“Focus!” Diana spat at Lucy, already poised for combat with her spear pointing forward.

  In front of them, the scattered and broken pieces of armour shot up into the air. Each one was connected by dark tendrils to an ink-black sphere, which the armour pieces fitted over to assemble into full upright armour sets. The cores pulsed with a low, brazen sound like a distorted heartbeat, and each pulse was followed by repairs to the armour. After about ten of these infernal pulses, every set of armour was complete and unscratched and polished to perfection. A sound like thunder ripped through the church hall as all of the newly-revived guards dropped from the air onto their feet at the same time.

  And, just as the Dream Knights had predicted, they were all facing toward the altar, their helmets shifting so that every single one was pointed at Ricardo.

  Diana looked to Lucy, her eyes burning with seriousness and her mouth tightly shut. The message was clear: Keep quiet.

  Lucy, still feeling her earlier frustration shaking within her, nonetheless nodded and focused on seeing Diana as an ally toward the real threat in front of them.

  Across the silent, beautiful wooden pews and the crudely shimmering crowds of royal guards, Ricardo moved his head slowly left and right as he scanned the veritable legion eyeing him like a swarm of predators.

  “You guys looking for a heretic boy?” he shouted out, calmly but clearly through the hall, his voice echoing off the walls like a priest’s during an homily.

  His words seemed to have reached every guard’s ears, for they all jolted in response, their gazes fixed on Ricardo with even greater intensity.

  “If you wanna know where he is,” Ricardo yelled, “you’re gonna have to beat it out of me!”

  This was a bluff. Kenneth had hidden in a small alcove off to the side of the church hall. Ricardo was made unaware of this exact hiding spot, on the off chance the royal guards overwhelmed him and did try to torture the answer out of him. If he truly couldn’t give an answer, then Lucy and Diana could use the confusion to gather Kenneth and escape.

  For now, Ricardo punched his fists together with a smack that was far louder than what should have been physically possible. In the dim church hall where only a few large shafts of sunlight hung illumination over the dour space, Ricardo’s entire figure glowed, eventually becoming so bright as to be a stark white silhouette. Once this brilliance faded, Ricardo’s body re-emerged in the striking silver hue of iron that encased him from head to toe.

  The air seemed to rip in two as he punched his shining fist forward. “Bring it on!”

  The sacred space fell deafeningly silent, like a field after a lightning strike when the last rumbles of thunder had faded. Then, all too quickly, the perfectly-arranged rows of royal guards advanced toward the altar, their metal armaments echoing savagely against the wooden pews and marble floor.

  Seeing this, and glancing again at Diana who already had her spear ready, Lucy unsheathed her sword in one quick fluid motion, focusing on sliding it out straight so as to make the sound barely perceptible. She held it at her side, pointed forward at the backs of the enemies who were still completely oblivious to hers and Diana’s presence. But just as Lucy raised her sword arm crossed over her body and readied herself to charge forward, Diana stepped in front of her and stretched out her open palm.

  Hold on, her arm and severe eyes said.

  Lucy still could not forgive Diana for what she had said only moments ago, but perhaps thanks to the extra points she had allocated to her Primary Axis, Lucy did not hesitate to stop as instructed and calmly lower her sword. She met Diana’s gaze, signalling for Diana to continue.

  The crimson-caped Dream Knight held Lucy’s gaze with steely eyes a moment longer, then raised her hand and pointed all of her fingers toward Lucy’s Ideal.

  In seconds, the blade’s blue aura enlarged like a growing fire, extending out several more feet in front of Lucy. The blade itself grew to match, becoming nearly as long as Diana’s spear. When Lucy raised it and gave a quick swipe through, the blade cut through the air at blistering speed with absolutely zero resistance, and Lucy felt that it was sharp enough now to cut through anything unimpeded.

  What Diana had just done was clear: she had used a Feat to buff Lucy’s Ideal.

  Lucy raised her free hand to give a shrug to Diana. Why had she only done this now, and not during any of their previous battles together?

  Diana emphatically gestured a number “one” using her index finger. Although this was ambiguous, Lucy quickly caught on to what she was trying to explain: the Feat was single-use within a Dream. Thus, Diana felt this was the right situation to expend this Feat.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  To Lucy’s surprise, Diana gave one more gesture: she pointed to herself, then jabbed her index finger into the air toward Lucy. Diana’s head, lowered slightly in an earnest manner, told Lucy the declaration she was silently making: I trust that you’re the right person to use this Feat on.

  Once that was made clear, Diana turned back around to face the swarming guards and gestured for Lucy to follow.

  “Hraaaaagh!”

  Diana hurled her spear with titanic force that kicked up a miniature gale in the air that was pierced through. Despite how the column of guards in front of her all wore armour that looked freshly-forged from impenetrable iron, Diana’s spear never faltered on its straight path ahead, cutting through the backs of the guards with such ease they appeared to be no more than paper. In the blink of an eye, the entire column of guards in front of Diana went limp, fell to their knees, then flat on their fronts as they went lifelessly still.

  Diana’s spear, rather than falling onto the ground with a clatter, stopped in mid-air and flew back into Diana’s hand. Lucy had to admit to herself that for all of Diana’s misplaced aggression, her style of fighting was unequivocally cool, like something out of a comic book.

  But that admiration was short-lived, as Lucy’s body tensed. Any moment now, the othe guards would notice their slain brethren and turn around, finding the perpetrator and rallying themselves to charge toward her and Lucy as a moving wall of steel and swords.

  Or so Lucy thought.

  Instead, the other sections of guards kept their backs squarely toward Lucy and Diana. In the distance, there was the sound of what had been ringing out in the background for the past few minutes now: the screech of metal being deflected, and Ricardo’s grunts and pants as he dodged and shoved and beat the guards back with his fists.

  It was all too familiar to Lucy, from that time Ricardo had gotten separated before Keilani could teleport all of them away. In the end, Ricardo had been able to hold his own and lead himself and Diana up the hill to the church, so in this situation there should be nothing to worry about, especially with both Lucy and Diana providing extra firepower.

  However, Lucy was still more than a little wary about Ricardo’s back: did his Feat actually reinforce that lower part of his spine and protect it from further injury? She watched as a guard crept up on Ricardo from behind while he was dealing a couple of them in front of him. The guard behind him jabbed the point of his sword right into Ricardo’s back. A loud clang rung out as it was deflected as expected, but Ricardo jerked and clutched his lower back, and Lucy gasped. But Ricardo remained in that state for only a moment as he quickly turned on his heel and gave that deceitful guard a right hook that toppled him. Glancing down at his assailant for only a second, Ricardo turned back toward the guards he had been facing and went right back into the fray as if nothing had happened.

  Seeing this, Lucy breathed a sigh of relief, but still she couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes off Ricardo standing against a seemingly endless hive of these armoured grunts.

  “Take the ones on the right.”

  Diana’s words cut through Lucy’s mind like how her spear had cut through the air. Her eyes bore an unyielding sense of urgency into Lucy, but they didn’t appear to hold any dismay nor annoyance. Perhaps Diana had her own switch that flipped her toward focusing on teamwork and minimizing internal conflict.

  If that were the case, Lucy wished that switch had been flipped much earlier, but she didn’t complain as she stepped up to the backs of several guards who were still oblivious to her presence. She raised her enhanced Ideal with her right hand, finding the elongated blade just as easy to wield with no apparent additional weight.

  Then, in a single stroke that could have been a mere shrug or accidental flick of her arm, Lucy swung her Ideal in a wide arc.

  Just like Diana’s spear, Lucy’s sword met zero resistance as it passed through an entire cluster of guards like an arrow cutting through mist. As Lucy stood still in the follow-through of her swing, thuds sounded as all of the slain guards fell to the marble floor as useless pieces of armour.

  Lucy’s breathing hitched and her heart began to race. At first, she thought she was panicking, as this was her usual physiological response, but Lucy soon realized it was quite the opposite:

  She was thrilled.

  Some twenty or thirty enemies had been eliminated with barely any effort on her part. She had destroyed them without any chance for them to even fight back. She was strong. She was powerful. She was unstoppable. Her mind couldn’t stop racing with these thoughts as she revelled in how fun it was to thoroughly decimate the opposition by her own hand. Looking down at the enlarged blue aura of her Ideal, Lucy decided that this Feat of Diana’s—one aligned with Rebellion, most likely—was one she didn’t mind having now that it had given her a taste of this exhilaration she had never felt before.

  She looked over her shoulder at Diana, who smiled—a real, genuine smile—while giving a quick thumbs up. Lucy didn’t know why she cared about validation from someone who had no qualms killing innocent people or harming the Dreamers they were supposed to rescue, but all the same she smiled and nodded back before returning her gaze to the remaining guards in front of her: her next targets.

  But just as Lucy began walking forward with her sword arm pulled back and ready for another decisive swing, a new sound clawed its way out and over the endless sounds of battle.

  “Aaaagh!”

  Ricardo cried out from the altar. His head was raised and his eyes squeezed shut in pain as he grasped at his lower back with both hands.

  “Ricardo!”

  Lucy’s cry was drowned out by the clanging of armour hitting the ground from Diana’s continued strikes as well as the thunderous unison of the footsteps of guards continuing to march toward the altar and its lone man dressed in white. That very same man was now kneeling on the ground, hands still at his lower back while his face was contorted in agony.

  “Diana, stop!” Lucy cried out.

  Diana’s annoyance returned full force with a sigh that almost appeared to exude steam. Still facing the guards she was about to slay, Diana said: “What? Don’t tell me you’re going to try and sweet talk every single one of these guards out of fighting.”

  “It’s Ricardo, he’s—”

  But when Lucy looked back at the altar, Ricardo’s gleaming white-and-silver figure was nowhere to be found. The altar itself was barely visible as it was obscured by a mob of guards who now occupied and covered the space without anything to oppose them. Then, Lucy saw it.

  Ricardo’s arm feebly reaching out through the legs of the guards kicking him on the altar floor.