[Adrenaline Surge]. [Adrenaline Surge]. [Adrenaline Surge]...

  Marie tried desperately to activate the Skill as the heatwave of Embris’ passage baked the surface of her skin. It had been more than an hour since she’d first used it, but still nothing happened.

  Why will you not work!

  She shook as she watched the burning genasi hurl herself at the enemy commander. He lashed out to cut her down, only to find the flaming woman whirling into the strike, latching onto his arm. His eyes widened as her molten body crashed into him.

  Embris wrapped round his hand, clutching onto his forearm with desperate strength, legs scrabbling at his waist in a vain attempt to burn him further as the genasi screamed her rage into his face.

  Ozone and ash filled the air as the superheated woman vaporised the skin off his arm and the gauntlet and vambrace he’d been wearing, and though he didn’t bellow out in pain, he whipped his arm violently in an attempt to shake her off.

  In that moment Thror and Kalminash and Braer struck once more.

  With part of his body on fire, the [Batallionlord] was too distracted to beat them back as he had done moments before, but even as he tried to scrape Embris off his arm he seemed to channel some of her heat out in a blast that forced the [Guildmaster] and [Butcher] back.

  Kalminash kept going, his axe thrumming with a power that set teeth on edge, but even then light shone from the commander’s shield to dazzle him.

  The berserk fighter ate a hit from the shield before the next sent him crashing to the ground, and as Thror and Braer struggled to push in closer, the commander, the meat of his sword arm now charred black from hand to neck, began punching his assailant into the ground, pounding Embris’ head into the rock-hard earth of the hilltop as she clutched on to the fused mess that had once been his hand and the hilt of his sword.

  [Adrenaline Surge]. Come on. [Bonebreake-

  Before she’d even finished forming the thought Marie felt the Skill activate, and in that moment a small part of her still able to comprehend the situation realised two things: firstly that her Skill hadn’t abandoned her; the adrenaline had been saturating her system the entire time. Secondly, she’d made a terrible mistake.

  She rocketed towards the [Batallionlord] too fast to fully embrace the stupidity of the move. The sight of Embris’ body being pulverised against the hard-baked ground had snapped something inside her.

  But the southern commander could only defend against so many at once.

  With one arm on fire and two Gold-ranked threats charging into him, it wasn’t a surprise that he ignored Marie entirely.

  Her sight blurred and her skin blistered as her body streaked past a dazed Embris still clutching onto the ruin of the [Batallionlord]’s hand, [Minor Elemental Resistance] not able to protect her from the intense heat. She was past it in a heartbeat though, and reaching for something else…

  …an amulet that was around his neck.

  [Artefact Appraisal].

  Marie had no idea what it was, but she knew how valuable it was.

  And anything that valuable to him was worth denying him.

  She scrabbled for the dangling pendant, and as she careened off his breastplate, something in her shoulder breaking from the impact, she felt it brush against the palm of one hand whilst the other grabbed onto the chain.

  [Keen Grip]!

  Skin tore as she ricocheted off the enemy commander, but she kept a grip on the amulet, and even if it was a powerful artifact, the chain it hung off was simple metalwork. Compared to the force she exerted on it with the speed she was moving, it didn’t stand a chance.

  It gave with a slight tug, and she flew, trailing blood and tiny silver links, until Omesia snatched her out of the air with a stomach-wrenching lurch that stopped her sailing out over the ranks of [Soldiers] that were beginning to press back in.

  Reeling from the sudden deceleration, she caught a glimpse of the mad fight against the commander as the retired adventurer set her down.

  Embris had managed to wrap her legs around the [Batallionlord] and he’d fallen to one knee as the white-hot genasi burned him to the bone.

  Thror and Braer pushed back in as Kalminash, now a hulking brute eight feet tall, struggled to get up.

  A spear flashed out as Dusty Brow risked a Skill to strike from ten feet away, but the [Batallionlord] caught the shaft under his arm and twisted to throw her into the side of Gil’s cart.

  His shield punched out into Thror’s shoulder as the [Guildmaster] swung his morningstar for the commander’s one good leg. Marie heard the cracking of bone and the huge tabaxi let loose a howl of pain.

  The morningstar fell from the Thror's unresponsive hand and the leader of the southern forces dropped his shield to catch it. Marie would have screamed if she'd been able to process it all as as Kalminash launched himself back into the fray, and the [Batallionlord] swung out with the weapon to cave in the side of the berserk man's head.

  Kalminash died almost instantly, his horned helm crumpling into his skull from the force of the blow, but as the light left his eyes, his arms and the rest of his body wrapped around the stolen weapon and dragged it from the [Batallionlord]’s blood-slicked grasp.

  Suddenly contending against the weight of the dead berserker, the commander reeled and angled the rest of his swing, releasing the weapon and the corpse to foul Braer’s assault, and in that moment as he knelt, exposed, one of the retired adventurers and one of Algar’s Hunters darted in to attack.

  But they’d underestimated the level of the man.

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  A backhanded-blow laid the adventurer out cold, and a headbutt broke the neck of the allagi.

  Embris was barely conscious as he repeatedly slammed her into the ground, but before he could loosen the genasi’s grip for good, Lady Kypria called out.

  “[Knowledge Transference: A History of Albraxi and its Military Conquests].”

  It was a desperate attempt - all her other Skills used.

  The man slowed perceptibly for a split second, swaying as a torrent of information rushed into his head. In the opening, Braer strode back in, cleaver held high, as Thror used his one responsive arm to prise his morningstar from the body of Kalminash, face filled with a terrible fury.

  Functionally one-handed and barely able to stand, the [Batallionlord] shook of the librarian's Skill and faced the citizens of Wayfarrow, but even if he was outnumbered, the [Guildmaster] and [Butcher] were the only combat-capable high-levels left to face him, and neither were in great shape themselves, and as Embris finally lost consciousness and fell next to the dead Aelind?, the southern officer managed to stagger to his feet and brandish his sword, held in little more than a skeletal hand covered in strips of burned flesh.

  A rictus grin flashed on his face as he wavered on the top of the hill, eyes wide and wild.

  Then Gil levered himself down from a badly battered cart and took a single step forwards, face drawn and sweating.

  “[Purchase Debt], [Apply Leverage].”

  The enemy commander collapsed to his knees-

  -and a blur left the place where Thror had been standing.

  Marie blinked against the shockwave of air, and as her eyes opened she saw a veil of bloody mist hanging in the night air.

  The commander was on his back, unmoving.

  The scene resolved as her exhausted brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing.

  The commander’s body twitched, chest caved in, broken ribs and pulverised organs visible through the gaping wound, and the dark-furred [Guildmaster] was breathing heavily half a dozen paces past with blood dripping from the head of his morningstar.

  Everyone was silent for a long moment as the gathered men and women digested the turn of the tide. Then, seeing the last and most powerful of their leaders laid low, the southern army finally broke, and the [Soldiers] that had encircled the hilltop turned and ran.

  A dozen adventurers began to pursue, but as the spectre of death they'd been facing loosened its grip, more than half of the men and women of Wayfarrow collapsed to the ground in pain, relief and grief.

  Marie fell to her knees, too numb to feel the pain of the impact.

  Her body sagged as the adrenaline finally began to fade, and as it did so the reality of the situation and the closeness of the corpses on the hillside began to assert themselves and hr body spasmed.

  A minute later, Marie staggered back to her feet, hugging her arms tight to her chest to suppress the tremors, leaving the vomit-spattered ground as she subconsciously sought the reassuring presence of those that still lived.

  Lived?

  That was perhaps too generous a term. It suggested a vigour and health that was lacking amongst the people that surrounded her.

  Survived. We survived.

  She gravitated towards the towering figure of Thror, one arm dangling limply by his side, morningstar resting head-down on the ground beside him. Braer, Lady Kypria and Gil all stood with him, surrounding the body of the fallen southern commander.

  A handful of others were arrayed around them. Omesia for one. Another of the retired adventurers cradling the body of Kalminash. Embris, conscious but too dazed to register what was happening yet.

  Sirrochon was half way down the hill, limping as he pursued the fleeing soldiers along with the other adventurers still caught up in his need for vengeance, but Algar was sitting with Ashe and Ulfran and the few of his hunters that still lived, heads bowed in mournful remembrance of their dead.

  A wheezing cough made her jump as the ruined body of the [Batallionlord] twitched.

  He is not dead yet! How can he live through… that?

  The four high-level citizens of Wayfarrow were keeping a watch over him as he bled out from injuries that would have killed a normal person in seconds. The sight of the cavity of his chest and the sickly-sweet stench of the blacked ruination of his hand turned her stomach, but she’d already voided its contents.

  She looked away, focusing on the stars in the sky above as she listened in on the others.

  “What do you suppose he was here for?” Braer sounded as exhausted as she felt. “Were they coming to take the town?”

  The rich tones of Gilded Paw were less laboured, but the tension and stress were no less obvious.

  “There’s no logic to it. Who would want Wayfarrow? And why pose as [Bandits] for all this time?”

  “It’s more likely there’s something out here they wanted. A resource? Or to deny us something that comes from the southern road? Do we get anything specific from there [Councillor]?”

  Thror ignored his broken arm as it hung, keeping his other hand tight on his morningstar as he monitored the fallen foe.

  “I don’t have the Class, Thror; I’m only a [Merchant]. But no, there’s nothing special we get from those routes that we can’t get anywhere else. It’s just the fastest and most cost-effective way t-”

  “Hold on.” Braer’s voice cut off the rotund tabaxi. “He’s saying something. Watch out for a Skill.”

  “If he had one left he’d have used it before this. Lady Kypria, can you understand him?”

  Marie closed her eyes as the [Chief Librarian] lamented her lack of proper translation spells or Skills. She could just about make out the pattern of sounds wheezing from the remnants of his mouth and lungs.

  "Eu... di... a eles... que dev... deviam... me... dado... avent... n?o... sold... Leal...dade... n?o... ser... pros... mor...tos..."

  Lady Kypria cursed quietly in frustration.

  “Something about he needed to tell them… he wanted to tell… loyalty of the death? The dead? He was loyal to his death? I’m not sure.”

  A low growl emanated from Thror’s throat.

  “It is no matter. There’s nothing to learn from him now. Embris, do you want to finish it?”

  Marie couldn’t help but glance from the corner of her eye as the woman sat up, staring blankly at the corpse of the elf next to her - a fragile looking body in death, facing the stars with unseeing eyes.

  It took her long moments to move, but no one rushed her. Then the fire genasi, skin now resembling cooling lava rather than than the heart of a star, nodded. She still hadn’t gotten to her feet, and in that moment she didn’t need to. Marie watched her lean forwards and press red-hot hands into the face of the southern commander, and heard his flesh pop and sizzle and one of his legs spasm against the hard-baked ground, until he stopped moving altogether.

  She scrunched her eyes shut and pushed everything from her mind and stumbled a few feet down the hill.

  He deserved it. He led them here. He killed…

  She dry-heaved again.

  When she finally stopped, the others had retreated back from the hilltop and were sitting down around. Not with her, or with each other, but finding a space to rest for a moment, to begin to process everything.

  “A few minutes at most, then we need to regroup. If the [Soldiers] rally…”

  The thought of another fight did nothing to help her nausea, but Thror’s words shook something loose inside her - as if she had needed the permission to let herself rest when surrounded by the remnants of battle - and she began to feel her breath, to slow it. To relax her muscles. To unclench her fingers.

  That stung.

  The pendant she’d snatched from the commander fell to the floor, along with a few tiny links of metal that had been embedded in the skin of her hands. She hadn’t realised she was still holding it, but for the time being she let it lie on the blood-soaked earth and just breathed.

  As the remnants of the adrenaline finally drained from her system, the damage she’d taken started to filter through, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain that flared up all over her body, the few fleeting moments of relief leeching away as the reality of what she’d been through made itself known.

  Deep cuts on her hands from the biting of the chain. Feet and legs on fire from the abuse of running so far and so fast. Arms covered in lacerations and burns, even [Thick Skin] ripped by any one of a dozen weapons or Skills. Weals and bruises from a hundred blunt traumas she’d suffered.

  Her shoulder was the worst though. If something wasn’t broken, it was at least fractured or maybe dislocated-

  No, I can move it. It must be a fracture.

  That thought reminded her of another set of broken and fractured bones, and against a wave of loss and weariness that washed over her, she began searching the hillside for the one set of remains that didn’t belong to a humanoid creature, but before she could take more than a few steps, Thror’s voice caught everyone’s attention.

  “Eyes up. Chiritta’s returning.”

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