“You haven’t done anything worthwhile in your entire life, kid,” he shouts out to Cet. He slows down and then turns around to shoot an indignant glare towards the dragon-kin.

“Fuck, dude,” Carl sneers.

“Sir, don’t you think that’s… a bit much?” Awnway suggests with an awkward smile.

But Rayull’s not done. He draws in another breath to yell across the snow.

“This is your one chance to make history. Do you want to be in the books as a runaway, or an overlord slayer?”

Right at the tree line, Cet stands there slack-jawed. He sees the men he served with for days- by some miracle they’re all still here. In a single moment, he asks himself if he can believe in Hoss’Rayull, the half-dragon that’s gotten him this far.

He starts back with a slow trot, averting his eyes from the group out of disgusted embarrassment. “Fuck it,” he says. “Let’s kick this guy’s ass.”

Bayl, the fatalist in him reaching a new high, sighs and shakes his head in panic. “Are you… Really?”

“Yeah,” Cet says as he crosses his arms. “I just had to remember that I don’t run from fights,” he adds with a crass smirk.

Carl scoffs. “Sure kid.”

Bayl wheezes and doubles over. “Are we… are we really going to fight an overlord?”

Rayull nods. “Murder, more like it.”

“But we’ll die! Like, we won’t even stand a chance! Theses dudes fight armie-”

“Chaos fights armies, the rest of these kids are little magic-school rejects with no friends,” Rayull says with a tone of pure distaste. A few nervous glances are exchanged between the men, but Rayull scoffs as if they were discussing the rules to a game. “The only person dying today will be Overlord Crimson. We’re going to make history today,” he adds.

“O-oh, Rayda’s ghost, please no.”

Bayl is nudged by Cet, who’s smiling, though the makings of tears of fury are in his eyes. “Chill out, dude. We got this guy hopelessly outnumbered.”

Bayl takes a deep breath and, while keeled over, he nods. “Alright, let’s… let’s make history.”

Rayull looks up to the tower, a large section crumbling off in the flame.

“Right, now we gotta’ pick a fight. Let’s get in range and open fire. Rangers, fire at him. He’s not the tactical sort, so I bet he’ll be going in a straight line for us; keep it in mind. Mullant can enchant your shots, but we should have time for only one or two shots each, so don’t miss. Mullant will also make cover for Crimson’s first hit, Vulrick, Carl and I will wrap around and hit him the second he hits the cover. If any of us screw up, all of us die. ‘Big pressure.’ You got it?”

There’s a moment in which everyone embraces the possibility of death as more than mere chance, but an assurance unless they all pull through. A real bond is made.

“Give me your first projectiles,” Mullant says to Awnway, Cet, Dresmond, and Bayl. They hand him the arrows, knives, and bolts they intend to use, and he wraps him in his hand. He casts something and a slight red aura manifests over the projectiles. Everyone loads up and they move in for the tower. The approach is quick, only half a minute’s run, but for many of them, it feels like half an hour.

Cet bites into the side of his mouth, not noticing the draw of blood welling around his teeth.

Bayl swallows nervously as his short life flashes before him.

Awnway remembers the time he went out on a shore-side date with the lady he loves.

Carl remembers a starry night when he stayed up talking with his father about religion and drinking tea.

Mullant recalls the quiet days studying books while longingly glancing down at the girls below the academy towers.

Dresmond’s brow furrows, his thoughts turning to the pages of his plentiful training manuals.

Rayull thinks, almost lovingly, of home, and Meeo’s smiling face peeping from his room’s door.

Vulrick’s mind is like a mirror, perfectly clear for the fight with the exception of a few ghost-like memories.

The time comes, and they’re near the foot of the tower.

“Charge the spell,” Rayull says without a glint of humor.

Mullant gets right to it and begins chanting and making the gestures proper for an advanced cover spell: the kind one makes to resist against even the force of an artillery shell.

Mullant excepted, everyone is silent, staring up at the smoke and listening to the laughter of Overlord Crimson cutting down more people up in the keep.

Finally, Rayull draws a deep, cold breath into his fiery lungs, the small lashes of fire licking along his teeth.

“OVERLORD CRIMSON!” He screams out, his voice gravely and filled with purpose.

The laughing up above stops, and then responds as a great, terrible head rears up from the side of the keep. “WELL! IF IT ISN’T A NEW SET OF WESTERN TOYS! HAVE YOU COME TO KILL ME?”

Rayull says nothing for this one. All he does is reach for his left-hand gauntlet, pull it off his scaled hand and then, with an animated motion, throw it down into the snow. All the while, Rayull is staring with a draconic dignity towards Crimson.

Everything but the fire is silent. Rayull knew he was going to do it, but not even he believes the moment is real.

First there’s a slow, sacred coo of awe from above, but after a few seconds it forms immediately into a fit of laughter. “DO YOU TRULY BELIEVE YOU COULD KILL ME?”

“NO,” Rayull yells upward into the spiraling cathedral of smoke, “I KNOW WE CAN. IN THE NAME OF THE ROYAL KNIGHTS OF THE OLD KINGDOM OF REINEN, I’LL SEE YOUR BLOOD IN MY MOUTH. YOU ARE FOOD TO ME.”

There is silence above and below, only the breeze dares to speak out and blow a sharp, alerting chill through the group.

“BLOOD?... NOT BEFORE I BASK IN YOURS!” Crimson screams with a voice unchallenged in madness. In a glint, the group sees Crimson leap down at them with an incredible falling speed.

This is it.

“Fire!” Rayull shouts.

The four at range fire their weapons at the descending overlord, more of a black and red dot than anything yet. Bayl and Awnway’s shots are especially precise- the group hears a wounding yell from above as the dot, becoming an ant in size, and then a mouse, rotating in the air from the hits.

At that, Rayull speaks again.

“Mullant, now!”

“Sher’an’handrane!” Mullant casts.

In the span of a wing-flap, a large, thick stone outcropping in the shape of a perfect wall forces out from the ground and reinforces to beyond-concrete levels of strength. As the ranged delivers one more barrage on unenchanted projectiles into Crimson, he smashes into the newly-made wall, driving his dual swords deep into the rock with senseless force. The barrier shatters instantly and the blades pierce deep enough to get through to Mullant’s right arm, the touch of them alone blasting him back with Awnway right behind him.

“I’LL SEE YOU ALL TO HELL!” Crimson shouts, Bayl’s first bolt smacking into his left eye.

Mullant doubles back as the three melee-operators leap to the left, right and over the wall. The trio strike at his front and sides instantaneously, Rayull’s breaking into Crimson’s skull, while the other two force in extremity wounds. Crimson responds reflexively by orchestrating his two blades into Vulrick and Carl- all armor is pierced. Vulrick takes a nick to his left arm, and Carl takes it in his stomach. Rayull smashes down again, blood flowing from the black and red overlord’s mouth as a lunatic grin wraps around his face. Vulrick forces his blade deeper, just as Crimson takes a breath.

“Orn’Fallorn,” he casts in a single phrase.

Vulrick is blasted away into the snow, and Rayull takes this chance to go for the kill.

He forces his great mace into Crimson, stunting him yet again, and then he tosses his weapon aside and grasps Crimson’s blades equal to him.

The two struggle with all they have, Rayull’s lightly augmented dragon-kin strength vs Crimson’s heavily augmented human strength. It’s almost equal, but Crimson is the superior, and begins pushing Rayull down, arching the blades to his scaled neck.

“Any last words?” Crimson asks, still taking a steady stream of ignored projectiles from the rangers of the squad.

Rayull smiles with a loose, sick madness behind it. “Dinner’s served, fucker.”

“What?”

Rayull leans into the blades, his neck pierced in by the points and, but granting him the position to slam his jaws around Crimson’s skull. With enough force to depart steel bars, the dragon-kin crushes crimson’s skull and tears off his head with his dense bulwark of inward-facing teeth.

Everyone that’s still standing stares on in awe- the corpse of an overlord is before them.

Rayull, holding his neck for the pouring wounds, rolls Crimson’s corpse off of him as he sits up.

“Patch us… up,” Rayull says with a spit over to Bayl.

Bayl looks around. Cet probably has no idea how to treat wounds, Awnway and Mullant are in the snow a few meters back, Vulrick is steadily limping back from the right, Carl is curled up in the snow to the left, but he realizes he’s not the only one that can help.

“I got you,” Dresmond says, already with the aid kit and at Rayull.

“Thanks,” the half-dragon starts, “does it look bad?”

Dresmond surveys the two wounds. “Yeah, they’re bad. You’re gonna bleed out pretty soon, but you’re a kin so they’ll close before you die; I mean, probably. If you were human you’d already be gone for sure.”

“The jugular?” Rayull asks, losing strength and leaning to the side.

Dresmond works a quick set of bandages around the wounds. “Yeah. But you know the wounds close way faster. Pretty sure you’ll be okay unless there’s something internal going on.”

“Yeah,” Rayull scoffs with a smile across his reptilian jaws. “At least I got that goin’ for me. Tell the general what we did… that a scale dealt the last blow to that asshole overlord,” he says, proudly, almost arrogantly glancing over to Crimson’s corpse just a meter away from him.

Dresmond scoffs. “I will. We really did make history today- and it was all you, man.”

“Heh… hehe…he-…” Rayull’s out, and seconds later, Dresmond finishes his treatment.

“Will he live?” Vulrick asks, reaching to two with a hobble.

Dresmond leans Vulrick to a sit. “He will. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Vulrick says. There’s blood coming out of his plating gaps.

Dresmond reaches for Vulrick’s plating straps. “I need to see. Take off the armor.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You’re obviously bleed-”

“I’m fine,” Vulrick cuts in.

But Dresmond doesn’t back off. “Take off your armor, ma-”

“Is that how you address a senior?”

Dresmond sighs and pulls back. “Suit yourself.”

Vulrick just lays down a meter from Rayull.

Dresmond then approaches Cet and Bayl. “How are you two?”

“Good, I think,” Bayl says stumbling to a sit.

Cet’s silent, his eyes wide with shock. Dresmond waves his hand in front of him, and Cet finally collapses. Dresmond shrugs and decides there’s more pressing matters than psychological injuries.

Next is Mullant and Awnway. Awnway’s alright, already regaining consciousness it seems, but Mullant’s right arm is totally obliterated.

“Yeah… he just… blasted it off, I guess,” a not-quite-all-there Mullant says with an awkward, pale-faced grin.

Dresmond takes a few minutes to apply a tourniquet high and tight to the remains of the limb, then he moves onto the last in the group.

Carl is still curled up, spouting quiet, spiteful curses.

“What’s the matter,” Dresmond says.

“My fucking stomach, man,” Carl says between closed teeth.

“Show me.”

Carl slowly opens his center. His stomach was pierced, and bile is leaking into the rest of his internals.

Dresmond pauses a moment as he looks it over, and speaks. “You’re gonna be alright,” Dresmond says with a slightly airy tone.

Carl scoffs. “Don’t fuckin’ lie to me, man.”

Dresmond sighs. “Chill out, there’s nothing I can do, but maybe one of the mages can.”

“C-cool. I’d rather you just killed me now though. This hurts like shit.”

“Sure,” Dresmond says as he patches up Carl’s wound, though it’s an ineffectual solution for a very serious problem.

Dresmond gets up and goes over to Bayl.

“Hey,” he says.

“What’s up?” Bayl, eyes to the ground, asks.

“You know a little magic, right?”

“Not healing, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bayl admits with a cold tone.

Dresmond sighs in awkward tandem with Bayl.

“Well… we need firewood, go get some, and come back in half an hour. If we don’t have magic I’m going to have to boil some shit for these guys.”

Bayl makes no sign of even hearing the phrase, as if the concept of work after this holds no meaning. “Firewood?”

“Yes, firewood, find sticks and shit. You don’t need me to explain that, do you?”

“No,” Bayl says dully, taking back to his feet, and lumbering off into the woods as if he were perpetually out of breath.

Dresmond watches for a moment as Bayl enters the tree line and then he takes up Rayull’s chat stone. With no difficulty at all, he sends a spark of mana into the stone, alighting it.

“I knew it, you bitches ran away,” the drunken voice from the stone emits. “I should’ve sent a slay team to clean up your asses instead o-”

“Secondary objective achieved, sir.” Dresmond says with a matter-of-fact tone.

The voice of the general produces a long chuckle before the slow, irritating noise of a sip can be heard. “Whatever. Just get back to the line and get back to work. If you disobey orders again I’ll have you all court-martialed, you hear me?”

Dresmond clears his throat before responding. “Sir, we followed orders to a t. Overlord Crimson is dead and we need a team to come pick up the body.”

There’s a pause. The general makes no sign of even hearing the phrase, as if the concept of mere mortals gaining victory against an overlord holds no meaning. “What you going on about? Who is this?”

“R.K.O.K.R. Dresmond Ulveroth, sir. I was a pick-up to Knight Law’s squad.”

“…And you’re saying you killed Overlord Crimson?”

“Yes, sir.”

“… Yeah, sure thing, kid. Bring his head so I can put it up on a wall when you get back. I’ll just use yours if you’re lying,” he adds with a scoff.

“No problem with that, sir. You’ll have his head.”

“Sure.” At that, Leinhard hangs up his stone, and Dresmond is left standing in the snow surrounded by the wounded, dying and unconscious.

He takes a breath and starts weighing his options as Vulrick finally stumbles back to his feet. Already, he walks as if the injuries are nothing. It’s obvious to Dresmond that this man is a warrior that’s been steeled beyond pain.

“You should lay down,” Dresmond suggests.

“I’m fine. We need a fire,” Vulrick responds, looking out to the clearing around them as the fire of the massive keep begins to die down, and clouds bend over the horizon. “It’s going to snow, and the tower could collapse any moment. We need something to keep us heated or we’ll be dead by morning.”

Dresmond sighs and thinks on it a moment before coming to a nod.