Maccain and his two undead stood in the rubble, confidently facing the Funny Bone. Screams rang from all around as window shutters opened and closed. Fast approaching boots stomped on stone and wood.

  Jerry forwent his control of the mice and unstrapped himself from Axehand’s back, stepping on the deck with his own two feet. The plan had already failed; they had been revealed, and not just that, but a terrifying opponent had shown up out of nowhere, too.

  This is ridiculous… I just poked some fun, and he actually chased us all the way here? Come on!

  The situation looked grim; Jericho, by himself, was an opponent they’d barely been able to match before, and now he was flanked by several powerful allies.

  “Say,” Jerry asked, staring at Jericho, “weren’t you dead?”

  “He was,” replied Maccain, a Herald of the Wizard Order, “but now he’s mine.”

  “I suppose he also can’t speak for himself.”

  “He does the killing; I do the talking.”

  “I see.” Jerry pursed his lips. “And I don’t suppose that big fellow is here to help us carry the furniture either?”

  The cyclops grinned, revealing a row of oversized, sharp teeth. He slapped his greatclub on an open palm—a single blow could probably tear the airship apart, let alone them.

  “Yeah, thought so.” Jerry frowned. “Come on, man, it was just a bird. How much free time do you have?”

  “It was my minion, and you destroyed it. That was an insult to my honor.”

  “An innocent bit of fun.”

  Maccain frowned. “This is not about you, necromancer. De-animate your undead and surrender. Then, we can talk.”

  “That’s not happening,” Jerry answered quickly. “If I de-animate them, they will lose all their memories.”

  “So?”

  “So, that’s not happening. They’re my friends; I don’t want them to die.”

  “Friends?” Maccain’s face darkened, the skin tightening around the scar on his forehead. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Stop repeating that delusional drivel and go find some real friends before calling your slaves that. Undead are tools; nothing more and nothing less.”

  Jerry crossed his arms. “I beg to differ.”

  “You’ll beg, all right. Gorgon, Jericho; get them.”

  Jericho and the cyclops stepped forward, their dark eyes shining with a hint of crimson. They stared like wolves at sheep. Both possessed clearly superhuman strength, and each of the two, by himself, could probably annihilate them all—except for one skeleton.

  A heavy form landed before the two zombies, barely reaching up to their shoulders. Jerry’s breath caught in his throat. “Get the ship started, now!” he hissed at Boney, who rushed below deck.

  Gorgon and Jericho had paused, gazing with puzzlement at the skeleton who’d stepped up. A confident grunt burst at their faces—and, at its source, Axehand faced down these two opponents, crimson flames burning bright in his eye sockets. One axe hand was aimed at each of them, and his intentions were clear—he would take them both by himself.

  Jericho’s eyes narrowed. “Laughable,” he said.

  “Is that your death knight? It’s decent.” Maccain laughed. “Too bad I have two.”

  Facing their mockery, Axehand only stood there, skull raised high and ready to fight.

  The cyclops chuckled—a predatory, guttural sound—and raised his Axehand-sized greatclub. He considered Axehand a toy; crimson flames lit up his eyes, and his face darkened, producing a predator of nightmare. He stepped forward.

  Crimson flames lit up in Jericho’s eyes as well. He bent his knees and stretched his hands out, each able to snap a normal person in half like a twig. With a heavy breath, he said, “I’ve been looking forward to this. I will tear you apart as you did to my brother.”

  Facing the two oversized opponents, Axehand did not reveal the slightest hint of fear. With a grunt that meant, “bring it,” he crossed his axe hands in front of his chest, entering a battle stance. The wind turned chilly, then, and the stars just a bit darker.

  Jerry gulped. Axehand couldn’t even handle Jericho—now, he wanted to face them both at once? It was suicide!

  “Come on,,” he told the Herald, “you’d go this far over some jest?”

  Maccain chuckled as he shook his head. The two giants, each towering far above Axehand, attacked together.

  ***

  Axehand scraped his axe hands against each other. He could feel it already—the manical, intense state of war. How everything fell away and only the enemy remained.

  At heart, all lumberjacks were warriors. Facing two enemies at once, each superior to himself, Axehand couldn’t help but grin in exhilaration, his bone jaw creaking as he forced it into shape. They seemed surprised, but not intimidated. He did not care.

  People spoke all around but Axehand ignored them. He only had two purposes in life—slay the master’s enemies and cut down trees—and he was all out of trees. Crimson flames shining, his entire body churned like a furnace as he charged forward at speeds a normal human could never achieve.

  Jericho—the earth spirit—grinned back.

  “Come, Lom,” he said. “Let’s end this.”

  Axehand’s name wasn’t Lom. It hadn’t been for a long time.

  He charged into Jericho with great momentum, bringing his axes sideways as if on a tree—and roots rose from the ground, blocking Axehand’s swings and getting chopped apart in midair.

  The moment the roots gave way, a massive fist appeared behind them, slamming into Axehand’s shoulder—that he raised to block—and throwing him a few feet back. The skeleton grinned. This was nothing.

  In fact, a surge of elation crept up Axehand’s spine; at the moment of impact, he’d felt it—Jericho’s power wasn’t infinite this time. The earth, his mother, had abandoned him. Axehand could finally take him on.

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  Or so he thought.

  A whoosh in his ears was the only warning. Axehand jumped with the flow, allowing the massive greatclub to smash into him. It wasn’t a serious attack; it was made off-hand, the same way a human doesn’t use all their strength to slap away a fly.

  And yet, that disinterested strike was enough to launch Axehand across the courtyard and through two manor walls, landing inside the room of a terrified maid. She screamed; he grunted.

  Some part of him cracked, but he didn’t mind. He stood back up, shedding planks and rubble off his body as he rushed back to the courtyard. The moment he stepped in it, the nature spirits regarded him anew, and Axehand felt the cyclops’s fighting spirit awaken.

  In his eyes, Axehand was no longer a fly; having endured one hit, he was now a real enemy, or at least a worthy challenger. The cyclops turned his whole body toward the skeleton, and his disinterest was replaced with knuckle-whitening fervor and a manic grin of flat, bulky teeth. Jericho frowned, narrowing his eyes at Axehand.

  “Sturdy,” he commented. “Next time, I’ll make sure you stay down.”

  Axehand had been blown away after trying his hardest, and the enemies were just getting started—he was vastly underpowered but did not care. He was a lumberjack, and no matter how sturdy the trees, he would take them down.

  A voice came in his soul. The master ordered him to be careful, to protect himself first, but Axehand disregarded the order. He grunted a challenge. The two giants regarded him evenly, and then all three of them rushed at each other.

  Around them, everyone else was fighting, too. Things were heating up, but nobody dared to disturb Axehand’s battle, and he didn’t bother with them either.

  Thick roots speared out of the ground, seeking to entrap or pierce him, but Axehand was a menace, cutting them down in their paths or dodging them altogether. His movements were simple and powered by brute force, but they were fast, too. Despite his considerable bulk, he did not lack nimbleness—as no lumberjack should.

  The cyclops did lack it. His club strikes were cataclysmic in force, but they were slow and telegraphed, allowing Axehand to weave through them like falling timber. An axe hand cleaved the cyclops’s side, drawing a thick line of congealed blood, but the damage was minimal.

  Axehand grunted.

  Spears rose from all around him, more than before, twisting and snaking up his limbs. He shook them apart—but to do so, he stood still, and that moment was all the cyclops needed. The club found Axehand in the ribs and catapulted him away with far greater strength than before, tearing the count’s manor another hole and tossing Axehand all the way to the outer courtyard.

  Screams came from all around, along with the sound of creaking wood and groaning stone. Axehand stood up from the mermaid-shaped fountain he’d landed in and gazed at the torn walls, finding solace in the fact that, even when he was losing, he could still break wood.

  He stumbled. One rib was left in the fountain, and another was smashed to pieces, but the rest of his skeletal body had held—and, with the master’s energy pouring into him, he was slowly recovering. Good. He was going to need that, because the battle was far from over.

  And they, he thought, crimson flames burning so extreme they scorched his skull, are going to pay.

  Axehand did not mind getting destroyed. He only cared about victory, protecting the master, and pride. His previous debt against the tree-man had already been paid, but now he had a new one. Those two had humiliated him twice in front of Master; Axehand would settle the score or die trying.

  The cyclops felt more like a wild animal than a human, not inciting Axehand’s rage too much, but Jericho… Jericho would suffer.

  Crossing his axe hands in front of his face, Axehand charged through the manor, once again tearing through wood and widening the hole his flight had created. He jumped into the inner courtyard, feeling more pumped than before despite his injuries slowing him down.

  A lumberjack never stops before the tree has fallen.

  “Axehand!” Master cried out, and he could see the Billies preparing to assist him, but he grunted them away. They were too weak to help; and, in any case, this was his battle. He would win it alone or not at all.

  “Admirable!” The other necromancer laughed. “What an exquisite death knight you have!”

  Axehand could try to reach that necromancer, but he wouldn’t. He refused to obtain victory in such an underhanded manner, and most importantly, that was not his opponent to fight. He was Master’s—and Master ought to pull his own weight.

  The two nature spirits assaulted Axehand again, roots and club flying together, and this time, he was ready. When things got rough, he simply focused harder.

  New memories flitted through Axehand’s mind; memories of a man endlessly swinging twin axes through a forest clearing, the trajectories becoming cleaner with time. He faintly felt these were his memories, but at the same time, they weren’t. He didn’t care—he only cared about the axes.

  The man’s movements already existed inside Axehand, and he only needed to let them emerge. He did. His axes grew sharper, or so it felt, and they cut through the air with less resistance, following trajectories which seemed faster and blended together seamlessly. The roots were diced apart, the club was dodged.

  “Do you know who I am?” the other necromancer’s voice carried over as he shouted something. “I’m Herald Maccain Darkson of the Wizard Order. HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME! Destroy them!” Something had happened, obviously—maybe Master?—but Axehand could not afford to look.

  He pivoted around a spearing root, using an axe to barely redirect a club strike that smashed into the ground with enough strength to send stones flying everywhere. Following his rotation, Axehand buried his other axe deeply into the cyclops’s waist, drawing a scream of pain. The axe got stuck.

  Before he could pull it out, a large hand grabbed Axehand’s skull from behind, raising him in the air and smashing him hard into the ground. The stuck axe was torn away from the cyclops’s body, eliciting another scream, but Jericho, apparently, did not care.

  Roots speared out of the ground and onto Axehand’s body, trying to pierce through his ribcage and shatter it. They could not; but through the hole of his two missing ribs, they dug into his skeletal body and wrought mayhem.

  Axehand could take that. Then, a massive greatclub landed on his back with all the hatred of a wounded cyclops, burying Axehand a foot into the dirt and cracking his entire body. He was dizzy and lost—thankfully, he felt no pain, but he could sense himself grow weaker.

  It did not matter. He would fight.

  Axehand dug his axes through the dirt, tearing the roots apart for long enough to hurriedly stand. A club headed for his face, and he raised both hands to block, but the club missed as the cyclops’s face was suddenly drowned in fire. More screams rang out, as, from the opening Maccain had initially created, a troop of guards ran in, accompanied by a red-feathered man with flaming fingers.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Surrender!”

  The cyclops, easily the most intimidating creature in the courtyard, did not surrender. Instead, he completely forgot about Axehand and charged the guards instead.

  “Back off!” Maccain shouted. “I represent the Wizard Order!”

  They didn’t seem to care—the wizard’s hands glowed red again, and another person, a woman, stepped forth to meet the cyclops. His club swung, but she dodged with blinding speed, instantly finding herself behind him and stabbing his back.

  “In the name of Escarbot, surrender!” she commanded.

  “Fuck off!” Maccain roared, and the cyclops’s entire body turned red, steam escaping his every orifice and wound. He swiveled and clubbed a guard, scattering his body across the courtyard before releasing a tremendous roar.

  The wizard launched fireballs and the woman used her superhuman speed to dash around the cyclops, barely dodging his club strikes. A web of cracks spread out each time he smashed the dirt, sending rocks and dust flying and shaking the ground under everyone’s feet.

  Axehand, of course, only noticed all those from the corner of his eye. His attention was focused on his one remaining opponent, Jericho, the one who humiliated him time and time again.

  You dared grab me, he wanted to say, so I will cut you down where you stand.

  Unfortunately, he could only grunt, so he would speak with actions instead of words.

  Jericho grinned and said, “There is no army to help you this time, Lom. I will obliterate you.”

  That was an insult, and Axehand was too proud. Axes twirling, he charged, meeting a reverse rain of spearing roots. A fist barreled into his chest and threw him back, but Axehand only grunted in glee, his skull morphing into a grin.

  He’d managed to scratch Jericho’s skin just now. It felt like bark.

  As much as his opponent seemed to have the upper hand, Axehand was the world’s greatest lumberjack, while Jericho was a tree-man. This was a battle he was destined to win. He started humming a lumberjack’s song.