Smoke hung in the air, thick with ash and sorrow. Adolfo's body laid still, cradled in Lillian's arms. His eyes were closed, his face strangely peaceful for a man who had just laid down his life. Lillian knelt there, unmoving. The world around her felt distant, muffled, drowned under the weight of grief. Her hat had fallen off. Her eyes, wide with disbelief, stared at the blood staining her hands. She did not even feel the pain in her body anymore where the vines had cut her. She just… could not move.
"Adolfo…"
The name barely left her lips, just a whisper.
Not far from her, the Pumpkin Man cackled again, spinning slowly in the chaos he had sown, arms stretched as though welcoming applause.
"Does the cowgirl cry for her beast?" he sneered, his carved grin impossibly wide. "Will it rot you from the inside while I feast? Does grief taste better than fire, I wonder?"
He began to approach her slowly, but before he could take another step. Blanchette roared. It was a sound of pure, unfiltered rage. Her fire sword flared with a brilliant crimson heat, nearly white at the edges. She charged blindly, her fury sharpening her every step. Every ember at her blade's edge danced like the breath of a volcano.
"You want to taste it?" she growled. "I will show you what burning alive feels like."
She leapt at him, her sword moving in savage arcs, each swing carving through vines and smoke. The Pumpkin Man, caught off-guard by her sudden wrath, had to backpedal, summoning up walls of bark and twisting root to block her blows. However, she carved through them like paper.
Albus watched from nearby, breathing slowly, his gold eyes calm, radiant with control. He stood firm amid the swirling storm of death and magic, letting Blanchette's rage burn unchecked. She needed it now, but he also needed to think. React. Strategize. The Pumpkin Man, forced onto the defensive by Blanchette's ferocity, began hurling more pumpkin-shaped explosives, each one bursting into spores and snapping tendrils. Blanchette ducked, rolled, countered. She was a blur of light and heat. Still… he was fast, and the battlefield favored him.
From the earth, the vines and roots twisted, reaching for her legs, her arms, her throat. One caught her ankle and flung her into the air, but Albus moved then, raising his palm and summoning a searing pillar of gold flame, severing the root and catching Blanchette midair with a burst of kinetic light that slowed her fall.
"I have got you," he said gently as she landed and steadied herself.
Blanchette nodded, panting, her rage undiminished. Nearby, Lillian had not moved. She still knelt, one hand over Adolfo's chest, her other trembling over her holstered revolver.
"He saved me…" she whispered. "He saved me."
The Pumpkin Man's gaze flicked toward her. He raised one hand, vines curling between his fingers.
"You mourn. Let that grief become your coffin."
He slashed a command, and the vines lunged toward her, but Albus was faster. He hurled a sphere of radiant fire, intercepting the attack mid-air. The explosion of heat scattered the vines like ash.
"Come on, Lillian. You have to move!" Albus shouted, but she had no reaction.
He turned to Blanchette and said, calm and focused, "Keep the pressure. I will protect Lillian."
Blanchette nodded once and charged back into the fray, her flames now dancing around her body like a wildfire incarnate. The fight burned with grief still heavy in the air. Still hanging over Lillian like a storm cloud, and the Pumpkin Man knew it.
"He is dead, little cowgirl," he sang. "And you will go with him."
"I will show you death!" Blanchette shouted angrily.
She never was that angry before. Grief impacted her in a different way. It unlocked something, something far more dangerous than anger.
The battlefield was scorched and torn, layered in twisted roots, scorched grass, and shattered bark. Fires flickered in patches across the broken land, casting shadows over the smoke-cloaked ruins of what once might have been a peaceful clearing. The Pumpkin Man danced among the chaos like a specter, taunting, slashing, exploding.
Albus hurled light spears, one after another, the gold-hot projectiles slicing through vines and bursts of toxic spores. His brow was furrowed, his eyes glowing with divine fire. Every motion of his hand summoned radiant destruction, but even that was not enough. The Pumpkin Man was too fast, always moving, vanishing into clouds of smoke and reappearing with slashing roots or detonating pumpkin bombs.
Blanchette, fueled by fury and the memory of Adolfo, was a storm of fire. Her burning blade left glowing trails in the air as she slashed and spun, carving flaming X's through the undergrowth. The temperature around her rose with every step she took. Yet even her flames did not seem to slow him enough.
"I love the way you struggle," the Pumpkin Man crooned. "So brave, yet so pointless."
He threw out both hands, and the earth burst upward in a field of thorned vines, lashing out wildly. One slammed into Blanchette sending her tumbling through the dirt. Another coiled toward Albus, who blasted it away just in time, but the effort winded him. Albus sank to one knee, gritting his teeth. His fireballs flickered in his hands, dimming. The light shield on his arm cracked.
"He is too fast," Albus growled. "And… wrong. There is nothing natural about him."
The Pumpkin Man laughed, twirling through the smoke like a ghostly jester.
"Oh, my sweet radiant boy," he sneered, "what made you think nature had anything to do with me? Was it the plants?"
He suddenly vanished into the smoke.
Albus's eyes narrowed.
"Blanchette!"
A rustle, then a blur, and the Pumpkin Man appeared right behind Blanchette, a dagger of blackened vine in his hand. He lunged forward, and Blanchette barely turned in time to block with her blade. Even so, the strike sent her flying back again, crashing against a tree.
"Tired?" he whispered, now looming over her. "Good. That is when the rot truly sets in."
He raised his arm, a cluster of pumpkin-shaped explosives blooming in his palm, but before he could throw. Bang! A shot cracked the air, piercing clean through the smoke. The Pumpkin Man stumbled, a long splinter running diagonally across the right side of his carved orange mask. The glowing eye behind it sparked, flickered, and dimmed. He turned. Lillian. Standing tall. Hat pulled low. Tears drying on her cheeks. Six-shooter raised, barrel smoking.
"You talk too much," she said coldly.
For a moment, silence. Then Blanchette leapt from the ground, fire blazing along the edge of her sword. With a furious war cry, she slashed upward, and the burning blade split the Pumpkin Man's mask clean in half. Crack! The two halves of the mask clattered to the ground. However, there was no face beneath. No skull. No blood. No bone. Nothing. Where his head should have been, there was just black smoke, spilling upward in slow spirals. The body collapsed… limp… like a puppet with its strings cut. The vines withered. The pumpkins stopped ticking. The smoke began to fade. And as the carved mask halves hit the earth, they shattered like dry leaves. Lillian lowered her gun. Blanchette collapsed to one knee. Albus stood in shocked silence. No one said a word. Because what they had just killed… might not have been alive at all.
Blanchette stared at the fallen husk of the Pumpkin Man's body, still curled in a heap where it had collapsed, smoke leaking from the collar of his suit like the last breath of something that should never have breathed at all. Then, she moved. She stood over his collapsed body, her breath heaving, eyes wild with rage, and her flaming sword raised high. The cracked mask still sizzled faintly where Lillian's bullet had split it, and the empty black void beneath it seemed to stare up at her, as if mocking. A wave of raw emotion surged through her chest, a churning storm of unbearable grief and rage. She screamed.
"You do not get to rest!" she roared, her voice shaking with grief and fury.
And then she struck.
Her flaming sword lit up with a violent hiss, and she brought it down into the Pumpkin Man's chest. Once. Twice. Three times. She slashed down hard, the burning blade slicing through the empty body. Again. And again. Each strike was more brutal than the last. Ash and embers scattered into the wind with each cut, mixing with the smoke still curling in the air.
"You killed him!" she shouted through clenched teeth.
Slash.
"You killed him!"
Slash.
"He was trying to redeem himself!"
Flames flared wildly from the blade, embers spiraling into the wind with each uncontrolled swing. The body jerked under her fury, but no resistance came. The shell was just that, an empty vessel. Yet Blanchette kept hitting it like she could carve some justice from its ruin.
Albus stepped forward through the thickening smoke. He did not raise his voice. He did not flinch. He simply reached out and gently placed a steady hand on her wrist mid-swing.
"That is enough," he said softly. "Blanchette… it is over. He is gone."
She froze. The blade trembled in her hands. The fire along the sword flickered, dimmed, and finally died. She collapsed to her knees, her sword clattering beside her. She trembled. Her breath hitched in her chest. Tears streaked down her soot-covered cheeks. Not a quiet cry, but the kind that came from the core, a broken wail of someone who had lost something that could never be replaced.
"I saw it in him. I saw how much he hated himself… how hard he tried to be better…" she said, choking on the words.
She looked up at Albus, tears carving rivers down her ash-smeared cheeks.
Her voice cracked as she whispered, "Adolfo was… he was becoming like a father to me…"
She buried her face in her hands. "And now he is gone too…"
Albus did not speak. He knelt beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder then pulling her into a light embrace. She did not resist. She simply buried her face into his shoulder and let the grief take her. He said nothing because nothing would be enough. His presence was steady, strong, and she leaned into it, weeping into the ash-stained earth. The wind passed over them, cool and quiet now, rustling the leaves that had survived the chaos. Not far off, Lillian stood alone. Her back was to them. Her coat, singed and frayed at the hem, fluttered lightly with the breeze. Her hat was low, shadowing her face. Her shoulders were squared, and her revolver hung heavy at her hip. She took one step forward. Then another then started walking.
"Lillian," Albus called gently, his voice calm but concerned.
She stopped, still facing away.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
A long silence passed. Then she spoke.
"I do not know," she said, her voice barely audible over the rustling trees. "He died… saving me. He died because I froze. Because I was not fast enough."
"It was not your fault."
"Yes, it was."
She tilted her head slightly upward, staring at the sky beyond the forest canopy.
"I have always protected these woods. Always stood between danger and the people who lived here. But today… he stood where I should have been."
Another pause.
"I… I can't sit with that. Not right now."
She took a few more steps.
"Do not come after me," she added. "I need to walk. I need to think."
And she moved into the trees. Each step echoing the weight of loss. No one followed. And she kept walking. Away from the clearing. Away from the broken mask. Away from the team. Into the trees. Into the dusk. Without looking back. For a moment, the battlefield was quiet again. Filled only with the sounds of distant wind and the crackle of dying embers and the memories of the one who was no longer there.