Anyways sharing this here for my fellow LaHoF freaks because someone in the comments asked me who would win a fight between Wels and Hels if they were actually on equal footing and that's actually a topic I've thought about extensively in the making of the fic because it's important to the themes and such so:
Quick and simple answer, assuming they were equally matched both physically and mentally/emotionally, this was just a fight for the sake of a fight and didn’t carry any of the other baggage that their conflicts throughout this fic do, Hels is going to win that fight 9 times out of 10.
Okay. now the long and drawn-out thematic explanation for the quick simple answer.
Wels and Hels are both really good swordsmen, and part of the reason for that is that they both come from similar tournament fighting backgrounds. I think, at a certain point in Wels life, back before he got picked up by the hermits, the two of them could have been on fairly equal footing, Wels could’ve won about half of those fights instead of just one. The problem then is that all of their encounters are within the confines of hermitcraft. I honestly don’t think the place Wels came from, where he did his fighting, was all that much kinder than where Hels did his fighting back home. But even if Wels knighthood didn’t really solidify as a part of his identity outside of character until his time on Hermitcraft, when he had something of his own to protect, the actual skills attributed to that knighthood, that protection, were much less necessary for him on Hermitcraft. He’s still a good fighter, one of the best on Hermitcraft, but there is a harshness, a precision, a desperation that is lost when you are no long defending your life every time you pick up a sword, when it becomes incidental, or a symbol, or a thing you use to spar with your friends rather than cut down your enemies. Wels has had time to soften in his years on Hermitcraft, and Hels has never had that privilege. Hels could’ve killed Wels 1000 times over since his arrival on Hermitcraft, the fact that he doesn’t until this point in the story is important because it’s a choice, not a failing.
He hasn’t killed Wels because he hasn’t wanted to. He has made threats, and played out fights, and he has let Wels beat him every time because he is trying to play a character, because he thinks that language of storytelling, owing to his performances as a tournament fighter, are a language Wels is in on, a way to get through to him. Wels is not in on it, because he is not immersed in that life the way that Hels is, and so when Hels plays the villain Wels takes it as fact, and no change Hels makes afterwards changes that idea in his mind. So, when Hels does finally start trying, and it becomes obvious that Wels is outmatched, would be outmatched even if he hadn’t been wearing himself thin for weeks, it’s a shock to Wels even if maybe it shouldn’t be.
This disparity of skill is actually a big part of Wels struggle throughout the story with guilt, self-worth, his knighthood, and the ability to accept help. Because Wels thinks Hels is horrible, and he also knows that, at least in certain aspects, Hels is better than him; in the discipline of his violence, in his execution of it, in his adherence to his knighthood, solidified by hardship rather than comradery. Wels spends the fic denying himself the ability to reach out to others and accept help because he has convinced himself that if Hels can do all that as a lone actor, he should be able to take him on, defeat that evil, as a lone actor. He sees his softness, his connections as weakness in contrast to Hels’ isolated skill. What he fails to see (until the end of the fic at least) is that those connections are his strength, not his weakness, that Hels’ failing is that all he has is himself, and his desperation, and his anger. He too can only run himself ragged for so long before making a sloppy mistake, and unlike Wels, he has nothing and no one to fall back on.
