Durest:

  The pit trap was a failsafe. Nimra had set it up, at my request. Gareth, however, thought they could take the knight.

  Clearly, that was untrue.

  And now…

  The knight notices the pit trap and avoids it with ease.

  Thus it is over.

  He will kill me again and again until Zaman does away with me himself. I reflexively touch those scars that scour my flanks. They twist into my skin like old burns.

  The 64th Knight of Basilbane makes his approach, circumventing the leaf pile for my form.

  I close my eyes.

  Oi, idiot.

  What are you doing?

  Since when did you ever give in so easily?

  Time seems to slow. The knight takes another, bounding step. His stalactite-like metal gleams white in the sun. The purple snow flecks on his armor.

  You’ve been through impossible situations. You’ve dealt with worse.

  I take a deep breath.

  The knight comes face to face with me.

  I will not die on this God forsaken continent in the middle of nowhere.

  I still have a task to complete. An end to strive for. A war to prevent.

  A flicker of movement catches the corner of my eye. I stiffen before, with a wry smile, lifting my hand up and closing a fist.

  The knight pauses. He no doubt expects some form of magicks or otherwise, considering that I managed to counter his soulfreeze prior.

  The pause is his undoing.

  For Gareth steps behind him and smashes his hatchets into the chinks of the knight’s armor. Purple blood squelches and spatters as the knight is knocked sideways, both axes lodged into his side. Gareth doesn’t relent, ducking his head down and slamming his shoulder into the knight. The two go tumbling near the leaf pile, wrestling now like bears. The knight’s large zweihander falls to the side.

  “You know—” Gareth begins, dodging an upward punch thrown by the knight before mounting his armored foe and beginning to wrench at his armor. “You are quite annoying.”

  The knight manages to bridge up with his hips, knocking Gareth off of him. But my protector recovers quickly, dislodging one of his axes as he rolls away while simultaneously ripping off the knight’s left shoulderplating. The knight stands up as Gareth comes back with a fury and arcs the axe towards the knight’s exposed shoulder. The black, burnt-looking skin underneath pulses like a raw aching heart.

  The knight sidesteps Gareth’s blow. Then, he throws a fast counter-elbow, which Gareth leans away from. The two engage in a dance of giants, moving far too swiftly and knowingly for their sizes.

  But with every punch the knight throws, Gareth seems to dodge just before it can hit. It is almost as if he can foresee the blows.

  “I’ll give you one thing, your patterns are quite good. But not good enough—aaahhh shit.” Gareth’s back hits a large tree, making him unable to dodge the wild blitz of the knight. The tree itself heaves before the knight slams into Gareth and the big man grunts something fierce as he coughs out crimson. Two more punches are buried into Gareth’s chest before he slumps down against the bark, chest heaving, voice wheezing.

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  The knight raises his fist back for another punch to Gareth’s exposed face.

  Then comes the sharp bell-like tinkle of steel on steel.

  And the knight stumbles aside, falling for a moment to his knees. He cranes his head to look at me.

  But I don’t give him the chance.

  For I raise his zweihander once more.

  And swing it down.

  …

  Raiten:

  It begins when the birds die. Their frantic twittering pitches in a chorus of short, curt screeches. It is like the sound of a thousand flutes playing out their last notes. Rocks from the ruins smash into their tiny forms, crunching tiny bones, putting an end to their tiny tiny chirps. The viscera of the birds splatters the innermost shield in red gore, obstructing our view of what is occurring.

  Not that we need to see what occurs, for sound fills our imagination.

  The shields begin to fizzle with heat and friction as all the elements within coalesce into one mess of fluid and ichor, blood and steel and gore. We hear the screams of the Lady now drowned by the very chaos she’s engulfed in. I see her face for a brief moment as she rams her head against the upper apex of the shield, her steel vibrating against the transparency. But she is pulled down by some whipping force and we do not see her again for some time.

  A pained yet determined expression colors Kiren’s face as his hand slowly closes into a fist, fingers shaking, shields matching his grit while they push further in.

  The very crater begins to shake.

  The world vibrates.

  Metal creaks and heaves like the hull of a ship buckling against a ramming force.

  What in the hells? Just die already!

  She’s almost as stubborn as me.

  Three BOOMS!!! Issue forth from within the shields. They rattle the earth and make me stumble.

  “What was that?” I yell.

  Kiren shakes his head. “One of the shields is broken.”

  I work my jaw in utter disbelief before turning back to the shields. The two remaining ones are layered upon one another, holding within them a tornado of red and brown fluids mixed with high speed rocks and cackling little spirits. And in the center of that, somehow, the Lady persists.

  Resists.

  She must’ve broken the whip.

  I grit my teeth. The original plan was for me to be in that mess—to hold her down and endure whatever pain she endured before Kiren’s shields killed her. And nearly killed me. Of course, Kiren hated that. He told me to just wrap her arms with the whip and get away.

  I told him I would. But, that was a lie. I had planned on going through with the original idea.

  Until the dream.

  Thraevirula’s words ate at me more than I’d like to admit. That, plus the amount of regeneration I’ve had to employ so far—it all made me hesitate. Made me just wrap her arms instead of committing.

  Fucking coward. I could’ve taken it. I should’ve taken it.

  Instead, I watch as the second shield breaks in a scattering of magick essence—watch as the Lady’s silver gleam shines through all that gore and rubble—witness as she raises her free hammer hand once more and bangs it against the last shield. It cracks. Kiren holds desperately, groaning in pain.

  But she just rakes her three swords against it.

  And thus, our plan falls away. To ash and dust.

  The flitty wind sprites take their leave, their end of the bargain complete. No… it's more like they’ve had their fun and they’ll grow bored of the slaughter that is to come.

  For it will be just that: a slaughter.

  Her metal may be bent. Her body may be crooked. Her head may warble and her strength may be diminished.

  Yet the Lady stands—no, levitates even, steel bloodied crimson, face turned towards me. She slashes her blades out and a spattering of blood leaps from their edge.

  Kiren looks just about to collapse. His knee buckles. Still, he finds enough strength to grab onto my shoulder and unfurl Meteorfang.

  “Even if I die here, I won’t let her lay a finger on my sister,” he wheezes. “We’ll damage her enough that Saegor can finish her.”

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him, eyes trained on our ultimate enemy. “No one’s dying here.”

  No one living at least.

  I chuckle. Blood spits out my lip.

  I wipe it off and raise my hands in an Iron Winter stance.

  “All we gotta do, Kiren, is put the dead back to sleep.”