The one-eyed lady’s prosthetic arm had barely finished reforming when Dain snapped his own prosthetic up and fired.

  Wind howled out of his palm, screaming across the street. She wasn’t there when it arrived. Her stonescale cloak blurred, and she slipped sideways with a dancer’s ease. The windsphere detonated against a crooked wall behind her and sheared half the stone face clean off.

  Tch.

  Before the shards even finished raining down, he fired another windsphere, then a third. His prosthetic jerked and kicked with every shot, but she twisted just enough to dodge the second and slapped the third away with her prosthetic, making it rebound into the ground. Evidently she was strong and fast enough to do so.

  And oh, he was content to just keep firing away until she couldn’t block anymore, but instead of answering with a counterattack of her own, she turned and dashed into the nearest alley.

  Coward, he thought, and then immediately corrected himself. No. She wasn’t stupid. A one-eyed as cautious as she was wouldn’t take the chance charging at him when she probably didn’t know the full extent of his abilities.

  But he chased, because the screams started on the next street over.

  His wings flared to help him vault a collapsed beam, then into the alley so he could clear the top of the dead end wall. Too slow, too late. He landed on creaky ankles just in time to see two townsguard fall to their knees. A long stone spear jutted through both their throats from behind, the one-eyed standing behind them, and she yanked the spear out only to reform it back into her prosthetic arm.

  The three galehorn that the townsguard were fighting backpedalled and tried to run away. The one-eyed had no mercy on them either and flicked her prosthetic at them. Stone detonated into shards that stabbed, impaled, and gored the galehorn rams, before returning to her as swiftly as they went out.

  “... They’re not a part of this,” he growled. “Your fight is with me.”

  Her head tilted. “Soldiers fight with honor,” she said softly, “but I am no soldier. I failed my initial ambush, so these men would’ve been obstacles in our direct confrontation. Don’t you want to have this entire town to ourselves, too?”

  He shot another windsphere at her face. She caught this one with her prosthetic, her arm turning into a shield that took the brunt before deflecting it. Then she stepped back—her stonescale mantle rippling once—and kicked off the ground, retreating onto another nearby roof.

  For a heartbeat, he lost sight of her entirely. Her cloak did something strange. Its stonescales rippled again, this time taking on the same cracked grey pattern as the roof beneath her feet. If not for the way her shadow slid across the broken tiles, he would’ve missed her entirely.

  She’s going for the others.

  “Track her, owl!” he shouted. His overhead owl began swerving wide berths around the town as he linked his vision. Following her from above was no difficult task—he immediately spotted her hopping towards Yasmin and Anisa, who were blissfully unaware and fending off a small herd of magic beasts themselves.

  No you don’t!

  He unfurled his wings and leaped after her. Wind rushed past his ears as he leaped from low wall to roof, then from roof to roof, cutting straight towards the two girls. Every bit of movement pained his heavy joints, but as the one-eyed slowed for just half a breath to leap over a broken chimney, he cut into her path—intercepted her—and drove his ignited oreblade straight for her back.

  She didn’t even look. She whirled, and his oreblade slammed against her shield once again. Sparks jumped. Firelight licked along the stone and guttered out as he extinguished it. In the same breath, she stomped, and three razor-edged stone spikes burst up beneath him. He was expecting something like that, but not exactly that. His wings jerked him sideways, but one spike still speared through the bottom of his left foot, making him grunt as he stumbled back.

  He barely had time to regain his balance before she stomped a second time. This time, the entire roof gave way. Tiles, rotten beams, and the two of them dropped into the dilapidated house in a rain of debris. He landed spine-first, but he hardened one wing and had it take the brunt of crashing timber and stone. He shoved off the ground with the other wing, throwing himself out the front door just as the one-eyed slammed down with a stone lance.

  As he burst out the house in a spray of dust, he somehow managed to roll onto one knee, jamming his oreblade into the ground to steady himself. No hesitation. He whipped his prosthetic up and fired the strongest, largest windsphere he could muster at the dilapidated house, shredding it with an explosion of broken stones.

  The shockwave hit him a half-second later, nearly shoving him onto his back again. His prosthetic spasmed, fingers twitching from the strain, and a hot iron taste flooded his mouth. He spat blood into the dust, feeling his head pound.

  Fuck.

  Shouldn’t… have drank that last potion. So… heavy.

  Is she at least… dead?

  He squinted into the storm of dust and debris, searching for any sign of her body.

  It was a stupid hope.

  A stomp rang out from inside the collapsing cloud, and a ring of giant earth spikes punched outward in a full circle, shredding the debris and flinging it aside like scraps of paper. Dust billowed out, but the spikes made a neat, brutal halo around a single unharmed figure in the middle of the collapsed house.

  The one-eyed stepped through the haze, her stonescale cloak rippling lazily as it took on all shades of the earth around her.

  ***

  Name: Stoneshard Prosthetic Arm

  Type: Passive Elementum-Class Relic, Uncommon-4

  Attribute Addition: +2 Might

  Ability Description: The holder can detonate, control, and reshape the stone shards into any shape or form. The size of the reshaped construct is limited by the amount of stone shards. The passive mana drain is 4 mana regeneration per hour.

  ***

  Name: Cairnstone Anklets

  Type: Active Elementum-Class Relic, Uncommon-5

  Attribute Addition: +1 Might

  Ability Description: When mana is channeled into the anklets, the holder can stomp and create earth spikes from the ground in any direction. The activation mana cost is 2 mana, and the more mana channeled into the anklets (up to 10), the higher the number and larger in size of the earth spikes.

  ***

  Name: Adaptable Stonescale Mantle

  Type: Passive Elementum-Class Relic, Uncommon-1

  Attribute Addition: +3 Resilience

  Ability Description: The holder can change the stonescales of the mantle into inheriting the color and texture of whatever earthly material they are in physical contact with. The passive mana drain is 2 mana regeneration per hour.

  ***

  Name: Earthen Resonator Charm

  Type: Passive Trinket-Class Relic, Common-9

  Attribute Addition: None

  Ability Description: The holder has increased senses to vibrations underfoot. The passive mana drain is 1.8 mana regeneration per hour.

  ***

  Name: Y?l?i?a?n? ?E?m?i?r?d?

  Grade: Uncommon-4

  Title: Scout

  Title Ability: Trueflight

  Acquired Skills: None

  Might: 19 (+3)

  Swiftness: 21

  Resilience: 22 (+3)

  Clarity: 23

  Mana: 68/185 (+1.5/hr)

  Relics: Stoneshard Prosthetic Arm (Uncommon-4), Cairnstone Anklets (Uncommon-5), Adaptable Stonescale Mantle (Uncommon-1), Earthen Resonator Charm (Common-9)

  ***

  Dain clenched his jaw and forced himself to read what he could of her relic Tags, even through the sharp, stinging pain in his eye. Her name in her personal Tag was obfuscated as expected—that one-eyed mask was a relic preventing him from doing so—but as far as the rest of her relics went…

  She’s only Uncommon-4.

  It’s possible to beat her.

  He tightened his grip on his oreblade as she approached, keeping the firelight ignited at all times. If he dared to extinguish it again, he just knew he wouldn’t be able to ignite it quickly enough for defense, because now her single black eye was fixed squarely on him, and he felt the weight of her stare like a cold hand on his shoulders.

  She was much, much stronger than him.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “... You fight rather amateurishly,” she murmured, seemingly more to herself than him. “Crude, wasteful attacks with overreliance on relic output. Hm.”

  Her head tilted a fraction further, as if she were examining an exhibit behind glass instead of a man still gripping a blazing oreblade.

  “Perhaps I was mistaken to be wary?” she said softly. “I had assumed you were a soldier who fought in the Black Exhibit War, but perhaps you are not, Third Defiler?”

  She didn’t give him long to stew in that remark.

  Her stone arm flowed, shards sliding and locking until it lengthened into a broad, cleaver-like blade. In the same heartbeat, she dashed in and slashed for his chest.

  He got his oreblade up just in time. The impact rattled all the way up his shoulder, and he hissed as his firelight, for the first time, spread its heat past his hand and up into his wrist, burning his forearm. Before he could twist and riposte, her knee drove into his gut. Air exploded out of his lungs. He folded, wincing in pain, and her elbow crashed down between his shoulder blades, sending him reeling.

  Then she stomped. A single earth spike punched up from the cobbles, and his wings acted automatically, yanking him back and up into the air.

  Mid-air was a mistake.

  Her stone blade shattered in that same instant, and she lashed the storm of shards at him, all of them shooting up like a stone volley. He swore and curled his wings forward. Most of the shards pinged off the silverplume feathers, and he fired two more windspheres down to destroy the rest of the shards.

  Some didn’t get destroyed. White-hot pain lanced through his side, his arm, his thigh—all grazes and shallow punctures, but enough to draw blood and make his muscles seize. He hit a slanted roof hard, boots skidding and leaving a smear of red on old tiles as he staggered to a stop.

  “You are an amateur,” the one-eyed said. She walked along the street below, stonescale cloak dragging behind her. “You don’t even know a Swordstyle. I had wondered if you were one of Orland’s seekers, but…” She tilted her head the slightest fraction. “Perhaps you’re simply another natural-born Defiler.”

  He spat blood over the roof. He could barely hold his firelight oreblade anymore—the cursed effect was sending heat through his entire left arm, and it was even threatening to eat into his shoulder and chest—but he held on anyways.

  “Leave it to cultists to make everything sound confusing,” he growled. “What’s Orland have to do with this? And what’s your face look like under that bastard mask?”

  “That is of no concern to you.”

  She stomped again. A massive stone lance erupted beneath the building he stood upon, punching through old beams like paper. The entire house lurched as its spine broke, but this time, he didn’t jump away. He took one step forward—felt the stone lance ripping up past him—then stepped onto it and kicked off.

  More stomps. More giant earth spikes erupted in sequence, stabbing up at him as he dodged over and over, leaped back and even further back.

  I can’t just defend forever.

  Find an opening and… go!

  The tenth spike wasn’t as fast. As it shot up, it became a ramp for him to jump on, then for him to launch himself at the one-eyed. The one-eyed cracked her neck. She took three steps forward, and three more stone spikes exploded up to intercept him. One grazed his wings, the other he screeched off with his oreblade, and the last he simply rolled past mid-air as he aimed his oreblade at her mask.

  But right before impact, she slid one foot aside—swift as ever—and caught his firelight oreblade with her prosthetic hand. Her grip clamped like a manacle. She dropped her center of gravity, rolled her hip, and used his own momentum against him. For a bare instant he felt weightless as she flipped him over her head—and with one hand in his Void Archivist’s Satchel, his back hit the ground hard enough to flash white behind his eyes.

  His spine bowed. His breath left him in a ragged cry. His wings spasmed against the stone, trying to cushion the impact too late. The one-eyed flowed with the motion, shattering and reforming her prosthetic into a smooth stone blade.

  She raised it, point hovering over his heart.

  “Is this all you have?” she murmured. “A Defiler in name only, with none of the—”

  He hissed and flicked his hand out of his satchel, throwing a pebble up at her shoulder. It bounced off her Stonescale Mantle with barely a sound. She didn’t even move to dodge.

  “... This is all you have,” she said, raising her blade. “I was wrong to be wary—”

  Something whistled down the street behind her head, and this time, it was no pebble. A segmented blade—Sahlir’s serpentine sword—snapped through the air at her head, and she whirled, whipping her stone sword around to smack it aside with a shower of sparks.

  In the same breath, a massive metal gauntlet came crashing down behind her. Kargun’s gauntlet slammed like a falling anvil. The one-eyed whirled back around and morphed her arm into a wide stone-shield, bracing above her. The ground trembled with the collision. She took the blow with bent knees, heels gouging furrows in the cobbles, then growled and shifted her weight to let the gauntlet smash into the ground beside her.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Without looking, she immediately unhooked the cloak from her shoulders and whipped it backwards, nearly cutting open Ilvaren’s throat as the elf tried to dash in for a sneaky backstab. Instead the mantle’s edge only clipped across Ilvaren's ribs, allowing her to back off and grimace in the same breath.

  “Elf!” Sahlir yelled from down the street.

  “I’m fine,” she snarled back through her teeth. “Just a scratch.”

  Sahlir, Kargun, and Ilvaren closed in from three angles, trying to corner the one-eyed while she put her cloak back on, draping the stonescales over her shoulders. At the far end of the street, Yasmin and Anisa appeared with four townsguard in tow as well, weapons drawn and armor already scuffed from dealing with the magic beast.

  The newcomers took in the scene in a heartbeat. Dead soldiers in the streets. Dain on the ground, bleeding and trying to push himself up onto an elbow. The woman in the one-eyed mask standing over him, her prosthetic arm cracking and struggling to reform completely after taking the brunt of Kargun’s smashing gauntlet.

  The one-eyed clicked her tongue.

  “Annoying,” she muttered. “Get out of my way.”

  Anisa’s crossbow came up first. She loosed a bolt straight for the woman’s mask, and at the same time, Sahlir cracked his segmented sword like a whip, blade snaking toward her legs.

  The one-eyed stomped. An earth spike surged up in front of her, intercepting both projectiles. Bolt and blade rang off stone. Then she shattered her prosthetic and swept it in a wide arc towards Anisa and the townsguard behind her, sending a conical blast of shards screaming down the street.

  “Down!” Yasmin shouted.

  The steward rammed her swordstaff into the cobbles and dragged her will through the earth. A small, thick wall of stone surged up in front of them, blocking the brunt of the shard volley. Chips still sliced past the edges, nicking armor and cheeks, but the worst of it stayed caught in Yasmin’s wall.

  Ilvaren didn’t waste the opening. She kicked off a windowsill, then a broken beam, her boots barely touching stone as she circled the one-eyed with twin blades flashing. Meanwhile, Kargun’s gauntlets floated up at his sides as he wrenched two great boulders from broken houses beside him.

  “Catch this, ye masked sow!” he bellowed.

  He hurled both boulders at her in quick succession. The one-eyed’s shards whipped back together at her wrist, just enough to form a thick stone fist.

  She met the first boulder with an uppercut, knuckles exploding into shards on impact. The boulder also cracked apart mid-flight. She turned with the motion and drove her partially reformed fist into the second boulder, crushing through stone and sending fragments flying—but right behind the second boulder, Ilvaren dashed in low, twin shortswords crossing for a scissoring slice at the woman’s throat.

  The one-eyed jerked her head aside to avoid the decapitation, but as Ilvaren flew past her, a thin red line appeared across her neck.

  “Got a hit!” Ilvaren shouted. “Keep the pressure on! She can’t—”

  “Amateurs,” the one-eyed hissed. “All of you.”

  Then she stomped. A ring of jagged spikes erupted out behind her, catching Ilvaren mid-dash and hurling her off her feet. Kargun also flew wide as he tried to block the spikes with his gauntlets. The force threw him backwards, crashing him into a half-collapsed building.

  The second stomp came before Dain could even blink. An even larger ring of spikes burst outward—twice the radius, twice the violence—forcing Sahlir, Anisa, Yasmin, and the nearby townsguard to dive and roll, some of them barely avoiding being skewered. Those who didn’t dodge fast enough were battered down by the violent upheaval of earth, but even those who dodged… none of them saw the third stomp coming.

  The ground detonated.

  Every spike in the area shattered at once—hundreds and thousands of stone shards exploding and raining down in a chaotic, rolling cloud that obscured all lines of sight—and then she tore off her mantle, gripped it by the edge, and whipped it around her.

  The gust it generated howled. The swirling mantle caught every airborne shard, swirled them, and then flung them out like a starburst of knives.

  Nobody could dodge this completely. Dain saw Ilvaren try to shield her head with her arms as several shards slammed into her shoulder and thigh. He saw Kargun’s metal gauntlets barely catch the worst of it before three shards sank into his ribs. He saw Yasmin’s earth wall crumble under the onslaught, he saw Anisa hit the ground with a strangled cry, and he saw the townsguard collapse one by one under the storm of cutting stone.

  His own body jerked as several shards stabbed into him—one in the hip and one in the stomach, making him wince in pain.

  He was down. Everyone was down. And the one-eyed wasn’t finished. She stomped one last time, and two enormous stone spike walls erupted on both sides of the street, cutting Dain off entirely from everyone else.

  Breathe.

  Br…eathe.

  It hurt to breathe. His vision blurred at the edges. His left hand was completely burnt and blistered. Every joint in his body felt so heavy he couldn’t even imagine lifting himself onto his feet.

  Bootsteps approached as the one-eyed stood over him, her prosthetic reformed into a long, tapered blade pointed directly over his heart.

  He forced his only eye open—and caught a thin glint of light from a side alley the earth-spikes hadn’t sealed off.

  A way out? No. Too far. Too late. But it was something, and something was enough to narrow his eye and steady his breath.

  He had a plan.

  “... One-eyed,” he whispered. “Tell me something before you kill me.”

  The one-eyed paused. Her blade didn’t waver, but her head tilted a hair’s breadth.

  “Why’d you destroy Corvalenne?” he croaked. “Why try to start a war? How many of you are there? What are you, and who’d you get that mask from?”

  Silence stretched thin between them, so he smiled weakly.

  “Come on. I’m about to die anyway,” he said. “Dead men don’t tell any tales, and I was a merchant before I was a ‘Defiler’. I know how to keep a client’s secrets.”

  Her single black eye fixed on him, unreadable.

  Then she exhaled softly through her nose.

  “There are more of us in more corners of the world than you can imagine,” she murmured. “So many in such high places that even I do not know what they call themselves. You call us… one-eyed? Then that might as well be our name.”

  He scowled.

  She’s not lying.

  How deep does this go that even someone like her doesn’t know the name of their own cult?

  “But you need not trouble yourself with us anymore,” she whispered. “I alone will continue onwards to Karatash, so rest assured that we serve a great purpose. Corvalenne’s destruction—and the death of its people—serves a great purpose. One day, I am certain even a Defiler like you would come to see our reason from the realm beyond.”

  His throat worked. “And what purpose is that? Destruction? Revenge? Chaos? Just for the fun of it?”

  “Forgiveness.”

  Then she drove her blade straight into his heart.

  Cold flooded his ribs like a bucket of winter water. Breath fled him in a thin, pathetic rasp. He felt the earth under his back, cold and gritty, as her shadow turned away—already heading east towards the capital.

  … Not yet.

  With fingers numb and trembling, he reached into his satchel and flicked his projectile at the one-eyed’s back. As it flew, he poured what little mana he could still muster into it, and she didn’t turn to slap it away. Of course she didn’t. She expected another harmless pebble. Another feint. So when his Darkmind Key stabbed into the back of her shoulder, she staggered a step forward in surprise.

  She ripped it out in an instant, grimacing as a thread of darkened blood trickled down her cloak. Then she glanced back over her shoulder, and it was like her single black eye was narrowing in silent fury.

  He almost smiled.

  Got you.

  Within ten seconds, Dain Sorowyn was dead.

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