Krosst looked at Micah curiously, cocking his massive head to the side slightly as Micah took a defensive stance, spear held horizontal to the ground in his right hand while his left faced the Durgh, palm out and glittering with rings.

“You know my Blessing human?” The Khan asked, surveying him calmly.

Micah nodded.

“You know my mana and my level?” Krosst continued, grabbing the chain of his flail in his left hand and lifting the spiked metal head from the ground.

He nodded once again.

“You haven’t eclipsed level forty,” the Durgh continued looking Micah up and down. “I would feel the energy roiling off of you as you prepared for battle if you had.”

“Wishing for more time won’t change that I am the only thing standing between your people and the sack of my home,” Micah replied bitterly, a half smile on his face.

“Despite this, you choose to fight?” Krosst questioned.

Micah nodded a third time. The indecision was gone. The anxiety was gone. For all of the years that he had prepared, weaving plans that never truly came to fruition, this was the moment.

“Khan,” Micah’s face blossomed into a full smile as the reality of the moment struck him. “It may be my time to die, but I die on my feet.”

Drekt lay grievously injured behind him, in urgent need of healing. His brother beside him, gripping his boyfriend’s hand tightly as he whispered words of assurance. Further away, the rest of his family crowded together in their improvised house by the lake, praying to Mursa for his victory.

Basil’s Cove, Trevor, Jo, Sarah, Telivern, and Ravi. Their weight rested on his shoulders. It was too much for any man to bear day after day, year after year, but here and now, for one battle. He could carry that burden.

“Truly,” the Khan sighed, “you are beloved of Ankros. It is a shame that you are so small and pink. You would have made a wonderful Durgh.”

“You have my word human.” Krosst nodded, picking beginning to twirl the chain of his flail with his left hand. “If you fall here today, my people will sack this fortress and return to the Great Depths. Your sacrifice demands no less.”

The spiked head of the flail almost caved Micah’s chest in. Whistling through the air with the speed of a striking falcon, he barely twisted to the side, letting it cut past him. A fraction of a second later, an explosion of sound washed over him.

Micah squeezed his left hand, willing the entirety of the mana stored in one of its rings into his tattoo. His jewelry crumbled into dust even as the translucent golden shape of the sturgeon sprang forth from his forearm, curling through the air and circling around behind him.

The flail returned to Krosst’s hand with a flick of his wrist as the big Durgh grinned at the gently glowing spirit. “A summoner, eh?” The Khan rumbled. “This might actually get a little interesting, human. Let’s see what else you have up those sleeves of yours.”

Krosst swelled in size as he activated his blessing, magma sprouting from his body to encase the already massive warrior. The grass of the clearing instantly blackened, sporadic fires breaking out as the dry vegetation overheated. Almost a hundred paces away, the crowd surrounding the two of them began slapping at the flames to keep them from spreading.

Micah held his ground, quietly reciting the words to Regeneration, Haste, and Foresight. One by one his body tingled as the spells washed over him, enhancing his capabilities. The Sturgeon coiled overhead, a mobius strip of menace and magical potential as another ring crumbled to dust on Micah’s hand, empowering the spirit further.

Finally the two of them stood, twenty paces from each other. Clad in layers of enchantments and raw magical power, neither moved. Eyes half squinted, Micah stared at the towering mass of molten rock, looking for the slightest movement or hesitation that would betray his opponent.

A rainbow of motion heralded Krosst’s attack, letting Micah Flash Step to the side, a half second in front of a head sized ball of molten rock that splattered across the ground where he had just been standing. His ring of heat resistance warming on his hand as Micah launched a Pressure Spear into the Khan’s side.

The titan of magma didn’t even try to dodge. His wind magic gouged out a fist sized divot in the layer of glowing stone that Kross wore as armor, only for the rock around it to flow into the wound, filling and erasing the minor injury in a matter of seconds.

Then the sturgeon opened its mouth, vomiting a beam of golden energy into the giant figure wreathed in lava.

The Durgh Khan crossed his arms, catching the blast of magic between them. Magma blackened and hardened as Krosst’s blessing struggled with the massive mana expenditure from the spirit’s attack.

Micah darted forward as the lava giant staggered back a step. He juked to the side, dodging a strike from the flail even before the Khan abandoned his attempt to block the spirit’s attack and swung the weapon at him.

Dirt erupted around him, the superheated ball of metal and stone gouging a crater into the ground just to Micah’s left even as the Sturgeon expended the last of its stored energy to rip a hole in the Khan’s chest armor.

Before his opponent could react, Micah’s spear flashed out twice, using both the Windburst ability he’d learned from Trevor and the weapon’s sonic enchantment. The first strike shattered the hardened stone covering Krosst’s forearm. The second bit into the flesh underneath, rupturing veins and mashing muscle.

Micah jumped backward, letting the follow up punch from the magma titan’s left hand smash into the soil just in front of him, launching him backward with the force of a shockwave from an unnamed martial art.

Even as Regeneration began to heal any number of scrapes and bruises from the near miss, the spirit swooped through the air, grabbing Krosst’s extended fist in its jaws.

Another mana ring disintegrated on his hand as the sturgeon’s jaws flexed, its teeth working their way through Krosst’s superheated armor.

The magma titan roared, shaking its arm but unable to dislodge the glowing spectral fish. A fourth ring crumbled to dust on its hand, and the sturgeon brightened, its fangs growing even longer as they punched clear through the Durgh’s defenses and into his body below.

Micah sprinted forward, mentally willing his spirit to retreat as a rainbow outline of the flail whipped toward the fish.

It didn’t move fast enough.

His summoned monster twisted in the air, dodging the flail’s head but taking a blow from the weapon’s chain halfway down its body. The superheated cord of steel cut through the ethereal specter, bisecting it.

Krosst bellowed in triumph as the spirit shattered, disappearing into scraps of golden mana that dissolved under the oppressive heat radiating from the magma-clad Khan.

Rather than stab his opponent, a prospect that would likely do little beyond melting Micah’s spear, enchantment or no, he reached into the sack at his side. His fingers closed around a crystalline carving of a stylized shield as Micah recited the words to a spell.

The Khan took a brief moment to assure that the spirit had truly dissipated. As soon as the last vestiges of the summon disappeared, the magma titan wheeled around, the multi-colored arcs of Foresight beginning to fade as the spell’s short duration elapsed.

Micah crushed the shield just as he finished reciting the last words to Poison Fog. A web of roots shot up from the ground, empowered by the mana released by the crystal. He barely had a chance to see the sickly yellow cloud of Poison Fog appear around Krosst’s head before the roots merged together, forming a thick half sphere around him.

Then the fog detonated.

He was thrown to the ground as the force of the blast shattered the root armor, spraying Micah with shards of wood. His armor turned away most of the shrapnel, but at least one massive splinter impaled his bicep, shaving off a huge chunk of Micah’s hit points.

Springing to his feet, Micah ripped the wood from his arm before climbing out of the shattered and burning shell of wood. Regeneration staunched his bleeding as Micah frantically began to pull blue gemstones from the pouch at his side.

The blast hadn’t damaged Krosst, but harm had never been his goal. The Khan was encased in an arms’ length of superheated rock. An explosion was never going to do anything more than knock the man around.

Instead, the force of the detonation had imbalanced the gestalt of magma and Durgh, toppling the man to the ground.

By the time Micah reached him, Krosst had already pulled himself to his hands and knees, seconds away from regaining his feet. Then the first of the blue gems hit the Khan’s calf, shattering and encasing part of the limb in a cylinder of ice.

The magma hardened immediately, cracking under the immense strain of its flash cooling and exposing Krosst’s flesh beneath.

He stumbled, body imbalanced by the sudden damage to the armor provided by his blessing, and unable to stand for one critical second.

Then Micah threw his remaining four stones, encasing the Khan’s shoulder, elbow, lower back, ankle, and wrist in blocks of ice.

Each of the gemstones had taken almost four hours and the life of a cave lurker to enchant. They were painstakingly reverse engineered from the defensive wards he’d pulled off of Elain Clancy, duplicating the ritual patterns that let them summon thick, defensive plates of ice. Micah just needed to remove the parts of the enchantment that protected the ‘wielder’ from the biting cold of the spell.

Krosst fell back to the ground, the hard and crumbling stone that had replaced the flowing lava around his joints immobilizing him.

Micah lunged forward, reciting the words to Temporal Vortex as he lashed out with his spear, the weapon’s humming point crushing through the solid rock of the Durgh’s armor and gouging holes from his opponent’s flesh.

He danced to the side, heat resistance ring struggling against the waves superheated air radiating off his foe. A fist, off balance but still blindingly fast, struck the blackened grass next to Micah, tossing him into the air. He landed with a downward blow of his spear, stabbing it through another expanse of cracked rock and into Krosst’s calf.

The attacks didn’t do all that much. The Khan had enough hit points that even with Micah’s high body and his spear’s enchantment, the stab wounds were like bee stings to him. Still, they confused and distracted his downed opponent.

Micah drew deep on his mana batteries, letting mana flow out of him like water in an endless torrent to power his spear’s temporal enchantment. It wasn’t as good as Foresight. No enchantment held quite the same power as the spell it was based off of. That said, it was just enough to keep him out of the magma titan’s reach, flowing back at the last second to dodge blows before darting forward with Flash Step and stabbing another needle prick into the Durgh warlord.

Halfway through casting his spell, Micah’s heat resistance ring failed. It could survive indefinitely in the scorching heart of a volcano, but the waves of hot air radiating off of the Durgh were too much for the enchantment.

He didn’t stop, hair bursting into flame as he ducked under another fist, stabbing upward into the partially immobilized Khan’s forearm. Regeneration was overtaxed, unable to keep up with the damage that Micah was accumulating, but it didn’t matter.

For five brief seconds, the massive Durgh was distracted and immobilized, unable to both stand up, and fend off the spear wielding pest that buzzed around him.

On a string around his wrist, one amethyst after another crumbled into dust, their mana expended as Micah completed his spell.

Time roiled around Krosst. Chunks of his armor froze while others brightened from an angry red to a brilliant yellow. His massive form shuddered as the temporal energy inside him weaponized by Micah’s spell.

“Eruption,” Micah heard the Khan whispering the word a second too late.

The superheated rock covering the Durgh exploded. Shards of rock and plumes of lava engulfed Micah as the ice ward did its best to protect him, summoning thick planes of frozen water in a vain attempt to block the incoming attacks.

The ice shattered instantly, and Micah felt his hit points drain to zero as a supersonic lance of molten rock pierced his chest, flash cooking his heart and lungs.

Time blinked as Temporal Stutter asserted itself.

Micah found himself under the molten form of Krosst once more, his spear stabbing upward through the Khan’s stone armor just as he finished casting Temporal Vortex.

He Flash Stepped twice, not even looking back at his foe as Micah’s spell ravaged the Khan. A second later, a wave of heat washed over him, stripping almost ten percent of his hit points away before the first fist-sized ball of molten rock even slammed into him.

Summoned ice shattered, barely deflecting the slug as Micah whipped around, activating the temporal enchantment in his spear. Time seemed to slow, as he pushed Haste to the maximum, dodging plumes of molten rock and slapping aside shrapnel with the haft of his spear.

It wasn’t quite enough. Lava seared his leg, charring through meat to expose bone while a spike of rock shattered his left shoulder.

Micah collapsed, pain from the attacks stealing the breath he would have used to scream.

Then the hail of rocks stopped. Micah reached into his pouch with a shaky hand, breaking three ivory amulets and letting healing energy flow through him. Combined with Regeneration, it wasn’t quite enough to get him back on his feat, but at least he was no longer at risk of going into shock.

Quietly, he began mouthing the words to another spell as he eyed up Krosst.

If anything, the Durgh was in worse shape than him. The eruption ability had stripped his foe of his armor, leaving him wearing little more than a loincloth as he swayed unsteadily twenty paces from Micah. Unsurprisingly, the Khan had massed more temporal energy than any opponent Micah had fought in the past, multiplying the effectiveness of his spell.

One leg was shrunken to the size of a child’s. Krosst’s left arm was a withered and aged claw, arthritis stealing the Khan’s vital strength. His chest moved raggedly as he labored to breath through ravaged and misshapen lungs as he glanced down at his twisted body with his half-blind and cataract ridden eyes.

“Time?” He croaked uncertainly. “Time magic?”

Binding Vines reached up from the ground, wrapping themselves around the Khan’s limbs and slamming him to the earth.

Micah limped over to his spear, reciting the words to Temporal Vortex once more. The attack would leave him mostly drained, barely able to cast the healing spells that Drekt needed. He hoped that it would be enough.

He’d already given so much. One more friend would be-

A bellow drew his attention back to Krosst. Even with his body deformed by Micah’s magic, the Khan was using some martial art to rip the vines from the ground, but it was too late. Without his maga body to burn them, they’d done their job, holding his overpowered opponent in place just long enough for the second Temporal Vortex to finish casting.

The Khan screamed, his body twisting and rippling as temporal energy ripped through him. Blood poured from his nose, mouth, and ears as his back spasmed, thrusting his shattered body upward.

Temporal Vortex blinked out of existence. The crowd was dead silent as he limped over to Krosst, using his spear as more of a crutch than a weapon. In his hand, he could feel its enchantments sputtering and dying, unable to withstand the abuse it had been subjected too.

Finally, he stopped some five paces from Krosst. The Durgh’s chest was barely moving, but the man’s sightless eyes turned to Micah regardless.

“You’ve won, human.” Micah couldn’t shake his gaze from the Khan’s teeth as he spoke Rotted and stained with blood, they jutted out from his gums like a porcupine’s quills, pushed out of their sockets by the new baby teeth grown by the rampaging temporal energy.

“I can call a healer.” Micah sighed with relief. “It will take some time, but I’ve learned rituals for transferring time energy. I can fix what the spell has done-”

“No.” Krosst coughed, blood spattering his massive chest. “I have lost a fair challenge against someone just over half my level. This is as it should be.”

A weak smile played itself over the pained rictus of the Khan’s face. “Plus,” the huge man continued wistfully. “You truly are beloved of Ankros. All Durgh must die, that is a given. Most spend their entire lives longing for that moment to come in a battle half as glorious as ours. My people will sing of this challenge for centuries to come. Do not steal my moment from me, human.”

“Finish it.” Krosst collapsed backwards, eyes closed peacefully as he stopped torturing his body by forcing it to move.

Micah bit his lip, trying to fight back tears of pain and relief as he lifted his weapon, now no more than an ordinary spear. With one quick motion, it claimed the Khan’s throat. Instinctively, he knew he had leveled up again, but the sensation brought little joy.

He turned and began walking back toward his companions. Drekt still needed his help.