The goddess is nowhere in sight.

A hundred men left standing, the knight counts, while another hundred lie in heaps of crumpled armour, torn flesh and broken bones. The crest on their shields and breastplates is of a lion-headed man holding up a swirl of three spheres, though the knight could not relate that to any of the kingdoms he knows, buthaps that is because his attention is too occupied.

Armour, flesh and bones, and the mossy ground beneath his feet and the open canopy above, all are with their appropriate appearances without the sparks and the embers the previous visions had, and the blood is a wet oozing red and the dead eyes are stuck wide with blue pupils bared.

A crash and a tremor send the knight’s attention their way, where the Shade lifts the warhammer from a crushed mix of metal and limbs. Stepping to the side to avoid a clumsy downwards slash from a soldier, the Shade swings the weapon up at his chin, and the head shoots off from the neck in one split motion in the way a fountain spits out a clog. Then in a wild twirling leap over a distance overly large, the Shade slices through a row of soldiers before they could launch a barrage of spears, the scythe now in hand swung wide and with deadly precision. The second line behind hastily forms up with a Screened front that deflects the scythe’s strikes, but the warhammer’s return swiftly changes that.

“Who-who-who-…” A voice approaches from the side. “Who are you?” A soldier with a half-broken helm and with a bloodied hand clutching his shoulder limps over to him, the knight turns to see. “Where do you come from? Am I seeing things? He-…Are you his knight? His knight?” The man emphasises in a rough tone, and his head twitches abruptly and then he lowers his head to grunt. “Good bloody Lord. Star-…Star of-…” he trails off as he turns to the direction of the fighting, where the Shade turns to him in kind with a cruel sideways glance.

For a brief halfsecond, the knight thinks he sees a flash of red within the Shade’s eyes before he instinctively lifts his shield to his face with both hands, realising in the last moment that his body has also acted with instinct to bring him in front of the injured soldier; he braces for less than a blinking wait. Then the knight is blown backwards by a harsh heavy shove that rings his ears and pushes every bloodscented breath out of his chest. The next halfsecond has him quickly rediscovering his bearings just to notice that the shield has flown out of his hands, and so the knight could merely attempt a risky roll to the side before the warhammer comes crashing down on where he was. Before the Shade could swing again, the knight has recovered his shield from the ground, though one of the straps is broken and the other has loosened. He unsheathes his sword.

Not allowing the knight to back away, the Shade lunges forward but the warhammer misses its target once more, whenthen the scythe arcs a wider full-circle that would have taken both his legs if the knight had tried to dodge it. Instead, the scythe bounces off the shield and the Shade is propelled off-balance by the recoil – but only slightly, and only for another halfsecond, if barely. But, chancing on this opening, the knight Sharpens his sword and delivers a ranged slash at his foe, and a blue crescent slices forward to hit a shoulder. Another slash from the scythe prevents the knight from any small celebration, hitting his shield for it to start slipping from its loosened straps.

Before the third and most-probably-decisive cut from the Shade, however, the soldiers join the fray with a more successful wave of spears. Then, reinvigorated by the sight of their enemy with a spear in a leg and another in an arm, a group charges forward to properly end the fight but is humbled with each of them losing half a head. And not by scythe, the knight notices, but by warhammer. The Shade plucks the spears out as if they are mere forest thorns.

The numbers are quelled further now; only sixty of the soldiers left. Or fifty. The sound of heavy muffled breathing surrounds the knight as the soldiers line up in between him and the Shade. “A wild knight in these woods. How peculiar. Let’s see if I would be alive to interrogate you after.” With a distinctly-shaped helmet that sports two pink-white feathers on top, the man beside him is clearly the commander of these soldiers. “A Shade? I don’t hear that term often. But listen, you have shown me how you held your ground.” He pauses to observe the Shade. “I must conclude that it might be wiser to approach him individually. Come. You and I.” Then he rushes out of the formation – his men letting him through – to jab his spear at the Shade only to be met by the warhammer. While he dodges quickly and goes in again for a second jab, the Shade swings the scythe at him. At this, he parries the strike with the blunt end of his weapon in an instinctual spin, but just barely. “I cannot do this alone!” He yells, impatient.

The knight is allowed through the formation wall as well, and he quickly sends a ranged slash to the front, but perhaps too obviously, for the Shade skids aside to swing the warhammer at his head. Letting himself fall on purpose to avoid the blow and immediately pushing himself back up, he gives a half-hearted slash which the Shade still backsteps to avoid. And the scythe returns, aiming for the opening he made, but the knight skips backwards and away. A jab from the side catches the Shade’s attention and the scythe changes course for the feathered-helmed commander, who has put too much force into that jab and is now properly outflanked, yet the knight jumps into the swinging arc of the scythe and forcefully bashes his shield forward. A loud ring pierces the air.

With the scythe deflected once more, and with the Shade’s balance this time properly disrupted, and with the commander’s resolve promptly recollected, the result of the battle is as certain as his spear is sharp.