“Shaya!” Ren called out.

She jerked her head towards the sound of Ren’s voice, instinctively trusting in her lancemate. A knife struck the monster’s skull hilt first, pushing the bite off course enough that Shaya’s slight movement let her avoid the snaping jaws. Spittle splashed onto her face and she reeled from the stench of the Arctiger’s breath.

Without room to swing her weapon, she simply dropped it and used her free hands to grapple the monster. With one hand, she grabbed the beast’s head, struggling to keep its gnashing teeth away from her face and throat. With the other, she brought her fingers together until her hand formed a knife and tried to drive her claws into its underbelly.

Its hide was too thick, her claws only leaving shallow scratches, so she switched to punching it. With less than an inch to gather momentum, that wasn’t very effective either, so she mostly just struggled and kicked, trying to prevent its hind limbs from eviscerating her less-armoured legs.

“Ren!” She roared.

Despite her efforts, the Arctiger managed to claw into her limbs, but didn’t slash apart anything critical. Its spiked tentacles flailed about it, her grappling keeping it too close for the tentacles to get at her, but the way they howled through the air suggested those spiked appendages had a lot of power behind them. Too much for Ren to ignore when approaching her.

What felt like an eternity later, he managed to get within the Arctiger’s reach and bashed its skull with his baton. Once, twice, and finally a third blow with a loud crack made the creature go limp. Shaya groaned as the creature’s weight dropped onto her, rolling it off her with Ren’s help.

“The Master’s getting away,” he said, hauling her up and pointing through the kitchens, “Go! I’ll handle this and keep everyone alive.”

Shaya looked up to see the apostate woman standing behind half a dozen guards with swords and spears drawn. The apostate’s look of concern was replaced by one of rage and spite – one that promised a long, drawn-out vengeance for what they had wrought here that day. The guards that didn’t share her heraldry looked the same, anger at what Shaya’s team had done to their lords overriding their fear.

“Ren...”

“I said go!” He said, dropping his broken baton and picking up Sathaea’s estoc. The rakish dilettante’s eyes glowed Sapphire along with his binding tattoos and he gave her his usual self-assured smile, “Don’t worry, I know how to resist feminine wiles.”

Their Azurite mage remained on the ground, semi-conscious, moaning in agony as she clutched at her wounds. Blood oozed through her side from multiple places and her breathing was ragged, but Shaya’s training as a combat medic told her at a glance that it wasn’t immediately life threatening – they had time.

Lan continued to struggle in futility against whatever spell held him, closer to the woman and her guards than to Ren. If Ren intended to keep him safe, he’d have to go on the offensive immediately.

Shaya trusted in his judgment.

Picking up her weapon, she turned towards where the Master had gone.

Shaya vaulted over the dining table with her free hand, sparing a glance at the restrained woman as she did so. The woman remained terrified, unable to see what was going on, but sported bruises from abuse and some deep cuts on an arm and leg from where the Arctiger had landed on her. With Phaedra’s pressure, they had intervened before the torturous entertainment begun.

“You’re going to be okay!” Shaya shouted, spinning to her as she landed on the other side with a grimace of pain from her own injuries, “We’re going to rescue you and everyone else!”

“Please free me!” She replied, eyes hysterical as they turned towards Shaya’s voice.

Shaya pulled out one of her last healing potions. The vial was shattered, likely from her struggle against the Arctiger, as was the next one. Her last remained intact and, with only a brief moment of hesitation, uncorked it and poured it down the woman’s throat.

“I’m sorry, but later!”

“WHAT!?”

Shaya continued to run, kicking herself for the precious seconds she’d lost making sure the woman didn’t bleed out. Her body ached from her injuries and the exertion of the day, and she drew in Jade to remedy that. As the aether filled her soul, her senses enhanced and made the pain worse, but she traced a simple healing spell to at least seal her wounds.

Her spirit didn’t have space for even the simple circuit, almost fully occupied by her current suite of spells. A snap decision made her dismiss her metal transmutation spell, hoping that her axe blade would be sufficient to cut through the mage’s robes and whatever defenses he could put up. It took a few heartbeats for the aether to fade and her spirit to open to more circuits, but she finished her healing spell just as one of the guards broke from his formation and charged her, sword raised.

With her leftover Jade, she re-activated the barbs on her cloak and whirled to snap it towards his face, catching him off guard. He screamed as the barbs lashed across his eyes and then his voice broke as she finished her spin by chopping a leg off below the knee, where his chainmail didn’t protect him.

Shaya didn’t have time to put him out of his misery, and moved on. She burst through the entryway to the kitchen and grunted in surprise as one of the cooks swung a heavy iron pan at her. She ducked the clumsy swing and rammed her shoulder into the scrawny man, slamming him back several feet. When she turned to her attacker, she noticed several more staff looking at her.

Azurite energy glowed in their eyes, and their faces were frozen in a look of horror. Each was chained to their station, but the chains were more than long enough to get at her. Despite their expressions, each of them screamed in unearthly rage and rushed at her with pans, knives, and cooking utensils, not even trying to defend themselves.

That bastard enchanted them.

She glanced to her north, the exit there was closed and unguarded. To her south was another exit, leading to the front of the keep, guarded by the enchanted servants.

Fight for those who can’t, eh?

She withdrew the barbs on her cloak, wrapping it around her arm as a shield, and returned her weapon to its belt loop. With cloak and fist, she bashed her way through the group of ensorcelled servants, doing her best not to kill any of them. What they lacked in skill, they made up for in crazed ferocity, and Shaya made it to the other side with a deep cut on her arm and a ringing skull from a glancing blow from a pan.

The next room was a nightmarish combination of a larder and torture chamber, Shaya clamping down on her imagination before it could run wild. She moved through the room like a blur, leaping over a toppled wine rack, and used her enhanced strength to burst through the next door.

With a yelp, she realized it was a set of servant’s stairs leading into darkness, and she rode the door as it clattered down them. The ride was longer than she expected, making her wonder if she had skipped the first floor and gone straight into the dungeons. The shouts and screams that greeted her as she stumbled off her valiant steed confirmed her fears.

Going to leave that out of the report, Shaya thought to herself, splashing through ankle-deep water and wrinkling her nose at the stench of refuse.

Around the next corner, she found a long hallway lined with cells, some crushed beneath collapsing rubble and others sinking into the lake, the bars of their cages no longer reaching the ceiling. A door slammed shut at the far end of the room, Shaya catching a flash of dark robes through the barred slit. She sprinted after her quarry, eying the door and the crumbling stone wall on either side of it.

At the sound of her approach, some people flinched back from the cell doors while others rushed forward, eyes widening as they spotted her, reaching their arms out towards her.

“Please mistress!” One man shouted, still looking hale. A newcomer, most likely, given the strength left in his lungs, “You have to save us! Don’t let them take us like they did the others!”

“I will!” Shaya shouted, running down the hallway towards the door, “But I have to put down the apostate first!”

“No!” He snapped back, “Free me first!”

If I were the enemy, Shaya thought, I’d trap the door, expecting my pursuers to go through it.

Shaya rushed past the prisoners, ignoring their protests, and danced up loose rubble towards a gap near the deteriorating ceiling. She ran three steps up the wall and launched herself for the hole, abused hands grabbing onto the lip of the rough brick. Sore arms dragged her up and through the hole, Shaya rolling as she hit the ground in the next room and checking her surroundings.

The heavy wooden door exploded into the room she just left, set to detonate just as she expected. The force of the explosion shook her to the bone, leaving her ears ringing, but she saw her quarry clearly now. He had slowed to cast that spell, hoping to kill her, but cursed as he spotted her as well. He ran off again, the inside of his cowled robes glowing with Jade and Azurite.

Shaya spared a moment’s prayer for the prisoners she left behind, hoping none were injured, then took off after her quarry again. Her long legs closed the distance between them, even as the water grew deeper, and her mind raced to formulate a plan to best a mage other apostates called ‘the Master’.

He’s just an apostate. I don’t understand how his power works, but his kind isn’t formally trained. Especially not for battle. He likely hasn’t gained much experience actively fighting others either, hopefully he’s grown used to punching down.

She thought back on all the times Jade slipped through her fingers and how Samorn had described Oraeus’ difficulties channeling Azurite.

Deny him aether, and he’s not even a mage.

“Come back here, you coward!” She bellowed after him, mimicking Basillo’s dull wit, “Are you so afraid to face justice, you worm!?”

Why do they always run?

Probably a damn nephilim under that hood, happy to outlive his immediate problems.

They’re so... unrushed with life.

He got through the door and slammed it behind him. She pivoted, knowing he’d have to commit to additional traps to dissuade from her direct pursuit. Spikes of ice shot out of the water in front of the door, Shaya already leaping between the bars of a cage and through the slight gap where the cell was sinking away from the ceiling. Without pause, she continued forward, feet running along the wall that took her over the collapsed section and into the next room.

“There’s no escaping you weakling!” She shouted as she spotted him again, “Whatever you had planned is already ruined!”

Her foot twisted as it slid on chains bolted into the wall, and she stifled a curse as she was forced to land before she wanted to. The Master didn’t seem to notice her awkward landing and spat a curse of his own at her. Shaya grew nervous as the man stopped running, deciding to make his stand in that small room.

The water was a foot deep here, promising to make footwork difficult, but there was little space for that anyway. The room barely went for five feet in any direction and most of it was dominated by a torture table that stood in the middle. Shaya even had to crouch to keep her head from scraping against the ceiling.

“Weakling?” He snarled in the Imperial tongue, his cold words sounding like they came from dozens of mouths that scratched at Shaya’s mind, “Let me educate you, Imperial dog.”

The azure glow from his cowl faded as the aether was channeled into a spell.

Perfect.

Shaya lunged forward, drawing her weapon as she flew toward him.