The two Earth-mages accompanying Messy, Rayni, Petra, Marra Falk, and the dozen-odd armed men and women with them Shaped, and the center of the stone barrier keeping them from entering the square withered and crumbled apart with the hiss and tinkle of sand and small stones falling to the cobbles. The scene that greeted them as they peeked around the remains of the wall was one of confusion and destruction.

  The Waystone still stood, goddess be praised. The building that was the administrative heart of the Splinter, however, did not. The tall stone building lay fallen, its bricks, timbers and roofing tiles piled and scattered halfway across the square. Beyond it figures moved about urgently, too indistinct in the darkness for Messy to even Inspect but shouting in alarm. And while Messy couldn’t see what was going on, Rayni and Marra could.

  Of the two, Marra was the first to speak, a pained whisper of, “Tober! I can’t see Tober!”

  Looking at the dark mass of the collapsed building between them and the Waystone, Messy expected Marra to run right on out. She was prepared to try and stop the woman from doing just that. Marra, however, was not that reckless, no matter how upset she might be. She might be her husband’s secretary now, but Messy knew that she was an experienced Delver, and Delvers could be careless or experienced, but seldom both. Instead of rushing forward, Marra took command.

  As they all ducked back behind the remaining slabs, she whirled on Rayni and Petra. “You two! You’re in a Party with Tober, correct? Is he alive?”

  “A moment.” There was a momentary pause, and Petra’s eyes unfocused as she looked at her Party roster. “Yes. Yes, he is!”

  Marra let out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the gods. Then let’s keep it that way! We don’t know where he and Pirta are, but they can’t have left the square!”

  Messy’s thoughts again went to the rubble. She couldn’t have been the only one, as Marra continued, “It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that the captains are… somewhere under the remains of Administration. But we can’t dig them out with enemies holding the square. We need to get Karti and the Earthbreaker out. Ideas?”

  “Um… we may not have to do anything,” Rayni said. She was poking her head out, looking across the square.

  “What’re they doing?” Messy asked in a low tone as Marra joined Rayni.

  “They’re taking cover,” Marra said. “Some behind the Waystone, some behind more raised stones. With their backs to us. They’re not even looking this way. Someone’s attacking them from the other side!”

  “So… do we wait them out?” one of the men asked hopefully.

  “Not bloody likely,” Marra scoffed. “Here’s the plan! We’re following the wall, keeping to the edge of the square with the rubble between them and us. If they see us coming we take cover, and hopefully they retreat down either Main or dawnward Cross. Otherwise we hit them in the back. Soft steps now, and follow me!”

  “Oh, gods, I wish I had my bow,” Rayni whined as she hefted her hand-axe, letting some of the others follow Marra before she did the same.

  “You’ll do fine,” Petra whispered, following along beside her. “I’ve seen you with that axe, and you’d better believe that Ana’s been talking you up. You’ve impressed her!”

  Messy stayed silent, but didn’t blame Rayni for either her desire to stay at a distance, or for her choice of position in the group. Messy liked and respected both Mistress Falk and her husband, and she had a great deal of respect for Captain Pirta, but she had too much to look forward to to take any worse risks than necessary on their behalf. And while she felt awful for thinking it, both her new Abilities from Duelist and her own reason told her that if they were going to actually charge those mages, she’d be much more likely to get into melee range if she wasn’t at the front of the line.

  Unless the earth opened up and swallowed them all or a building collapsed on top of them, of course, but she’d rather not think about those possibilities.

  At roughly the same time as that idea occurred to her there was a ping from somewhere down the square, followed by an odd buzzing and a soft tchuck as something embedded itself in the wall no more than a foot ahead of Messy’s eyes.

  It was a crossbow bolt. Rayni had to grab Messy by the arm and drag her along as she stopped and contemplated that if that thing had been a foot to the left, or if it’d come a fraction of a second later, she would’ve been dead before she knew it.

  She added “getting hit in the head by a random projectile” to the things she’d rather not think about.

  “I can see them now!” Rayni whispered as they all took cover behind the rubble. “Whoever they’re taking from, I mean. Mistress Falk, look! There, on the roof of the temple. See them? Two people with crossbows!”

  “Idiots!” Marra spat silently. “It’s not enough they put both of the guild’s captains in danger; they’re going to get the Wayfarer’s temple torn down beneath their feet!”

  “Wouldn’t they have—” Lavret, the male Earth-mage in their group, started to speak, but fell silent when Marra’s head snapped around to look at him.

  “No, go ahead,” Marra said. “What were you saying?”

  “Ah…” Lavret hesitated but then, seeing that Marra was being sincere, said, “If they were going to tear down the temple, wouldn’t they have already?”

  “Maybe,” Tesvi, his female colleague, said. “Or they’re completely tapped out. Setting aside that they’re right next to the Waystone — I mean, I know it’s not all the way back to how it was, but I still can’t imagine how they dredged up the mana for the barriers, or to destroy Administration — that Shaping must be strenuous as all hell.”

  “Don’t you feel it, though?” Lavret countered. “There’s too much mana in the air! Much more than earlier today. Breaking down the barrier back there was way too easy, wasn’t it? They have that Grand Summoner, right? The elf guy? Maybe he’s doing something to the Waystone?”

  “As horrifying as that thought is,” Petra said tersely, “is it possible that they’re just trying not to make an enemy of the Wayfarer in case they survive this? Rayni said that they’re mercs, so they’re probably not Sentinel fanatics. And besides, does it matter? Mistress Falk, are we attacking or not?”

  Marra hesitated, one hand on the tall pile of rubble under which, for all they knew, her husband might be clinging to life, unable to do anything but wait for rescue. Even in the dim moonlight Messy could almost see the thoughts churning in the older woman’s mind. They could offer to let the Earthbreaker go. They could call a truce, and get to digging immediately, the Earth-mages and the stronger men and women in their group shifting the pile of rubble like leaves. Or they could attack, and risk losing people; risk losing everything, and leaving the captains trapped under that rubble until the crushing weight or the lack of air overcame them.

  Messy knew what her choice would be. She itched to attack.

  Whatever the Earthbreaker and his men thought of razing the temple, it was clear that their concern didn’t stretch to damaging it. From their positions behind the Waystone or stone shelters raised from the surface of the square itself, they returned the crossbow fire with projectiles of their own. Messy, of course, couldn’t actually see this, but she heard the sound of rocks crashing into the facade, the windows, and the roof tiles of the holy building well enough.

  What she could see clearly, as she peeked over the rubble, was the tall, cowering form of Karti. For his sake alone she hoped that Marra would order the attack. Messy didn’t know if she could kill an unarmed, terrified man. She didn’t think so. But the desire that welled up in her, to put her blade to his throat and see him paralyzed by fear the way she’d been at the white obelisk, was so strong that it almost scared her.

  Goddess, had she always had this vicious streak? Had the past three months changed her? They must have. That, or Ana was rubbing off on her somehow, which was admittedly not an unpleasant idea. She wouldn’t mind becoming a bit more like her angel. Not too much, though. Messy loved the woman dearly, but the casual way Ana could dispense violence was unnerving sometimes, regardless of how it excited her. Besides, Ana had the skills and the Attributes to back up her attitude, and Messy didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

  Marra leaned heavily against a broken timber protruding from the mass of rubble. Then she turned to face the people with her, and her face was hard.

  “We need them off this square. Dead for preference, but fleeing will do. I won’t pretend that it’ll be easy; I can’t Inspect them all, but the ones I see outlevel most of us. But we outnumber them almost three to one, and they’ve got their backs to us. If we hit them hard and as silently as we can we can take most of them down before they react. So don’t alert them! Are you ready?”

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  There was a soft hum of whispered confirmations. Using gestures, Marra quickly positioned people near the top of the rubble, ready to go over. Messy tightened her grip on her sword, the oiled leather wrapping already slightly slick with sweat. She looked at Petra, further up the heap and focused on the Waystone, then locked eyes with Rayni, who nodded and made a sweeping gesture hooking around south then dawnward. Messy nodded back.

  Soundlessly, Marra ordered the attack with a stab of her mace and went over the top of the rubble. The others followed close behind.

  It was only a short sprint from the scattered ruins of Administration. Reaching the mages who were exchanging projectiles with the two crossbowmen on the temple roof would be a matter of moments. It didn’t matter.

  The Earthbreaker reacted so quickly that he might as well have been expecting them. From his position behind the Waystone, the most mana-starved point in the entire Splinter, he whirled around with a cry of “Behind us!” sweeping his right hand in a counter-clockwise arc north to south. In the line that his gesture traced across the square the cobbles exploded upward, and a dense hedge of inch-thick three-foot spikes of stone speared out, jutting crazily in every direction only feet in front of the charging Bluesky guild members.

  Many of them had the reflexes to stop, or to jump. A few had the Attributes to make it count. Rayni threw herself sideways with a startled yelp, scrambling on hands and feet around the southern end of the hedge. Messy cleared the spikes, having leapt instinctively as soon as they began appearing and no doubt only making it thanks to the bonus Strength from her Class. She didn’t see what happened to Petra. The woman was stocky, but also strong. It could have gone either way.

  At least a half-dozen of their number hit the spikes, either running into them or falling short with their jumps. When the Earth-mages on their side reacted and started clearing the spikes, making them crack and wither, they were a second too late. The damage was done, and the admirably silent charge devolved into screams of pain and fear.

  Messy hit the ground running, stumbled once, turned it into a juke as the enemy mage ahead of her sent a trio of small stones her way, and kept running. The movement was almost entirely unconscious, and Messy felt a thrill at the smoothness of it, the grace with which she’d avoided the attack. It was almost entirely thanks to Instinct and Reflex, her Level 3 Duelist Ability, but she didn’t care. Her Class was as much a part of her as her arms and legs, and she’d never felt like this as a Jeweler. The things her Abilities let her do were no less real than what she could accomplish with thought and muscle, and in that small movement, in leaping that hedge and dodging those rocks that came flying at her from the darkness, she felt suddenly amazing. Invincible. Like how Ana must feel all the time.

  Goddess, how she wished that Ana could see her now.

  “Almost had me!” she laughed, her use of Charm triggering Flair and Style as she advanced. The mage made a frantic rising gesture, and a spear of stone, longer and thicker than those in the hedge, shot out between them. Messy twisted and twirled midstep. She barely avoided impaling herself, but the movement cost her as the mage launched another set of stones at her head, at closer range this time. She couldn’t react quite fast enough — one of them clipped her cheek, and she felt that side of her face explode with pain, her whole body reflexively twisting to keep her neck from taking the full force of the hit. But the pain was nothing, thanks to an Enhancement Ana shared through her Bastion ability. The momentary loss of balance was nothing, as Flair and Style let her continue forward, turning the twist into a pirouette as she came into reach of the mage and slashed out with her blade.

  In that moment she was Ana — unstoppable, graceful, and deadly. The mage blocked her slash with the palm of one hand, his skin tougher than granite, but when he tried to grab it and disarm her his hand closed on empty air.

  “Fair try,” she said glibly. She’d already disengaged and flicked her point around to the outside of his arm. Then, with her blade in a perfect line from her center to his face, she lunged.

  In the moonlight, she saw his eyes go wide for just a moment before several inches of steel slid through his left pupil and into his skull. A twist of the wrist and a jerk back to free her sword, and the man fell twitching to the ground.

  She only barely stopped herself from saying something incredibly gauche, like “Didn’t see that coming, did you?” Flair and Style might reward her for using her social Skills, but mocking a dead man was a bit too much. Besides, this was no time for standing around and being glib. The fight had barely begun, and a quick glance showed that Messy had been lucky. Her opponent had been flatfooted and facing someone who could ignore pain, and even injury to some degree. Not so the others.

  Other than Messy, Rayni, and Marra, five people had made it over the stone hedge. Messy desperately hoped that Petra was one of them. They also had their own two mages as a back line. But that numerical advantage was nowhere near as significant as one might hope. The enemy mages may be outnumbered and getting attacked from both sides, but they’d reacted to being attacked from the rear with a decisiveness that suggested at least some experience.

  To Messy’s left, at a glance she could see two dark shapes on the ground between the hedge and the plinth on which the Waystone stood. She couldn’t say what had become of the remaining three, but she could hear sounds of fighting and the crash of stone from that side of the plinth. On the plinth itself, Marra’s attempt to get to the Earthbreaker had been foiled by a man in what looked like a knee-length aketon. He was doing much like the man Messy had just killed, blocking quick, sharp blows from Marra’s mace with his hands when he couldn’t avoid them. As for the Earthbreaker himself, Messy couldn’t see him.

  More pressing — more personal — for Messy was that to her right, Rayni was in trouble. She was frantically dodging a steady sequence of blasts of some kind, being fired at her by a tall woman in a utilitarian dress of some light color, pale grey in the dim light. The mage looked relaxed, like she was just toying with Rayni for a while. Ray, meanwhile, was looking for an opening, unable to get closer lest she not be able to avoid getting hit anymore.

  Messy’s choice was easy. Besides her few levels in Clerk, Marra was midlevel in some combat Class. She could take care of herself. Rayni might be able to fall back but was stubbornly refusing to, trying to find an opening to advance. From where Messy stood it was only a matter of time before the mage stopped toying with her and she got hit, and Ray didn't have any of the advantages of extra Enhancements and increased Vitality that Messy enjoyed thanks to Ana.

  Advantages that Messy was going to pay for once the fight was over. Beneath the blanket of Ana’s Enhancement, the left side of Messy’s face was a mass of blinding pain. She could feel a wetness trickle down her neck, and her vision on that eye was going a little fuzzy, not that it was easy to tell in the dark. She hoped that Ana admired scars as much as she herself did, because she wasn’t getting out of this without one, she was sure. Goddess only knew how much worse it might get if she didn’t get healing soon.

  All the more reason to end this fight as quickly as possible. With a roar of challenge Messy threw herself toward the mage who was holding Rayni off so effectively, leading with the point of her sword.

  Too late, the danger sense component of Instinct and Reflex screamed at her to dodge something she wouldn’t see. She juked left, but stumbled as something punched her hard in the upper right of her chest, between the shoulder and her breast. Her first instinct was to shift her sword to her left hand, as her right arm spasmed. That was fine, really. With Dexterous and Sinister it didn’t matter which hand she used, and it was healing well, strong enough to hold the blade. But in the split second between when she stumbled and before she recovered herself, she thought that it was very odd. The mage in front of her had only started to turn; she wasn’t facing Messy yet. And she couldn’t see anyone else who could have thrown any rocks or shards of stone or anything at her.

  Then her peripheral vision caught first the rounded fletching and then the shaft of what had hit her, and she thought, Oh. A crossbow bolt. The idiots on the temple roof had hit her instead of the mage. She was going to have to work really hard to talk Ana down from killing both of them, and at the moment she wasn’t sure that she wanted to do that.

  Then the woman she was charging at finished turning and lazily launched a barrage of small stones at her, and though Messy twisted, no amount of Ability-granted reflexes or balance could keep her on her feet as half of them struck her, spread out from breast to hip on her right side. The only mercy, she thought as she slammed back-first into the stones, was that they’d missed the damn quarrel in her shoulder. Well, that and the fact that the mage didn’t get a chance to follow up, as Rayni came in, screaming and hacking with her axe.

  From her position on the ground as she struggled to right herself, Messy saw Rayni’s axe strike the woman between the neck and shoulder… and glance off, leaving only a shallow cut. The mage was using the same infuriating Shaping as apparently every other Earth-mage in existence. Ironskin, Ana and Tellak called it. Rayni seemed to have been expecting this, though, and simply continued forward, doing her best to bowl the mage over.

  In any other situation, Messy might have laughed at the look of surprise on Rayni’s face at what followed. She looked utterly baffled. But there was nothing funny about the way the mage grounded herself and received Rayni’s tackle, barely moving, only to grab her with one hand around the neck, the other between the legs, and lift the Huntress bodily over her head.

  There was no technique to it. It wasn’t one of Ana’s practiced throws. This was simply brute force, far more than anyone would have expected from a mage. The tall woman held Rayni above her head just long enough for Rayni’s scream to turn to a startled yelp, and then she slammed the Huntress into the smoothed stone of the plinth hard enough that the sound of bone breaking carried clearly.

  Now that she was both close enough to see despite the dim light and still enough to focus, Messy took a moment to Inspect the woman. Her label read [Human Iron Warrior (31)]. And Messy knew that she and Ray were in serious trouble.

  Messy’s side screamed silently as she forced herself to her hands and knees, preparing to rise, dodge to the side, throw herself forward, anything. She never got to her feet.

  The Iron Warrior locked eyes with Messy, and despite the dim light she could see the mix of wild grief and rage on the mage’s face.

  “You killed Thomé,” the woman spat. “I’m going to fucking shatter you.” Then, with a roar of animal fury, the melee mage grabbed Rayni’s unmoving form, lifted her to hip height, and hurled her.

  The Huntress hit Messy dead center, knocking her back and off the plinth. They went down hard, and Messy felt her head bounce off the cobbles.

  Everything went black.

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