Sara threw herself down the keep's steps three at a time, Ignite and Evie beside her. Their combined armors and equipment sent down an atrocious racket as they scraped around corners and threw themselves over banisters, such that the small crowd that had been awaiting their arrival had fled the keep by the time they arrived, assuming it nearing colpse.

  Sara dashed past the motley collection of masons, carpenters, and other tradesfolk without a word, heading for the keep's gate. Evie, behind her, had time to shout only the briefest expnation.

  "Ships afire in the harbor!"

  "Order any guards to the dock immediately!" Ignite added, his words overpping Evie's. Almost immediately, however, a bell began to ring atop the tower walls, sounding the arm. It had been one of Ignite's first additions to the city, and it proved its use as the guard atop the vast granite defenses took three running strides before heaving a long pole out into the skies above the city, a red streamer trailing behind some twenty feet. With a perch so far above the city, it was impossible to miss, and it pointed the scattered city guards exactly to the point of assault.

  Sara tucked her head down as they entered the streets, furiously cwing at her ruined gauntlet. With her fist permanently curled by the ruined hinges she couldn't grasp a straw, much less her sword, and that was going to very quickly become a problem. Even as she ran she took out a belt knife and began to pry apart the most troublesome sections, heedless of the occasional gouge she gave herself in her haste.

  Soon they had to slow as they coincidentally passed patrols of guards, who Ignite promptly ordered to fall in, even though they couldn't match an Irregur's pace. Weeks of Hurlish's bor and Nora's spoils had equipped most of the Tulian Guard with a level of protection that was utterly extravagant for city guards, yet woefully inadequate for a frontline soldier. Straight-edged metal cuirasses, coming to a steep horizontal V before the pecs, protected their chest well enough, but they were open-backed, and the only metal on them besides their swords. Most had eschewed the simple leather caps they'd been provided in the Tulian humidity, and a few had even shucked off their heavy gambesons, which would have done a great deal to protect them from arrows or cutting edges. Sara couldn't imagine what was going through their heads as they jogged alongside their commander and leader of the city while so obviously having scked off, especially to such consequence, and they poorly hid their petrified gnces at Ignite and Sara. With a battle near they shouldn't have worried about their reactions, at least not yet, but Ignite would certainly be shouting himself hoarse the moment the fight was finished.

  Sara called over one of the burlier fellows among the guards jogging behind them, showing him the ruined gauntlet and the knife she'd been trying to break it apart with. She handed him the hilt and instructed him to get it off her, no matter what, and his eyes had bulged.

  "But ma'am, I could--"

  "I have healing potions for a hand, but they'll be awfully hard to drink if my skull's been caved in because I couldn't hold my sword. I can't get leverage on it myself, so get to it."

  The man took the knife's hilt with all the enthusiasm of a man driven to the noose, gently setting its tip inside one of the gaps she'd already wedged open. Sara held her hand as steady as possible as the city streets fshed by, watching with some amusement as a man with biceps thicker than her head anxiously licked his lips and readjusted the knife a dozen times over. She thought of ordering him to hurry up, but for all her spoken bravado, she wasn't eager to see what it felt like to lose a finger.

  Just as the docks came into view the man briefly grunted, the sound accompanied by a fsh of pain in Sara's hand. She looked back down to see that he'd popped the metal around her index finger off like he was shucking corn, and was already moving to her middle finger. Having found himself a method now, the second came much quicker, and Sara tossed him a few mindless mutterings of praise as she focused on the situation in the harbor.

  Lady Vesta's ship was only a few hundred yards from the shore now, every inch of sail still fully raised. The fire on the main sail had been extinguished, somehow, but there was little left to it other than a few tattered embers still colpsing. The rest of the sails were still enough to be driving it forward at an impressive speed for a sailing ship, and Sara saw no attempts to divert from a collision course with the docks.

  Behind the ship, perhaps two hundred yards back, were the Sporatan Navy ships. After a month of reading and listening to Nora's thoroughly exhaustive after-action reports, Sara could now recognize in their build that they'd been trimmed for speed, rather than endurance, and the iron-capped rams jutting from their bows were their primary weapon of choice, complimented by teams built primarily of archers, not boarders. It was a relief, to a degree, because it meant they weren't here to take the city, but it also meant she'd have a hell of a time doing anything about them if they chose to break off the chase and pepper the shoreside buildings with fming arrows. The Tulian Guard was never meant to be a military force, and so the only archers among them were those who'd been hunters and brought their own bows.

  Ignite suddenly let fly a flurry of curses in his native nguage, wheeling to the right without warning to head perpendicur to Vesta's path.

  "What's up? Where are we going?" Sara asked.

  Ignite was so incensed that he answered in his own nguage for the first few words, before visibly forcing his temper down. "They are holed below the waterline, and intend to beach themselves to prevent a sinking, but the docks they point themselves to were built for deep drafts, and will swallow them hole."

  Sara had no idea how he knew all of that, as the ship looked to be sitting perfectly even in the water to her, with the only visible damage being to her sails, but she certainly wasn't going to question someone with decades of experience in the matter.

  "What do we need to do?"

  "Have you a communication with them?" Ignite asked, accent thickening under the stress. "We must show them to shallower grounds, so they may beach appropriately."

  "Communication? No, no I can't talk to them."

  "Master, what about producing a signal fg with your illusion?" Evie suggested. She'd easily kept pace with them, summoning and dismissing her rapier anxiously the entire trip.

  "I have to know what a signal fg looks like, first, and I've never paid any attention." As soon as she said that, however, an idea occurred to Sara, and she fumbled for her bag with her free hand even while the guard kept working at her gauntlet. She quickly produced a notebook and charcoal nubs, pressing them to Ignite. "Draw me the symbol and I can make it rger with a spell."

  "I know only Carrion codes," Ignite protested, awkwardly juggling the supplies. "They may not recognize it, or worse, mistake its meaning."

  "Better than nothing, isn't it?"

  Ignite cursed in his native nguage once more, pinching the charcoal stick in his armored hands. He paused in his walk for only a few seconds to ssh out the symbol, a simple X with two dots on the left, one on the far right. "It means 'you are ordered to approach directly'," he expined, tossing her back the book.

  Sara immediately drew her sword and flicked it to its full length, thrusting it skyward as if holding a banner.

  "Ta-da!" She shouted, and in an instant regretted the activation word she'd chosen for the spell, which she'd never thought would be used in so desperate a circumstance. Thankfully the nearby guards had little time to think before the illusion burst into existence, willed as rge as possible. In her haste she hadn't fixed a clear image in her mind's eye before casting the spell, and so the entire page Ignite had drawn upon was rendered as a ten foot by ten sheet of yellowing paper emitted from her bde, the symbol scrawled across in jerky lines exactly as Ignite had. She kept holding it up as they jogged along the dockside, until Ignite abruptly ordered her to stop, somehow divining that the water was shallow enough for Vesta's ship to strike bottom.

  The success of the plot could be debated. Vesta's ship indeed began to heel to port, having luckily recognized the symbol, but in a small disaster, so too had the Sporaton ships. Far more maneuverable than Vesta's lumbering transport, they angled to cut off her approach, devouring the gap that the burned sails had already been allowing to close. In moments they'd be within archery range, and Sara could see lines of troops assembled on each of the three pursuing ships.

  Ignite began shouting orders to the guards as they slowly trickled in, a second signal spear having been flung by the watch on the wall to redirect the troops to their new position. The guards gathered together with their toes practically dangling off the edge of the docks, low tide leaving the water pping some five feet below them. Those that had brought shields were first in line, using their shortswords as intended, and Evie began sprinting about while ordering the few that had worn their helmets to donate them to the frontline, furiously snatching them off the heads of any who refused to give up what meager protection they provided.

  Sara herself had walked further up the pier, grinding her teeth as she watched the approach. Ignite had directed Vesta's ship to ram itself between two of the half-degraded stone piers that jutted out from the dockside, and the angle required to arrive there was bringing them closer and closer to the enemy. Sara scrambled over the eroded rocks at the end of the pier, wondering if the ship would pass close enough for her to leap to, or even if doing so would be a good idea.

  The first volley of arrows were loosed from the closest ship, a bck starling cloud traveling in a ponderous arc. Perhaps half the volley sported fming rags tied to their tips, but with the archers at the far end of their range, most of these spun out of sorts and fell short, while the traditional arrows sailed on. Though the pounding of her heart left the volley seeming to fly through mosses to Sara, it covered the distance in short enough time that those on deck could only fling up their hands or dive towards whatever cover was nearest.

  A rain of muffled thuds fell close enough together to almost sound as one impact, the practiced volley littering Vesta's ship with arrows. Sara was close enough that she heard several voices began to scream in pain, but fewer than she expected. Sara guessed the captain of the ship had ordered the crew to take shelter belowdecks when it became clear they wouldn't escape the volley, and only a few brave souls had remained atop to man the essentials.

  The second and third ship loosed a second volley, with fewer fire arrows after seeing the failure of the first. By the time the third ship had unched, the archers of the first were already drawing their bows back. Sara was forced to watch the ship grow ever more pierced by a hail of projectiles.

  As Vesta's ship slipped between the two piers, the Sporaton ships began acting oddly. Two furled their sails and dropped anchors, as if content to wait in the bay, while one turned sharper, aiming directly at the stern of Vesta's ship. The charging vessel switched wholly to fire arrows and abandoned coordinated volleys in favor of individual rapidfire, while the furthest kept piercing Vesta's ship at range. Strangely, however, the middle ship had ceased all combat, and was now veering hard to starboard, as if its rudder had jammed. The archers atop its deck were no longer even facing the city, but were rather pointed up at the helm, where Sara could only just see the captain holding up both hands.

  Then Vesta's ship passed groaning by her, and she had no attention to spare. She ran alongside as it headed for the still-growing clump of guardsmen, the few survivors visible on deck braced for impact.

  Sara put a forearm over her eyes as the limping ship impacted with all the speed it could muster, a violent snapping of the wood throwing splinters dozens of yards in every direction. There was a great shout both from Ignite's troops and those aboard, followed by the creaking moan of an injured beast.

  Sara opened her eyes and at once could see that Ignite had been right. The rear end of the ship, no longer held up by momentum, was already dropping into the ocean, lending the entire craft a rapidly steepening upward tilt. Ignite began shouting precise orders up at the deckhands, but the thoroughly terrified civilian sailors ignored every word in favor of flinging themselves off the deck to dry nd. With the stern sinking and the bow jammed in pce, the ship had become a lever, its foremost tip jutting ten feet above the dock. Still the sailors leaped down, several breaking ankles or legs, and then unable to get out of the way, were further injured by their fellows nding atop them. Wood and bones alike snapped among agonized screeches, the hiss and fre of fming arrows soaking the scene in a hellish tint.

  Sara reached the front of the ship and skidded to a stop beside Ignite, regrettably ignoring the several injured sailors she had to leap over. In the shadow of the ship they were somewhat sheltered from arrows, and so Ignite had bunched his soldiers close, shouting orders at them.

  "Gods all, where's a dder?! No, don't leave to find it, get close and--" by way of demonstration, Ignite took his gdius and smmed it into the ship's bow, bde biting deeply it into the wood. "Cut them a path, free the inside before smoke kills all!"

  Sara leapt to the task with several others, shortening her sword so she wouldn't hit her fellows as they all began desperately hacking at the thick timbers. Even with her and Ignite's impossible strength it was agonizingly slow going, over a foot of seasoned wood between them and the interior. With the ship still being pelted by arrows and the fmes now licking their way across the deck, no more were leaping free from above, unable to ford the deadly hail, so she had no choice but to forge on. Sara didn't know how long it would take to break through the ship's hull, but a sinking certainty filled her that it would be too long to save anyone.

  Until she heard a low-pitched, guttural roar from behind, and then the csh and cnk of armor shoving against armor. Sara looked behind to see the ranks of Ignite's guard parting in panicked waves, gdder by far to face exposure to archers than be in the path of one orc and her massive hammer, coming down the hill at a dead sprint.

  Sara dove to the side just before Hurlish reached the ship, swinging her hammer in a cataclysmic side-on blow. The bow of the ship turned to paper-mache under the impact, using her shoulder as much as her hammer to blow the timbers apart.

  Sara lifted her head just in time to see Hurlish bowling on into the bck void of the ship, welcomed by a chorus of terrified excmations. She'd left a gap wide enough for two to walk abreast. Almost immediately people began to flow from the exit, more than one bloodied by splinters Hurlish had sent flying, yet looking none too disappointed about the incidental friendly-fire.

  And then, just as Sara regained her feet, there appeared a familiar face. Half-dressed in pieces of the old suit of pte armor she knew very well, features caked in the soot of smoke, emerged Tarlin. Lady Vesta's bodyguard was the only human Sara had met taller than her in this world, and his height was presently further exaggerated by the way he alone exited the ship with rigid calm, resolutely blinking through the sun that glinted off a gleaming halberd.

  The bodyguard was in a state like Sara had never seen him. He sported a random assortment of his usual ptemail, with a single right-sided pauldron banced out by greaves running up only his left leg, with his breastpte as polished and shining as ever. Sara was familiar enough with the process of donning armor to recognize that he hadn't been caught halfway through dressing, which would have looked very different. It seemed like he had somehow lost half or more of his equipment, and since this theft not even bothered to cobble together any protection beyond the thin cloth tabard used by Vesta's guards.

  More interesting to Sara, however, was the ck of helmet, and what it revealed.

  Cat ears. Feline cat ears, just like Evie, covered in a thin brown fur, twitching every which way atop Tarlin's head. Sara gnced down, searching for a tail, and found it pressed tightly to his back, just as Evie always preferred in battle. Tarlin was a Feline, like Evie, and she'd never known. How could she, when she'd never seen him dressed in less than full pte?

  Sara had no time to ruminate further on the revetion, however, because he barked a word that summoned a small group pouring out directly behind him, shoved forward by a coughing woman in verdant green dress. Her red hair was stained by smoke, rips littering her fine clothing, and she wore none of her usual jewels, but Sara could've recognized Lady Vesta anywhere.

  "Lady Vesta! Here, here, I'm over here! Tarlin, get her over to me!"

  The armored Feline pivoted without hesitation, herding Vesta towards Sara with a firm press of his halberd's haft against the small of her back. The Lady stubbornly refused to be led ahead of the others, shoving off his attempts in favor of pushing three young men ahead of her. Confused, Sara studied their features for a half moment and realized with a shock that they were Lady Vesta's sons; they couldn't be anyone else. Three boys, early to te teens, all sporting the distinctive red hair so uncommon in Sporatos. Sara ran forward, ripping a shield out of the hands of one of the guards she passed.

  Still hidden from arrows by the shadow of the ship, Sara reached Lady Vesta in the same moment Evie did, her girlfriend already snapping orders off for nearby guards to form an escort. Sara held the shield up over their heads as a parasol against falling debris, wrapping a possessive arm around Vesta's shoulders.

  "Lady Vesta, are you alright?"

  Vesta opened her mouth to respond, then bent forward with a ragged cough, clearing her lungs by hacking bck spittle onto the stones. The incredibly un-dylike act seemed to disturb her children even more than the battle, eyes widening as if it were the final strike that nailed their desperate circumstances home. Seeing that Sara was now protecting Vesta herself, Tarlin circled around to stand before the kids, moving with the calm precision of parade drills, a stark contrast to the panic of his charges.

  Vesta ran her sleeve across her mouth, smiling shakily up at Sara. "Hello, Lady Sara! I apologize that I couldn't send a letter ahead of time. Dreadfully rude of me, to appear with so little warning."

  "Yeah, well, I'm more irritated by the paparazzi that followed you in. The hell'd you do?"

  "A complicated story, Lady Sara, and one which will be better enjoyed at a more convenient time, I imagine--"

  An abrupt silence cut through the air, choking off all conversation. The arrows had stopped falling.

  Ignite's voice rose above all else as others looked about, confused.

  "Brace!"

  Sara snagged Vesta by the colr of her dress, one of her sons by the arm, and threw herself back. A great crash split the air, the final ship having reached its destination. Vesta's wedged ship was thrown skyward, caught between the harbor walls and a ram, and Sara saw in horrifying slow-motion the split working its way along the hull. She kept running backward, hollering orders that were lost in the havoc. As the ship's bow reached its final height, prow three stories above them, the crack finally reached its end.

  The entire front third of the ship began to fall, so massive it seemed slow, drifting towards the stones in ponderous fashion. The illusion was ruined the moment it struck ground with a hideous bang, pulverizing the cobblestones and sending pieces scything above and into the assembled crowd.

  The moment Sara's grip loosened Vesta ripped herself free, sprinting back with hands cupped around her mouth.

  "Bene! Aric! Tarlin, where-- are they alright?!"

  Tarlin burst through the dust and smoke with both of Vesta's children being driven before him, using his halberd more like a cattleman's prod to force the unathletic nobles forward at a furious pace. Sara didn't immediately understand why, the collision having passed, until she saw more figures moving through the fog. They moved atop the remaining portion of Vesta's ship with measured steps, advancing as one line across the ship's deck.

  Sara threw her shield aside and raised her sword, trusting Vesta's safety to Evie. "Guard, with me!"

  There was a brief moment of hesitation, the scattered guards disorganized and confused, but it was wiped away by the first booming beat rolling out of Sara's chest. With no time to choose a tune, she activated Champion's Inspiration and ran forward, trying to cut the boarding crew off before they found a foothold on solid ground. As if she needed any proof that her subconscious was terrible at theming, she raced towards the enemy bsting the choral hum of Order, from a damn video game, of all things.

  Sara was joined in her charge by a ragged mass of Tulian guards, their fear temporarily smothered by Sara's abilities. She mounted the jumbled heap that was all that was left of the ship's prow, halting at the top to survey the scene and allow the guards to catch up. There was a thick crowd of nearly a hundred enemy soldiers picking their way across the fming ship, which had now settled onto the shallow seabed. There was a three foot drop from wharf to the deck, difficult to climb under duress, and the loose rubble of the prow provided an immediate second obstacle to their advance.

  Sara's initial idea, to wait atop the pile for the enemy to make the treacherous climb up to face her and the guards, was quickly shot down. Quite literally, in fact, when the better part of a dozen archers took aim at her from the rear of the formation, snapping off a hasty volley of arrows that easily flew over the heads of their fellows.

  Sara lunged forward with her head tucked low, forearm covering her eyes. She slid and stumbled blindly down the pile, knocked about by the ctter of arrows bouncing painfully off her armor. Thankfully there were only shortbows present, none of which could pierce the steel, but her right unarmored forearm was struck twice in rapid succession, barbed arrows skating off the flesh. Sara hid her yelps of pain in the music she emanated, which had devolved into a barrage of incomprehensible drums.

  Sara reached the bottom of the pile just as the first group of enemy soldiers did. Recognizing how impossible it would be dislodge a line of determined soldiers at such a disadvantage, they practically ignored her in their haste to mantle the wharf.

  Sara sought to correct their rudeness.

  She id about them as a butcher, blood flinging from her injuries as she cleaved at heads and shoulders with unrefined chops. Being naval marines, their protection was light, leaving their chestptes and helmets with regrettable gaps where the shoulders joined the neck. It was a weakness only easily exploitable from above, a rare scenario for a footsoldier, but devastating in these unlucky circumstances.

  Even as she dropped one after the other, collecting a pile of corpses at her feet, the rest managed to take positions on the wharf. The Tulian guards were far slower to navigate the rubbled mess than she'd been, tripping and falling to their knees as the loose pile slipped beneath their feet. Even as she killed a woman trying to come at her from the front, Sara felt a ringing impact against the back of her head, an archer wielding a pnk having circled around to come at her from behind.

  Sara whirled about in a rage, runes hissing to life as she cut the man from hip to hip, clearing her retreat. She began stepping back up the rubble pile, yelling mindless profanities in her fury at being driven back. The guard colpsed in on her sides, forming a shield wall to her left and right.

  Far more constrained by fighting in a formation, Sara was reduced to lunging at those that got within her range, trying to bite off any limb that dared to draw near her. Recognizing her as at least an Irregur, if not the Champion herself, the enemy sergeants barked orders to focus on the troops to her fnks, staying well clear of Sara herself.

  She was left seething in pce, useless for anything other than deterrence. Any time she dared to slip out of the line's protective safety she would be swarmed by a horde of soldiers, forced to fight her way back to friendlies or else be dragged under by weight of bodies. It was utterly infuriating, to be pinned by the absence of enemies, rather than a press that would at least give her something to do, and soon enough her frustration was vented by her Champion's marks, clouds of effervescent runesmoke tinging the world shades of pink and red.

  The Tulian Guard, trained in Carrion tactics, were as prepared for this battle as well as any force could be. Stances meant for stability on a pitching deck now served to keep them steady on broken wood and shifting rubble, the emphasis on an unbroken shield line keeping enemy marines from breaking through to range among the city itself.

  Even still, training was no substitute for experience. Ignite and Nora had always spoken of the Sporaton navy in tones of professional contempt, but for all they cked in numbers or equipment, the fact remained that the enemy had seen combat before, and the Tulian Guards hadn't. She suspected it was only the bolstering effect of Champion's Inspiration that kept them from breaking, a smothering bnket that turned mortal peril into mere terror. Even still, many of the troops she could see falling back did so well before necessary, panicked by small cuts or gncing blows that just as easily could've gone ignored. Their comrades dutifully took their pce in the line, preventing any rge gaps from opening, but it was a narrow, harrowing fight.

  Sara bit off a curse as yet another soldier danced out of her sword's range, joining the fight elsewhere. She took a few steps back to gain some height, risking exposure to archers for the brief moment required to scan for Ignite and the rest of the Guard. They should've reinforced her already.

  Ignite was nowhere to be seen. The space behind the rubble was deserted, not even the rest of the Tulian Guard present. Refusing to believe Ignite had abandoned her, Sara risked herself just a bit more by stretching her neck out, looking throughout the harbor.

  Aside from the ship that had now wedged itself firmly into Vesta's, there was no sign of enemy vessels on the open water. The vague area of the ship that had been turning strangely earlier was now coated by an incongruously dense cloud of fog, an impenetrable white cloud whose origin Sara was utterly clueless to. The puffy white aberration sat motionless on the waters of the bay, covering no more space than the ship would have occupied. Sara didn't know if it was a spell meant to conceal the ship, or some strange failure of an enchanted weapon, or even just a bizarre bit of weather, but she didn't have the luxury of time to investigate. She kept scanning, finding the third ship a moment ter.

  In a dispy of unbelievable brazenness, she found it docked two wharfs down. The Navy vessel had calmly slipped into pce and lowered its gangpnk, apparently intent on depositing its full compliment of shipboard soldiers in organized fashion.

  Unfortunately for the ship's bold captain, Ignite seemed to have taken a particurly personal offense to this. Sara could see him tearing his way up the wharf, bodies dropping into the water on either side of his advance, his Guard hurrying to occupy the empty space his assault opened. With their center filled with Tulian Guards on the narrow stone pier, the close-pressed enemy marines were more often shoved off the sides rather than fought, doomed to drown by their heavy metal armor. They went in screaming, some reaching for belt knives to cut their armor's straps, others turning the knives on their own throat as they slipped beneath.

  Blood clouded the water.

  None surfaced.

  An arrow whizzed past Sara's head, forcing her back down from reconnaissance to absorb what she'd seen. Ignite would easily deal with the docked ship, at his current rate of advance, but it would likely take more time than she had. Evie and Vesta were nowhere to be seen, which was a relief, but Hurlish's disappearance worried her deeply. She'd never seen the orc emerge from Vesta's ship, but there'd been plenty of time for her to escape before the ramming had occurred.

  Hadn't there?

  Horrible, taunting, images of Hurlish lying face-down in the flooding ship coursed through her mind, distracting Sara as she retook her pce. Hurlish could have been overwhelmed by smoke and rendered unconscious, or been struck by the ram, or any number of things.

  Sara's runes deepened further in hue in accordance with her tightening grip on her sword, the handle of which was now slicked by blood running down her arm. Crimson drops falling off her skin were nearly indistinguishable from the reddening smoke, which soon pooled between her feet. Whatever the magical substance was, it was heavier than air, and it gathered and ran like ephemeral water. When it reached her ankles it began to spill out over the debris, cascading down towards the enemy as a bloody waterfall. The Sporaton troops nervously skittered away from it, unsure if it was a spell or some other foul plot, and their skittishness began to open a gap.

  It was the final straw. Sara's long overstressed restraint snapped with a crack, boards breaking beneath her feet as she unched forwards. She charged with a roar, bleeding clouds of smoke as she bulldozed towards the broken ship. The enemy sergeants began bellowing orders at their troops, demanding they halt Sara's advance, but the cowed troops were too reluctant to approach the smoke. Sara met only a single man along the way, an idiotically brave swordsman that she didn't even bother to engage. She simply lowered a shoulder and ran him over, leaping off his ribcage toward the half-afme deck.

  A dozen archers stood where she nded, having been pre-occupied by searching for an angle to fire upon the Guard. She didn't give them a moment to register their shock.

  Sara id about herself with unrefined strokes, barely feeling a tug as her sword bit clean through leather and flesh alike. She began to shout Hurlish's name, barely paying attention to her own swings. The naval archers didn't even have a dagger to defend themselves.

  Very quickly, unfortunately, she found herself becoming the center of much unwanted attention. While the bulk of the boarding ship's forces were still engaging the guards, the line was too narrow to occupy every avaible swordarm. The smoke around Sara was dissipating without effecting anyone, something the sergeants were pointing out with great vigor to their troops as they urged them forward. Sara continued to work her way towards the back of the ship, where a stairwell led down below, praying for Hurlish to be alright.

  To anyone looking from afar, it must have looked very strange. After her initial assault the archers had fallen away from her, staying well outside the length of her sword, unable to loose an arrow without risking friendly fire. With nothing to do other than watch and stay out of her way, the archers parted around her in a bubble, a school of fish broken up by a marauding shark.

  Sara worked to drive home the impression. She snapped her sword out constantly, gring down at anyone in her sight, willing the smoke to keep pouring from her skin. Her head was cool enough by now to recognize that she'd just idiotically dove into the middle of a hundred enemy troops, and it was only their fear of Champions keeping her from being rushed by overwhelming numbers. Pying the part of an enraged beast was all that kept her alive, and she endeavored to do the role justice.

  It couldn't st, naturally. A cluster of footsoldiers that had been surrounding the stairwell were now heeding their sergeant's calls, reforming to face her instead, and what troops could be spared from the assault on the guards were hurrying up behind her. Some archers had been ordered to climb what remained of the mast and rigging, searching for an angle that would let them shoot down on her without potentially striking allies. Far too te, the scope of Sara's impulsiveness began to weigh on her. If the Sporatons didn't kill her, Evie certainly would.

  Frantic drumbeats shook the air, Champion's Inspiration still echoing out into the skies. The swordsmen surrounding the stairwell had formed a shieldwall to greet her, ten of them assembled in ragged fashion. It had been not even two months since Sara had been stopped cold in simir circumstances, the troops of a Carrion Magecraft an impenetrable wall, but the simirities to that stormy day were shallow. Sara began to understand Nora and Ignite's disdain for the Sporaton Navy as she eyed the soldiers, who formed one long line of ten, rather than a denser two row formation that would have been more difficult to breach. Their shields didn't overp, and they kept their eyes locked on her, paying no mind to those beside them, the inattention creating more gaps in their defense. Sara licked her lips and strode forward, blood running down her arm and off her fingers to join the crimson collection on her sword's edge.

  That blood hissed into steam as lightning began to crackle its way up her bde, a serpent's twisting embrace that rapidly grew blinding even in the light of day. She raised her sword with zy contempt, one eye squeezed shut to help her aim at the centermost woman. The thick scent of ozone clogged her nose, the hair of every archer and sailor on the deck standing on end.

  "Boom."

  Where her old 'Taze' spell had coated her bde in electricity, this one devoured it, bck steel turned white. In one instant there was a woman and her comrades, holding fast against Sara's approach, and in the next there was emptiness. Brilliant light filled the void, a bolt as thick as a man was tall summoned with a crash of thunder booming out over the harbor. The three middle most soldiers were obliterated entirely, turned to ash, and those beside them recoiled with bloodied ears and singed skin.

  Lightning. A simple spell, all the more powerful for its inexorable nature. A single piece of Olympian wrath called by Sara's words, enough to annihite nearly anything. Under Garen's consideration she'd selected the spell, hoping to alter the magic so it might produce less dramatic power for a considerably longer time, imitating the arc welders with which she was so familiar. While there had been some success in that regard over the st month, most of her attempts had manifested much as this one had, with her target reduced to ash. She'd learned after only the first day that it was a spell best practiced beyond the city's walls, out of concern for both property and the citizenry's nerves.

  Sara dropped back into a proper sword stance, pressing the advantage. The lightning bolt had blown a hole clear through the stern of the ship and into the bow of the Sporaton vessel beyond, fires the sailors had barely suppressed roaring back to life all along its trail. She ran past the dazed and confused enemy marines, who were too shellshocked for her to bother engaging.

  Sara pulled up short just before the stairwell, swelling with relief. Green skin and a massive hammer emerged, their owner coughing violently, a wet rag pressed over her nose and mouth.

  "Hurlish!" Sara cried, running over. The orc turned to her with bleary eyes, reddened by the thick smoke which still boiled below. Sara immediately ducked under her arm, hauling her up. The lightning had blown open the rear cabin of the ship, and she led Hurlish into the newly created entrance to take temporary shelter, dropping Champion's Inspiration so they could talk. "Are you alright? Can you fight?"

  Hurlish coughed a few times into the rag, then used it to wipe her face. "I can fight, yeah," she raggedly insisted.

  The relief with which she surrendered her weight to Sara's support told a different story. Her armored breastpte was dotted with dozens of deep dents, as if the thick steel had been used as a target for machineguns. She kept blinking slowly, as if still in the thick smog below, and her eyes never quite focused right.

  Sara pressed a finger to the indentations. "The hell happened to you?"

  "Some fuckin' mage," Hurlish huffed, using her hammer for a cane. Sara had to struggle to hear her over the sergeants outside hollering to one another, preparing to assault the small gap. "Real big fan of ice magic, I guess. Kept throwing the shit at me so I couldn't get back up on deck. Killed 'em in the end, though, right about before I heard the big kaboom. That you?"

  "Yeah, it was me. That spell may not be great for welding, but it does wonders for getting rid of dickheads."

  "Ah, I'm sure you'll figure it out," Hurlish said, then bent to cough once more. The shouts outside were growing more infrequent, their organization nearly complete.

  Sara reached into her bag of holding, retrieving a potion. She handed it to Hurlish, who took it gratefully. The potion wasn't enough to put the orc back in full fighting shape, but her breath lost some of its ugly rasp, and she stood straighter. Sara downed one of her own, which knitted up the wound on her arm. She wiped her bloody hands on the wall, sopping up the blood soaking her sword's grip with Hurlish's pants leg.

  "How many out there?" The orc asked.

  "About a hundred. Some of 'em are stuck fighting the guard, but there's still more than enough to swarm us."

  "You got another lightning bolt in you?"

  "One. It'll clear the gap well enough, but after that, I'm spent. I'll be down to my one-on-one spells."

  "Well, shit," Hurlish sighed. She hefted up her hammer, resting it on her shoulder. "Sounds like they're about to come at us. Want to see how many we can get?"

  Sara tried her best to grin. "You better not sck off. I'm just about caught up to your level, remember?"

  Hurlish snorted, facing the entryway with a grim expression. Sara took a pce by her side, mentally readying her second lightning spell.

  They could hear the enemy just outside, listen to their words as the sergeants shouted encouragement and threats in equal measure. They'd be rushing two irregurs, in confined spaces, and Sara and Hurlish were sure to exact a horrific toll on any assault. Nonetheless, the sergeants truthfully warned their soldiers, faltering would be worse by far. The assault may kill half, but a rout would be the death of them all, freeing Sara and Hurlish to run through their ranks with impunity.

  How Sara hoped it would happen.

  And then, abruptly, the tone changed. There was a great cmor as orders were shouted to about face, turn around, damn you, and then there raised two competing cries, one of dismay, the other of jubition.

  Sara risked the briefest gnce around the corner. Running over the debris, dressed in gory breastptes and sporting shields looted from the fallen enemies of the other ship, was the Tulian Guard. Ignite's forces had finished sweeping up the enemy on his front and had finally returned, the man himself at their head.

  "Oh, hey, look at that," Sara said, not quite exhausted enough to avoid sarcasm. "We're not going to die. How neat is that?"