Mythos: Last Stand

  Chapter 27 — Extraordinary Individuals

  by Caide Fullerton

  Some time earlier; the southern end of the port...

  A blast of wind scattered Jahd’s hair as a cleaver slammed down into the ground beside him. He barely had time to roll between the mech’s legs before it made to lop off his head. He distanced himself from the mech with several quick leaps, taking slow, deep breaths as he held his odachi at the ready.

  The Volundr mech turned to face him, its metallic feet clanking against the stone floor of the wharf. It stood out compared to the others. It was taller, its armor bulkier in some spots and lighter in others. The entire thing was coated in a paint of gleaming bronze, scars of its original grey coloration peeking out from beneath.

  What caught Jahd’s eye the most, however, were the mech’s weapons. Unlike the others, which almost all carried spiked maces, this mech was wielding dual swords. They were peculiar in their construction—the blades protruded beyond the hilt like the base of a kitchen knife, their edges curving upwards to a pointed tip like a scimitar. He’d never seen a weapon quite like it before, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he never saw one again.

  This mech was clearly different. He cast a quick glance sideways, further down the wharf, catching a glimpse of Matthias and several others fighting other mechs, each the same iron tint. Was this one an officer of some kind? A commander?

  That might explain the color, but would the commander risk taking to the battlefield directly? He found that doubtful. It was certainly distinguished from the other mechs, given its color and unique weapons, but it was no leader. He arrived at a different conclusion, one based on a third factor—its movements.

  The mech broke into a sprint, stomping towards him with blades ready.

  Jahd had faced more than his share of Volundr throughout his years. It came with the territory of fighting on a sailing crew or in defense of a port city. Volundr mercenaries were incredibly common, and he’d had a hand in cutting down many that had threatened Avek Tirion in the past.

  Not once had he ever encountered one that could run.

  The mechs were large, heavy, and unwieldy. That their pilots could keep them standing at all, much less use them to fight, was a miracle—no, a testament to the endless perseverance of their race. He could hardly imagine how difficult it was to make those iron constructs move, and how monumentally more difficult it would be to make one run without tipping over.

  Between its movements and its unique weapons, it was clear—this mech was an elite among elites of the Volundr, one that was distinguished for its incredible skill.

  And Jahd was facing it alone.

  The mech thrust one sword down at him; he leapt to the side, darting past the mech. Against any other, he could easily get behind it before it turned around; this one whirled its great iron body about no slower than a creature of skin might, swinging its other sword his way.

  It was too late to change course and evade. The sword’s arc was too low to duck beneath, too high to leap above. With no other option, Jahd faced the oncoming blade and held his own in front of him, placing one hand on the flat as he braced for impact.

  Against a foe several times his size, one wielding a sword several times the size of his own, he prepared to block the attack. Metal met metal, sparks screeching between the blades. The smaller warrior stood firm, bearing the brunt of the colossus’s strike with ease—naturally, such a thing did not occur, but Jahd accomplished what he set out to. Instead of being cleft in twain, his body was merely sent careening backwards, flipping through the air like a ragdoll.

  The Zombie did his best to right himself midair, catching a glimpse of the mech already pursuing him just before he crashed back-first into a stack of crates. Several boxes were reduced to splinters, the rest tumbling down around him along with their contents—foodstuffs, thankfully. Even he might’ve died if it were a box of weapons stacked the wrong direction.

  His vision was blurry, his gaze swaying unevenly. His ears rang. He had numerous bone fractures. His back was torn open and pincushioned with shards of wood. He was no doubt suffering from a veritable flood of internal bleeding.

  Ignoring all those gruesome wounds, he staggered forward, forcing his senses to focus on the approaching mech. His bones twisted back into place. Perforated organs tied themselves closed. Flesh knit back together, expelling the foreign objects that had dared to pierce it.

  Jahd was a Zombie. Thanks to that heritage granted to him by the Cycle, he was blessed with the inability to feel pain and the ability to regenerate from almost any injury. The blow he’d just suffered may have been fatal to a member of any other race, but he could walk it off in seconds. He didn’t actually need most of his internal organs in order to function, and bleeding—internal or external—didn’t actually harm him in any meaningful way. Once the shock of the impact wore off, he focused his regeneration on the most important things first—restoring senses so he could track his opponent, mending bones so he could move, reattaching muscles so he could fight.

  He lurched forward, sword gripped tight. His body was much worse for wear, but in terms of effective combat power, his remaining wounds had minimal effect.

  The mech was upon him.

  The colossus swung its right-hand sword for his head once again. He dove forward, rolling between the mech’s legs; he could feel the rush of wind rustle his clothes from the armor’s movement, its sword cleaving through several of the crates that had been behind him. As he rose to his feet, he swiftly jabbed the tip of his sword into a gap in the mech’s armor, where the plates over its knee and shin met. Metal screeched at the attempted intrusion, and as the mech whirled around he was forced to retreat with a leap backwards, only the very tip of his blade having drawn blood.

  Had he, perhaps, bitten off a little more than he could chew? He held back a grim smile as he mused to himself.

  The mech maintained the momentum from its previous swing, its blade drawing a full circle as it swung around at Jahd. He was easily able to duck back out of his range, having already been moving that direction, but the mech stepped forward, pressing its offense. It smashed its left-hand blade into the ground in a diagonal slash, forcing Jadh to sidestep it. He moved to the right, away from the mech, but it kept pace, thrusting its other blade at him above the first. Its edge caught his shoulder; he set his regeneration on undoing the damage.

  He pedaled backwards, but the mech refused to let him retreat. It made several slashes as it stomped after him; with its longer legs, the distance between them closed rapidly, each swing coming closer to hitting its mark. Finally it made a horizontal swing which Jahd was once again forced to block, bracing his sword with both hands. His edge met only the tip of the mech’s sword this time, but the force was still enough to send him somersaulting backwards.

  His eyes were of little use to him as he rolled across the pavement, but his ears alerted him to the mech’s approach. It had swiftened, lunging towards him for a follow-up attack. He slammed his feet into the ground at the next opportunity, feeling his ankles snap as he forced his body to right itself, now sliding backwards.

  The mech shot towards him with its arms crossed, swords held horizontally out to either side. Jahd ducked as both blades were swung, forming an arc of death that rended the air just above his head.

  Something felt wrong.

  That had been a truly destructive attack, of that there was no doubt, but it was slow, predictable, easy to read. Would this enemy, which had shown such superb skill, truly resort to such an amateurish technique?

  No. It was a trap, and in his haste to react, he’d fallen right into it. All he could do now was minimize the damage. But how was the mech going to take advantage of this situation? After that attack, both of its arms were stretched out to its sides; if it tried to strike with either, he would quite easily be able to avoid it in time.

  The mech’s foot clanged against the ground as it took the next step forward. It did not swing either arm. Instead, it did yet another thing Jahd had never seen a Volundr mech do—it kicked him.

  It was not a graceful kick, not any of the refined techniques he might have expected from a soldier or martial artist. It was a simple, straightforward movement, like a child kicking a football.

  Given the sheer size and mass of the mech’s armored leg, that was more than enough. Metal rammed into Jahd’s chest, hoisting him off the ground before driving up into his neck. He was thrown into the air, spinning, limbs flailing before he smashed down to the ground with a splatter of blood. He relived all the same steps as the previous impact—bleeding, bones breaking, senses going haywire, followed by each of those problems mending themselves in reverse order.

  Except this time, getting hit had hurt.

  Zombies could not feel pain—not the same sensation that all other creatures possessed, at least. His senses would inform him of which parts of his body were damaged and to what degree, and that sense could distinguish between different types of damage in a similar way to nerves transmitting different types of pain. The sensations were identical in purpose; Jahd’s just didn’t ‘hurt’.

  Zombies had three magical abilities. The first was their ability to regenerate. The second was their immunity to pain. The latter was common knowledge, but it wasn’t entirely accurate—not a falsehood, but an oversimplification. Immunity to pain was merely a byproduct of their second ability—that their ‘life’ was not intrinsically linked to their body.

  Most creatures died if you killed them. You could deprive them of blood or air, break their body down with disease or poison, sever their brain from their body, or destroy any of a number of other organs that were critical to the ongoing process of life—any of these things would cause the majority of creatures to die. This was not so for Zombies. Their life was tied to their soul, not to the body it inhabited. You could make them bleed until their blood ran dry, you could choke them, you could break them down with poison, you could behead them, you could even rip out their heart, but they would simply walk it off, so long as their body still met the conditions arbitrarily set by their magic.

  The heart. Two lungs. The spinal column. The brain. The magic that separated a Zombie’s life from its body tied itself to the condition of these five parts. If at least one of them remained intact enough to serve the purpose it might serve for a normal Human, even slightly, then the Zombie would live; if all five of them were broken simultaneously, the Zombie would die.

  Zombies did not feel pain because their lives were not tied to the wellbeing of their bodies. It naturally followed, then, that damage to those few essential parts that were tied to them would cause them pain. It was a different sensation from the pain others experienced, from the feeling Jahd could only vaguely recall from the memories of past lives. It was more a spiritual pain than a physical one, but pain nonetheless.

  That kick had hurt.

  Just as he had before, Jahd willed his body to move, but it was sluggish. His spine… not snapped, he thought, but certainly damaged. It was his top priority for regeneration. His arms had taken the brunt of the fall; once full motion was restored, he could mend what was necessary there. He spat, more blood than saliva, cursing whatever coincidence had paired him up with this foe as opposed to anyone else.

  This was a terrible match-up. He could hardly deal any meaningful damage through the Volundr’s armor. Sure, he was also regenerating from its attacks, but a stalemate this was not. While a Zombie’s natural regeneration was powerful, it was not enough to heal major wounds across his entire body in just a few seconds. Through his many years as a warrior, he had learned to focus his regeneration, willing it to prioritize certain wounds over others. Using that fine-tuned control as a basis, he’d developed a technique—the ability to take shortcuts.

  The human body—the blueprint shared by most races, that is—was a complex thing. Something like a single muscle might seem simple, but its inner workings were far more complicated than any one person could ever truly understand. Fully repairing many such wounds across the entire body would take far too long.

  Instead, Jahd willed his body to repair the bare minimum, knitting things together enough to restore normal function rather than perfectly restoring them to their original state. He’d perfected this technique such that it would not hinder his movements and had a minimal impact on the amount of strength he could exert, but it was not without a downside—with his body held together by these shortcut ‘band-aids’, it was much more fragile than normal. The band-aids could easily be torn apart; with every wound he healed, his body became more vulnerable to the next attack.

  Luckily for him, the mech took a while to steady itself after the kick. If even a crew as skilled as this one struggled to perform such a maneuver, it was no wonder he’d never seen another attempt it. The wobbling mech surged forward with an uneven gait, regaining its footing as it charged.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Ah, shit.

  He forced his sluggish bones to move, digging his boots into the ground and bounding to the right. The mech brought one of its swords down at him, and he was too slow to avoid it. It cleaved through his shoulder with a clean chop, severing his left arm.

  The mech had swung its right sword, leaving the left, crossed over its right shoulder, open for a follow-up. He was once again forced to block an incoming strike, this time with only one arm. His odachi felt heavy in his hand, and with a single point of contact he could not keep it firm against the mech’s blow. The flat of his own sword was pressed into his skin, the very edge of the mech’s sword cutting into him. Just as before, he was sent rolling backwards, but in this case it was a blessing—the damage incurred was trivial, and the distance granted him precious time to mend his bones.

  He bounced to his feet as he rolled, striking his sword against the ground to steady himself. The mech was already in hot pursuit. He tossed his sword to the side, instead drawing one of the lighter wakizashi from his belt. His opponents no doubt thought dismembering him marked a turning point in their duel; a logical conclusion, but he would show them he was no less formidable with one arm.

  Regenerating something as large and complex as an arm would take him about one minute if he dedicated the full focus of his abilities to it. He deliberately willed his body not to regenerate his arm at all, instead focusing that energy on his spine and other bones. He regained full motion by the time the mech reached him. It approached with arms crossed, lunging forth and striking with both blades simultaneously, their arcs drawing an ‘X’ in the air.

  The attack had only one blind spot. He darted forward, ducking past the swords and between the mech’s legs. He made several quick jabs at the slits in its armor, some resulting in naught but noisy clangs, others painting the very tip of his blade with crimson. The mech tried to step backwards, but he moved along with it, continuing his assault.

  The mech was quick to change tactics. It reversed its grips on its swords—another remarkably dexterous maneuver for a Volundr mech—and jabbed one between its legs, forcing him to move behind it to escape its reach. Its other arm reached behind its back, jabbing its other sword perpendicular to the first. Jahd grazed mere inches past the colossal blade.

  The mech spun and tried to kick at him, but it was a much less impressive kick than the first, and he was prepared for it this time. They entered a dance of slashes and sidesteps, the Zombie slipping just past each of the mech’s attacks, peppering its armor with quick thrusts of his sword.

  Losing an arm limited his options for attack, that much was certainly true, but Jahd truly was confident that he was just as formidable with only one—that wass to say, fighting one-armed had its upsides. Muscles and bones and the various other things contained within an arm were heavy; by shedding one, he could move faster. Being lopsided caused him to constantly tip to the side, but that could be turned into an upside as well; all he had to do was position himself such that he could move with the natural tipping of his body, allowing gravity to further increase his speed. Like this, he could dodge the mech’s attacks.

  And so, the battle of attrition turned in his favor. His attacks were shallow, but unlike him, the Volundr piloting the mech were very susceptible to pain, and they could not simply regenerate from the wounds he inflicted. Small cuts and scratches may be meaningless to Jahd, but most other creatures died after accruing enough of them.

  A smile crept onto his face. Despite the dire circumstances, he found himself enjoying this battle. He’d never faced an opponent quite like this before; the back-and-forth was exhilarating. Not only was he having fun, he was amassing more and more respect for his opponents. Volundr were mercenaries—they bore no ill will for Jahd or his people, and under different circumstances, they may have been fighting for his side instead. Having served in several similar lines of work, he couldn’t find it in himself to hate these men and women that put their lives on the line for a living.

  Jahd: “I’m impressed. There ain’t many who can fight on our level, y’know? The last place I expected to meet a real warrior like this was against a band o’ Volundr.”

  To some, that may have seemed a backhanded compliment, but he was sincere. The Volundr were a race of meager abilities. Their racial magic allowed them to sense vibrations, squeeze into tight spaces, and stick to surfaces like glue. Apparently, records from very ancient history saw the creation of the Volundr as a cruel prank by the Gods; their abilities lacked any clear combat application, and their bodies were just as lacking, too soft and frail to serve even as standard footsoldiers.

  The Volundr were not daunted by their poor lot in life. They were crafty, quickly finding that they could make up for their frailty with iron shells. Their people soon became renowned as excellent armorsmiths, but still they were too weak to fight on their own. Their ingenuity continued to shine through, however, and before long they produced the invention that would come to define their race for the rest of history—the Volundr mech.

  The mechs were, despite their name, not truly mechanical in the slightest. In truth, they were just a series of metal armor plates that, when assembled in the correct shape, assumed the form of a large humanoid warrior. This armor was useless in the hands of any other race, but it was perfectly tailored to the abilities of the Volundr. By locking limbs and squeezing their bodies into the plate armor, a crew of several Volundr would become the muscles of the mech, turning a suit of iron into a living armor.

  Jahd held the Volundr in the highest regard for devising such a perfect use of their powers, but time would show even this invention could not quite put them on equal footing with other peoples. Magic was as varied as the races that dotted the land and sea, and there were those whose abilities could bypass the Volundr’s armor with ease—those such as Kyte, Matthias, or Celeste. Beyond that, the mechs were slow and unwieldy, granting them a poor match-up against the most skilled warriors of any race. Even Jahd, who had no method of bypassing a mech’s armor, had felled quite a few thanks to the difference in their speed and technique.

  Volundr mercenaries gained a certain reputation among militaries and strategists—the ‘footsoldier’s bane’. While they were generally ineffective against elite warriors, a Volundr mech was nigh unbeatable if set against everyday soldiers. The mech Jahd faced now, however, had proven that the basis of those common views were flawed. What made Volundr mechs ineffective against elites was something far more nebulous than simple attributes like their speed.

  Jahd: “How many o’ ye’re packed in there? Five, six, seven?” He mused out loud as he ducked past yet another slash, darting behind the mech.

  Among every race, there were individuals who surpassed others. Whether by talent, practice, or birthright, some could utilize their racial magic in ways the average person could only dream of. Inevitably, these elites would come to dominate warfare; there was little a regular soldier could do against one alone.

  Jahd would count himself, Sils, Raffica, and Celeste among that caste of elite warriors, just to name a few. Each of them had honed their skills through the various circumstances of their lives, coming to surpass the average warrior. That, he realized, was what held the Volundr back—for them, surpassing the average simply wasn’t an option.

  Volundr could not fight alone. Their mechs were operated by multiple pilots. Even if one of those pilots did happen to possess the extraordinary skill of an elite warrior, they were only one part of the puzzle. He found it rather unfair, now that he’d pieced it together.

  Unfair as it might be, this mech had proven that the odds were possible to overcome. This mech was nothing short of extraordinary. That it could stand on the same level as him was a true testament to the hard work of its pilots—however many of them were inside, the fact that they matched Jahd in skill meant that every one of them was his equal. To assemble so many of such skill into one suit of armor was incredible on its own.

  After suffering another round of poking at its armor, the mech shifted its weight. Jahd could sense a change in its approach; he practically grinned in anticipation. Holding both swords out to its sides, the mech began to spin. It was slow at first, but the titan of armor picked up speed quickly, soon becoming a whirlwind of outstretched blades. Jahd was forced to roll away as it was still gaining momentum.

  From a distance, the maneuver looked silly. For any warrior that wasn’t a giant, near-impenetrable suit of armor, such an attack would be laughably ineffective, only leaving it open to counters. Naturally, that logic did not apply to the mech. Jahd was forced to keep his distance, but it was quite easy to avoid the spinning blades. They’d entered a stalemate again.

  A metal foot slammed into the ground, the mech wrenching its rotation to a stop. This would be it, the deciding moment. If Jahd could intercept its guard again, he could return to the cycle of dodging and jabbing from before and whittle the mech down. How would it stop his approach? He was eager to see.

  Sword to his side, he launched into a sprint right for the mech. The time it spent spinning had given him plenty of time to regenerate, mending some of the band-aids he’d accrued. He was the healthiest he’d been since taking that first hit, aside from his missing arm.

  The mech seemed to match his intensity. Were its pilots enjoying this, as well? No emotion could pierce the rounded iron shell of its ‘face’, but it seemed to stare at Jahd. It marched towards him with a lumbering gait, one sword held before it, the other reared back.

  Jahd’s eyes lit up as he realized what it was doing. He felt like a giddy child.

  The mech threw its sword.

  Jahd was forced to pivot, slamming a foot into the ground and throwing his body to the side. The mech’s huge sword crashed against the stone floor with a violent clamor, blowing up dust and shards of jagged rock. Several scratched Jahd’s skin; he ignored them, rolling to his feet. The mech was quick to adjust, continuing its march towards him. The distance closed in seconds, the colossus only a few bounds away from him.

  It slammed both feet down, its body tipping forward.

  At this point, it went without saying Jahd had never seen a Volundr crew crazy enough, stupid enough, or skilled enough to so much as consider attempting what he now witnessed.

  The mech didn’t jump. It leapt, a headfirst motion more like tripping than anything else. It soared through the air with the grace of half-a-ton of metal, sword-arm extended in as much determination as desperation. The titan’s leap, its height, and its outstretched hand—together, these covered the remaining distance between it and Jahd, its sword crashing to the ground.

  Its blade struck true. It cracked the ground beside Jahd, his arm flopping down beside it with a squelch of blood. Had the attack truly been too fast for him to avoid it? Had he been too shocked to react in time? Or had he simply respected the sheer audacity of his opponent enough to let the attack hit him? He didn’t know.

  He staggered back, adjusting to the balance of his lightweight, armless body, setting his regeneration on replacing one of them. Before him, the mech lay collapsed atop the pavement. It raised one arm and struck its sword into the ground as it began to lift itself. This moment of vulnerability was the perfect opportunity for a counterattack, but there was nothing Jahd could do with no arms—or so the Volundr likely thought.

  Zombies had three magical abilities. The first two, the powers to regenerate and to have life untethered from one’s physical body, were the cornerstones of Jahd’s fighting style. The third he found to be more situational, especially against a large, armored foe, but it still had its uses.

  Shink.

  Metal scraped against metal as Jahd’s sword slipped its way between the plates of the mech’s bent knee. In this position, the blade was able to sink deeper than any of his other attack thus far. He, of course, remained standing in front of the mech; the culprit behind the attack was his right arm, still holding tight to his sword. Its accomplice was none other than his left arm, holding the other to allow it to swing without being attached to a shoulder.

  Manipulating dismembered body parts—autotonomy was the third ability in Jahd’s arsenal. He could maintain control over shed parts for as long as it took to regenerate those parts on his main body. With his fine-tuned control over his own regeneration, he could prevent a part from regenerating and thus maintain remote control of the severed limb indefinitely—he had done exactly that with his left arm.

  Jahd: “Gotcha good, huh?” He chuckled, stepping back as the mech rose. “I’m sure that one had ta hurt. I really hope it didn’t kill any o’ ye.”

  Back on its feet, the mech smacked its sword against its armored leg, forcing Jahd’s arms to make a hasty retreat. They moved by flexing and twisting, rolling across the ground with surprising speed. The mech ignored them, focusing its full attention on Jahd as it retrieved its thrown sword. His right arm wasn’t even halfway done regenerating.

  Jahd: “I was cursin’ it earlier, but I really am glad we got paired up. Not only ‘cause I got ta fight ye, but… well, Matthias would’ve killed ye by now. It’d be a waste ta let skills like yers just disappear.”

  The mech took a step forward, raising a sword for its next attack, but upon hearing his words, it paused. It kept its sword held high, ready to strike at any moment, but it seemed the crew had an idea of what he was about to say—or at least wanted to hear him out, if not merely out of respect for a fellow warrior.

  Jahd glanced behind him before continuing, “We’ve no ill will against ye. Stand down an’ I’ve no doubt th’Admiral will spare ye. The last thing we need is more bloodshed in Avek Tirion.”

  The mech stepped forward again, but to Jahd’s surprise, a voice game from within. “Halt’ch your regeneration and we will talk.” The Volundr’s voice came rough and scratchy, muffled by its iron shell and thick accent.

  Jahd did as they asked. The bubbling and stretching of flesh down his right arm came to a complete stop, though he did secretly continue mending his internal injuries. Seeing this, the mech moved to a neutral stance and reversed its grip on both swords, planting their tips into the ground. The warriors stood across from each other, their deathmatch paused through mutual respect.

  Volundr: “You want’ch us to surrender? War is not’ch such a simple thing.”

  Jahd raised an eyebrow. “Maybe not, but do ye really plan ta die fer some other nation? Evendel’s coin can’t be worth yer life, not when ye know ye’ve lost.”

  Volundr: “We do not’ch fight’ch for Evendel. We fight’ch for our people—for Kan’aa.” The raspy voice spoke the name of its homeland with pride. “If we surrender, we tarnish the reputation of all Volundr. The Vow is more sacred than survival.”

  Jahd: “An’ that ‘Vow’ precludes ye from surrenderin’ no matter what, even when the fightin’s finished?” He gestured around with his partially-regenerated arm. “Just listen. The fightin’s windin’ down.”

  The two did stand in silence for a moment. Throughout the course of their battle, loud clamors and cracks had sounded in the distance, ringing out from all around the bay. The sounds of attacks striking the mechs’ armor, of their maces cracking the stone pavement of the wharf, of piers or unmoved ships being struck to splinters. These sounds weren’t quite completely gone, but they were few in number now.

  Jahd: “Most o’ yer companions are either dead, surrendered, fleein’, or never even made it out o’ the water. There ain’t any shame in surrender when ye’ve already lost.”

  The Volundr was silent a moment longer, as if considering his words. “And what’ch about’ch you, Undead? Quite’ch presumptuous to demand we surrender when you are about’ch to lose.”

  Jahd: “Aye, I’ll admit ye’ve got me on the ropes. It’s a poor match-up; if we kept goin’, you’d probably win.” He glanced behind him again and smiled, “But this ain’t a duel—it’s war. Like I said, most o’ yer friends’ve lost. On the flipside, that means most o’ my friends’ve won.”

  His reinforcements arrived perfectly on cue. With a sound like the crack of a whip, a figure came careening through the air, sliding to a stop on the opposite side of the mech—Matthias, his hands caked in blue blood. He wasn’t alone, either; others came rushing after him, including… Helena, wielding some unfamiliar weapon? Jahd would scold her recklessness later.

  Jahd: “So? Still feel like dyin’ in vain?”

  The mech’s iron shell groaned as it lowered to the ground, the armor itself seeming to sigh. “Very well. We surrender.”

  Jahd let out a sigh of relief, resuming the regeneration of his arm. “Good. It’d be a shame for Kan’aa ta lose a warrior of yer caliber—all of ye.” He turned, not facing his opponent. “Congrats on beatin’ me.”

  Southern battlefield — Result: Jahd’s victory.

  Chapter Glossary:

  The Cycle - An extremely powerful ritual cast over a thousand years ago which remains in effect to this day. It is responsible for creating the Undead races by recycling the souls of the deceased.

  | The Vow - A core concept of Volundr culture which demands they give their utmost as mercenaries, even at the cost of their own lives. They believe that universally adhering to the Vow is necessary to maintaining their race's reputation as quality mercenaries.

  Kan'aa - (Pronounced con-ahh) A nation within the swamps in the southwest corner of Kiyona, and the homeland of the Volundr.