Katherine took a step forward, but Luna caught her elbow without looking. “Wait.”
“Cute commander—”
“Wait, Kath. Mila, army.”
Mila was at her shoulder. His voice was firm, and his eyes had not left the line of Death Knights. “Doan-Commander. Doctrine assault. Mage Columns to focused fire. Heavy infantry by neck protocol. Begin.”
“Sir.”
The order rolled down the line.
Where the volleys had been wide and long across the wall, they tightened now. A single Column, the Lieutenant calling cadence, and a focused stream of fire poured into the southernmost Death Knight for ten unbroken seconds. The plate began to glow.
The Wolf Banner advanced.
Two Files, eighty soldiers, polearms forward, shield wall locked. They reached the burning Death Knight at a measured pace. “Neck. On three.”
Eighty pole-tips went up.
“Three. Two. One. Strike.”
Most skipped off plate. Eight or ten found the seam.
The Death Knight came apart slowly, over perhaps two full seconds, the head separating, the shoulders folding, the body collapsing into its own armor like a coat dropped on a chair. The mage Column dropped its volley and shifted to the next target.
Luna had counted two soldiers down. One had taken a backhand from the third death knight. One more had been caught by a wide swing of the second Death Knight.
Two soldiers.
She made herself watch, and she made herself count. She was the one responsible. Skeletons kept attacking, and the army kept defending. The second Death Knight burned. The polearms went up. The strike landed. No casualties.
The third Death Knight burned. The polearms went up. The strike landed, and at the last second the Death Knight caught a polearm and pulled the Lieutenant inside its guard, and one soldier went down before the seam opened.
“Three down,” Mila said.
“The fourth—”
“Lv.43. The senior. He has been watching.”
The fourth Death Knight stepped forward.
It moved one stride out of the threshold, and the violet of its eye-sockets sharpened, and its greatsword shifted into a guard pattern Luna had not seen on the other three.
“Sir,” Ostan said quietly. “He’s reading us.”
“Kath.”
The grin behind her was instant. “Yes!”
“This one. No Glorious Fight. Save it.”
“Cute commander!” Katherine clapped her shoulder hard enough that the mantle flared. “I save! Big save! You see! Now I cut!”
She was already moving. Greatsword off her back, aura coming up in a slow red wave that washed the scorched stone at her feet in heat-shimmer, the air around her thickening into something the soldiers in the front rank stepped back from without being told.
The Lv.43 saw her coming and adjusted its guard.
The two of them met in the cleared ground between the Banner and the keep.
Luna did not watch all of it. She heard the first exchange, a shock of greatsword on greatsword that cracked the air, then the slower rhythm of two heavy weapons in single combat, and she heard the moment Katherine’s aura found a seam in the Death Knight’s guard because the Death Knight grunted.
Then a long, clean cut. Then silence. Katherine turned, blood on her pauldron and grin intact. “Done! Big one easy. Aura good day.”
“Reasonable,” Mila said.
The threshold of the keep was clear.
—
Mila turned to Luna. “Lady Lunaris. This is the time.” She looked at him. “The army holds the courtyard. There is still cleanup—wild undead in the perimeter farms, archers we have not yet pulled off the inner walkway, the last few caster cells in the keep’s outer rooms. These are tasks for the Doan. Mages will burn whatever mana they have left at long range. No one rushes. No one goes alone.”
“Mila—”
“The keep is yours, Lady Lunaris.” His voice was steady. “Korven is your fight. Whatever waits below him is your fight. The army has done its work. The rest is for the people who can do what we cannot.”
Luna’s hand, which had been tracing, went still. She thought about what was inside the keep, and how the fight that mattered now was not a thing she could ask the army to die in.
“Okay,” she said. “Mila.” Her voice almost cracked. She did not let it. “Thank you.”
He inclined his head.
She turned.
Katherine was already at her shoulder. Lisa fell in to her left. Ian came up on her right, daggers checked, bow across his back. Fty last, staff in hand.. “Two and a half hours on the clock,” Fty said.
“Enough time,” Luna said as she glanced briefly into Katherine stream. “Easy.”
They walked through the threshold.
—
The keep’s great hall was vaulted in dark stone, with high narrow windows bleeding pale gray light onto a floor that had once been marble and was now scorched along the southern edge from Lisa’s fire. Tapestries hung in shreds. The far end of the hall opened onto a wide stair that spiraled up into the keep’s tower, and standing at the foot of the stair, in a heavy plate with his greatsword slung at his back and his helmet cradled at his hip—
Korven.
Behind him, in a semicircle that filled the hall’s middle, was his guild. Twelve players. Luna counted them without thinking. Six casters in the back, robes and staves. Six melee in the front, plate and longblades, shields up. Around them, summoned out of the death-saturated stone of the floor itself, perhaps twenty undead in a thin perimeter.
Korven looked at her.
“Cavegirl.” His voice was slightly amused. “I told you I’d be waiting.”
He stood at the foot of the stairs in heavy plate with his arms loose at his sides, looking at her. “Good job, kid,” he said. “You brought big bad army to my wall. You burn my courtyard. You kill my Death Knights. Your baker manhandled my girlfriend’s body. And now you walk into my hall.”
He took a single step forward.
“Drop the others.”
Luna blinked. “What?”
“You and I. Single combat. Right here.” His head tilted. “Win, you take whatever’s behind me. Lose, your loot stays in this hall and the Queen of Rimebreak wonders forever what happened to her favorite pet.”
He waited.
Luna’s right hand had gone to the rapier grip without her permission.
She felt it. The class fantasy. The Chronosblade. The duelist instinct that lived behind her sternum like a second heartbeat, the one that said yes, you, alone, blade to blade, that is what you are for. She felt herself begin to step forward.
She thought about Lv.39 against Lv.29. She opened her mouth to say no. She did not get to say it.
A red blur went past her left shoulder. Katherine arrived at the center of the hall before Luna had finished drawing breath.
Greatsword off her back. Aura up. Boots planted on marble. The heat-shimmer that had washed the courtyard rolled outward from her in a slow red wave, and Korven’s casters in the back were squinting against it before they had registered why.
“MINE.”
Katherine’s voice filled the hall.
“Cute commander stay back! This my fight!” She pointed her greatsword at Korven, the tip steady. “Big stupid face. Big Glory day. We FIGHT.”
Korven’s head came around to her. He had not been expecting Katherine. The challenge had been calibrated for Luna’s pride, Luna’s class, Luna’s instinct. Katherine had walked through it as if it was paperwork.
His hand went to the greatsword.
“You—”
“I Seek Glory,” Katherine said brightly. “Best day for me. Bad day for you.”
Korven looked at Luna.
Luna looked back.
Katherine had taken the fight without asking, and Luna’s job, the new job, the commander’s job, was to let her. Katherine was now bouncing on her feet, glancing her way.
She nodded once.
Katherine grinned and charged.
The first exchange cracked the hall. Two greatswords met. Katherine’s blade came down in a vertical strike that Korven caught on the cross-guard, and the impact was loud enough that one of the back-rank casters flinched. Katherine pressed forward, body weight committed. Korven was driven back two steps before he found his feet.
In the back of the hall, a caster drew breath to fire something at Lunaris.
Lisa was already moving.
—
The fireball that left Lisa’s hand was a single sphere the size of a fist, traveling in a straight line, and it took the caster in the throat and detonated outward in a contained burst that took two of the undead beside him without touching the ceiling above or the wall behind.
“Lock in,” she said, not to anyone in particular. “Luna. Right side. I’ve got the left.”
“Got it.” Luna’s right hand came up with the longsword and her left hand came up with the rapier as she moved. The undead at the front of the guild’s formation were two paces apart. The gaps between them were small, but they were there.
She slipped into the first gap.
Longsword high, rapier low. The undead on her left swung at where she had been; she was already past it, boots almost not touching the marble. The next gap, she was already in. The one after that, the same. Three undead behind her now.
Casters in front, and she didn’t slow.
One of the casters in robes saw her coming and threw up a defensive ward. “Sorry!”
[Paradox Slash]
The first cut hammered the ward and made it ring. The second cut, the one from a possible future, came through it as if the ward had never existed and it popped as she quickly used her longsword.
The HP vanished in an instant; the caster fell apart along a clean line, and Luna was already past him, already moving toward the second caster, who was bringing his hands up in something that might have been a counter.
Behind her, Ian was working.
She heard him before she saw him. The clack-clack-clack of Quick-Draw, the daggers leaving the sheath fast enough that the first strike landed before the eye expected the second. Two undead down.
“You shall not live!” Ian was fully committed. An undead came up from the floor itself behind Ian, raised by a back-rank caster Luna had not yet reached, and it lunged for his exposed side.
Fty’s hand was already up.
A bright lance of healing light headed for the marble beneath the undead’s foot, which sanctified at Fty’s touch. The undead came apart in mid-step as if it had walked into a wall it could not see.
“Eyes left, Ian,” Fty said.
“Yes, Fty.”
“Buff is up.”
“Thanks, Fty.”
Luna reached the second caster. He had time to look at her. He had been streaming, an icon over his head, the Necromancers’ guild watching this in real time.
She killed him quickly and without flourish.
In the center of the hall, Katherine and Korven were still going.
—
The exchanges had gotten faster.
Korven’s stamina was holding because he was Lv.39. Katherine’s stamina was holding because she was Katherine, and because eating three solid hits and giving back two was the core of her combat philosophy, and she was not yet ready to stop.
Her chestplate had a long crease in it. The aura had absorbed worse, but one of Korven’s heavy strikes had landed clean, and the dent ran from her sternum to her collarbone, and she was bleeding through it.
She was still grinning. “Big stupid face!” she called. “You good! Better than expected! I sorry I underestimate!”
Korven swung instead of answering.
Katherine took it on her shoulder, stepped inside the recovery, and brought her greatsword up under his guard in a short thrust that caught the seam of his pauldron. The greatsword bit. Korven yelped, and the back of his free hand came around and caught Katherine across the helmet.
“GOOD HIT!” she said cheerfully and brought her greatsword down again.
Luna had reached the back of the hall. The last caster died on her rapier without ceremony.
She turned. Lisa was behind her, hands lowered, breathing hard through her nose. Ian was kneeling beside an undead, making sure it was actually down. Fty’s staff was up and his free hand was tracing a healing arc through the smoke toward a cut on Ian’s forearm Luna had not even noticed.
The room was empty of casters. The wild undead were down.
In the center of the hall, two greatswords still sang.
Lisa took a step forward.
Lunaris put her hand on her elbow. “Big sis. No.”
Lisa stopped. “But—”
“It’s hers.”
“Awwwh,” Lisa turned on her heel and instead of helping Katherine embraced Luna. “Look at you! Such a big commander!”
Luna felt her face blush and tried to protest. “Bi—”
“Big sis is so prouuuuud!”
Katherine took another hit.
This one landed at her hip, a sweep that should have severed something, and the aura ate most of it. She staggered. She caught herself. She grinned at Korven over the locked greatswords.
“Now I bored,” Katherine said. “You fight long. Boring. Goodbye.” She set her boots and hit him. “[Judgment]”
The strike came down in a single vertical arc, full body weight, full momentum, full Glory Seeker conviction, and Korven brought his greatsword up to catch it. Katherine’s blade smashed through his greatsword and through the cross-guard and through his helmet visor and through the bone behind it, and into the marble.
Korven stood for a second longer before he exploded in a pile of loot. Katherine pulled her greatsword out of the floor.
[Attention! Bonus experience due to level disparity!][Various enemies had been defeated; Various amounts of contribution: +124,239XP]
[Congratulations! You are now level 30!][Congratulations! You are now level 31!][Congratulations! You are now level 32! XP to next level: 22,174/51,200]
Name: LunarisHP: 411 | STR: 71ST: 335 | AGI: 291MANA: 95 | INT: 68
She was breathing hard. Blood ran from a split in her lip. The crease across her chestplate was wider than it had been a minute ago.
She turned and grinned. “Cute commander,” she said. “I save Glorious Fight. Like you say.”
Thankfully, Lisa let Luna go, so she was straightening her hair as she regarded Katherine. “...You did, Kath.”
“Big stupid face dead. Streaming!” She gestured at the camera. “Donate to big glory! Today’s the best day!”
Ian made a strangled noise.
Lisa burst out laughing. “With you, there is always the next big day.”
Katherine laughed at that. “No tests today!”
Fty was already moving toward Katherine with his staff up. “Don’t move yet. Sit down.”
“Not tired!” she protested, and her grin died.
“Sit down, Katherine.”
“...Fine.”
Luna walked over. Her hand traced one small ghost-line. She let it. She crouched beside Katherine. “Thanks, Kath.”
“Welcome, cute Luny.”
“You—”
“Save Glorious Fight,” Katherine said, grinning through the blood on her lip. “Big save. Maybe more big bad waiting upstairs. Save for him.”
“Yeah.” Fty’s healing was already working. The crease in the chestplate was still there, but the bleeding underneath had stopped.
Luna stood and looked at the stairs at the far end of the hall, the wide spiral going up into the tower, into whatever waited at the top.
“Up,” she said.