Elliott stepped out of the tavern into raindrops lashing down on his head and the cobblestone streets of the square. Isabel moved to stand beside him on his left, and Elsie took a perch on his right shoulder. Rose followed them out, though she stood behind them, as the tavern door closed with Korin inside.

  A welcoming party awaited them in the dim light of the square. A semi-circle of guards wearing blue tabards with a red cross and gold five-pointed stars over their chainmail and leather armour. Over a hundred as Isabel had said, the front ranks lowering their halberds and spears in their direction, while behind them, archers nocked arrows to bowstrings, waiting for their orders. Elliott saw Micah weaving between the ranks of soldiers as he made his way to the mounted officers near the headless statue. That group was flanked by six individuals that clearly differed from the regular soldiers. He only needed a glance at the gear they wore to know they were a mixture of warriors, mages and a single healer – the only real threat here. Well, to others anyway.

  He tapped into his mana reserves and cast several spells.

  [Supernal Barricade] threw invisible walls across every street leading to the square, blocking off all ways in and out. He directed [Celestial Prism of Thaumaturgical Containment] over the barricades and the buildings to trap any magical effects within the area. He wrapped [Transcendent Panes of Energy Absorption] over the prism to contain physical damage. He had no interest in destroying the town. Finally, he covered everything in a [Mirage], so anyone looking in would see an empty square.

  “All yours, Isabel. Elsie will take care of the runners.” He looked at Elsie on his shoulder, who met his eyes with a bright smile.

  “As you wish, Sir,” Isabel answered as she stepped forward, unclasping the axe on her back.

  She drew Death’s Whisper from its restraints.

  ***

  Micah swung into the saddle of his horse, almost missing the stirrup when one of the mages called out, “He’s Starforged.”

  His head snapped to the source of that voice. Anya, a mage cloaked in the colours of the Empire, her hand trembling slightly on the staff she held.

  Micah turned his gaze to the man, with that devilish doll on his shoulder and the maid at his side. Micah knew they were different when the lights had turned back on in the tavern and he found himself face to face with a child’s toy with a pin near his eye. But the man was the leader, the way he had easily commanded the room once he’d appeared. Micah knew he was dangerous. Knew he was most likely Starforged. Anya had only confirmed it.

  “How do you know?” Rolan asked, standing by her side in his armour, broadsword already in his hands.

  “He’s casting magic I don’t recognise. And he didn’t have a cast time.”

  That sent gasps through the ones close enough to have heard it.

  “It’s unheard of,” Valren said, white tabard of his healer class draped over his robes. “There hasn’t been a Starforged that powerful since the He…” he caught himself before he blasphemed.

  Micah ignored it. The Covenant of Heroes had been proven to be a lie and the man standing in front of the tavern looked anything but heroic. Leather combat boots. A dark coat in an unrecognisable fashion flowing to the man’s knees, its collar turned up. Dozens of weapons strapped to his back, various orbs hanging at his belt. The man was unlike any adventurer Micah had ever seen and nothing like the Shadows that accompanied him.

  And then there was the pentagram scar carved into his forehead. The symbol wasn’t too unlike the banners of the Order of Balance. Was this man theirs? Someone they hadn’t informed the Empire about? Or was he here to help the resistance? It was too coincidental for him to show up at this moment.

  It didn’t matter.

  Micah wiped rain from his face and called two mounted scouts over. “One of you go and inform the Lord Commander of what’s happening here. And one of you go and inform Lord Captain Harshaw. Tell him we need all the Orichalcum and Adamantite soldiers they can send.”

  The scouts nodded, turning their horses to gallop from the square. Outside the tavern, the maid stepped forward, drawing the monstrous axe on her back that was two-thirds as tall as she was. Another anomaly from this man. First, the doll. Now, the maid. Micah would have questioned the man’s strength, hiding behind those two, but with Anya’s words, it confirmed he was operating at a higher level.

  “My Lord,” Gondry called to him. He turned to the younger man, sitting on his horse, hands on the pommel. “Your orders, Sir?”

  As Micah had left the tavern, he had briefly considered sticking to his promise and turning his guards around. Let this man and his little group leave unharmed and undisturbed. But he knew he would have to face the Lord Commander’s wrath if he did that. The Empire’s work here was almost done. The resistance would soon be finished. They couldn’t leave a loose end like this free. Regardless of Anya and Valren’s words, nobody was unbeatable. Even those Heroes had disappeared over a century ago, if they had ever existed at all. Whatever it took, until the reinforcements came, they would need to contain these three.

  “Capture or kill,” Micah ordered. “You may begin.”

  Gondry nodded and turned to face the tavern.

  “Archers!” he bellowed.

  “Aim!” The archers lifted their bows.

  “Draw!” Bowstrings creaked as the archers pulled back their arrows to their cheeks.

  “Loose!” The arrows unleashed with a snap of fletchings on leather towards the man and the maid.

  Of the six Wardens with Micah, two others were mages alongside Anya. Their eyebrows furrowed as they held their hands out, casting. Half the arrowheads suddenly burst into flame racing along the shafts, the fire hissing in the pelting rain. The other half of the arrows crystallised into jagged spears of ice, their surfaces reflecting the dancing shadows of fire.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  As the arrows were halfway to their target, the maid sprang into action, swinging her axe through empty air. A violent shockwave slammed into the front ranks of soldiers, flattening them as the arrows spun wildly to the sides or back the way they came. Even as far back as he was, the wind pinned his hair as his horse staggered. The mages scrambled to put up a barrier, but they were too slow to prevent several arrows slamming into soldiers that had survived the blast. Ice and fire spread through the ranks.

  The maid scanned the chaos ahead of her, eyes locking on to Valren. She hefted the axe in one hand and hurled it with such force that Micah couldn’t even see a blur as it travelled through the air. He only knew where it was when he heard it smack into Valren with a sickening thud of crushing bone. The weapon struck the healer between the eyes and carried him with it until he slammed into a wall, the axe pinning him there.

  At the same time, a shout came from behind him.

  “We’re locked in, my Lord!”

  Micah turned to see the two scouts returning towards him. “There’s something blocking the streets out of the square,” one of them said, loud enough that those nearby could hear him. Micah looked at the man standing outside the tavern, whose eyes were locked on him. There was no glee or goading in the man’s face. Just a quiet confidence in the outcome of what was taking place here.

  Micah almost laughed to himself. He thought he was done in the tavern at the hands of a doll, no matter how ridiculous that was. Then he thought he’d managed to somehow grasp a new lease of life. But looking at that man standing outside the tavern door, he realised that it had only been an empty dream that he’d been sold.

  The maid glided between the surviving soldiers with the grace of a dancer, elegantly swaying past their halberds and spears, her fists striking out wherever she stepped. A punch to a soldier’s throat here, a hook to a liver there. Wherever she moved, men crumpled to the ground, each taken out with a single blow. Other soldiers writhed around her, flames overwhelming their armour or ice trapping them to the floor. She ended their agony as she passed between them. One of the mages tossed a fireball at her, and she nonchalantly batted it away like she was playing a sport with children.

  “Wardens! Take her down,” Micah shouted out. “Anya, I want you to go with these two,” he nodded at the two scouts, “and find out what’s blocking the exit and lift it.”

  She nodded, but he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. She was Adamantite, on the cusp of being Starforged but undoing the magic of a mage more powerful wasn’t easy. It could be done, but any mistake and the backlash could result in anything from losing the tip of a finger to having her insides rearranged. Or worse.

  As Anya and the scouts left, Micah turned back to the scene and saw the maid was only a few metres away, standing amid the carnage, soldiers lying still behind her, flames burning across their bodies refusing to be extinguished in the pelting rain.

  Rolan jumped at her, swinging his broadsword over his head, as the other warrior swept a thinner blade at her neck. She brushed past both attacks as if their decades of training meant nothing to her, hands reaching out and grabbing both warriors by their armoured throats. These were Adamantite warriors – each better than several dozen regular soldiers. Some of the best in the Empire’s army. They had to be to join the Wardens. And she was handling them like misbehaving children.

  A sharp whistle screamed as something massive blew past, air rushing by his ears. His horse whinnied. The maid let go of Rolan as the axe tore into the back of his armour, tearing through the metal like it was cutting through parchment, splitting Rolan’s flesh and bone down the middle before the maid caught the handle with a wet slap. In one smooth motion, she cleaved through the air and took the other warrior’s head clean off.

  Gondry had seen enough, turning his horse and running. Several other mounted officers followed him, trying to control their horses on the slick cobblestones as they looked for somewhere – anywhere to run.

  “We can’t contain her,” one of the surviving two mages called out. “She has a protection barrier. Our magic is ineff–”

  The mage’s head rolled and came to a stop in front of Micah’s horse. It reared up, almost throwing him off, but he brought it under control, turned it around and ran. The horse’s hooves clacked on the wet cobblestone as the dying screams of the other mage followed him like an accusation. He had no choice. If the maid could put the Wardens down so easily, this was beyond any of them. They needed to get a message to the Lord Commander. The Imperial Command needed to know about this threat.

  With one hand on the reins, Micah wiped the water from his eyes as he squinted at the street, looking for signs of the others. Suddenly, his horse slammed into an unseen barrier, throwing him forwards against the animal’s neck as it shook its head and whinnied. He looked around wildly but he couldn’t see the others.

  “Gondry? Anya?”

  They should have been here somewhere.

  His heart hammered, rain poured down his face. He nudged the horse forwards, but it refused to move. Micah reached out and placed a palm on the invisible wall ahead of him. It was like a realistic painting, the cobblestone street stretching before him with the buildings to either side, but all of it out of his reach. He led the horse along the invisible wall, desperately searching through the rain for another street or one of his people. Maybe they were at one of the other streets that led into the square.

  As he approached the edge of the square, without warning, his horse whinnied and reared, suddenly collapsing as its hind legs crumpled beneath it. The horse toppled, taking Micah with it, the animal’s weight crashing down on his leg. He screamed in pain, his leg trapped between the horse and the wet cobblestone. He gritted his teeth as he tried to pull his broken leg free but through the sound of the rain pelting the cobblestones, he heard a familiar rhythmic beat.

  A rhythm that whispered death.

  His head turned wildly this way and that, his hands grasping at the wet cobblestone as he tried to drag his leg free, but that rhythmic beat was getting closer.

  Pit-pat. Pit-pat. Pit-pat.

  ***

  Elliott looked on as Elsie dragged the body of Lord Micah behind her to the headless statue and placed him alongside the others. The fires had stopped raging, a combination of running out of material to burn and the torrential downpour. Isabel wiped the blade of her axe on the cloak of the former Lord Captain, before walking towards Elliott with Elsie perched on her shoulder. She gave his sister a little finger wag beneath her chin.

  Who’d have thought the terrified girl he’d rescued a century earlier would become so efficient, so deadly? He remembered her trembling hands when he’d given her her first sword and taught her how to use it. Countless training sessions. Countless dungeon crawls. Countless covert missions. And now, he wondered if even he could match her without his magic. Seeing how she moved across the battlefield, the effortless way she disposed of her opponents, the tactical disposal of the healer.

  Of course, her opponents were nowhere near her level. It was almost insulting to send this meagre force against them, but it was the way she had moved between them. No wasted movement. No flourishes to her work. Just pure efficiency. And Elliott knew that she hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  “What’s the matter, Sir?” Isabel said as she approached him. “You have a curious look on your face.”

  He laughed. “I’m thinking we should spar when we get the time.”

  Isabel grinned at him. “I would like that, Sir.”

  He turned back to the tens of bodies lying around the headless statue.

  [Levitate]

  Dead bodies rose into the air, soldiers and horses alike, together with discarded weapons, charred cloaks and tabards, and every other remnant of battle that didn’t belong to the square.

  [Unite]

  All of the remains converged to a point several metres above the headless statue, binding horse to soldier, metal to flesh, until it all fused into a sphere several metres in diameter.

  [Solar Core]

  The outside of the sphere blazed fiercely into a white-hot ball that gradually shrunk as it consumed everything within it before winking out of existence, leaving no trace of what had occurred here. Elliott expected the authorities would investigate – a senior official going missing with a significant number of soldiers wasn’t something that could be brushed aside but they had until morning at least before questions would start to be asked.

  Elliott turned to Isabel.

  “Now, who did you want me to see?”