Chapter 9

  “Jetflame means I pierce you with fire.”

  Hitasa’s eyes fixed on a smudge of dirt marring the wooden plank just below her face. She heard the sizzle of Jean Castreier’s spell. She heard Sitoa’s body slump into the pillory. But all she saw was the smudge and the memory of Petaa’s sheepish face as he turned away from her just before the Wolf Brigade crashed through the door to her workshop and took her and Sitoa away.

  The moment played in her head over and over. Hitasa willed it to end with Petaa facing her, speaking the words she most wanted to hear. “I love you. I’m with you. I will never betray you.” But in every recall of that day, he always looked away, and the Wolves always left him behind when they took her and her brother.

  But that couldn’t be how it had happened, so she tried again to change her memory.

  “There, are you happy?” Castreier said. She heard the scaffolding creak under his boots. “I made it quick.”

  He took another step, and Hitasa knew he was looking down at her. She felt the accusing finger pointed at her head.

  “Your brother is gone,” he whispered. “I’ll send you after him now, but I’ll be sure to burn the bodies, so you don’t meet in the forest.”

  A flash of rage coursed through her body. Who was he to take her brother from her? What gave him the right to decide their eternal future? She had to stop him. She had to do something. The words she had been writing just before Petaa gave her away to the Wolf Brigade echoed in her ears: “Dignity was our ancestors’ weakness. It is all they left for us, so we must make it our strength.” No one had read those words yet. No one would ever hear them. They would die in her mind, never to be shared.

  But the rage was not enough to dislodge the despair settled in her heart. That anger slipped uselessly from her final breath. She could not speak. All the mana had been drained out of her. No pitiful words of power would defeat this enemy of her people. Her brother had always been stronger, more stubborn. But he was dead, and she hadn’t even looked to watch his spirit slip away.

  Finally, she craned her neck to meet the glare of the human who despised her so much and his finger that would end her life.

  “Jetflame means–”

  Hitasa’s eyes landed on Castreier just as a figure in brilliant blue armor exploded out of the crowd below and slammed into the human with enough force to blow him off the scaffolding and into the brickwork of Telman’s big town den on the other side of the plaza.

  The scaffolding shook. The building behind it crumbled under Castreier’s impact. Whether the effects of Silenceria still lingered or the people in the plaza were just shocked, no one said a word. The Elite members of the Wolf Brigade surrounding Hitasa did not move.

  The blue-armored newcomer stood next to her and stared at the damage his blow had delt to the town den. A man’s voice came from beneath the figure’s helmet, “Holy shit. I think I killed him.”

  In response, two words escaped Hitasa’s lips, words she hadn’t thought she retained the energy or intention to say. They flowed out of her anyway.

  “Probably not.”

  She fainted.

  ***

  “Probably not,” the female elf said, and then she went limp.

  Considering Dalex had used Castreier’s body as a cannonball to blast a massive hole through the side of the sturdy building across from him, it seemed unlikely he could have survived. Still, the man could use magic, so all bets were off.

  “Good to know,” Dalex said.

  The armored beastkin still on the scaffolding drew their weapons, ripping swords from scabbards and pulling axes from slings. One stepped toward him, sword pointed at his breast.

  “In the name of our God, the Winged Inferno, identify yourself and prepare to die!”

  Dalex briefly considered giving an alias, but that wasn’t his style.

  “My name is Dalex of the Expedition 7,” he called, loud enough that the crowd below probably heard him. “I have to warn you; I killed a giant chameleon in the forest earlier and that injured my psyche a lot worse than killing your boss just now. I’m guessing killing you wouldn’t bother me either.”

  Behind the beastkin leader, two of his fellow guards exchanged glances. Dalex wondered what the look meant.

  Their leader roared, “Our lord Jean Castreier is not dead!”

  “So, you think so, too?” Dalex raised a hand to the sky and shouted, “{Skull Anchor}!”

  A cloud of {astral mortar} billowed out of his hands, forming into a double bladed adamantine greataxe just like he had seen in the blueprints of his {inventory}. It hung in the air for just a second, glowing in the afternoon gloom, and then fell into his gauntleted hand. He took the lower haft of the axe in his other hand and braced the weapon across his torso, blade toward the beastkin.

  “If Castreier makes another appearance,” he breathed, “we’ll have to see about that.”

  A pulse of confusion went through the soldiers in front of him. They stared at the axe in his hands. One said, “He didn’t define the spell.”

  “Our blades cleave through steel,” the leader shouted, rallying his squad. “He holds his misty axe like a novice. Let us cut him down and be done with it.”

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  Dalex expected he looked like an amateur. He had never touched an axe before, let alone a great axe. But he figured with the right armor and enough strength, even an amateur could bowl over a few lower-level mobs.

  The beastkin leader bellowed, “This sword freezes hearts!” He charged Dalex head on, lifting his sword for a heavy strike. A cool wind blew off the weapon. It glistened with frost in the cloudy light. Behind the leader, the other beastkin shouted similar announcements, and Dalex realized they were publicizing their weapons for him, just like the shopkeeper had described, perhaps lending strength to their blades. One sword lit on fire. Another dripped a vile-looking liquid from its edge. An axe glowed red along its single blade as if hot.

  Time to swing away.

  Dalex hefted his axe and swept at the leader from the side, leaning back and adding centrifugal force to his swing. The elite beastkin soldier saw the axe coming from a mile away and pivoted his sword to block it. Dalex watched how the parry was supposed to unfold. His axe would be easily deflected, leaving the leader in the perfect position to thrust forward and stab Dalex in the chest. No doubt, the magic blade would pierce the adamantine or deliver enough of blunt force trauma to knock Dalex out of the fight. All laws of momentum, force, and skillful combat dictated their brief duel should play out exactly like the lead beastkin intended.

  But, somewhat to Dalex’s surprise, his axe shattered his opponent’s sword into a hundred fragments and connected blade-on with the beastkin’s side armor. The armor crumpled and Dalex sent him rocketing off the scaffolding, flying away at a perpendicular trajectory to his boss, slamming through the wooden back wall of another building. Screams echoed from the next street over, so he had probably traveled a good distance beyond that.

  The other beastkin soldiers slid to a stop, their weapons raised but without as much killing confidence left in them.

  Dalex whistled, setting the head of his axe down on the platform beneath him with a heavy thud. He rested one palm over the weapon’s pommel and raised his other hand to his brow, examining his handiwork. “I thought for a second that was going to cut him in half. Lucky guy. You fellas wear some tough armor.”

  He rolled his head to take in the remaining beastkin on the scaffolding. “Do you want to call it quits? I’ll take these two elves and get out of your hair.”

  They stared back at him, frozen in indecision. None of the more lightly equipped guards below had bothered trying to mount the platform to join the brawl. Of course, the elves hadn’t attempted to intervene either. Everyone seemed shocked into inaction, save the biggest badasses in the plaza, and Dalex was starting to realize he might be the baddest ass of them all.

  Confidence rampaged through his veins. He had always been sure of his own character as a human being. On the other hand, he had never felt even the slightest confidence in his physical abilities. His {far realmer} enhanced body magnified by the power of his armor changed everything. It felt good; so good that his conscious mind started sending messages that maybe it was time to cool down. But he couldn’t do that yet. He needed to get the surviving elf and her comrade’s body out of harm’s way.

  Another of the beastkin soldiers stepped forward. “In the name of our God, the Winged Inferno,” she began, shakier than her leader, “prepare to die.”

  “I admire your stick-to-itiveness,” Dalex said, picking his axe back up. “Bring it on.”

  The beastkin attacked all at once, roaring animalistically. To Dalex’s untrained eye, they moved quickly and with a carefully crafted strategy, incorporating their entire squad. Two rushed at him. Two more came from either side, attacking in sequence so they would strike at the exact same time. Dalex couldn’t deflect every blow, so he didn’t try. If his armor could stand the chewing of a giant chameleon without breaking an adamantine sweat, these weapons couldn’t touch him.

  He leapt into the embrace of their swords, swinging purposefully with his axe. He didn’t put as much force into the sweep this time. The blow still split the beastkin woman’s weapon in two and knocked her off the scaffolding. She hit the walkway of the plaza hard enough to crack the stone. Her charging companion dodged back just in time to avoid the rest of Dalex’s swing, but he took a step forward, raised Skull Anchor up high and then hammered it down on the evading beastkin’s head. The top of his helmet wrinkled, crushing his ears and stopping just short of caving in his skull. His feet broke through the scaffolding platform, and he crashed down to the ground below.

  The two flankers reached Dalex half a second later. One stabbed at him from the side with a sword. The other swung an axe at Dalex’s hip with all his might. Both weapons hit the adamantine armor and glanced off, showering the platform with sparks and setting the wood alight.

  Dalex rotated, smashing the pommel of his axe into the head of one of the flankers and knocking him out cold. The other, he gave a hefty prod to the belly, pushing him to the edge of the scaffolding where he came to a stop, holding his stomach and gasping for breath.

  A voice shouted, “Ignomous means missile of fire!”

  A bright light bloomed in Dalex’s peripheral vision. Something hot and solid rushed toward him. It splashed against an invisible barrier a foot from touching his armor, bursting into flames that quickly dissipated in the cool air.

  One final beastkin soldier stood toward the far edge of the platform. He held out a hand toward Dalex. It smoked from the fireball he had just cast. That wasn’t a publicized weapon. Was it some kind of dedicated magic that worked on the same principle?

  Dalex said, “{Blunderbuss}” and the axe in his hand instantly changed forms, shimmering into the large-bore projectile weapon. He squeezed the trigger and a lower yield of the pulse that had killed the chameleon hit the beastkin square in the chest, blowing him off the scaffolding like the others before him. Dalex twirled the blunderbuss around so he could blow on the tip of its barrel.

  He let the weapon vanish into mist and then started stamping out the various fires on the platform before they could grow too large. Once he was done, he stood straight and observed the mess he had made. Only two beastkin remained on the platform, both down for the count. None of the others he had kicked out of the arena had attempted to ascend to challenge him again. As far as he could tell, none of them were dead, though he knew he must have broken some bones and fractured a skull or two.

  A cheer erupted from the elves below. They chanted his name along with two others, Sitoa and Hitasa. They pressed in toward the legs of the scaffold and the ramp that led up its side. The beastkin guards holding them back broke and ran. Most of the beastkin civilians in the plaza chose that moment to leave as well.

  Dalex walked to the pillory with the dead elf and ripped the top half of the wooden device off, snapping the iron latch and freeing the corpse from its perpetual bow. He gently laid the elf’s body on the platform and then freed his companion as well.

  Before any of their fellow elves could make it to the top of the platform, someone shouted Dalex’s name again, voice full of alarm.

  And then Castreier’s voice returned, thundering across the plaza to echo over the surrounding buildings.

  “YOU!”

  Dalex looked up to see the man standing in the rubble of the building that Dalex had used him to partially destroy. His finger pointed at the scaffold, taking in Dalex and the bodies at his feet. The man’s hair was frazzled, but his clothes looked unmarred by rips or dust. Were Castreier not at the heart of a crater, Dalex would have thought nothing had happened to him.

  “JETFLAME MEANS…” Castreier screamed.

  “Welp, time to go,” Dalex said, snatching up the two elves both living and dead and throwing them over each shoulder. The enhanced strength of his armor and new body made it as easy as shouldering two kit bags.

  “I PIERCE YOU…” Castreier continued to chant.

  “{Fly},” Dalex said, and he shot off the scaffolding.

  He didn’t hear the rest of Castreier’s spell, but a second later the top of the platform disappeared in blinding flash. Dalex hoped none of the elves he left behind were caught in the searing bar of flame. He soared into the sky, over the town’s palisade walls and toward the forest, leaving the enraged human behind.