Rannulf swung for her. A dazzling hacking of steel blitzing through the air with audacious speed. His form was wild, untrained, vicious. She could see how he had put the wrong foot forward, trusting his anger over his own training. His face was a mask of rage, eyes glowing with bloodshot red, spit flying from his snarling cracked lips. She wanted to tell him to stop and let go of that anger. She wanted to yell at him to return home and grow up to be a loved one. A father. A husband. But she couldn’t. She wasn't in control. She could only watch as she voided the blade and felt her lips curl into a sadist's grin.

Her right arm reared back, fingers clenching into a fist. So tight was it that her nails dug into her palm. She screamed to herself, begging to not do what she was about to do. The arm traveled forward with force, aimed for the young boy's head. Gíla bellowed and then choked as her fist connected with Rannulf's head. Metal. Bone. Flesh. Brain matter. All of it crunched inward and gushed from his orifices as he fell to the muddy earth in a heap of dead flesh.

The bear-maiden gasped for breath as she stared at his corpse, tears welling in her eyes like shimmering crystal stars. Around her, the battle of Vucan raged again, each soldier reduced to mere figments of shadow with an only base humanoid form. Their faces were gone, faces she swore she would always remember. But none of them could she remember - only Rannulf's face remained so distinct in its deformed state. Crystal stars fell from the lids of her eyes as she herself fell to her knees, plopping into the blood pool that had formed from the dead man's head. In control of herself, at last, she reached forward to touch Rannulf's shoulder and shook him in the vain attempt to wake him up. He couldn't be dead, not this young boy with so much to live for.

"You killed him," a voice gurgled.

Gíla looked up and met the crushed gaze of the giant, halberd clutched tightly in his hands. His body radiated cold, and what flesh remained of his face was bloodied and gray. Bile swelled into her throat as she heaved forward onto her hands, bracing herself on the lifeless Rannulf. A shock of shadow arrows pelted the earth beside her, though she paid no mind to them. Thick, yellow fluid pressed against her clenched teeth, the taste of it as vile as any corpse stench.

"You killed him like you killed me," the giant continued, his voice sloshing with gore from the ruin of his mouth. "Like you killed that woman. Like you beheaded that man. Like poor Alden, who you abandoned. Do you think he ended up like young Rannulf there?"

The rupture from her mouth was grotesque, and Gíla shot up to her feet to escape it - rushing for the giant with outstretched hands. She gripped his shoulders and dug her claws into the metal of his armor. Cold blood greeted her fingertips as she stared into his mess of a face, her own twisted into a painting of remorse and rage. She snarled and shook him violently, a slew of incomprehensible words running along the acrid taste of her tongue.

"You killed them all," the giant laughed with chunks of something pouring from his destroyed jaw. "And you'll kill them all again. What will you do, Drayheller? Regret and fight again? Or run?"

Gíla's eyes were wide, glowing gold with such intensity that the giant's corpse was close to burning in the gaze. Suddenly, from the horde of shadows surrounding them, a voice cried out: "Gíla!" It was cacophonous in the air, somehow besting the drowning noises of battle. She looked away from the giant and searched for the source of it. Again, it cried out. "Gíla!"

It was closer this time, and the bear-maiden turned back to the giant. Her heart skipped as her blood ran as cold as his own. Jira's face had replaced his, her features contorted into fear. She cried out, again and again, a rapid-fire of pleading to the Drayheller. Gíla backed away from the image with panting breaths. "Go away!" she demanded.

"Gíla!" the Jira-image hollered, so loud and so violently that the world shook and the sky fractured.

Gíla blinked in time to void the driving thrust from a king's woman, the tip of her steel blade skidding along the polished surface of the Drayheller's chest plate. "Malfar ching!" she shouted in her mother tongue, swinging her hammer up to bash away a quick responding swing from her assailant. Steel cracked from the impact and the young fighter was thrown off her feet and onto her back. Air erupted from her lungs like a snapping tree and returned to her like a broken whistle, her eyes glazed over in surprise.

The bear-maiden stood over her foe, breathing so heavily from the attack of memory that the very plates of her armor audibly skated against each other. Her fists clenched the shaft of her hammer shudderingly tight, and golden emotion beamed from her eyes as she stared. Rannulf looked back. "Stay down," she demanded with a brittle tone. "Or I'll…just stay down."

She spun on her heels, inhaling sharply as she took in the rest of the battle. The world around them was lit by the dying glow of orange from the sun, the waves of the nearby river cascading gently against the coast. Thin trees and bushes surrounded them, growing even thinner closer to the village some half-mile away, which was little more than twenty buildings and a modest stone church.

As expected, the strike force had crossed the Raech, using the old bridge near Murlay. After that, nothing had gone as expected. Just like Vucan, and she cursed herself for expecting any different. Whoever had spotted the strike force was, thankfully, mostly correct in the numbers of the standard infantry, but had failed to relay the fact that the force possessed small siege equipment and far more knights than originally reported. It was as if they expected the rebels' arrival.

The tower had fallen within an hour, its gates breached by the ram, and its wall ascended by ladders. Orlantha led her Ravens on a counter-assault that, somehow, brought them into far more agreeable terms outside the claustrophobia of a captured tower. The Contemptors launched their flanking attack on the archers, taking out many of them before joining their companions against the larger force of sell-swords, knights, and spearmen. Now it was a fight for survival.

"Gíla!" Jira yelled from somewhere. "You have to fight!"

Fight, but don't kill. I don't have to kill. I don't have to kill. Just…knock them down. Don't kill them. Survive...go home.

The bear-maiden clenched her eyes shut and shook her head, clearing the images of Rannulf from her mind. She moved forward with thunderous steps. Someone came at her with a yell, slashing at her neck. Gíla voided it and swung her hammer into their calf, flipping them up and down onto the earth with decisive force. She did the same to another, cracking her hammer into their knee and dropping them like a sack of rocks. Their leg bent inward, and their screams resounded in the air.

More and more did the soldiers of the King advanced on her, attacking her with hacking strikes and walloping slashes and piercing stabs. Each was armored in dark mail, the colors of their surcoats muted by blood and grime, and their faces indistinguishable from those who fought alongside her. Kinsmen fighting each other for a crime no one even knows, surviving on hate alone. The tales do no justice to the horror of hatred. No one should have this much hatred for another soul.

Not wishing to join that hate again and now far more aware of her strength than she had before, Gíla swung her hammer as lightly as she could while still doing enough to incapacitate her enemies. Bones were snapped by her efforts, but lives were spared as she frantically bulldozed her way from cluster to cluster, smashing and batting away the young and fool-hardy. Little advanced skill could be seen on her part - nothing like her betters - but it was, at least, more impressive than her showing at Vucan.

A particularly brazen man charged her with a storm of spear thrusts, the metal blade screeching as it skidded along the black plate of the bear-maiden's chest. He was rewarded for his efforts with a simple backhand to the stomach, lifting him off his feet and into a nearby group of his allies. The polished metal of her armor became riddled with thin scratches and light marring, yet no blade had been strong enough to penetrate a single layer of it. It went on like this for a long time, and it seemed to those that fought with the bear-maiden that none could take her off her feet. Cheers began to sound from her allies as more of the King's soldiers were beaten down and left writhing in agony - to be taken prisoner. Even Gíla could not resist the swell of pride in her chest for being so accomplished in this goal.

Then came Hans Gabriel Jurgon.

The knight was towering, clad in a full-body suit of plate enameled green with golden insignias of the King's crown on his chest and back plate. His helm was fashioned after the King's sigil, a lion-drake with snarling black teeth and eye-sockets for visors. He was built like an ox on hindlegs and wielded the largest greatsword Gíla had ever seen, its similarly green blade shining in the dying orange glow of the day's sun. Like Acominatus, he towers above all others, wielding the blinding sword of sunlight, charging into his foes.

He rushed the bear-maiden, growling with a voice akin to that of Gervais Tamas. A jab from his sword carved through the surface of the bear-maiden's left pauldron, its edge nearly kissing the doublet underneath. She ignited into action with a yell, ducking away to dislodge the blade, and swung her hammer at his legs. This true giant, someone she estimated at no less than seven feet in height, merely stomped on the shaft of the hammer and sent its force into the dirt. Gila's mouth ran dry and she tugged on her weapon, finding it completely stuck under the weight of Hans' foot.

Gíla grunted and let go just as Hans' sword came piercing down for her head. He lunged for her with a slash of his sword, the edge once more carving through the metal of her plate armor - this time leaving a bright gash along her stomach. She yelled out and ducked another slice, shunting herself forward in the attempt to drive her shoulder into his stomach. This succeeded, but it was Gíla who was lifted off her feet, the knight having wrapped a free hand around her upper body to lift her up. Gíla shouted as she felt herself be let go and then groaned as a hammering fist struck her back to careen her down. She landed on her stomach, the snout of her helmet buried in the dirt.

"You ain't so strong, are you?" she heard the giant rumble. A foot was placed on the back of her head, pushing her face further into the soft earth. "I heard Drayheller're strong fucks. You ain't strong."

Not again. Don't be saved again. I can fight him. I can fight him.

The tip of the giant's sword pressed against the exposed part of her neck, shutting down all function in her body as fear overtook her. Air refused to fill her lungs and she could feel her heart begin to burn.

"Fucking weak," the giant growled.

"Lieutenant Arsinoe!" cried another, drawing a confused grunt from the giant knight. Someone barreled into the freak, pushing him and his blade away from the Drayheller.

Gíla shot up immediately, crawling on her hands and knees to retrieve her hammer and then set her gaze on who had saved her life once again. Torin was facing off against the giant, sending blow after blow of his sword and shield into his stomach and head. Annoyed noises came from that snarling lion-drake helm. Hans parried, and Torin was on his back a second later. He reared his greatsword up high, poised to cut Ham-fist's face open. Gíla's hammer met his descending blade. Flat metal met edged and batted it aside. The bear-maiden followed this up with a reverse strike with the spike of the hammer's head. It pierced deeply into Hans' thigh, drawing gouts of blood from the wound. He cried out and sent a hard hook into her face, knocking her helmet clean off her head. Torin was back up, weaponless, and struck again with a series of jabs and hooks and crosses from his ham hock fists, eventually bending the giant knight over and wrenching the lion-drake helm from his head.

Flowing brown hair was released into the hot wind of the battle, framing a battle-scarred face of stone. Hans snarled and erupted with his own strikes. He kicked away Torin like a dog and then accelerated with a flurry of slashes for the bear-maiden. Metal screamed against metal and new scars were made as Gíla voided what she could, blood weeping from where the greatsword had cut deep enough to cut open even her protective hide. Gíla fought back with wild bashings of her hammer, denting his once immaculate armor and drawing more and more breath from his body.

Torin jumped back in, leaping from his feet and sending the hardest punch Gíla had seen him throw into Hans' unprotected face. The giant's front teeth became splinters from Torin's gauntlets, and his nose became bent like a spoon. Hans retorted the strike with an equally forceful swing of his sword, faster than Gíla or Torin could anticipate. Torin fell to the earth, grasping at his entrails-leaking belly and growing paler by the second. Hans' mighty sword had carved through the armor and leather like butter.

"TORIN!" another of the Contemptors shrieked. Gíla, dumbstruck by her comrade's sudden fall, turned to see young Karlyle bounding forward with a shield and spear in hand.

He jabbed for Hans' face, the chipped metal edge of his spear carving through the left side of the giant's mouth and cutting off half of his left ear. Hans roared in pained rage and batted for the boy. Gíla jumped, tackling Karlyle down. With a surge of strength, she kicked the boy away and, in the same breath of motion, somehow rolled to her feet with the hammer still clutched in her right hand.

Hilda Ackerg leaped in now, as did Rolland Eldus, Lucette Ela, and Janot Milicen. Hans bellowed, taking down Janot with a swipe at his torso that carved him clean in half. Lucette attacked with her spear, doing the same that Karlyle had done to the giant's right side. Rolland stabbed at the dented parts of Hans' armor, piercing the weakened layers and the inner gambeson and, finally, the flesh. Hilda performed the same, targeting his legs. Karlyle had risen to his feet with the aid of the twins Heymeri and Iordanus, who drew his attention to the encroaching kingsmen. Jira ne'Jiral, Farrimond Sampson, Waymar Amaud, and Segar Berolt joined in, breaking through the growing mass of the King's warriors. Gíla frantically searched for any of the Bloody Ravens but found only the King's forces slowly surrounding them and doing battle with the Contemptors who fought on in spite of the disadvantage.

Gíla finally shook herself free of her stupefaction and joined the group bringing down Hans. A timed strike at his knees dropped him to the earth, bending his legs backward, his roars now nothing more than gurgles and gasps. Another up-cut from the hammer cracked against his jaw, snapping his head backward and reducing him to a dazed groaning hunk of metal and meat. She stood over him, Hilda kicking away his sword while Rolland and Lucette pinned his arms down. She looked down at him, and Rannulf looked back. Don't kill him, she heard herself say. Don't be like them.

"Do it!" she heard Lucette and Rolland shriek. "Kill him! Kill him!"

Don't!

Gíla gave her own roar and raised her hammer high. From nowhere, Conon Mainfroi of the King's army charged into the fray, spearing Gíla away from Hans with a bashing of his own body. She tumbled to the ground, rolling with the moment, and barely brought her vambraces up to defend against the knight's descending ax strike. The edge of the blade bit into the metal and doublet arms underneath. She yelped in pain and felt instinctive pleading form on her tongue. Her eyes momentarily gazed left and beheld the sprinting form of the red-haired Orlantha Quills, bloodied and stoic.

The King's knight noticed her too and wrenched his ax free from the bear-maiden's arms. He swung for Orlantha, missing her by a mile as she ducked like a panther and sent her rapier for a gap in his armor. He voided it just as effortlessly, swinging down for her back. Again she dodged, spinning and stabbing at once for the visor-slit of his helmet, barely missing. It was a dance they shared. Orlantha moved in wraith-like motions, jabbing and stabbing with her rapier, while Conon swirled like smoking flames. Gíla rose again, hammer in hand, and watched the fight unfold. Nearly imperceptible, they battled, Orlantha unleashing aptitudes with the thin dextrous blade Gíla never knew someone could have.

"Bear-maiden!" she heard Karlyle shout from Torin's fallen figure. She bounded over to him, briefly casting a look to Hans, Karlyle's spear jutting upward like a spire from his split face.

"I'm sorry little Karl," Torin grunted, his voice dry and choked. "I should've…waited for you. Just wanted...ah shit...my da...shoulda…."

Karlyle looked to Gíla, his young eyes wet with tears and full of dying hope. He looks like Alden. "Can you save him? You Drayheller know a lot, right? You can save him, can't you?"

Gíla examined Torin's wounds and grimaced. Intestines fought to leave the gaping hole that had once been protective armor and flesh. She clenched her eyes shut and opened them to Karlyle's begging expression. "I'm sorry, Karl," she said. "I don't know what to do."

The young boy shook his head violently. "No…no! Where are the healers? Get him to the healers and…and they can close up his wound!"

Hilda had knelt near the boy as well, placing her hand on his shoulder. Her round face was scrunched and tear-stained. "He won't make it to the village," she lamented. "It's too deep."

"Love…the optimism…Hilda," Torin chuckled with a grave tone.

Karlyle shook with despair. "You're going to be okay, Torin! We'll get you back to the Bastion and we'll share an ale, okay? You can tell me all about farming again. We can take that pilgrimage together on the Divine Road! Like Hilda here wanted."

Hilda wept. "Yes, we can do that. It's going to be great"

Torin was beyond pale, his eyes glazed with death. "S-sounds nice. My da-my dad...gonna tell him to-to make you a good p-pie. Fresh pic-picked berr-berries."

Gíla was prepared to say something, anything to make the boy feel better. But there was nothing to say - nothing that could heal young Karl's breaking heart.

"Arsinoe!" she then heard Jira call out. Gíla looked up in time to see her captain cut through the neck of another woman in plate, the outcome of a beautiful riposte. "Get them up! We're not done yet!"

But they were done. The fight, they would learn, against this strike force was over before it ever began. In fact, the entire ordeal was nothing more than the testing ground for something none in those central nations of Khirn could have expected.

It started as dissonant whispers in the distance, something normally negligible for those of sufficient willpower. Then, in grew into a discordant whirring noise unlike any the bear-maiden had heard before. Then came the rumbling in the ground and the growing silence of every combatant in the vicinity of that tower. The only noise beyond this was the sudden worried howling of Orlantha Quills and Jira ne'Jiral, who ordered an immediate retreat from the area. Only the wisest of the two small guilds followed this order immediately. Men and women such as Farrimond Sampson, Waymar Amaud, Segar Berolt, Emelot Lilion, Vanora Mirils, Ivette Jesmond, and Hamelen Dannet.

But the bear-maiden, Karlyle Robion, the twins Heymeri and Iordanus, Hilda Ackerg, and the rest stood motionless in confusion. And then she saw it. The glowing, coalescing blue lights somewhere beyond the walls of kingsmen and rebels, and the words of Orlantha Quills sounded in her mind. "Imagine those sprites mingling together, forming a single conductive ball of energy that sinks into the ground to summon the earth for your control. And imagine that earth wrapping around your body, mingling with every strand of flesh you possess. You become an extension of the planet and of yourself. Limitless things you can do with the rock and the roots and the vines and the thorns. It's beautiful."

Gíla turned to run, but it was too late. The lights detonated into a catastrophe of raw arcaeno that sunk into the ground and uprooted everything inside. Rock, stone, dirt, roots, vines, plants. All of it flew into the air like the tentacles of some sea beast, grasping for anyone that they could. Lucette Ela was taken, bent in horrible ways as her body crunched and burst from the small hole the vines pulled her into. Another named Richemanus hacked at a strand of rocky earth that hand wrapped around his body only to violently twitch as it tightened. Segar Berolt wailed as branches of buried trees pierced his eyes like daggers and dragged him across the land.

"Gíla! What's happening!?" young Karlyle screamed, his ears buried by his hands.

Jira leaped into position by them, lifting Karlyle to his feet and smacking Hilda clear of the stupefaction that had stricken her. She looked down at Torin and found him silent and motionless, and then to Gíla. "Gíla! We have to get back to the Bastion. Go, go now!"

Gíla nodded and began running as more of the land around them crumbled and rose like the undead. More of the faces she had come to know were taken, split into pieces, consumed by the earth, or cocooned in vines and roots. She ran hard, sprinting so quickly with adrenalin that one would have assumed her armor weighed nothing.

"Keep running!" she heard someone yell. And then: "Watch out!" Perhaps it was Orlantha. Perhaps it was Karlyle, or Hilda, or any of the others.

Gíla would not come to know this, for it mattered not. All Gíla saw was a light - brilliant sapphire - racing through the air and inflating like lungs. It dipped as it neared them, its trajectory clear as the day that had died for this battle. Save her! Gíla heard herself say.

She bounded forward and pushed Jira out of its path, and the light enveloped her in sapphire brilliance as the earth reached for her with craggy fingers. She was lifted, feather-like, and all sounds of the world were drowned out by the serenity that filled her body. A million images of events old, current, and yet-to-be filled her eyes as she was whisked into the air like an arrow shot from a great bow. The clouds parted ever slowly, and the sky became darker and darker until the very edge of its boundaries became a figment of thought. Starlight beamed in her eyes as she rose higher than anyone had ever risen in the history of the world, and the heavens of the gleaming void beyond it began to open their doors. Peace filled her body as she stared in awe at the brilliant white and blue that began to near her and further beyond the doors that had opened. And then, just as quickly, the light dissipated, and Gíla fell onto a hot, dark metal floor that smelled obscenely like sweat, blood, and smithy oils.

"God damnit," she cursed, punching the floor with a surge of rage unknown to her heart as the peace melted away.

Footsteps drew her eyes up and the Drayheller jolted to her feet, bringing her hands up into a defensive position. They were in a room of indeterminate size, criss-crossed with beams and what she assumed were dwarven piping systems. Creatures of unknown make and purpose skittered across the floor and into the walls, or hidden places in the crannies. Everything seemed to be made out of some time of iron or bronze or both, though the dim orange lighting from the lanterns granted her limited visibility on anything except the man standing in front of her. He was old yet somehow young, and was covered in black smudges and glistening sweat. His body, like his face, was angularly chiseled with dirt-specked hoary hair and blue diamond eyes creased with crow's feet. His strong, wrinkled right hand held a lit smoking pipe made of animal horn while his left was tucked into the pocket of the grungy brown leather overcoat he wore over painfully stained white shirt and pants.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked, her voice no longer known to her as it echoed along with the clanking and banging within the walls of this horrific room. Something groaned in the distance, followed by a bellowing horn that shook the room and sent dust flying off the pipes and beams.

The man took a long puff from his pipe. Another horn blast followed by an even louder and deeper roar of something she could only say sounded mechanical like the forges of an armory. He exhaled the smoke with a manner of irritation and acceptance after the noise quieted. "Of fucking course this happened. Out of practice, I am. Oh well, you're not the woman I was planning on getting out of there, but…you'll have to do."