It bit into the ruined doorway arch like cracking ice.
The figure was already gone though, dispersing to a puff of vile, green mist before reappearing on the other side of the tavern.
Lox’s body convulsed on the floor, leg kicking out in spasm as Hamish and Sammy knelt over him—pressing their palms to his chest, his shoulders; not bearing to touch the wide, empty space between his forehead and the wooden boards beneath.
As Sludge had leapt forward from the card table, it had felt the wood around it disintegrate to splinters.
Now, Halbrecht stood above the wreckage, his armour pulsing a deep red.
A blood red.
The Lord of Dunden flared his nostrils and wiped his hand across the air into a fist. As his knuckles clasped tight, a pool of hot red liquid danced from Lox’s still retching body, followed by shards of bone and skeletal fragmentations. They slid out from him like loose flesh on a well-poached fish.
“Gods above!” Screeched Sammy, as he stood up from the empty sack of skin beside him.
The slick of blood, bone, and flesh, shimmered across the tavern like some obscene constellation, twisting and furling into a perfectly round sphere. It seemed to pulse like a beating heart.
Th-dunk, th-dunk, th-dunk.
Although it looked like it could—any second now—the sphere of blood did not rupture immediately.
Instead, it hovered there in the centre of the Sunny Buckle like some grotesque lantern, swollen and glistening, its surface pulled taut by whatever violent geometry churned within. Each pulse rolled outward through the tavern in a thick, bodily th-dunk that tremored through floorboards and table legs and bone alike. Tankards danced. Benches creaked. Ale sloshed in sloppy arcs across the scarred oak.
Halbrecht stepped forward and stood shoulder to shoulder with Sludge, neither ahead of the other, neither yielding an inch of ground. The red glow from his armour bled across the tavern interior in harsh strokes of light, carving hard shadows into every beam and rafter. His wounded hand dripped freely, yet the blood that fell never quite reached the floor. It hovered. It coiled. It answered him like a curious serpent might writhe in its master's palm.
Across the wrecked threshold, the strange, green-misted figure watched with mild amusement, raven-feathered robes stirring in a wind that did not touch anyone else. The violet light from his bone staff hummed and crackled, casting the room in sickly putrid-green undertones.
“Go on,” he murmured to Halbrecht, voice like ice dragged over stone. “Show them.”
The sphere split.
Not outward—upward, like some unholy zipper.
A seam tore open across its crown, and from that crimson wound rose something that wore Lox’s shape only loosely, as a scarecrow might wear a coat.
It was tall. Broad. Sculpted from sinew and corded muscle woven of blood and bone. Its chest was plated in rib-like armour that overlapped in layered crescents. Its arms ended in heavy, clawed hands formed from fused knuckles and curved splinters. Where a face should have been there hung a smooth mask of red-veined cartilage, blank and featureless save for two glowing slits that pulsed in time with Halbrecht’s heartbeat.
The creature seemed oddly composed in its god-forsaken womb.
There were no twitching or convulsions. It stepped down from the collapsing sphere with a slow, deliberate grace and turned its head toward Halbrecht and Sludge.
The last remnants of Lox’s broken flesh sloughed away into mist and were drawn upward, absorbed into the construct’s frame.
Halbrecht’s jaw tightened.
“Up,” he commanded softly.
The blood creature straightened fully at his side, matching Sludge in height and presence, radiating heat and iron and some specific brand of controlled violence.
Sludge felt the warmth in its chest surge in answer.
Once again, the ledger flared across its vision.
[Allied Summon: Sanguine Warden (Halbrecht69)]
[Chivalric Code (Rank 1): Agnes, Esme, Hamish, Sanguine Warden, Sammy, Tub]
The green bastards’s thin smile faltered for the briefest flicker.
“Ah,” he breathed. “You kept that one.”
The floor beneath him blackened.
“Just the one, though?”
Vines burst upward through the tavern floor in a riot of blistered growth, thick as a man’s thigh and slick with pustulant sap. They lashed outward in jagged arcs, seeking throats and wrists and ankles indiscriminately.
Sludge moved first.
The trapper’s axe came down in a brutal diagonal sweep that severed three creepers in a spray of sap and splinters. Frost detonated along the blade’s edge, freezing cut ends into brittle white stumps that shattered with the inertia of impact.
The Sanguine Warden launched forward without a sound.
It crossed the tavern in two heavy strides and crashed into the nearest mass of vines, claws scything through green flesh in broad, efficient arcs. Each severed length of creeper did not fall; it dissolved into red vapour and streamed back toward the Warden’s body, reinforcing its frame in fresh layers of crimson sheen.
Halbrecht extended his uninjured hand and curled his fingers into a fist.
Blood answered.
From the cracks in the boards, from the shattered body of Lox that had not yet fully dispersed, from the wound in his own palm—liquid iron light spiralled outward and hardened into curved, shield-like constructs that orbited him in tight, defensive sweeps. A second gesture shaped that blood into jagged spears that hung suspended at his shoulder.
“Drive him!” Halbrecht barked.
The tavern obeyed. A pulsing, golden glow exuding from the Barston folk that called the Sunny Buckle their home; their place; their protectorate.
Tub roared and charged, axe raised. Hamish and Sammy flanked him, boots thundering over splintered boards. Agnes snatched a fallen stool and hurled it with feral accuracy. Esme ducked low, dragging a barrel into the assailant’s path as the green commander glided forward through his own creeping growth.
The feather flocked assassin did not retreat.
Instead, he lifted his staff and brought it down with a sharp crack.
The tavern floor exploded upward.
Stolen novel; please report.
A ring of thorned bone erupted in a circle around him, jagged spines forming an instant barricade that skewered Tub clean through the thigh and sent him crashing to the floor in a howl of agony. Sammy vaulted the rising spikes, barely clearing their tips as they snapped shut behind him like the teeth of a bear trap.
Sludge charged straight through, as Halbrecht screamed, “Morgrog—fuck you!”
The axe met bone in a thunderous collision that split the barricade clean in half. Frost surged outward from the impact point in branching veins, racing along the thorned ring and locking entire sections into crystalline stillness. The Sanguine Warden slammed into the frozen barrier a heartbeat later and shattered it apart in a shower of white shards and red mist.
The assassin, Morgrog, flickered backward in a smear of green.
Then—the blood spears at Halbrecht’s shoulder launched as one razor sharp lance. They screamed through the air in tight formation, trailing red vapour. Morgrog’s staff spun in his grip, violet light forming a rotating disc that deflected two of the projectiles in bursts of crackling energy. The third struck home.
It punched straight through his left shoulder. Green fire spat from the wound. Raven feathers ignited in a flare of light and ash.
Morgrog’s head snapped toward Halbrecht, eyes blazing with cold fury. A smile creeped across the corner of his mouth, as words on the ledger skittered across Sludge's vision.
[Regional: Dunden is under siege!]
"NOO! The Nor—” screamed Halbrecht, hand outstretched.
His cry was cut short as the staff slammed into the floor again, and this time the marsh answered.
Through the shattered doorway surged a wave of green radiance thick as fog and heavy as tidewater. It rolled across the tavern in a suffocating sweep, extinguishing lingering embers and devouring red light where it touched.
Sludge braced.
The warmth in its chest flared brighter, pushing outward in a golden corona that wrapped the Barston folk in a thin, trembling shield. Tub, bleeding heavily, felt his panic harden into stubborn defiance. Sammy’s shaking hands steadied. Hamish set his jaw and stepped forward again despite the pain screaming through his ribs.
The Sanguine Warden planted itself in front of Halbrecht and crossed its clawed forearms.
In an instant—green light crashed into red.
The impact drove the Warden back half a step, claws gouging trenches through the boards. Its surface blistered and steamed where the marsh-light burned against it, yet Halbrecht stepped in close and drove both hands forward.
A beam of condensed bloodlight erupted from his open palms. It struck Morgrog square in the chest and forced him backward through the wreckage of his own thorned barricade. The tavern filled with a roar like tearing metal as red and green energies collided in a churning column that split rafters and cracked beams.
It mattered not to Sludge, as it charged into the ensuing storm.
Lumberjack skin flaying and splitting in the light, the Trapper’s Axe rose and fell in heavy, relentless arcs, each strike aimed for the bone staff that anchored Morgrog’s vile magic. Frost and violet collided in detonations that flashed white-hot. Splinters of bone flew. Sparks cascaded across the tavern floor.
Morgrog snarled and twisted the staff free, bringing it down in a sweeping counter that clipped Sludge across the ribs. The impact felt like being struck by a falling tree. Sludge staggered, boots carving furrows through splintered wood, breath driven from its lungs in a ragged grunt.
However, the green bastard had miscalculated his own body weight. The Sanguine Warden answered almost instantly.
It seized Morgrog by the wrist. Crimson claws closed around green-veined flesh, and for a heartbeat the two forces locked in raw physical contest. The Warden’s grip tightened. Bone creaked. Morgrog's free hand snapped forward and drove two fingers into the Warden’s mask.
And then—a sickening green light detonated at the point of contact.
The Warden’s head snapped back. Cracks spidered across its featureless face. Red vapour vented from the fractures in hissing plumes.
Halbrecht roared and stepped in close, red constructs orbiting him in violent arcs. One hardened into a broad, curved blade that extended from his forearm in a shimmering edge of coagulated light. He drove it forward in a savage thrust.
Kkksssssttttt!
It punched through Morgrog’s side with a hiss.
Green ichor sprayed across the tavern wall.
Morgrog screamed, a sound that peeled paint from beams and sent the Barston folk clapping hands to their ears. The marsh-light surged again in furious retaliation, blasting outward in a radial shockwave that hurled Halbrecht and the Warden back across the room like ragdolls.
Sludge caught Halbrecht before he struck the far wall.
They hit the boards together in a skid of splinters and dust. A sickening, slick sound followed. The red aura around Halbrecht flickered, guttered, then flared again in stubborn defiance.
“On him,” Halbrecht rasped. “They're sieging us. If the Accord falls then I'm fucked. Fucked fucked.”
Sludge rose at once.
Across the tavern, Morgrog straightened slowly, green fire licking from wounds that refused to close fully. The bone staff in his hand had cracked along its length. Violet light seeped from the fractures in thin, unstable streams.
He looked far less amused now.
The Sanguine Warden rose again as well, its mask fractured, one claw partially dissolved where green light had eaten into it. It rolled its shoulders once and advanced without hesitation.
The Barston folk rallied, cantankerous as they dusted themselves off and blew blood-snot from their nostrils.
Sammy darted in low and drove his axe into Morgrog’s thigh. Hamish followed with a wild swing that glanced off the raven-feathered robes and drew another hiss of pain. Agnes snatched up a fallen poker and jabbed it at the bastard's ribs. Even Tub, pale and shaking, dragged himself forward and buried his blade into a trailing vine to keep it from snaring Halbrecht’s ankle.
It felt as if every strike mattered. Every heartbeat counted—coagulated blood-shambler included.
Morgrog lifted both hands and the tavern ceiling split.
From above crashed a rain of bone shards and thorned tendrils, cascading downward in a lethal storm. The Sanguine Warden leapt upward into the falling barrage, body expanding as it absorbed fresh streams of blood from the shattered boards and the wounded around it. It grew broader. Heavier. Its claws lengthened into scything crescents that carved through the descending storm in a frenzy of red arcs.
Sludge moved beneath the fleshy shield of gore and offal, like some nightmarish big-top tent, and reached Morgrog again. The axe came down in a two-handed swing—quicker than before—aimed square for the centre of the staff.
It connected with a clonk; the crack that followed resounding like a cannon blast.
The bone staff split fully in two this time, ripping and retching like shredded bark in a storm. Violet light erupted from the break in a blinding column that speared through the tavern roof and into the night sky. The shockwave flattened what remained of the scarred-oak bar and hurled bodies in every direction.
Sludge hit the ground hard and rolled, it's vision swimming.
When it forced itself upright again, lumberjack ears ringing, it saw Morgrog standing amid a vortex of uncontrolled green and violet energy, robes in tatters, flesh seared and smoking.
He was laughing. Cackling, even.
“You really left Dunden for some Jiggy Palm?” he rasped. “So cringe, Hal.”
The broken halves of the staff dissolved in his hands and reformed instantly into a new shape—longer, darker, carved from something older than bone. The violet light deepened to a colour almost black in its absence of light.
Halbrecht rose unsteadily beside Sludge, clasping at his side.
Blood ran freely now from beneath his armour. Red light leaked from cracks in his breastplate and dripped onto the floor in thick, luminous drops that did not evaporate as before. Each breath he drew sounded heavier. He coughed—a trickle of black-blood pooling in his spit.
The Sanguine Warden staggered once as well, its form destabilising at the edges where green fire had eaten into it.
Morgrog raised the reforged staff, and the marsh answered again with a roar.
A column of concentrated green radiance descended from the torn roof and slammed directly into Halbrecht.
The impact drove him down to one knee.
Red light exploded outward in desperate defiance, forming layered shields that shattered one by one under the relentless pressure. The Sanguine Warden threw itself into the beam, bracing alongside its master, claws digging into the boards as it tried to divert the torrent, but it was gone as soon as it stepped inside—red flesh swirling like a beef tomato in a blender.
Sludge charged into the heart of it, Morgrog braced to the wooden frame with his staff raised aloft.
The warmth in its chest blazed like a forge door flung wide, pushing outward against the green deluge, bolstering the Barston folk who had not yet fallen—giving Halbrecht a fraction more space to breathe… or so it hoped.
The axe rose with an icy aching.
And fell.
And rose again.
Each strike against Morgrog’s limbs, and body, and cackling face, sent fractures of ice, bone, and writhing tendrils scattering across the wreckage of the Sunny Buckle.
Black feathers flocked through the air like ash.
Halbrecht screamed, part in fear, part in fury, and forced himself upright against the beam that sought to crush him. He drove both hands forward and unleashed everything he had left in a final, incandescent surge of bloodlight that met Morgrog’s column head-on.
[Regional: Dunden has fallen!
The tavern had become a crucible. Red and green tearing at each other in a hideous pyre that lit the marsh for miles around. Dunden, Skaggad, and god knows what beyond that.
And in the centre of it all, Sludge snuffed it out as the axe came down heavy on Mogrog’s skull—punching his forehead clean in two like a split melon.
[Notoriety: 20/20]
[Ding! Soul Fragment Level Up!: Gal-ghuruk, the Cold Prince]
[Ultimate Ability: Chionic Tomb (Rank 2)]
[Active Ability: Rimeforged (Rank 2)]
Sludge felt the ice in it's tentacular veins pulsing like pipes in winter, but before it could wrench its axe free from the gore and the heavy wooden boards beneath, the feather-armoured corpse faded to nothingness in a soft green glow.
Behind it—a voice rattling and rasping between breaths that sounded like some stuck pig.
“S-s-ser… Sludge,” wheezed Halbrecht, blood bubbling in the corner of his mouth.
“I-I’m d-done, Sludge. That's me… done.”