Maiz dashed forward, ignoring the heat of the desert noon as he ran across the sand. He brought his weapon up with all of the speed he could manage, and slammed it into a flashing blade aimed for Juya’s neck. His hands stung from the impact, but he didn’t pause. Attack.

The sounds of battle were louder than they had been in training, but the screech as his Windblade clashed with his opponent’s sword still filled Maiz’s ears. He let loose with a pair of blows from each end of his staff, followed by an upward sweep that morphed into a Flicker Strike as he saw his enemy’s sword coming to meet the attack. His staff blurred, the other end screaming towards the helmet of the woman before him.

Her sword flashed, and Maiz’s staff bounced away with another screech. A moment later, his body was wrenched to the side as the sword bit into the space he’d occupied a breath ago. A wave of exhaustion passed through him as Fast Feet took its toll. How high is her Dexterity? The woman was already turning, graceful even in her armor, and moving with the sort of ease that told Maiz she was conserving her energy. He hadn’t put a scratch on the woman’s armor, and her eyes looked bored behind the visor of her helm. Adept.

Nightwalker firmed his grip on the ground as he pivoted, sweeping his staff in another attack as he formed a pair of spells. The staff was blocked of course, as was the next strike, but then ribbons of flame sprang up around his staff, and blood mana leapt towards her. Blood Paralysis would do little against an Adept’s Strength and Constitution, but a moment’s pause was all he needed. As the spell wrapped around the enemy, Maiz stepped into his strike, aiming for the chink between helmet and neck-guard. A critical strike was his only chance.

He felt it when the Blood Paralysis broke against the woman’s armor. An enchantment. Hells.

His staff was met yet again by the opponent’s sword, but when his Flaming Strike triggered against the weapon, he felt a push, and stumbled backwards. In the moment before he could regain his footing, there was already a sword sweeping for his neck. It met the steel of Hugan’s shield with a resounding clang.

Maiz almost fell backwards, taking a relieved breath as Hugan weathered a barrage of supernaturally fast attacks from the swordswoman. He winced almost immediately, as he saw a strike get around the shield and leave a dent in Hugan’s pauldron. Have to help him. Quickly, Maiz looked around to where Juya had been standing, but the tunic-clad Monk was already rushing towards them, eyes fixed on the Adept. Her staff was slick with blood, telling him what she’d been doing while he was fighting.

“Let’s go Maiz!”

He whipped his head around towards the familiar voice. Lila’s face was a mess of sweat and sand, but her gray eyes were hard. He nodded as the sound of clanging from Hugan’s armor grew louder, and rushed at the Adept with Lila at his side.

When he brought his staff again to attack, Maiz knew they had made a mistake. His strike was blocked by a sword so fast he couldn’t see it. For a bare few seconds, the woman fought Lila and Juya with blinding speed, and then her weapon blurred and flashed out in three directions at once. Maiz felt his stamina drain again as he dodged away, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Lila do the same, but Juya’s body froze, clearly unable to take the stamina burden imposed by Fast Feet. The sword landed, and there was a cry as Hugan stumbled back, Shieldmate transferring the blow to his body instead.

The woman stilled for a moment, raising her sword and tensing, and Maiz knew that she had decided to stop conserving her stamina. Move. Desperately, he tried for a last swipe with his staff, but the attack was knocked away too quickly for him to even see it. The whisper of wind was his only warning as the sword came for his neck. A cloud of sand flew up around them as Hugan and Lila cried out together.

“Maiz!”

Maiz blinked, then blinked again as the sand in the air mixed with sweat and fell into his eyes. What? Then something shoved him backwards, and he was on his rump in the sand.

“Watch!”

Another clang, as Hugan blocked a strike from an opportunistic spearman to their left. Lila jumped forward, and the man was on the ground in instants. Maiz noted the exchange with more than a little appreciation, but he was entranced by the show in front of him.

The sand had cleared, revealing a gray haired man currently flowing around the swordswoman’s attacks. The scene was made more impressive by the fact that the woman was moving so fast now that her sword looked like a literal wall of steel as it screamed through the air. The man--the commander--ducked a slash an instant before it came at his head, then jumped backwards with impossible ease as more steel blades burst outwards from the woman again. She’s powerful. Maiz considered throwing another Blood Paralysis at the swordswoman, but her armor had blocked the spell the last time, and he needed to conserve his mana.

As the commander attempted to close again, the woman tried to keep him at bay with a dizzyingly fast flurry of strikes, but he slipped around them without apparent effort, executing an improbable kick at the other Adept’s chin. With a barely audible rip, the women’s helmet flew off her head, revealing short black hair matted with sweat. The helmet landed with a thud fa few meters away from Maiz a moment later. Hells.

“Right!”

Maiz turned, and dodged an incoming axe. Windblade snapped back up around his staff, and his body tightened as he used Illusion Strike. Luckily, his short opponent didn’t seem to have particularly high Wisdom, because he died blocking a stab which never came as Maiz slashed his neck.

Without warning, the world exploded.

Maiz felt the heat a moment before the light blinded him and the shockwave pushed him back. He winced as the already dry air became scorching, but he was far enough away from… whatever it was to avoid the worst of it. He tried to blink the bright spots lingering in his vision, but he was still disoriented. He was looking down, wasn’t he? What was that flashing… the Adept’s helmet. The woman’s armor had been enchanted, hadn’t it? And the helmet looked to be about his size.

Maiz snatched the piece of armor up, noting that the straps meant to secure it had apparently been torn by the force of the commander’s kick, and jammed it onto his head. A little roomy, and a little annoying for visibility, but the visor was quite wide. Fine.

“Look!” Lila tugged at his arm, and pointed upwards, but Maiz already knew what he would see. Sure enough, there was a golden dragon, massive and terrifying, swooping in towards them, and… were those more in the distance? The monster swept a claw, and there was another blinding flash of light. Maiz managed to close his eyes in time, and when he opened them he was able to see as a gray-haired streak jumped into the air to meet the monster.

The commander’s attack against the dragon seemed almost comically underpowered, but the massive beast coiled around the Adept’s kick as he flew past. The Adept was already twisting, preparing another kick at the dragon's shoulder, but it slashed a gleaming claw at him before he could complete the motion. Midair, the commander had no way to dodge, and when the massive beast hit the man, he went flying back down in a streak of white that kicked up a cloud of sand when he impacted the ground. Maiz winced.

“Oh hells, Rafi!”

Lila ran forward before Maiz could react, and both he and Hugan cursed at the same time. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the area where the commander had fallen--the ground was a smoking black ruin only meters away--so he ran after her, motioning for Hugan to follow.

Lila was pulling the Adept into her arms, and Maiz could see that the man’s right side had been scorched badly--whether from the dragon’s initial attack or another Maiz had no idea. He didn’t know how the Adept had escaped death from the dragon’s attack in the first place. As they ran towards him, Maiz could see the Adept they'd been fighting, smoking in the center of the black stain. Her armor was falling of her body--Maiz suspected the straps and bindings had been destroyed by the dragon's attack. He caught up to Lila, who had propped the man up gingerly, his head resting on her shoulders.

“He’s alive?” Maiz would have tried being gentler, but they were on a battlefield--they couldn’t waste time on a dead man.

“Yes--we have to get him to the Clerics. Hugan, help me with this.”

Maiz knelt helping Hugan gather the limp man into his arms as he saw for himself that the Adept’s chest was still rising. An Adept as powerful as this man was a valuable asset--if he was alive, it was their duty to keep him that way. Quickly, Maiz transferred his healing bracelet to the man’s unburned wrist.

“He is alive?” Juya ran up behind them, panting, then nodded as she saw the commander's breathing form. “I will lead.”

They followed her through the battlefield, such as it was. The fighting had been spread out before, but now the desert was in pandemonium, with the most powerful members of both sides doing battle. On the way back, they had to stop short as a cloud of sand billowed up before them in a line. There was a gust of wind, and a boom as two massive forces collided a hundred meters away. Maiz caught a brief glimpse of the Jin’Teslin, barehanded, fighting a man in gleaming armor before the two Masters moved further away in a flash.

“Keep moving!”

They made it a dozen more meters before a roar shook Maiz out of his single-minded focus. That was…

A huge humanoid lizard was brandishing a spear at them. Next to it, a blue-furred monster with three eyes set in the left, front, and right sides of its skull was rushing forward with claws out. There were more monsters than just the dragons about, it seemed.

Maiz moved forward with Juya and Lila, Windblade and Flaming Strike forming around his staff, fixing his gaze on the lizardman. He had killed a monster like this before, he--

--something brushed over his head, a wind too strong to be natural, but not powerful enough to hurt. Maiz whipped his head around immediately, the helmet wobbling a little as he did so. There was a red-robed woman standing in a small cloud of sand a few meters away. An Aeromancer.

Maiz checked on his friends, but both Lila and Juya seemed more than capable of dispatching the monsters. That was, unless a spell killed them first. He ran at the mage.

He closed easily enough, carefully using Nightwalker when he felt the mage preparing a bludgeoning attack, but she surprised him by following up with another sharp Air Blast. Rather than dodging, Maiz lowered his head, and let the enchanted helmet absorb the attack. How many more of those does it have? Best not to test it too much.

Maiz finally closed, and brought his staff up. The mage’s eyes were wide, but she held her posture perfectly. In the last moment, as she considered Maiz’s staff and his unaffected stance, she brought her hand up, aiming over his shoulder. At Hugan, who was still carrying the Adept.

Maiz’s Flaming Strike took the hand off. The woman had little time to process the fact before her head followed. Keep going.

By the time he returned, Lila, Hugan, and Juya were already moving on over the monster’s corpses. The final stretch was clear, and it appeared that only the truly powerful and the extremely unlucky were still on the battlefield. The only monsters Maiz could see that weren’t already dead were the dragons, which seemed to be launching attacks at the flashing streaks and fiery infernos that were the Masters of both the Temple and the invading army. In the moment he watched, a massive gout of flame erupted from the ground and engulfed a dragon, before being banished by a flash of brilliant light which left starts in Maiz's vision again.

The fighting was moving further and further away, as the Jin covered the raider’s retreats. Maiz’s party ran behind the dune, and were met by a trio of imposing Warrior Monks.

“Is that the commander? Clerics!”

In moments, the burned Adept had been swarmed by green-robed men and women, though Maiz did not see Ziya or any of the younger Clerics. One of the three Monks who had been standing watch at the edge of the dune grabbed Maiz’s arm.

“Get your team through the Dungeon exit now, boy. Their weaker fighters have already retreated, there is no point to you staying here. Move!”

Maiz nodded, and the helmet jiggled again. He pulled the damned thing off, though he kept tight hold of it. As he and his friends ran to the cave partially hidden by the dune, struggled past the crowd of retreating Monks, and finally made it back to the Temple, he held the little piece of armor. Whatever else they had gained or lost in the battle, he had plans for the helmet, or more accurately, the mana it still contained. He suspected, however, that he would need to work on ranking up his Farsight spell.