drawing I found, it was you!”


    “Oh that,” said Lyra, opening up the locket and removing the picture. “It was happenstance that you found it, but once you did, I knew it would be useful. An image in your mind to focus on, so that, when the time was right, I could create a body to match. At least for one night.”


    A small flame erupted from where she grasped the drawing, and it burnt to ash in a second as she laughed. She then walked over to each of the Crystals we had found together and marked them with similar symbols to those on the ground next to me.


    “After being trapped for so long, you’re just going to kill the person who’s the only reason you’re free?”


    Lyra finished her markings and returned to the center of the Circle to stand over my prone body.


    “Did you really think you were the first one to try to free me? I am so much older than you know. And in that time, I have not been idle. I have moved the pieces slowly in place. Sword-bearer by sword-bearer. Young, hungry boys and girls, who were itching to prove themselves, to prove their worth to those that thought them worthless. Some lasted longer than others. But all were important links in the chain of events that led to this moment right now.”


    “So you just used me?” I said. “I was just a tool to you? To be manipulated and discarded when you got what you wanted?”


    “Mati, you are so much more than that! Can’t you see? You may be one of many, but you are the last. You are the one who freed me. And I am ever so grateful for it.”


    “You have a weird way of showing your gratitude,” I said.


    Lyra knelt down next to me, and ruffled my hair with the pointy fingernails of one of her red hands.


    “Has last night already faded from your mind? None in a thousand years can boast that they have slept with the demoness Lyrazesque.”


    “Lyrazesque? There’s no demon with that name. We all learned at a young age the great demons of the Continent, and their signs, so that we could-”


    “So that’s the thing,” said Lyra, who was now straddling my body, just as she had last night. I suppressed a laugh at how much things had been inverted. “That was entirely my doing. I made the world forget about the demon Lyrazesque. And the purpose-forged sword that bears my Name. Only in your valley do they know the legend of Hauteclere.”


    She bent down to hold the blade up to my face, and I saw that it no longer bore the familiar block-letter etching of Hauteclere. Instead, in a messy red script were the letters of Lyra’s full name. The final indignity, I supposed.


    “How?”


    “Long ago, when my name still inspired fear in the night, the first of my heroes went on a ‘journey.’ Book-by-book, scroll-by-scroll, she dutifully collected almost everything that was ever written about me. Until the night that her lodging suddenly went up in flames and she died a horrible death.”


    Lyra laughed, and it sent a chill down my spine. Gone was the warmth that we had shared over so many adventures, and I wanted to kick myself for being so naive.


    “Another half-dozen helped gather the materials necessary for the illusion charm to create the fake name of Hauteclere on the blade. And over the years, I seeded the story near your home and then cleaned up the leftover remnants whenever they arose. The last effort being just the other night.”


    “The mess in the Grand Library, that was you?”


    “No, no, Mati. That was you! It’s always been you. Your kind is always so pliable when you are sleeping, especially by a moon demoness like me. It is quite simple to rouse your body and guide it to where I want it to go. Did you ever wonder why you are always so tired whenever we were near a library?”


    Even after all I had just learned, this revelation still stunned me.


    “I knew you would find that stupid book there. It has been a burning thought in my mind ever since I had Tara the Wildfyre slay its scribe eight hundred years ago. But unfortunately for me, he had scurried the book away, along with my true nature, in the Last Ring, a place even I dared not tread until all of the Crystals had been found.”


    Her voice shifted and dropped an octave, until she sounded like an old man. “But perhaps among its most remarkable properties is that it was specifically crafted to bind its namesake, Lyrazesque the Thrice-Burned. She is still trapped inside to this day, the bond of the Eight Crystals making sure she is never released again.”


    “What-”


    “That old man lived far too long,” said Lyra. “I made Tara take great pleasure in tearing him apart. She would have made a fine heroine if she hadn’t been so ravishing. Instead, she ended up betrothed against her will to one of the idiot kings in the West. A waste.”


    “Why are you telling me all this?”


    “Because,” she said, leaning down next to my face. “You earned the right to know. For all of the help I gave you along the way, I could not have done it without you. You are different than so many others who have taken up my sword. And that is why…”


    Lyra pressed her fingertips against my forehead, and I screamed as she traced her demonic markings up and down my entire body.


    “… you will continue your journey with me, this time as my Sword, as I take the Continent.”


    “No,” I whimpered. “Please. I’d rather die.”


    “I’m sorry, Mati,” she said, as she pressed her lips against mine one final time. “But I love you too much to let you go.”


    She pushed herself up and rubbed her hand over her bare stomach, which now sported a small bump.


    “And besides, I wouldn’t want you to miss this.”