Lerute’s screams devoured the violent tumult of the battlefield. The only sound that rivalled that was Madrily’s hurling of obscenities at Geruke as she fought off two pirates with two daggers, blood seeping out of the gaps in her plate armour.

Why did he bother to look? Why did he stand there in the middle of the battlefield and watch? Snakard’s ship was right there, at the edge of his vision. That was his goal, the money. So why did he watch his friend die? He thought he refused to let himself care.

Yet, he stepped towards Snakard, an inexplicable rage rushing and burning within his heart. It surged up his stomach and roared into his chest, begging Geruke to drag all he hated into its infernal depths to tear, burn and shatter it till it all blackened and shrivelled into incoherent debris. But he glanced at Snakard’s ship. His past beckoned him. He reached for it and his hand smothered the sight of the ship; silhouetted against the full moon. He had it in his grasp. Yet he froze. Yet his eyes watered. The sound of Lerute screaming sent a wave of sorrow to envelope around the shattered fragments of his heart.

He glanced back down at his writhing and wriggling friend. His friend was dying because of him. Geruke inhaled and exhaled, burying the guilt within a prison. He turned away to step towards Snakard’s ship.

“The last remaining member of the Righcas Family, is it?” Snakard said as he turned to Geruke, standing over a bleeding and screaming Lerute. “Yes, I’m not wrong. It’s definitely you. It would explain why you lasted so long against me and how you killed so many of my crew.”

Geruke froze his step and clicked his tongue, angry that he hesitated too long. He was still too weak. Now that Snakard focused on Geruke, he’d never be able to get to that ship unless he somehow defeated him, which wasn’t going to happen.

Glancing at the ship, none of the portholes glowed, all were dark. So that form next to the ship wasn’t Snakard. Geruke was right, it was just a barrel. Some doubt in that assertion sprang into his mind after staring longer at the ship and seeing the barrel quickly moving closer to the shore, but no matter what the thing was, it wasn’t important; Snakard was in front of him and stronger. Geruke hoped he could at least keep some hope alive by entertaining the possibility that a candle could fall and set his ship on fire, but even that was out of the window.

It was all hopeless.

But despite that insurmountable wall shoving itself in front of his plans, the panic and anguish that wailed in his heart quietened. Why? Was it the fact that Geruke’s distracting of Snakard provided Lerute with a sliver of a chance for survival? Anger surged up in his stomach at the thought of that being the case.

Regardless, Geruke shot a glare at Snakard. He had no choice but to adapt. “You’re an idiot if you know that and are still willing to fight me,” Geruke said, forcing a smirk to appear on his face.

“Why is that?” Snakard chuckled and kicked Lerute’s temple as he shivered and writhed on the sand, adding extra weight to Geruke’s forced smirk. “I actually doubted that you were Gerouch Righcas after seeing that pitiful display of swordsmanship back in my ship. Yet, you think I’m not willing to fight you?”

“It’s not my strength that should frighten you,” Geruke pointed up at the sky and his smirk widened at seeing Snakard’s grin twitch. “I had the Lady of Archi Town send a nastagle to my friend, Eddan.” Panic vanished from Geruke’s heart as he watched sweat drip down Snakard’s temple. “He, his mother, and a group of Royal soldiers will arrive here shortly on grand nastagles.”

Snakard burst into laughter, swiped sweat off his forehead, and his grin returned. “That was a good bluff, you nearly had me there.”

Geruke shuddered. Why did he think it was a bluff? He appeared to buy it all the way until he uttered that last sentence. What set him off?

“Whilst you didn’t do a good job of tricking me,” Snakard crept towards Geruke as he shifted across the sand, towards the shore. “You’ve done a good job of reassuring me that my worries about you weren’t unfounded and that my lavish, and some would say excessive, preparations were necessary,” His grin morphed into a scowl and his voice dropped into a low and gravelly growl. “I don’t just think you’re a threat, however. I also want to kill you for my own pleasure. I want to see you suffer. I want you to know what it’s like to lose everything.”

“Why?” Geruke said, crouching and reaching for a cutlass that laid in the hands of a pirate’s corpse. “I barely knew you.”

“You just keep running away!” Snakard roared, shattering rocks and splashing sand as he ran and sliced his cutlass across the ground.

What the hell was he talking about? Why did Snakard hate him so much? Geruke barely met and barely knew him. However, the speed of his running gave Geruke no time to ruminate on that question.

So he snatched a cutlass out of the hands of a pirate’s corpse and spun to block. His blade wobbled and his entire being shuddered. Snakard’s strikes were powerful before, but now that an extra person didn’t distract him, it reverberated terror through his arms and all across his body.

Jogging backwards and all around the beach, it took all of Geruke’s concentration to block and slap away Snakard’s swings and thrusts and slashes. He never had an opportunity nor any hope of attacking.

And before he knew it, Snakard pressured him so far that Geruke’s back crashed against a beach boulder. Snakard’s blade blurred into incoherence as he pirouetted his blade around Geruke’s. He couldn’t even tell what he was doing. All he knew was that a quarter of a second later, his cutlass flew out of his grasp and spun behind Snakard’s back to splash into the sand.

Before Geruke could even brush his fingers against the hilt of a dagger, Snakard rammed the pommel of his sword into Geruke’s cheek. His teeth rattled, the taste of iron smothered his mouth, and the world around him rippled and spun. Blood splashed out of his mouth. His shoulder smashed into the sand. As Snakard thrust his cutlass at Geruke, he gazed around the area, taking in all the scenery he could before he died.

The pirates that Madrily fought laid dead on the sand in pools of blood.

The ringing of metal slamming metal battered Geruke’s ears. Splattering blood on the beach boulder, Snakard’s blade stabbed in the sand. It scraped a shallow wound across the side of Geruke’s chest. A cutlass fell on him. It fell from the hands of Madrily, towering over him and dripping blood all across her plate armour.

She saved him.

“Get up!” Madrily said as she leapt at Snakard, her cutlass a blurring rod of pale blue in the moonlight. “Don’t make saving you a waste of my time!”

Geruke nodded and jumped to his feet, whipping his sword at Snakard at the same time as Madrily.

Madrily didn’t intimidate Snakard at first. He didn’t know her, but he knew Geruke’s last name. So he faintly flicked away her attacks and focused his power on Geruke, slashing at him with both hands strangling the hilt, shaking his arms with each strike, tearing up his black tunic, and doubling the cuts and blood that covered his body.

But Madrily’s strength equalled Geruke’s.

Snakard’s swift and one-handed block of her blade failed; she swiped it aside with a heavy swing of her sword and whipped her cutlass at his face, snapping his eyes wide, spreading a dark red wound across his cheek, bursting blood into the air, and sending black hair fluttering to the sand. Snakard staggered and fumbled with his blade as he struggled to batter away her unexpected speed, strength and finesse.

He and Madrily's pressuring Snakard backwards shocked Geruke. He grinned. The two of them backed Snakard all the way to the shore. His boots splashed in the water and sunk into soaked sand. He trudged away from the two of them, his swordsmanship struggling with such awkward footing.

Madrily smiled when Snakard finally tripped and fell against coarse rocks and pebbles that laid underneath the water. Geruke and Madrily leapt at him and swung their swords down at Snakard whilst he stabbed his cutlass into the bed of sea pebbles. Was he giving up? Regardless, Geruke was about to wi-

Snakard’s blade burst up through the water, shovelling pebbles up with it. He slammed away Geruke and Madrily’s swords with that swing, but that wasn’t his focus. The pebbles showered the two of their faces, hitting them on the forehead, temple, nose, and the whites of their eyes.

Both of them stumbled backwards, flailed their blades, and rubbed their eyes to bring back their vision. Whilst they did that, a blurred Snakard rose to his feet. Another person, a silhouetted figure, splashed up from the sea to step onto the shore a long distance away in his peripheral vision. Or was that his imagination? Was it the barrel? His vision was too hazy to make any accurate judgements.

Geruke’s eyes fluttered, and his body and footing grew steady. Madrily shook her head, and she regained her senses as well. By then, Snakard’s form, silhouetted by the full moon, devoured their bodies with its shadow. Their prior advantage vanished.

Snakard’s blade raged and ravaged the two of theirs, swatting away their blades and shoving them back up the beach. Geruke and Madrily stepped out of the sea and back onto the sand. Snakard was the only one in the sea. As if reading Geruke’s mind, Madrily abandoned defence and rushed at Snakard, letting his sword scrape through a gap in her pauldron, cut gambeson, and splatter blood onto her armour.

Before Snakard could ease his footing by stepping back on the flat and soft sand of the beach, they needed to attack whilst he still trudged through the sea. It was a gamble, but they had to do it.

Whilst Snakard’s blade still scraped across steel, he flicked it away and twirled it to slam the pommel into her helmet. Slamming her helmet off and inspiring a scream, Snakard whipped a hand away from his sword to fling a fist at her face. Her body spat and splattered blood into the air as she fell onto the sand.

Geruke slashed at Snakard as he attacked Madrily, but using the momentum from his punch, he spun, jumped, and cartwheeled in the air. His long hair flowed to the sand and caressed Geruke’s sword as he flew. He landed on his feet in a puff of sand. Carrying that momentum in his legs, he whipped his foot at Geruke’s face, slamming into his temple, lifting his feet off the sand, and spinning his body into a pirouette. He crashed and tumbled on the ground, searing pain rushing across his entire being.

Snakard pounced on Geruke and slammed his feet into the sand under both sides of his torso. His cutlass rose, glinting in the moonlight. It plunged down at Geruke’s neck. Flicking his eyes at Madrily, she continued to lie in the sand, unable to push herself to her knees with her wobbling arms. Snakard’s sword smothered his vision.

It was over.

“Don’t betray me ever again,” a feminine voice said before the ringing of metal hitting metal rattled the air.

Snakard’s sword splashed in the sand beside Geruke’s neck, slicing a shallow wound across it. Someone other than Snakard stood above Geruke. Her black ponytail billowed in the sea breeze, her blue tunic gleamed in the moonlight, and she held his parent’s claymore. He rubbed his eyes and his lashes fluttered. Geruke’s mouth gaped as he staggered to his feet and stumbled away from Snakard.

The thing he saw next to Snakard’s ship and approach the shore wasn’t a barrel.

Lyrassa was alive.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Snakard clicked his tongue and scowled at Lyrassa. “You’re just delaying the inevitable.” Snakard dashed backwards and slid through the sand.

How was she alive? Geruke couldn’t come up with any answers, let alone any that were plausible. There was no way that Lyrassa could defeat Snakard on her own and even if she could, why would Snakard still be alive? Unless she ran away from him and hid in his ship. But she was in a daze and had a sword to her neck. By all logic, she should be dead. So why was she alive?

Regardless of the confusion that rumbled in his mind, anger flickered in his stomach because of how he had to restrain an urge that begged him to run up to her and pull her into a hug. He clicked his tongue when he noticed his eyes watering and a smile straining his cheeks. He shook his head, slapped his face, inhaled and exhaled. She should be dead. He had no choice but to leave her and he shouldn't care about her life or death.

“Lyra, how are you alive!?” Madrily shouted and laughed. Her eyes sparkled as she stared at Lyrassa in awe. “Geruke told me he left you to die!”

“He wasn’t wrong.” Lyrassa turned to Geruke and smiled at him. “He’s been impressing me a lot today. But that’s not important now.” She turned to Snakard as he ran at her. “Let’s get rid of this guy first.”

Geruke and Madrily ran to Lyrassa’s side, pressuring Snakard with a stampede of blades. Geruke, Madrily and Snakard panted, sweat, and fumbled with their weapons; the length of the battle weighed down on them. But for some reason, Lyrassa raged with energy. Her strikes wobbled blades, her footwork formed clouds of sand, and her sword blurred, spitting sparks into the air with every slash.

Jogging up the beach, Snakard stumbled over a pirate’s corpse and slipped over a mace that laid in her hand. In that moment, his parries fumbled. Cloth, blood, and skin splashed all around him as the three of them showered his body with shallow cuts and punctures. He scrambled back to his feet and the pressure only increased. They rushed him up the beach and the number of corpses he had to hop over and slither past multiplied.

Replacing her sword, Madrily carried something else in her hand; the mace that the pirate Snakard tripped over carried. With it she battered Snakard’s blade, splattering chips of metal onto the sand.

After a dozen slams, Madrily shattered his cutlass.

He dropped the broken thing, and it was his turn to shoot a hand to his belt and grab a dagger. But before his fingers could tap a pommel, Geruke slashed at Snakard’s belt, cutting it so all of his daggers fell to the sand.

Blood soaked Snakard’s clothes and dappled his body as he scrambled away from Geruke’s, Lyrassa’s and Madrily’s rolling tsunami of steel.

Snakard tripped over another body. He fell to the ground, and he stopped. Madrily leapt at him, sword swinging. The blade point sunk into Snakard’s clothes and pierced skin.

But she froze. Her cutlass didn’t sink any deeper.

Madrily flung her spare arm at Lyrassa and Geruke, beckoning them to stop. Geruke glanced down at Snakard and saw that the body he tripped over moved.

The body belonged to Lerute. Snakard snatched a dagger out of Lerute’s flimsy grasp to press it against his pale and sweaty neck, sinking into it and dripping blood down it.