Two can play at that game, I thought.

With a slight effort of will, I triggered Armor Evocation, which allowed me to swap preassembled gear sets the same way I could call and dismiss my Soul Bound weapons. My Arcana Gauge dipped by a fraction of an inch as a cloud of silvery mist enveloped me, wrapping around my arms and legs, slithering over my chest and back. As the magical mist dissipated, my training attire was gone, replaced by my Leather Grass Hound Armor. I could just as easily have summoned my heavy, Stone Spider forged Plate Mail, but I had a theory about how to beat Kerra.

I’d seen her go toe-to-toe against the Elder Fell Bear so I already knew a thing or two about her skill set and how she fought. Despite her diminutive stature, she was an immovable tank. Her job was to draw aggro, take a hit, and buff her teammates with a variety of spells that came from the Ward of Valor. She was damned good at what she did, but she wasn’t built for speed, and she wasn’t built to inflict massive amounts of damage. These Vigils worked in teams for a reason—they were all hyper-specialized and from what I’d gathered so far, the Vigils of Justice were the primary, melee damage dealers.

A notion, further reinforced by the fact that the Citadel’s Weapon Master was also a Vigil of Justice.

I had no doubt Kerra was more proficient with her warhammer than I was with a mace—she’d probably been using the weapon every day for the past twenty years. I, on the other hand, had been using my mace for all of a month and despite my combat training as a Marine, medieval battle weapons weren’t part of the curriculum.

None of that mattered if she couldn’t land a hit.

With a roar, I rushed forward bringing my mace back high over my shoulder.

She planted her feet and thrust the warhammer out, the wicked spike at the top meant to impale me. At the last second, I sidestepped right and brought my mace screaming down, knocking the warhammer aside. With a twist of my wrist, I reversed the direction of the blow, sending the flanged mace head directly into her armored chest. I connected with a thunderous clang that should’ve knocked her on her ass, Vigil or not. She didn’t budge an inch—didn’t even seem to feel the blow.

But I did.

Steele-gray spikes of Arcana erupted from her body the second my attack landed, kicking me in the chest like an angry mule.

I stumbled back, wheezing.

Fuck, she was running Spiked Shell, a Ward of Valor passive ability that reflected melee damage back on the attacker. I’d used it during my battle against the Hexblight and knew exactly how useful it was.

“What the hell?” I growled, retreating a couple of steps. “I thought this was a weapons exhibition? No one said anything about using our Vigil abilities.”

“It is weapons exhibition,” she said, slowly circling left, “but remember, you are the weapon, not the mace in your hands nor the spells at your disposal. I want to see what you can do. Now, have at me.”

“Okay. If that’s the way you want to play,” I said, “then game fucking on.”

“There is no other way to play it,” she replied.

Instead of remaining rooted to the spot, which is what I expected, Kerra immediately went on the offensive. The warhammer in her hands blurred into a never-ending series of arcs and spins, the momentum always moving, always growing. Even in heavy plate armor, she was as fast as a methed-out forest boar and just as goddamned mean to boot. She brought the weapon careening toward my head, and I danced back, narrowly avoiding the blow, then threw myself into a roll as she swung the hammer at my chest.

I rolled up on a knee and lashed out with the mace again, this time connecting with the side of her leg. Another flare of grey Arcana lashed out, sucker punching me in the teeth.

I scrambled to my feet, deflected another swipe with a clumsy backhand, then tried to open up some distance between us. Tried was the operative word. She was a tiny, relentless whirlwind of hammer strikes and spike thrusts. I stepped left and found my foot literally rooted in place by a grasping vine that had sprouted from the courtyard. I’d seen her use Spectral Roots in the battle against the Fell Bear, so I should’ve been expecting it, but she was so damned subtle about it.

Instead of conjuring a small forest worth of grasping brambles, she’d summoned something just big enough to minorly inconvenience me. Something so small and unobtrusive I’d missed it until it was too late.

It was a smart move, which only pissed me off more.

She swung her warhammer over her head and brought it down on me again. I couldn’t afford to let her connect with a solid blow or this fight would be over.

I thrust my free hand out and dipped into the well of energy nestled inside my chest. Power surged down my arm, draining a quarter of my Arcana bar, and exploded out from my palm. A glimmering dome of golden light, covered in a flurry of crimson runes, intercepted the hammer strike. The blunt head smashed ineffectually into the barrier, releasing a shower of disorienting golden sparks. Kerra winced against the sudden flash.

It was her first mistake and I planned to make her pay for it.

I dismissed the conjured Shield and lashed out with Kinetic Blast.

An unseen wave of force exploded from my upraised palm, sideswiping Kerra like a battering ram. My Arcana Gauge drained by a fifth, leaving me momentarily reeling. I’d upped my Arcana significantly but burning through a big chunk of energy still took a nasty toll. The blast should’ve sent her petite ass sailing across the courtyard, but she merely grunted and held her ground. On the plus side, hammering her with magic had two positive effects. One, because it wasn’t a direct melee attack, her Spiked Shell didn’t retaliate against me, and two, she’d lost focus and her Spectral Roots had withered and died as a result.

I bolted right.

I couldn’t afford to stay in one spot for more than a few seconds, otherwise I ran the risk of getting snared again and that was as good as a death sentence. Speed and distance were the two factors I had going for me.

“You can’t run forever,” she taunted, hammer still whirling like a mad.

“Not running, just buying time” I shot back, and I was. Arctic Spike was a badass spell, but there was no way it would penetrate her heavy plate armor and the only other offensive spell in my arsenal was Kinetic Blast. Problem was, I’d already hit her directly in the chest and I’d done it at damned near pointblank range. She’d barely even flinched and hadn’t budged an inch. Clearly, a magical solution could buy me time, but if I wanted to win this sparring match, I was going to have to do it with the mace in my hands.

Maybe there was a way.

First things first, I needed to give her a little taste of her own medicine. As she closed the distance, I activated Spectral Roots. I was far less subtle about it than she had been.

The ground rumbled and thorn-studded vines erupted in a spray of dirt and stone, reaching up like the fingers of some angry Ent. Whatever Kerra had been expecting me to do, it wasn’t that. Her eyes flared wide as the brambles, roots, and vines wrapped around her legs, crawled along her torso, and fought to pin her arms in place. She struggled frantically, ripping at the vines with incredible strength, but it was pointless. Plus, her warhammer was next to useless. It didn’t have a cutting edge and she couldn’t swing it around.

I was just getting started.

Renholm had fought by my side countless times and although he didn’t have a lot of physical attacks, he was great at one thing. Distractions.

Time to see just how effective Cunning Glamor could be in a combat setting. I envisioned what I wanted to happen—lights, sounds, even the acrid stink—and cemented it in my mind. The whole while, my Arcane Gauge sunk lower and lower, channeling energy away from my core, feeding it into this illusion that I was willing into the world. After a handful of seconds, something clicked inside my head and the energy rushed out all at once in a brilliant Fourth of July fireworks display. A barrage of fiery Catherine Wheels, twinkling Sparklers, and blooming silver peony clusters lit up the air all around Kerra.

And it wasn’t just the beautiful lights. The thunderclap of the explosions rattled the stone walls and the sweet sink of spent gunpowder loitered in the air, assaulting the senses.

It was fucking glorious.

I took off at a sprint, circling around her while she fought off my roots and shielded her eyes against the blinding redneck rave. Trying to keep the Glamor and the Spectral Roots running at the same time was just too much, so I gave up on my roots, letting them wither and die. They were still a great goddamned nuisance for the time being, dead or not. Once I was behind her I darted in and took a page out of my fight against the Fell Bear. I called up another Warded Shield and used it as a springboard to launch myself high into the air, over the tangle of blackening roots.

I brought back with my mace and readied both Rend and Crippling Strike.

Since Kerra had Spiked Shell active, there was no way to avoid taking a nasty hit that was gonna hurt like a Mike-Tyson punch to the nutsack, but it was gonna hurt her even more. Spiked Shell returned a quarter of all melee damage dealt, which meant seventy-five percent of the total damage would still plow into her like a Mac Truck. This was going to suck, but it was a price I was willing to pay, because there was no other way around it. Plus, I liked to win and I really wanted to wipe the smug look off Kerra’s face.

I brought the weapon down with every ounce of strength I could muster.

—Then my light show disappeared in an eyeblink, here one second gone the next.

I had no idea what she’d done, but something had just slashed through my illusion.

Time stuttered and took on a languid dream-like quality. This was one of the secondary effects of my Combat Sense ability, Precognition. For every thirty seconds I spent in battle, I had a two percent chance of triggering the effect which would allow me to momentarily foresee what my enemy was going to do before they did it. This time, what I saw was Kerra staring up at me with victory etched into the fine lines of her face. She’d freed her arms from the remainder of the roots and was winding up her hammer for a strike that was going to rock my fucking world.

I watched, frozen, as a shadowy version of Kerra’s Essence traveled outward from her body and into the space she planned to inhabit.

Unfortunately for me, she planned to inhabit her warhammer right into the center of my fucking chest.

The worst part about it was that there wasn’t a single thing I could do to stop her. I was airborne. There was nothing to push off of, no way to redirect my momentum. Even with magic, physics was still a factor, and my twelfth-grade science teacher, Mr. Adams, had successfully drilled the Newtonian Laws of Motion into my head. Number two applied to my current situation. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. In short, I was boned. And with how low my Arcana Pool was at the moment, I couldn’t even try to intercept the attack with another Warded Shield.

There was no way I could avoid the hit, but maybe I could brunt the damage it dealt. With the last wisps of my Arcana, I triggered Armor Evocation, exchanging my leather Grass Hound armor for my far studier Stone Spider plate mail. The silver mist coalesced and hardened just as time resumed its normal pace and Kerra’s weapon collided with my sternum, driving me to the ground. I felt something snap inside my chest, followed by a wet gurgling noise that spread into my lungs. Goddamn it. Suddenly it felt like I was being waterboarded by an angry chimp.

Matchless Endurance was the only thing that kept me from passing out on the spot. It allowed me to fight longer and harder, numbing my body against physical pain while temporarily boosting my Verve score and my Health and Arcana Regeneration rate. Even with all of that, I landed on my back in a heap, white stars dancing across my vision while black pressed in from the edges.

Screw me sideways, but she hit hard.

I blinked and wheezed, trying to sit up. I couldn’t. Kerra stepped over me, glowering down at me as she raised her warhammer.

“Yield,” she said softly.

I licked my lips. They were wet and I could taste the copper on my tongue. Blood. It hurt to breathe, to talk. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to let her win.

I coughed up blood and lifted a shaky hand, motioning for her to come closer.

She bent down, canting her ear toward me.

“Eat a dick,” I said.

I dismissed my mace and summoned my magically enhanced shottie in the same instant. I didn’t want to kill her—hell, I wasn’t even sure I could kill her—she was built to absorb damage like a sponge soaking up water. I was convinced I could hurt her, though, and she had a little payback coming her way.

I leveled the barrel, pushed the barrel up against her breastplate, and pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession.

She’d been ready for my Kinetic Blast, but she wasn’t ready for two enchanted slugs to the chest. The rounds punched into her plate mail like a pair of pistons and lifted her off her feet. She landed a few feet away in a clattered of armor and angry curses. I let the shotgun vanish as I coughed up a gout of blood and closed my eyes.