Rory didn’t have trouble reaching the Knight’s vicinity. The battle was still raging furiously, but the defenders were putting up enough of a fight to hold all of the Thundershells’ attention, at least those that weren’t lost trying to fight off the Wraiths and Ghouls. That left Rory to navigate the broken courtyard until he was standing about a few dozen feet away from the Knight.

“You say I cannot win?” the monster asked from near the ruined gate. “There is nothing you are capable of that can stand before me in person.”

There was no gloating or bravado or anything of the sort in its voice. Rory had never detected them before, and he didn’t find any now. The Knight was simply stating the facts it knew. It wasn’t completely wrong either. Rory alone could do little.

But little was more than nothing.

“Just wait and watch, Thunderclaw,” he said, activating his Harmonic Blizzard.

The wintry storm erupted from the tip of his staff and hammered into the Knight with its regular fury. Unfortunately, before Rory could even select what to preserve and what to destroy, a red Sigil flared on the monster’s head. A miniature thunderstorm flashed into being around it, fully eradicating Rory’s blizzard as a sizzling, stormy smell filled the area in seconds.

Throwing caution to the winds, Rory flung himself behind a large chunk of rubble. The lightning storm flashed past him. He was safe, but the whole area around him had been savaged by the crackling bolts, and the impact with the hard ground had jarred his body to the bones.

“You see,” the Knight said. “Your struggles, as ever, are futile. Surrender.”

Shakily, Rory got to his feet. He tried to muster some defiance, but his mind was rushing at too many miles per hour, desperately trying to find a way of stopping the creature, to think of a reply.

The Knight pulled out its large, curved sword, raising it high. “If that is your answer, then—”

A carmine slash shot in from the monster’s left. It didn’t hit the Knight. A shield of crackling lighting formed instantaneously around the monster. It wasn’t just a hemispheric forcefield of electricity this time. A net of lightning bolts crisscrossed the monster’s body, easily stopping Viv’s attack. It seemed to have upgraded the Sigil on its right shoulder, which glowed red instead of dark brown now.

But that was fine. Rory felt his heart relaxing just a fraction. Viv was here to support him.

He turned to check the condition of the rest of the battle for a second. Many of the Thundershells had fallen, creating mounds of broken rocks that sparked electricity here and there. Their assault had lowered in intensity enough for Viv to leave the rest to the others and join the fight against their main opponent.

“You alright?” she yelled out to Rory.

“I’m fine,” he shouted back.

They turned their attention back to the monster at hand, who had banished the lightning net and raised its sword high into the air again. The red Sigil on its head was glowing brightly again.

“We need to find a way to stop the lightning,” Rory shouted.

Viv had been about to teleport away again, but she froze. She could escape, sure, but that blast of lightning storm would shatter everything—and everyone—around them at this rate.

“I got this,” Sue shouted from behind them.

Her Electrium barricades went up at the same time as the tempest of lightning struck down. The impact was so heavy and loud, Rory shook where he stood, nearly falling to the ground. At least his poor eyes were protected from being blinded by the barricade.

It wasn’t enough. The Knight’s furious attack was too powerful for Sue’s barricade to contain, and the bolts cracked through, striking the battleground, sending chunks of Electrium flying in every direction. But Sue’s barricade had done enough of its job. It had absorbed enough of the storm so that the lightning that did strike down didn’t deal much damage. It wasn’t hard to avoid arcs that landed among them.

Since Viv hadn’t been forced to teleport away to dodge the lightning, she had found her opportunity to attack. She had blasted more red slashes at the Thunderclaw Knight, nearly smothering him in crimson energy.

The Knight had summoned its net of lightning. The combination of the electricity and the scarlet energy had blinded the monster, which left Viv free to move around without alerting it. When the Knight dispersed its net of lightning and thumped out the crimson slashes, it froze.

Rory grinned. Viv had teleported behind it. Wasting not a moment, she pulled her arm back and stabbed forward, her Omnipresent Sabre turning into focused beam of blistering red energy.

The Knight was slammed forward. For a second, Rory’s heart stopped as the monster seemed to be on its way to crash right through them, but then Sue summoned her barricade again. The Thunderclaw Knight slammed into the Electrium with an impact no less jarring than the lightning and thunder going on around them.

Rory staggered back as another attack joined the fray. A blast of dark flames shot in out of nowhere, striking the back of Sue’s barricade. The resulting explosion made Rory cower and cover himself, tiny burning shrapnel stinging wherever they struck him.

He quickly looked up to see the result of their attack. It was too much to hope that the Knight would have fallen to their combined assault.

Rory was right. In the smoke of the debris and through the dark flames burning all over the area, he saw the Knight reforming itself. It had broken into several chunks, but they all reunited magnetically, little sparks of electricity shooting between them. Rory frowned. Electrostatic Resilience, just as Viv had.

But there was something strange there too. A rock in the centre of the Thunderclaw’s broken body, like a core made of compressed lighting. All the other pieces formed around it, until the Knight was once again standing tall in its usual form.

“Keep pressing the advantage,” Viv shouted. “We need to break down its defences.”

Easier said than done. The monster decided that it was time to counterattack. It summoned its net of lightning around it again, but this time, it was spread out in a larger area. Not big enough to hit any of the defenders, but easily with enough space for the monster within to move around however it needed to.

The Knight suddenly burst out of its net with a blistering salvo of lightning. Rory staggered away as it shot a miniature storm in his direction. Sue threw up a quick Electrium barricade, but the blasts of lightning shattered the barrier with ease. Rory threw himself to the ground, as did Sue, though she was slower. She screamed as she was struck by several shrapnel.

Dez blasted the monster with more of his dark flames. The fireballs hammered the Knight hard, and it was forced to retreat several feet.

But it wasn’t enough. Several Sigils flared on the monster’s body. As Viv slashed in burning red arcs of energy, the Knight sliced its curved sword to send a lightning storm roiling in her direction. She was forced to teleport away. At the same time, a tiny arc of electricity latched onto Dez, and he began to float, losing his balance and twirling over himself.

Dez was tugged forward like a fish on a hook. He burned the thread of electricity with his Abyssal Inferno, quickly throwing himself back as the Knight swung its sword again. The resultant salvo of lightning nearly blinded Rory. He was unable to see if Dez survived.

A huge arc of red energy swung in from the sky, but the Knight had summoned its shield of lightning nets in time. Once Viv’s attack had been repelled, the Thunderclaw Knight launched another overwhelming little storm high into the air.

Viv teleported to the ground just in front of the Knight. Her pattern of teleporting and attacking continued. She was unable to make any headway against the Knight, but at least she was alive for now. Though for how long with their Mana reserves surely depleting by the second was a concerning thought.

Rory growled, then stabbed his staff forward to throw icy bolts at the Knight. They struck but did little damage. He was only freezing tiny chunks of the monster. At least he was able to gain its attention.

As the Knight hammered him with a furious blast of lightning, Rory quickly summoned his Harmonic Blizzard. It wouldn’t have been enough if Rory hadn’t quickly selected the lightning storm itself as the target of the blizzard’s destruction, throwing the target of preservation in the direction Sue had fallen.

Still, the storm of lightning blasted around him with enough force to pummel him to the ground. Even through the wintry murk, he could smell the burning.

It wasn’t working. The Thunderclaw Knight, contained though it was for the moment, was still too powerful for them to take down. They needed a new tactic. At this rate, they’d be killed before long.

Rory quickly rose and found where Sue was lying, bleeding from her injuries. He pulled her up and dragged her away, fighting against his stupid old body every step of the way.

“Leave me and get going,” Sue said, grinding the words out.

“Don’t be stupid.” Rory pulled her closer so it was easier to pull her on. “Just focus on staying alive, got it?”

She grunted. Rory’s attention was drawn to the rest of the battle around them. The number of Thundershells had reduced at first, but it seemed several had broken off from the group fighting the Wraiths and Ghouls. The defenders were once again hard-pressed to hold their line. They weren’t going to get any more reinforcements from them.

There was a sudden, horrified shout from behind. Heart thumping in his gullet, Rory turned in time to see a huge bolt of lightning shooting up into the sky from the Thunderclaw Knight.

Dez was hurrying towards Rory and Sue. “Get down!”

Viv was trying to head off the Knight with her slashes of red energy, but they had little effect against the net of lightning around the monster.

As the Thunderclaw Knight hammered the giant bolt of lightning down like a scythe, Sue pushed herself off Rory. She summoned a barricade of Electrium as fast as she could. Dez had rushed over to help them fend the Knights’ attack off with his Abyssal Inferno. Slow and late through he was, even Rory joined in with his blizzard preserving the barricade Sue had thrown up.

But even with all their combined powers, it wasn’t enough.

Rory was blinded and deafened by the brilliant, thunderous attack. It lasted less than a second. Rory threw himself to one side, fully aware any defence was pointless.

It was no surprise that the enormous bolt of lightning burned through Dez’s flames without too much effort. Sue’s barricade didn’t do much better. It lasted a fraction of a second longer than Dez’s fiery shield had, but it exploded after the lightning’s energy became too much to bear.

Rory was unable to see, but what he heard—and didn’t hear—frightened his very soul. Despite the lighting’s rapturous crack, he was able to hear Dez scream. Rory blinked rapidly to clear the effect of the blinding light. A shadow on the ground was twisting and contorting before falling still.

When he was finally able to see again, he found it was Dez. His left side had been badly burned, the skin peeling and showing burnt, glistening flesh. Rory only resumed breathing when he saw the big man’s chest rise and fall. Alive. Dez was still alive.

Just beside Rory, a trench had been carved in the ground by the lightning. A heavy, burnt smell was wafting off it, and he followed the trench all the way to the palace. The Knight’s attack had destroyed half the steps to the entrance, broken most of the entrance itself, and shattered several columns in the main hall. So much for keeping the Thundershells away.

But worst of all, as Rory tuned his ahead around to find, was Sue. She didn’t look like she was alive, not with those injuries.

One of her legs had been reduced to ash, ending in a burned and bleeding stump at her upper thigh. An enormous gash in her stomach was pulsing out copious blood. Half the rest of her was simply charred over, much of her hair falling off her head in ashen powder.

Rory couldn’t breathe. He could hardly even think. His ears were ringing from the thunder. How was this even possible? If he’d been able to throw himself away, if he had managed to save himself from any severe injury, how had these two come to such grievous harm?

For him. The answer arrived, all too obvious and all too real. Rory shook his head, eyes widening so much, he was sure they’d pop out of their orbits. It shouldn’t have been this way. He shouldn’t have—

“Rory!”

Viv’s shout dragged his attention to the Thunderclaw Knight. It was fighting her, sword swinging this way and that, trying to crush Viv. She was teleporting short distances and firing off more arcs of red energy, none of which left any mark against the creature. Rory didn’t know how she could focus when so many of them lay dead or dying.

A thunderous mini storm made her teleport far back. That gave the Knight the opening it needed to cast the massive lightning bolt once again. It raised its sword high, the first sparks of electricity flying from the tip to the bottom of the shimmering golden barrier. But that meant it needed to focus on charging up its attack, giving Viv the opening she needed to get a proper attack in.

But it had all been a feint. Viv had flashed in close with another red arc, and just as she was about to stab her Omnipresent Sabre against the monster in a beam, the Knight sliced its curved sword down, its glowing edge sharpened by lightning.

Rory gawked, his disbelieving eyes taking in the disaster before him. Viv was caught by surprise. She desperately tried to defend herself with her crimson sabre, but it wasn’t enough. Viv screamed. The Thunderclaw Knight’s sword cut through the Viv’s sabre, then through her arm, then finally crushing into the ground. A lightning-fuelled explosion shattered outwards at the impact.

Shrapnel flew everywhere, tiny arcs of electricity flashing through the dust and flying debris. They stuck him in a stinging spray, and Rory was forced to try to cover himself against the rain of agony. But he still had to see, even if it was only through the small gap between his arms.

Viv had gone flying in one direction. Her arm had gone the other.

Frozen in numb shock, Rory could only stare as his wife’s sliced-off arm hammered into his head hard enough to throw him back. He fell, ears still ringing from the explosion and the screams around him, whole body stunned and in pain. It seemed that the real apocalypse had only just arrived on Rory’s doorstep.