“I FUCKING TOLD YOU TO STOP!” Skadi’s voice was like thunder, reverberating throughout the entire battlefield. “DID YOU THINK YOU COULD IGNORE ME?”

Skadi was gripping Victoria in one arm, but his other smashed straight into Ogura’s fist. The very wind trembled around them, and yet another crater appeared under Ogura’s feet. But before he was sent flying away, Skadi’s fist opened into a palm and blurred forward to grab Ogura by the face.

“Stop! Stop! We agreed we would stop!” Jeboro’s hoarse voice whispered out as loudly as he could. “You can’t just break the agreement like that!”

“I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT IT MEANS TO IGNORE ME, SKADI!” Skadi screamed, his hands trembling. Blinding light shot out of Ogura’s body again as he desperately overpowered against Skadi’s death grip. A flash of green light appeared, immediately followed by Oguro’s scream, which was quickly stifled by the crunching noise his head made as his skull cracked apart.

Ogura, too, had his head destroyed so quickly his soul would never go to Sky.

The corpse thudded onto the ground, completely motionless. Solera could see an eyeball poking out from the pile of mud and hair that had once been Ogura’s brain. At this moment, he was feeling extremely conflicted; Guinness had died, but he had been thoroughly, thoroughly avenged.

Jeboro gaped at the mess that had just been Ogura. “I… I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

Skadi gazed at Jeboro out of the corner of his eye, his face still dark with anger. “The girl still lives. Isn’t that what you care about?”

“Of course, of course. I don’t care even a little bit about that southern fool who was so stupid as to ignore you, Skadi!” Jeboro bobbed his head hurriedly. “The same goes for you two! And the Tornado elders as well! If Victoria dies because of any of you, we’ll have a time out to kill all of you!”

Only now, did Solera dully notice that the enemy soldiers were wearing different uniforms. Some were in the black garb of the United Duchies, whereas others were dressed in dirty gray robes. Standing at the fore of the gray-robed channelers were two gold-robed figures, their faces covered by smooth, gray masks that only revealed two holes for the eyes. And standing on the branches of the fortress was a dark-skinned, bare-chested man and a light-skinned woman wearing a helmet which covered her entire face.

“Negotiating with devils.” The half-naked man sneered. “You can be sure the Pope will hear about this within the next two years!”

Solera looked around, his eyes taking everything in. Two immortals from the Tornado Sect, two from the Halo cult, Jeboro, Elia, Ogura… maybe Skadi could kill them all. He had just killed one immortal without even the slightest resistance. He could kill them all! They hadn’t lost yet!

Solera didn’t believe it could happen, but he forced himself to believe. He absolutely did not want to surrender to these stone-hearted murdering scum.

“Where’s the Lynx? I know the bitch is here.” Skadi glared at them as he adjusted his grip on Victoria, whose bored eyes made her seem completely unaffected by the fact that she was being held hostage. “She’s the only one among all you trash who has the qualifications to talk to me.”

“Insolence.” The bare-chested immortal from the southern continent made a sweeping motion which encompassed the entire battlefield. “Your forces are cornered. All your demon lords are dead. Surrounding you are-”

“Shut up! Shut up already!” Jeboro shrieked. “Damn it, if Victoria dies, Duke Shatter will be very mad. You can’t just let him be mad like that! Just shut up! Esteemed Skadi, the Lynx will be here, uh, shortly. Definitely.”

“I am here.” The voice came from far away, tremendous in volume but so harmonious that it seemed as if the speaker was right in front of them.

She appeared from a tunnel several hundred meters away, a tall, graceful woman seated atop a savage black tiger, whose fur glistened like polished metal. The Lynx had faint lines crisscrossing her exposed skin, but that was the only sign of her birth as a monster.

But Solera knew… this was the face of a monster! He had heard about her many, many times over the course of the siege, and of the countless fatal injuries he had seen while working with Jogujo and Alda, a good half of them were caused by one of the thousands of tigers she controlled. The corpses right behind him were the work of her tigers. Every single tiger was under her mental domination. Everything they did was because of the Lynx!

This woman was no woman. She was a monster with an ocean of blood on her hands!

“All right, Lynx.” Skadi spoke, not to them, but to the Lynx. “What’s going on here? Fighting your age-old comrades, allying your age-old enemies. The Halo cult, of all people! Has two millennia without a master addled your brain?”

“No, Lord Skadi.” She was completely composed, like a feline at rest, and spoke as if she was purring. “I chose independence that day. But even when I am independent, I cannot control everything that happens. Nobody can.”

“Bah.” Skadi snarled. “Enough about that now, I already want to kill you."

He massaged his eyelids for a few seconds before resuming. "Here are my terms. Let me and all the captains go. Guarantee the safety of the soldiers you take prisoner. Then, you can have Victoria back.”

He stroked the expressionless girl’s cheek with one of his long, tattooed fingers. “I’ll even leave behind that pile of siehnti.”

Solera stiffened. Surrender, to the United Duchies? He remembered Fortress Hickory! They had not given anyone the opportunity to surrender before they burned everyone alive. Was Skadi seriously even considering this?

“Don’t joke around!” The bare-chested man shouted. “We’re only here to slay you demons! Why would we want your peons? Lay down this life you stole and-”

“We accept.” The Lynx cut the immortal off with a purr that seemed much louder than his shout.

Skadi looked at the bare-chested man with a gaze that could cut steel. “Consider yourself lucky, punk. The Lynx knows that if I overpowered again, I could kill at least five of you!”

Despite his declarations, Skadi seemed rather bitter. He turned around, his eyes sweeping over the entire battlefield.

“My soldiers! My comrades!” Skadi shouted. “I am sorry! But we have been surrounded by countless experts. This loss can only be blamed on me, for my lack of awareness…”

Solera felt like a mountain had fallen on top of him. Skadi had given in, just like that! They had lost, and they were surrendering, and this time, there was nowhere he could run! Was nobody going to continue fighting? He looked around, seeing expressions of defeat on the other soldiers’ faces. None of them seemed to have any fight left in them at all. Solera felt the unwillingness raging away in his heart, but he could do nothing. Not if nobody else would.

The power crystal! He had to hide the power crystal before it would be confiscated! With a groan, Solera raised a hand up to the stone dangling around his neck. His shoulder blades were cracked, making movement insanely difficult. Several bones in his ribcage were also broken, but he couldn’t feel any pain yet. His hand was able to grab onto the power crystal after several seconds of struggle.

“Uggghhhh.” Solera grunted as he contorted his neck to allow the necklace to slip out of his hair. Losing the power crystal was the one thing he could not do in this situation. Without it, not only would his injuries take months to heal, he would also be rendered powerless against his captors!

The faintly green rock rested in the palm of his hands. He had to hide it, but where? His backpack was definitely a goner. His clothes might be changed. His boots? No, too risky. Should he swallow it? He could just vomit it back out when he needed it. And if not vomit, well…

Yes, that was the place. With some difficulty, Solera raised his hand to his mouth, but halted right as he was about to open his palm.

Immortals had impossibly sharp senses. Elia had heard and even identified Chip’s mumbling as they ran through the tunnels, and back at the Genbu mission Skadi had been able to see Jeboro and Victoria from over ten kilometers away when they were far above the clouds. If he was going to swallow a rock, there would be no doubt that an immortal would find it strange. He had to do it in a fashion that would cause them to pay no attention.

“... I promise you all that if any of your captors harms any of you, their country will pay tenfold!” As Solera unstrapped his backpack, Skadi finished his closing speech. Solera didn’t assign his words any weight at all; Skadi, despite all his bluster, was just a coward running away with his tail tucked between his legs. He was a seraph with his own free will, after all. Why would he bother dying for Solera’s country? Fucking scum.

Solera was unable to get the backpack off, so he made some fumbling motions behind him to mimic retrieving a pill from his backpack. His shoulder blades made some crackly noises, causing him to finally feel a pang of pain, but he ignored it. He could heal it later, when he made sure they weren’t going to execute him. Then, he could at least take down a couple more with him.

His backpack scuffed his back as he brushed up against the tree, causing him to flinch in shock. He could feel that there was a deep gash in his back. So deep, yet he could feel nothing there! Solera grimaced. A wound like that meant he had no choice but to convert the verdant power into healforce.

“ALL RIGHT. ALL PRISONERS, LIE DOWN ON THE GROUND AND LACE YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!” The half-naked southerner roared as Skadi and the captains walked into the distance, Skadi still holding Victoria in one arm.

Solera inwardly cursed. The immortals were sweeping everyone with their gazes! After a split second of thought, he squeezed the power crystal into the gash in his back. The sudden flare of pain in the core of his body told him it had gone deep inside to the very core of his body.

What Solera had realized in that split second was that if he had swallowed the crystal, it would have been impossible to channel its power because there were no channels inside the stomach. The back, on the other hand… there were no guarantees that the power crystal would be able to come into contact with a channel, but it had paid off.

He could feel a small trickle of verdant power pouring into his channels!

Solera made a show of struggling to lace his hands behind his back, then channeled the verdant power throughout his body to help himself into position. The deepest parts of his wound instantly knit together around the power crystal, concealing it from normal vision. A person wearing truesight goggles might only see a particularly bright spot, but even that could be concealed as long as he spent effort to stop the channeling flow through his body, which was a bit like holding one’s breath.

“THESE SOLDIERS ARE GOING TO COLLECT ALL THE WEAPONS. IF YOU RESIST, YOU WILL BE KILLED!”

A man in black came to Solera and roughly wrenched off his backpack while several others stood by in case Solera tried anything. Solera stared at the mud, not daring to even breathe. If he even flinched, it was possible that he would be killed.

“God damn. Poor kid’s good as dead.” The man cursed as he saw the blood on the backpack and the wounds on Solera. He shook his head as he walked away, mumbling some words Solera could not hear. Solera looked at the man’s back, a glare on his face. He didn't want to die here. He would not die here!

“The soldiers in the grass, my tigers will escort you to the rally point.” The Lynx spoke up, then resumed talking quietly to the Tornado sect elders.

Out of the corner of his eye, Solera could see a woman in white robes emerging from the fortress, a mildly unhappy look on her face. He immediately looked back down into the mud, his face paling. Elia!

Judging from her expression, Chip had probably been able to escape! Good for him, but Elia had seen Solera’s face. If she saw him… he shuddered at the thought. Right now, his top priority was to escape her notice.

“The groups atop the hills, follow the directions of my channelers!” One of the masked elders snarled with a harsh, grating voice that could be heard from kilometers away.

Solera blinked. The Tornado sect and the United Duchies were both taking prisoners? He was up against a tree, just out of range of the hill and inside the grass, so it was likely he would be taken by the United Duchies.

His eyes flicked upwards again to look at Elia. Black-armored men were now flanking her as she strode towards the Lynx. She… was a member of the United Duchies!

The United Duchies! They were the ones who had burned children alive! They were the ones savagely killing soldiers in the tunnels for the last few months. Solera had already seen countless soldiers succumb to wounds created by tigers, flying darts, Vigors… The child whose face had been cut into an unrecognizable mass of flesh starkly stood out in his mind's eye.

The United Duchies had been allied with Eden, yet they began this war from out of nowhere. They had proven, time and time again, that they were completely untrustworthy. They were being led by the Lynx, a monster who had killed tens of thousands through her summons. The fact that he had to hide from Elia was just the last nail in the coffin.

Solera stood up. His knees felt weak, but nothing had broken. Gritting his teeth, Solera stumbled towards the gray-robed channelers. He had no idea what the Tornado sect people were like, but he would take his chances. Surely they could not match up to all the reasons he had against the United Duchies, the country which perpetrated the most despicable acts Solera had ever seen. Be their prisoner? He would then truly be as good as dead!

“Hey, you! Kid! You’re going the wrong way!” One of the United Duchies men whom had confiscated his equipment just then shouted at him, but Solera grimaced and kept walking. He was as good as dead, right? Stop caring about him already!

“Kid… ah, fuck it, man.” The man gave up, and Solera didn’t hear him again.

“You! Group five!” A gray-robed man shouted at him, pointing towards a cluster of prisoners in the back. Solera swept his eyes through the prisoners as he walked. He couldn’t see Macaw anywhere he looked. Could he have escaped?

There were thousands of prisoners, so Solera couldn’t be sure. Even if Macaw wasn’t among these prisoners, he could be on the other side, taken prisoner by the United Duchies. Or… he could be dead.

Guinness was dead. Solera didn’t want to think about anyone else he knew being slashed or mauled or crushed to death. Macaw! Just half an hour ago, he had been annoyed with Macaw for occupying his bed. Now, Solera didn’t even know whether he was alive or dead. How quickly things could change. The problems of half an hour ago seemed like a blissful dream to him now.

“Hello.” A voice broke Solera out of his meandering train of thought. A red-haired boy several years older than him, with a babyish face and sparkling eyes, was smiling at him. “I think I saw you that day, when Skadi was testing our cultivations. My name’s Lem.”

Solera stared at Lem, a little disgusted. They were prisoners of war, their future fates unknown, and this guy was actually smiling at him. “Solera,” he muttered, averting his gaze to focus on a nearby tree stump. Maybe Lem would stop pestering him and let him think in peace.

“Are you okay, Solera? You have some cuts on your arm.” Lem grabbed Solera’s arm, giving it a closer look.

Solera shook him off and turned to face Lem directly, so that Lem would not see the injuries on his back. “I’m fine.” This wasn’t the time or place for stupid conversations, for fuck’s sake.

“Okay, my bad.” Lem scratched his head, the twinkle in his eyes dying. “Sorry, I’m just scared. I talk when I’m scared. Uh, the person in charge of our group is coming.”

He tentatively pointed a finger at an approaching gray-robed man.

Thanks for sticking it out with me this far, everyone. Your support and comments mean a lot more than you'd expect!