The walk along the river was strangely tranquil. The fresh air, with scents of pine coming through the thick swaying grasses, did much to lift the malaise that held the women. The harsh juxtaposition of the serenity now after the horror they had just endured, or the realization that they had been saved, caused some to openly weep.

  They made their way slowly down the river, the sounds of the flowing water having a calming effect on the nerves of everyone. The girls had started to talk among themselves. They still used hushed tones and looked warily around, but they were no longer withdrawn into themselves.

  It was nearing noon when they turned to head into the city, and they could see the tall spire of the Academy tower in the center of town. At this pace, it would only be 45 minutes before they arrived. They stopped to take a break before moving into the street of the city, resting in a grassy park a stone’s throw from the first pavement. Suddenly, A message with Katherine’s frantic and panicked voice echoed in the air.

  “The Academy is under attack.” Morgan stiffened. “ At least thirty men. The survivors are with me, barricading ourselves in the south wing. All patrols and guards report to the Academy as soon as possible.” Looking around, he saw everyone else tensing; they had all heard it. The message continued, “Use caution. I repeat, around thirty men have attacked the Academy. We have suffered heavy losses already, please try to …” The message faded.

  “Damn, thirty men,” said Frank. “That means they had some infiltrated already in the Academy, or not just the one group we saw.”

  “South wing, they are the female dorms,” Mara stated, “They are only accessible from the first floor.”

  “We need to split up,” Morgan decided, “You and Mara take the women and hole up in one of these shops.” They were beside a strip mall, “They cant get their hands on them again.” Frank nodded once, then started unstrapping the police body armor.

  “Here, you take this, it isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing,” Frank grunted, shucking the vest over his head. Morgan maneuvered his way into the vest. The unfamiliar feeling of the vest settling onto his shoulders and then wrapping around his chest felt oddly comforting. It was Kevlar and padding, no metal plates, made to protect from prisoners, not bullets. Frank shook his hand and wished him luck. Mara stepped forward and gave him a quick hug before stepping back.

  “Kick some ass,” she said, “these guys are only going to hurt more and more people. They think that because they are stronger, they can just take whatever they want.”

  “I will do the best I can,” Morgan said, straightening.

  “That’s all anyone can do, lad. You cant help everyone,” Frank started.

  “But I can help someone,” Morgan finished with him. Frank looked at him with a halfhearted scowl, then grinned.

  “Stay safe,” Morgan nodded his head to his two companions, “I’ll be back”. He turned and began sprinting to the Academy.

  Rounding the last corner, Morgan slowed. He could see the metal gates of the Academy; the iron bars of the gate were twisted and peeled back. He had enough room to slip through easily.

  There were signs of fighting as he crossed the large lawn, scorched ground, some leaves on a tree still smoldering, and corpses sprawled haphazardly on the meticulously manicured lawn. There was a wide variety of wounds on the corpses: burns, slashes, missing limbs, some bodies wore crushed and battered armor, some nothing more than street clothes.

  The thought of absorbing skills from all these people made Morgan slow slightly. Arguing with himself, he decided he would only take the skills of ‘bad’ people. Feeling better about somehow being respectful of the dead who were ‘good’ people, he jogged on.

  The sounds of loud banging and voices could be heard from the main foyer. Morgan walked in, sword drawn, expecting an immediate fight. There were about ten men of various ages, wielding an assortment of weapons from batons to swords. They were all facing away from the entrance, cheering a strongly built, tall man who had a club similar to the one Stocky had used.

  The man was striking the thick wooden door to the south wing with the club. His blows were splintering the wood, but just after he struck, a shimmer would ripple across the door and pull all the splinters back, and it was whole again. Glancing over, Morgan saw another man, standing eight feet away, eyes closed, hand resting on the podium.

  A plan formed in his mind, and Morgan turned to the crowd facing away from him at the door. He swung as hard as he could in a wide sweeping arc about a foot above the ground. The swishing sound of Godslayer’s Blade activating was music to his ears; he couldn’t have hoped for a better time for it. His blade moved unhindered through the shins of the back four men, their initial exclamations of shock turned into screams of pain as they fell, blood spurting from their cleanly severed legs.

  Morgan turned and ran past the podium, beheading the shopping man as he did so. He turned and dashed up the stairs to the men’s dorms, where Frank’s room had been. A man was standing in the middle of the hall as Morgan’s skill allowed him to silently push open the door. His eyes widened, and he was still reaching to draw his sword, when Morgan slashed into his sword arm, and ran past to Frank’s room.

  Shutting and locking the door behind him, he threw open his pack and grabbed his helmet. Dropping the police visored helmet, he slid the Faceless Bastion on. Feeling its materials wrapping onto his face, he opened the window and dropped down the fifteen feet to the yard below. His knees took the brunt of the fall, something popped in his left knee, but it healed in moments.

  He walked back into the main foyer from the entrance. Three men were lying on the ground, still screaming, one silent. Two men were trying to bandage the wounds. The man with the club was still banging on the door. Lunging forward, Morgan killed one of the men bandaging the wounded. Too late, he saw the large man turning. Overextended, there was nothing he could do as the large club slammed into his chest. The police vest helped to disperse some of the force, but he felt his rips crack as he was thrown backwards through the door he had just entered, dropping his sword and rolling down the steps into the yard.

  A man was shouting orders as Morgan crawled onto all fours, drool escaping his mouth, pooling inside the helmet. His sternum was pressing into his lungs, keeping them from inflating. Once again, he felt the wriggling sensation of bones moving as his ribs crawled under his skin, back to their normal positions.

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  Working his way to a kneeling position, he struggled to make his chest work. The blood and saliva that pooled in his helmet drained out onto his neck and chest. He slowly stood, a group of five men fanning out in front of him. A tall, muscular well dressed man wearing a gray suit and bright red tie walked out behind the group. He had short blond hair and blue eyes, and a thick mustache. The large man with the club staggered out, his shirtless chest already turning into a sickly blue and black bruise.

  “Well, well, it seems we have finally found the man in the black mask.” The man in the suit said calmly, in a thick European accent. “I am Steven Johansen. Ralph sent me a message as he died. It was just you in your mask, standing over his bleeding body.” He looked down at the police vest Morgan wore. “I see you have been to the mill,” he said thoughtfully. “I must assume then, since you are here, my men are dead and the women are free somewhere in the city. No matter, we will have more here than we did there.” Morgan was still trying to get his breath to work more than five percent; his vision was starting to swim, and he fought to keep from swaying.

  “It is true,” Morgan finally wheezed out. “We won’t let you have the Academy!”

  The man, looking unperturbed, chuckled and spouted off some foreign language, “Den enes br?d ?r den andres d?d. One man’s bread is another’s death. While I appreciate your drive, I can’t accept you interfering in my operation.” He held out a hand, and Morgan felt a force gripping his mind. He was paralyzed; he could move his eyes but nothing else.

  “Go on,” Johansen said, pointing to the man on his left. The man walked forward with his sword and stabbed it into Morgan’s chest.

  Morgan couldn’t move, even as the man pulled out his sword and blood geysered onto the lawn. The man who stabbed him winced, bringing his hand away from his own chest, staring in shock at the blood that had soaked through his shirt. Morgan’s chest wound took longer than usual to heal, but it was sealed in a few seconds. The man stood in front of him, confusion on his face.

  she said, then added pleadingly,

  Morgan thought back sarcastically.

  “Oh, this is going to be interesting, “Johansen said, interrupting Morgan’s internal thoughts, a hideous grin twisting his face into a mask of evil menace, that turned into a wide-mouthed “o” of a scream as a crossbow bolt thudded into his bicep. Glancing up, Morgan could see Marcus leaning out of a second-story window of the Academy. Johansen turned and ran back towards the Academy entrance, cursing loudly.

  Morgan felt his body come back under his control. He grabbed the hand holding the sword of the bewildered man in front of him, pushing on the blade slightly, heaved the grip up, making him drive the weapon into his own neck. Marcus was still firing down at the group of men around him, handing the crossbow inside, then leaning out and firing again.

  Then, a second window opened, and a woman Morgan didn’t know shot an icicle that slammed into the large man with the club as he ran to get back into the foyer, following Johansen. The large man stumbled and lurched into the doorway, disappearing from view. A third window opened, spewing a large rock the size of a baseball into a man’s face.

  Then there was a flash as a spear blade slashed in front of Morgan’s face. Drawing his own short sword, he dove. Fighting the spearman was a new experience. He had a spear with a large blade and a hook on the end of it. The reach of the weapon made getting in with the short sword without getting hit difficult. After a few back-and-forth strikes, parries, and deflects, Morgan realized he didn’t need to worry about getting hit once.

  He dove in, not trying to avoid a slashing stab into his left shoulder, but then he was close, and the short sword was much better than the spear. The spearman cursed and fumbled the spear just a bit as blood emerged from a slash on his shoulder. Morgan looped his left arm, still slightly numb and useless from having the shoulder tendons severed, over the handle of the spear. Turning and using his bodyweight, he pulled the now-wounded spearman off balance. As the spearman stepped forward, bracing to pull back, Morgan drove his sword into the man’s extended leg.

  The spearman released the spear and clutched his leg as it buckled. As the spearman fell, Morgan raised the sword, slashing him again in the neck. He ran toward the building, sheathing his short sword and grabbing the bastard sword as it floated up in front of him. Silently thanking Jiwoo, he bounded up the stairs. A group was coming out of the door to the south wing, Katherine at its front. She was wearing a set of chainmail, holding a dagger.

  “How many?” she asked, “They had at least thirty when they attacked.”

  “I don’t know,” Morgan responded, “There were still about ten, and Johansen.”

  “We got separated from a group of the guards, they were in the west wing taking some wounded to the healers.” Katherine lamented, “We thought we could hold them outside the gates, then one of them summoned a huge rock golem that just ripped its way through.”

  They made their way as a group to the healer’s courtyard. Everyone in the courtyard was on high alert, but they had been untouched.

  “Where did they go?” Katherine asked, “They didn’t just disappear.”

  “What is the most important thing you have here?” Morgan said, turning to face Katherine. “What would make coming here worth it?”

  “The podium, and… and… the storehouse.” She said her face was going pale. “We had hundreds of rations packs, a few collections of weapons and armor. It’s in the north wing, next to Marshall’s office.”

  Morgan took off down the hall as Katherine directed the healers and guards. He could hear voices as he neared a corner at the end of the north wing.

  “We had a deal, Johansen.” An angry man was saying in a harsh tone. “I just had to get you into the Academy.”

  “Your part of the bargain,” said the heavily accented Johansen, “was to get us in, and give us control of the sheep you said were here. I don’t tolerate incompetence.”

  “I thought you were planning to wait a week. I wasn’t ready.” The angry man’s voice had started to sound whiny.

  “Only the fact that you have done exactly as I asked for the last eight years is keeping you alive,” Johansen hissed out.

  Morgan risked a peek around the corner. Johansen stood with a blood-soaked bandage on his outstretched arm. A bald man, Morgan assumed Marshall, stood paralyzed in front of him. Beyond the two men, Morgan could see a dozen or so men loading the last few boxes onto the truck-bed wagon he had seen earlier.

  Drawing the short sword and testing his grip with his right hand, Morgan stepped out and tossed the sword overhand at the two men, aiming at Johansen. The sword missed, but slammed hilt-first into the paralyzed man’s face. He didn’t move but let out a shrill cry as blood exploded from his nose, and the sword fell clattering to the ground.

  Running forward with his bastard sword, Morgan got close enough to nick the side of Johansen’s hand as he spun around, taking off the pinky. Marshall fell, knees buckling under the unexpected weight. Johansen jumped back, calling out to his men. They surged forward as Johansen ran out the door.

  Hearing noise behind him, Morgan spared a glance to see a few guards coming from behind him. The bandits saw this as well and turned to follow Johansen. They pushed the cart quickly.

  As Morgan ran out to follow, a giant rock fist crashed down into the lawn, inches from crushing him. He rolled and came up in a ready stance. Ahead of him was a twelve-foot-tall slate gray golem, it had enlarged hands and arms that ended in sharp-looking shards of broken rock. It took a ponderous step forward, its large stone foot sinking inches into the lawn. Morgan edged backwards; he did not want to get hit by this thing. He was unsure if he would recover from becoming a red mist.

  The golem moved slowly but pushed a tree over as it plodded after Morgan. Singular in its pursuit. Then, as if a massive hammer from the sky had slammed into it, it shattered and cracked, collapsing and losing form, becoming a large pile of slate gray stones.