Friday, February 20th, N.E. 807, 23:57

Command Center, Eastern Keep, Bleeding Forest, 34 Miles South of Arvas, Fredirin Kingdom.

General Frederica Canyon Fredirin.

“Haah...Haah...Haah…” I panted, exhaustion already sinking into my body.

I was only 31 years old this year, but already I felt like an old woman. By the Gods, if this was what growing old would be like, I would be happy to just die.

“Haah… Well… that might be the case regardless.” I quietly said to myself as I straightened myself back up.

Just in time as another elemental charged at me. This one’s body was simply a ball, and where its legs should have been, were a pair of arms that ended in stumpy hands, arms that were identical to the two on the upper half of its body. The thing looked as if it’s top and bottom were mirror images.

A hand reached out towards my face as it shambled past me, what passed for fingers seemingly trying to grab at me, but I slightly shifted and the finger just brushed passed me. I pivoted and spun, my own strike, a horizontal slash at its back, landed clean, bisecting the elemental almost perfectly in half.

Even before the top half could hit the snow-covered ground, my second attack hit the lower body, shattering it into hundreds of shards.

“Haah… just need… haah… to take this nice and… haah… slow” I once again spoke to myself as I watched another soldier bring a large pickaxe down onto what remained of that elemental. It took three strikes, but it shattered and died.

If elementals could even truly die.

A long time ago I was called One Strike, because every opponent of mine fell in one strike. Or so the rumors went. In actuality, many of my opponents survived more than one strike, and many even went on to beat me. They never killed me, so there is that.

There was some truth to the rumors, the style I learned, and then eventually altered into my own, was one based around putting everything into one powerful attack. It wasn’t the pure offense of a berserker, I defended, parried, dodged, looked for openings, feinted, probed, but when the time came to strike, I put everything into that one blow. I wasn’t merely trying to cut my opponent, but striving to cut through my opponent.

And then one day, and one fateful encounter with an ancient salamander and everything changed.

Everyone knows that salamanders spit fiery globs of oily goo that burn like oil, and at least everyone who lives in the Canyon Domain, knows how to tell when they are about to do so. They lift up their chests, they take a big breath, their throats swell up, they pull their heads back, and then they let loose. The key is the swelling of the throat, every year hundreds, if not more, would be adventurers from the rest of the kingdom end up dead or severely burnt because they don’t know what to look for. However for those of the Canyon Domain, it’s common knowledge, even trainee soldiers know how to defend those attacks.

I could avoid those attacks without even thinking about it.

But, ancient salamanders were something else entirely. Only the largest and oldest salamanders are considered ancient, and they are incredibly rare, in my entire life, I had ever only heard of that one. It really was massive, almost ten feet tall when it was still keeping all four feet on the ground, it was nearly thirty feet from head to tail, and it was pure muscle. Salamanders are usually lithe creatures, thin and nimble, but still strong. Unless you look closely, you can’t even tell they have scales. Not so for an ancient, it looked less like a salamander, and more like a dragon or wyrm.

I knew how dangerous the creature was, I knew how much of a threat it’s burning spit would be, so I charged straight at it. My rush was fast and strong, I lept towards its face, and brought my sword down upon its head. I intended to cleave right through its face, its neck, and however much of its chest I could reach.

And the ancient salamander was slow to react, it made no effort to dodge or defend, my blade effortlessly sliced through scale, flesh, and bone. As the salamander’s head split in two, I knew it was dead.

But I immediately realized my mistake. The ancient salamander’s body was big and bulky, not at all like its younger version, and its throat did not swell up when it prepared to spew its fiery spit. As my slash continued down, slicing through its neck, the mass of burning goo exploded out.

I barely survived, burns covered nearly half of my body. My face, never exactly what one would call pretty, was now a burnt mess, only one eye survived. My right arm was burnt badly, everything below the elbow was completely gone, my right foot was nearly destroyed, and the majority of the muscles on the right side of my torso were ruined too.

With only one eye, one arm, and one working leg, everyone assumed my fate was to never wield a weapon again. But, my family has a strong belief that only an individual can make their own fate, so I proved everyone wrong, modifying my style so that I could still fight. However, my title of One Strike, slowly changed, it no longer told of how I could kill any enemy with one attack, but now it referenced the fact that I only had one arm, one leg, and one eye.

“Haah… Not good… getting lost in the past like that…” I said shaking my head.

The last few elementals around us were being destroyed, but I could see another group a bit away steadily making their way towards us. I had maybe thirty seconds to recover my strength and check on the situation.

“Wiln… How are things looking?” I asked my adjutant who had stayed behind with me.

“Not good General…” Wiln answered as he crawled out of the pile of snow he had been hiding in.

Wiln wasn’t a warrior, not in any sense of the word. In fact, he had almost zero combat potential, he was instead trained as a spy and as a thief. Even from an ambush, he was only as skilled as a normal soldier. But, if he wanted to stay hidden, he would be extremely hard to find. I wasn’t sure how well that skill would fare against the elementals, but he was still alive.

“Haah…. Not good… how?”

“We’ve lost almost all of the knights for starters.”

“How did… that happen?” I frowned as I asked. “What is Deo doing?”

“Knight Commander Deo is dead Ma’am, and his second-in-command was... one of those, ‘Valorous’ types. That said, she died before she could cost us all of the remaining knights” Wiln said with disdain.

“I’d order you to have the rest of the knights folded into Major Pirtsen’s command, but I am sure they are already there.”

“Yes Ma’am. As for the sappers and Grenadiers, Lieutenant Colonel Jay last reported that most of the heavy siege has been destroyed, they are using the smaller stuff, but it isn’t as effective and his people are suffering heavy casualties. And the last I heard from Lieutenant Colonel Zuu was that while her grenadiers were highly effective, they were running low on munitions. I don’t know how that has turned out.” Wiln reported.

“You don’t know?” I asked sounding shocked, “find out.”

“General…” Wiln hesitated for a second. “Vai is dead.”

“Vai…? She is?” I said, truly shocked.

I scanned over the battlefield looking for my adjutant. Vai, like Wiln, was not a warrior, and unlike my other adjutant, she was not a spy either, she instead specialized in various types of utility magic that she learned as an arcanist. Vai was my communication's officer, able to use telepathy to talk to distant people, and to use basic scrying spells to gain an understanding of the situation. Because we would need to rapidly adapt to changes in the situation, I had needed her to stay, and she, much like Wiln, had volunteered without me even needing to ask.

“She was hit by a shard of ice,” Wiln’s voice brought an end to my search. “Someone brought her back into the keep, but it was… I am sorry.”

“Haah…”

Vai wasn’t just my adjutant, she was my friend. Since I was a child, Vai had always been by my side.

But, I had to focus. I could grieve later, if I survived. Now, without Vai relaying my orders, defending would become even harder.

“Wiln, tell...no, nevermind.” I said as I readied my weapon again, “there is no time. Hide yourself well.”

I watched out of the corner of my eye as he shuffled back under the snow. He had probably said something, but I couldn’t hear it over the clangs as I used my sword to deflect the several shards of ice that had been launched my way.

These attacks couldn’t kill me, not like this at least, but they sapped my strength, slowly wearing me down. And they prevented me from moving, a fact that would normally bother me, but since my encounter with that salamander, my style no longer relied on moving.

The first elemental, a six-legged wolf with a pair of small angel like wings on it’s back, pounced right at me, even as the shards were still flying through the air. A few bounced off of its body as it flew towards me, but they did no harm to its equally hard body.

The sword in my left hand was still dancing through the air, redirecting the shards away from me, and away from the soldiers behind me. My right arm had no hand, so I could not wield a weapon or a shield, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. As the wolf approached, I shifted and slid past it, my sword deflected two more shards, and my right elbow came down right on the wolf’s head, shattering it along with a large portion of it’s body.

Touching an elemental was dangerous, especially these ice elementals. Even though I had a finely crafted steel elbow plate strapped to my arm, and a layer of chain mail under that, a chill permeated into my arm. If my right arm had been good for anything besides last-ditch attacks like that, this would have been a real problem.

The rain of ice shards came to an end as the next elemental went my way. This one was much stranger than the last, it's body was nothing more than a log of ice, six to seven feet across. The only limbs were four horse like legs that ran the length of it as it charged at me.

Against normal soldiers, the charge would have served as a plow, smashing through an entire line. Against me, a simple overhead slash easily cut it in two as it approached. The two halves stumbled and crashed past me where my soldiers would finish it off.

“Haah… We can’t do… much more of this…”

A humanoid elemental changed direction and headed my way, this one was similar to a human, except its legs were twice as long as those found on a normal human.

This one would also be easy, it would obviously attack with its legs, and all I needed to do was sever the leg when it came near, and it would fall.

However, when it was still ten feet away from me, the ground shook. That elemental, and some others, along with several of my soldiers, all tumbled to the ground.

Whatever made the ground shake was going to be an issue, but right now, I needed to take advantage of this opening.

Mustering what power I could in my ruined leg, I dashed forward. The shaking had no effect on me, and I reached the still airborne long legged elemental and cut it before it landed. I changed direction, shooting toward a worm-like elemental that lost it’s head as I passed, another pivot, and I killed the five-legged elemental that was about to kill two fallen soldiers. My left leg kicked out, sending one of those soldier’s discarded hammer flying. Even as that hammer shattered the chest of a hunched over elemental, I had sliced through two more, and then I ended my attack by stomping on and crushing an elemental that was a mix between a rat and a bird that had fallen due to the shaking.

“Haah… Haah… Haah…”

I was now completely exhausted, but almost all of the elementals in this group were now dead. My men would be able to finish whatever was left off.

“Haah…” I breathed out heavily, but again, the ground shook.

b...o...o...m

b...o...o...m

B...o...o...m

B...o...O...m

B...O...o...M

B...O...O...M

With each thundering crash, the ground shook, the intensity building with each crash.

“Haah… Haah… I never… catch any… breaks…”

Its ponderous footsteps brought it closer, one massive leg stepped through the veil of snow created from the blizzard. The leg was like a castle tower, over ten feet until the knee. There was no foot, only a flat bottom. From the knee, another ten feet of massively thick ice lead to the elemental’s body, all three of its legs connected to what I could only assume was its core, a vaguely humanoid-shaped torso that was twice the size of a normal human chest. A tiny, featureless head sat there, between two shoulders that were the size of boulders, at least twenty feet across, and covered with spear sized shards of pointed ice. The shoulders ended in tentacle-like arms that reached the ground, each one being drug behind the massive elemental. It was currently at least fifty feet tall, but it might be closer to sixty if it extended its legs fully.

Elemental Overflows were caused when a fragment of dense elemental energy happened to find itself in an area where the boundaries between the magical, and real world, were thin. The fragment would tear an opening and burst forth, and other elementals would pour out through that opening. The fragment would always be in the form of a huge elemental.

Exactly like the one in front of me.

It’s presence here was both good and bad. Good, because once it emerged fully, the rift would seal, and no further elementals could make it through. With the fragment here, the overflow was at an end. Of course, only some of the elementals would have headed directly towards our keep, many would have tried going in different directions until we raised the barrier locking them in this island. The Bleeding Forest would still be crawling with elementals, and they would be heading here now, since it was the only way out of the island. But, at least an end was in sight.

It was, however, bad, because we would not be able to fend off an elemental of that size at all.

A large, unending, barrage of heavy siege weapon attacks might bring it down, but I had already lost almost all of my larger, heavier, siege weapons. Individual warriors would be hard pressed to handle something of that size, even I, in my prime, could only keep it at bay, I wouldn’t be able to destroy it. An army would just get turned into minced meat if they went against it. Really, the only decent option was to blast it with magic, but I had sent all of the mages away. Even though I knew this would show up sooner or later, the mages were too valuable to waste here.

“Fall back!” I roared at my frozen men, “Into the keep!”

We were already fighting right in front of the keep, they only had to fall back ten, maybe twenty feet.

But, we were too slow.

Elementals do not have voices, they do not naturally make noise. But the fragment elemental flailed it’s tentacle arms with such speed and force that the air cracked. They smashed through the few palisades still standing from the first and final defense line, scattering the logs through the sky. Even as they still fell back to the ground, the fragment elemental reared back, and with the sound of thousands of whistles, the spears growing from its shoulders were fired.

I could just barely track the spears, and I was confident no one else among my forces could even do that. Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter, even if anyone could see the ice approaching, they would not be able to dodge, and nothing would be able to block an attack like this.

Unluckily, my men who were just starting to retreat back to the keep were not the target, but the very keep they were falling back to was. Made from the most solid granite, reinforced with steel beams, and inscribed with powerful wards, the damage was kept to a minimum. The outer fortifications were scraped away, a few of the anterior rooms were crushed and collapsed, but the damage was largely superficial.

However, almost all of my remaining siege weapons were destroyed, and my sappers and grenadiers would have suffered devastating casualties.

“Leave this bastard to me, the rest of you focus on-”

My sword intercepted a sharpened blade of ice an inch away from my neck. I stopped my head from flying, but the force was still transmitted to me. It was a testament of my years of practice that I held onto my blade even as I was launched backward. I smashed into the ground, bounced into the air as I spun, and then landed skidding further back on my two feet.

“Fuck.” I cursed as I spit out the blood that welled up into my mouth.

Idly I realized that the me from before would not have been able to stay on my feet after that, something positive did come from my experience with the salamander.

The elemental that sent me flying was shorter than me, just under five feet tall. It was very similar to a human, but its lower legs and lower arms were blades made of ice. It slowly stood upright and then, while keeping its featureless face locked on me, began circling around me.

“Ah… Fuck…”

Elementals were mindless. They had some rudimentary instincts, they knew how to use their bodies, as strange as those bodies often were, and they were consumed by an overwhelming hatred of anything alive, the more intelligent that life was, the more they hated it.

But, they were less than beasts in many ways. They could not learn, they could not adapt, they had no sense of self-preservation. All they could do was charge and attack. The big one, the fragment, would have a slight sense of self-preservation, but it would still be as mindless as the others.

Elementals were strong, but if you had the right tools to face them, they were an easy opponent. They would charge right into what was clearly a trap and no matter how many before them were destroyed the rest would follow them in.

Every being made of ice here, including the fragment elemental, would be classified as a lesser elemental.

Except for the one that just tried to decapitate me.

That was undoubtedly a greater elemental.

And that was a huge fucking disaster.

“All remaining siege weapons and grenadiers, target the big one. The rest of you, do what you can to stop the little ones. This fucker,” I said while pointing my sword at the greater elemental, “Is mine.”

The greater elemental stopped as I spoke, and when I finished, it seemed to laugh, even though such an action was impossible for it. And then, in the blink of an eye, it was in front of me, jumping through the air while sending a roundhouse kick towards my ruined eye.

This time I knew it was coming, my sword clashed with the leg, and both of us were blown back. Even as we stumbled, I spun and lunged out with one of its arms, but the pommel of my sword met that, and we were blown even further back.

The greater elemental landed with both of its hands, rotating its legs, trying to use them as scythes to slice me in half, but I easily ducked under that and sent a slash towards its face. It pushed off and flung itself into the air, the shockwave from my slash blasting away the snow and gouging a ten-foot trench into the ground.

The being of blades and ice landed twenty feet away and cautiously began circling me. It knew I wasn’t something it could kill easily, and it knew it had to change its tactics.

The fragment elemental was a massive mindless creature, but due to its size, there was only so much I could do to it with a sword. But this greater elemental, it might be intelligent, and stronger, vastly stronger than a normal lesser elemental, but I could still cut it, could kill it.

It charged, its body low to the ground as it skimmed past the fallen snow. Its two arms were thrust out, one aimed at each of my legs. If my right leg still worked, I could have jumped away, but that wasn’t an option for me.

My sword gave me greater reach, so I met its dual thrusts with a thrust of my own, my sword aiming for its head as it approached.

Realizing we weren't playing the same game, the elemental skidded to a halt, barely avoiding being run through, but still getting blown away as the force of my thrust blasted a crater into the ground.

“Wow… how disappointing, “I said with a smirk while tapping the flat of my blade on the steel faulds that protected my hips.

Provocation wouldn’t work on a lesser elemental, and I wasn’t sure if it would work on the greater elemental before me. I wasn’t even sure it could understand me, but at the very least, it would see that I was leaving an opening. Whether it could comprehend I was doing so intentionally, well, who knows?

Unfortunately for me, my opponent decided to be cautious as it began circling me again. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t approach it, but that quickly depleted my stamina. It would be much better to let it come to me. On the other hand, I couldn’t dawdle forever with this greater elemental.

“Well let’s try something else first,” I said as I raised my sword and got ready to attack.

I swung, a powerful horizontal slash sent towards the greater elemental that was still over twenty feet away from me. The shockwave let loose by my slash only created a faint ripple in the air, but my enemy easily sensed it and ducked. And then dove to the side to dodge the second shockwave I fired off, and then jumped over the third.

These shockwaves would never hit it at this rate, but they were also pretty easy for me to make, so there was no real loss.

It sidestepped another shockwave that cut into the ground, throwing up chunks of frozen dirt, and then it dashed towards me in a zigzag pattern, first coming from my right, then left, then back to the right.

“There we go,” I said with a smirk.

It jumped at me from my right, one arm going towards my neck, another towards my heart, and even one of its legs was brought up and sent towards my stomach.

But it had good instincts, it pulled out of its attack at the last second and curled up into a ball, just in time to receive my slash, the fastest slash I had unleashed so far.

The edge of my blade met it’s two crossed over arms, and as little chunks of ice were scattered from the impact, the elemental was smashed into the ground and sent bouncing back towards me. My shoulder tackle caught it in the side, sending it tumbling through the air. Even as it bounced and skidded across the ground, I stepped after it. A rising slash caught it unaware, my blade easily severing one of its arms and the force leaving it spinning out of control in the air. The pommel of my sword descended, crashing into its back and leaving a web of cracks as it smashed down into the ground, blasting out dirt and making another crater.

Before the weakened elemental could get back up, my steel boot crashed down onto its head, grinding it into the dirt.

“Haah… this took a lot out of me, but it ended well at lea-”

Once again, in too short of a window, my sword was raised just barely in time to intercept an incoming attack. First, it was a blade of ice, and now it was a spear of ice. Unlike last time, when both of us were blown away, this time it was only me.

I was sent flying, smashing through a snowdrift and leaving a path of disturbed snow as I skidded along the ground. My sword acted as a shield, and I was able to protect myself, but I was still battered from the sheer impact that had knocked me away. Still, I instantly jumped out of the snow and took a ready stance with my sword prepared to block another attack.

No attack was coming. In fact, the spear that had sent me flying was still in the air nearby, and as I watched, it slowly retracted the forty feet back to its owner.

Standing next to the greater elemental that I had almost finished off, and that was now standing up and leaving the crater I had left it in, was another elemental. Almost twice as tall as the other, at around nine feet, this one looked as if it was a heavily armored knight sculpted of ice. The armor was rounded in most spots, what would have been the pauldrons were covered with small spikes, and the helmet had two horns coming out of the sides. In the left hand was a massive kite shield, and in the right was the lance that had just almost run me through, now back to a more normal size.

“Haah… Two greater… Elementals… Just my… Luck…”

Half of all elemental overflows end up producing a greater elemental. Two of them showing up was very bad luck.

The knight slowly trod forward while the damaged one began circling me again.

“Haah… This is rough…”

I needed to be cautious of the knight’s extending spear trick, but I also couldn’t let them surround me. I'd need to take out the damaged one first, but I couldn’t make a move on it until I had a better idea of what the knight could do.

“Haah… Damnit… two is going to be hard…” I said to myself as I regained some of my strength, “Well let’s get… aw… Fuck!”

Before any of the three of us made a move, a ten-foot tall spider stepped out of the blizzard, its spindly legs effortlessly allowing it to glide across the snow. And before I could even acknowledge that, a long serpentine body burst out of the snow on the ground. Its tail was almost twenty feet long, and it had a humanoid torso, making it look like a lamia. However, it was headless, and instead of arms, it had two snake-like appendages that ended in fanged mouths.

“Well… Fuck me, this is bad,” I said, unmoving, as the four greater elementals surrounded me.

I didn’t need to see them in action, nor did I need to be a mage to sense their mana, they were clearly all extremely powerful, my instincts were screaming at me to run. I could fight one of them and win easily, two of them I could manage, maybe even three. But four, that was too many. Way too many.

“It’s been a while, and I hope I can handle this…”

Back when I was still One Strike, I had created a magical aspect to my style, having fused mana into my swordsmanship. After I was injured, I had continued refining that, hoping that it could compensate for what I had lost. In a way, I had succeeded, the complete form of my style, with magic fully integrated, was very powerful. Using it allowed me to reach heights that were well beyond what I was capable of before.

But, there was a flaw, a major one.

The foundation of my style was built before I was injured, was based upon the premise that I had my old body. With things as they were now, I could bring out a great degree of strength, but doing so would tear my body apart, I could easily kill myself if I went all out.

Not that that mattered right now.

All four of the greater elementals paused their approach as they felt my mana gush out, the muscles in my arms and legs bulged, the veins glowing read through my skin. The sweat dripping down my body evaporated, and then soon after the snow surrounding me did too, creating a sphere of steam that battled with the blizzard that still raged. Then, after I grew nearly half a foot, and after all of the snow near me was gone and the dirt had been baked dry, my sword ignited into a brilliant white flame.

“Well then, you all are dead,” I announced as I charged into battle.

Saturday, February 21st, N.E. 807, 00:10

Royal Capital Arvas, Fredirin Kingdom.

The Royal Capital Arvas is the biggest city within the Fredirin Kingdom, in size, in population, in the degree of importance. The city was the heart of the nation. Despite that, when the sun sets the city would sleep. In the depths of night, only a fraction of the population would still be awake, some servants, some guards, a few merchants, and some people with more disreputable occupations.

The fact was, most people would not waste resources to illuminate the night. And during the season of winter, not only were the nights longer, but they were colder. This not only required one to waste fuel on light but on heat too. The blizzard raging only made the situation worse, Arvas was shut down securely tonight.

However…

Bbbbbrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A great horn, made from the bone of a dragon, let loose with it’s deep, thundering roar. The sound reverberated throughout the city, shocking the population into wakefulness. Most had no idea what the sound was, many even feared it was the call of some monster coming to attack the city.

Before the groggy citizens could fully drag themselves out of their beds, the low roar was joined by another, less majestic sound, the call of a second horn.

And then a third.

And a fourth, and fifth, and sixth.

And then more than anyone could count, their blaring sounds merging together into a cacophony of rumbling noise.

Only seconds had passed since the extra horns had joined in when the first bells, great metal bells from the churches and clock towers began to ring. They added their clangs and chimes to the chaotic orchestra of sound that had at this point, roused every person from their slumber.

The more astute and aware realized that many of these horns indicate the various alarms that could resound throughout the city, but never before had all of them bellowed their call at once. As some people began exiting their houses, coats and scarves wrapped around their bedclothes, the sky was suddenly lit up.

The first Sunburst flare, fired from the castle at the heart of the city, burst in the air, illuminating a portion of the city. As that light faded from blinding flash to a simple glow, a multitude of additional flares were fired, from guard posts, from walls, from gateways, from military barracks, from supply depots, from stables, from the city hall, from all over the city.

Suddenly, the darkness of midnight receded in an instant, just like the silence of the night had disappeared moments before.

Arvas was awake.