Disclaimer: I do not own Crypt of the NecroDancer. I mean, I have my own copy, but I don't own the game. Also, all the spoilers for the Cadence storyline, so I suggest you run like a pursued goblin if you don't want those!

Dead Ringer awoke with a start. There was that one beat of disorientation, when the ringing in his brain wasn't quite so strong and he could almost remember, but then the ringing was back full force and there was nothing but the command. Today the enemy was not some lucky wild animal wandered in from above: it was an adventurer. He studied her through his crack: blonde hair, slightly shorter than him, wearing heavy metal armor and a blue bandanna, wielding a rapier whose crimson blade glimmered with magic. Some little part of him thought he might recognize her, but the ringing didn't give him time to dwell on it. Dead Ringer attacked.

She was good, he had to give her that. Of course she was- she'd survived this far, hadn't she? As he watched, she took down the dragon he'd summoned first in only two hits, then rang another bell, probably to see what it would do, judging by her fleeting expression of curiosity.

That was her first mistake. The ogre nearly smashed her flat. And after that, things didn't run quite so smoothly for her anymore. She was getting scared, sloppy, making mistakes. She misjudged a lunge, sending herself straight into a nightmare's hooves. By the time all four bells were spent and it was time for Dead Ringer to deal with her himself, her armor was battered and broken in places, several of which oozed blood. She was in bad shape.

The tiny part of Dead Ringer that recognized her screamed at him to stop, but he could hardly hear it over the ringing. The command was too powerful. He readied his hammer for the final charge.

It caught her in the chest, snapping her rapier like a twig and sending her sprawling into the wall. She slid down it, leaving a smear of scarlet, and was still.

Dead Ringer lowered his hammer and allowed himself a sigh of relief. His job was done. Any beat now he would feel the ringing command him back to sleep, ready for the next time some fool managed to penetrate this far into the crypt.

But it didn't. Instead it grew louder, louder every beat until his head felt like it was about to explode, and yet there was no command. Dead Ringer waited, in silent agony, as the ringing built to a thundering climax, until he could not help but scream-

The scream was what did it. With the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life, the bellhead split. Dorian screamed until he had no breath left to scream with, feeling his very eyes vibrating in their sockets, and then passed clean out on the floor.

When Dorian came to, he had a fog in his head worse than the worst hangover he'd ever gotten (a couple mornings after Melody died). He counted beats, focusing on his breath - in-two-three-four, out-two-three-four - until he felt some semblance of better. His warrior's instincts told him he was alone, not about to be attacked, so he took his time sitting up, feeling almost every muscle in his body complain at the movement.

When he opened his eyes, it was to a fairly gruesome sight: a wall splattered with blood, blood that was clearly human. Nothing else down here had blood quite that color, that shade of bright, vital red.

...Wait a second. What was "down here"? Why were there beats to count? His memories of the time before the ringing were in pieces, refusing to put themselves in any coherent order. His memories of the time during the ringing were almost nonexistent. Except for the final fight, the one with the young female adventurer he thought he might know from somewhere. Dorian thought back to the glimpses he'd gotten through the crack in the bellhead, when, just for a moment, he had seen her face…

Cadence.

The face had a name, and the name had a history, and the history was his as well as hers. Suddenly the memories clicked: being a child and pretending a stump was a dragon and a stick his mighty sword, being a teenager and learning that mighty swords were tougher to use than he'd thought, being a young man and meeting Melody at the bards' festival- Melody. That name had a face and a history too. The auburn hair, the laughing green eyes - Cadence's eyes - the way she sang, the way she smiled, the way she had carried and borne and helped him raise their daughter. Their daughter. His daughter. Cadence.

And she was dead.

For a moment, Dorian couldn't quite comprehend it. When he'd left in search of the Golden Lute, Cadence had still been a girl- a girl on the cusp of womanhood, true, but a girl all the same. This couldn't be the same person. It couldn't. He couldn't have killed her. That wasn't the way this was supposed to be.

But there was the blood on the wall, and the last traces of ringing in his head, and the broken hilt of a rapier lying on the ground.

Dorian didn't know how long he knelt there, staring at the remains of his last and greatest mistake. Afterward it was a haze in his memory: he might have cried, he might have just sat there with his heart like a dead weight in his chest, he might have prayed to any deity that might happen to exist to please, please let him do it over again, let him never have gone to search for the thing or at least let him have lost the fight, but nothing he did changed anything. Cadence was dead. Melody was dead. Was Dorian himself dead? He wasn't quite sure. In any case, dead or not dead or something else again, he was powerless.

And then he thought, the staircase.

There was a staircase at the end of his room, leading down further into the crypt. Hopefully, if the situation got too bad, he'd be able to get back up it again. If there was any chance at all that Cadence had been reanimated somehow, he had to take it. Dorian hefted his- no, Dead Ringer's hammer - why did it seem so much heavier now? - and descended, feeling the beat return as he did.

The room at the bottom was small, with only a single sarcophagus that Dorian made short work of. He'd been expecting something more, and he wasn't disappointed: as soon as he took out the last of the skeletons, a voice shouted, "Who's there?!"

A female voice. A hauntingly familiar one.

"Cadence?" Dorian called into the disco-lighted dark, hardly daring to hope.

She shambled into his field of vision from the far end of the room, looking a mess: her armor was gone, revealing several scabbed-over gashes in her ever-present tunic and tabard. Her hair was matted, her bandanna askew, her skin covered in the same purple splotches that Dorian's was, that Melody's had been before she died. Her eyes were the worst part, though. Instead of Melody's green, they were pits of glowing violet, with no white or pupil.

It looked for all the world like a single hit would kill her.

"Cadence…" Dorian said again, uncertain now.

She didn't respond, just took another step closer, then another. Every other beat. And then, when she was close enough, she swung at Dorian with a scratched-up old dagger.

It was a pathetic strike, really. Dorian sidestepped with ease and brought his hammer up in a defensive position. "Cadence, honey, it's me, it's your father, please, listen…" he begged, but she didn't seem to hear. She just came at him again and attacked, a weak and horribly predictable slash that Dorian caught on his hammer shaft. She swung for a third time. Again, Dorian dodged, then leapt to the far side of the room with his boots, giving himself a little space to think.

Killing Cadence, even in this broken, cursed state, was out of the question. So was leaving the crypt: he'd entered it by falling through the ground and nearly splitting his head open, so no getting back up that way. And the stairs on the other end were locked up tight. He would have to defeat her somehow to go onward.

And yet. Everything had a trick to it, but nothing had a trick where you could defeat, but not kill. Even if they did, he doubted he could have figured it out; he was an old adventurer, strong with hammer and sword but little else. If he couldn't kill her, and he couldn't defeat her without killing her...what now?

What now?

Dorian was so preoccupied with this terrifying question that he nearly forgot about Cadence. Only a reflexive flinch saved his exposed upper arm from her dagger. He leapt away again. She followed, but slowly, so slowly. He'd met slimes more dangerous than this.

"Oh, Cadence…" Dorian moaned, his voice no louder than a whisper.

He looked up at the ceiling, and was surprised to find a square hole where the exit stairs from Dead Ringer's old room had been. He tossed his hammer through it; it clattered against stone and didn't fall back down again. Good. It took him a couple tries, but with the help of his boots he managed to get his arms through the opening and haul the rest of himself up as well. Dorian sat, panting, on the stairs, as from below Cadence screamed in rage, a sound somewhere between a banshee screech and Melody yelling at him when she was really mad.

Melody. He was stuck, and now he was stuck without her. All the ten years of planning and exploration, that final awful charge into the crypt, it had all been for naught. He could not kill his daughter, not again. But if he didn't, his wife would stay dead forever.

What now? What now, indeed?

He supposed he'd have to live down here. Eat the food he'd left lying around the crypt, or buy some off that opera-singing shopkeeper, who got his supplies from the surface. Water he could get from the rooms with the temperature contrast- it would be easy to melt a little ice, then boil the water over a hotcoal until it was clean. He could bring some soft fungus down here to Dead Ringer's room to sleep on. Ladders between levels might even be possible, if he could find enough skeleton-knight lances to steal and enough string to lash them together.

It would be enough to exist on. But it would never, could never, be enough to live. Not without Melody. Not without Cadence.

In the weeks that followed, the idea occurred to Dorian that someone else might come along. The crypt might still be an adventuring destination, despite almost everyone worth their salt having heard that it was too hot to handle. Dorian discarded the thought, though. Nobody was that brave, or that stupid. There wasn't much point in hoping for something that would never happen.

Nocturna had been called a lot of things when she left the clan hideout to come investigate this graveyard. The usual things, certainly: foolish, obstreperous, even suicidal. But she'd also been called young, and untested, which she thought was absolute BS. She was no younger than anyone else they sent on investigations, and she'd been practicing her fighting skills for years.

Just because she had no actual field experience didn't mean they should discount her entirely. First time for everything, right?

And besides, it wasn't as if she had a life to risk. None of them did. If there were undead at the graveyard, she'd fit right in. Like as not, she'd be in no danger at all.

Nocturna kicked open the door leading downward. Immediately there was...what? Music? She felt her heart start to pound in her chest, something it hadn't done for as long as she could remember. It felt fundamentally wrong to stand still. Nocturna tapped her foot and let her wings bounce in time - it really was good music - which alleviated some of the feeling, and did a final look over her supplies. Cutlass? Check. Shovel? Check. Emergency explosives? Check. Belt pouch, for if she happened to pick something up on the way? Check.

Nocturna descended the stairs, moving to the unfamiliar rhythm of her own heartbeat. She'd be fine. She was an undead, entering a nest of other undead.

What was the worst that could happen?

A/N: Ah, the joys and perils of having more than one fandom...

Prompted (inadvertently) by Bill Nye the Beardy Guy on Steam. I told you I'd write this somewhere other than a comments section! ;)

Crossposted on AO3 (first fic in the fandom there, actually!) as SassyDragon.