On the field of battle, in a horde of blades and meat where life could end in the flash of a second, chance and opportunity were kings. All the strategy in the world meant nothing when those who would employ it felt keen to do away with battle standards and logical practices in favor of blood and guts. A battle plan the commanders had prepared could only be employed for so long before those fighting in it decided to fall into a deluge of gore spawned from an unknown flash of light. Skill only worked for so long before some no-name soldier took an opening to stab a great warrior in the back, distracted by the frenzy around them.

Nothing would work in the confines of modern tactics when the narrative of tyrants resurfaced to invoke its terrible influence upon the world. Like those warlords of old that Gíla had studied so much, the armies of the rebel Duke and the King clashed in a storm of pent-up hatred. The field had been destroyed, the grass trampled, and the dirt scuffed up with boots and scars from blades. Crimson flowed from a hundred wounds across thousands of combatants, and mounds of torn muscles and snapped bones dotted the landscape like anthills.

Gíla grimaced, seeing friend killing friend; kin slaying kin; merchant slaughtering baker; scholar violating history. Dozens had died in the opening moments of the shield walls' failure and that bright light that told no origin or reason.

That light.

She had grown a new, belated expectancy after the devolution that such a strange thing would have given the armies some pause before the fight—some chance of recollecting themselves and resuming proper formations.

Why had she expected any different? She had known it herself since the day the Duke's army set out for this battle weeks ago—the anticipation in the air following every step. The prayers of vengeance and death uttered every night. The visceral excitement as the day grew closer and closer. And of course, the very morning, not hours ago. Excited battle cries, chants, priestly things, and incomprehensible shouts. Why had she expected that a single person like Megare the Wolf could have held this all together? Even if the white light had not burst the walls apart, the two armies would have broken rank and charged without further hesitation. Seeing that, Gíla realized that it wasn't a possibility that this could have happened. It was a certainty. A short matter of time before the hatred between countrymen was recognized.

The Drayheller rose to her feet as swiftly as she could upon this culmination of evidence, gripping the worn hilt of her replacement arming sword as tightly as her hand would allow.

She had killed none in the twenty minutes this battle had devolved, voiding any strikes that came at her or simply incapacitating her foes. She had thought herself ready to kill a man - to see the life flee his body as a result of her actions. But at the first opportunity, blade held at the throat of a woman with black hair, she found that she had none of the willpower that her comrades had. She had stood there for what felt like hours, trembling in the attempt to simply move the blade left to cut the woman's throat. It ended with a single kick to her chest, knocking her away and out of the fight. Am I truly as weak as...as they said? I can't be. My people are strong. Brave...the bravest. I can be a warrior. I can...I can be one. Mepi ukka!

Every attempt only furthered stabbed the inability to kill into her beating heart. Despair and loathing filled her, the gold of her eyes becoming more and more glowing until they were like freshly minted coins in a bank's vault.

As it was, the army of the King did not share her weakness. To them, she assumed, she was a prize unlike any other. A Drayheller in the flesh to present to King Aslofidor for some jewel or trophy. Such an opportunity surely pushed them to call upon the true limits of their training, which she had frantically concluded was likely far more adherent than her rebellious fellows.

Gíla turned at the sound of more feet, her ears twitching to the pattern of its encroaching stomps on the grass and sun-baked dirt. She yelled as yet another one of the kingsmen swung at her with a gleaming blade, backstepping at the last second as its edge carved through tension-thick air. The man, bedecked with his coat of the greens and blacks of the King, followed up with another quick vicious stab for the Bear Maiden's face. Its tip nearly scored through her snout, only missing because the Drayheller bent backward as it neared her flesh. At the same time, she parried the man's blade away and drove it into the dirt in a downward arc. Gíla stepped forward, grabbing the man by his coat and throwing him through the air into a nearby group of mobile steel.

She pivoted after that short breath, ducking as a large blade whirled through where her head had been. However, such was her height and the angle of her motion that the tip of her left ear was sliced off clean. Red liquid immediately ran down the side of her head and she groaned at the stinging pain. Her first instance of pain from the sword. The Bear Maiden quickly entered a defensive stance - or whatever equivalent as one could do with only a sword - and eyed the broad-shouldered man wielding the shining claymore. He was middle-aged with powerfully built arms and legs, his hair little more than a shaggy mop. His hands were clenched around a two-handed sword, shining brightly under the sunlight. A wall breaker, she surmised.

His voice broke into a clamor as he leaped for her.

Gíla was lucky only by virtue that she was stronger and slightly faster in reaction. The lack of mail or plate over her body, and the general lightness of her blade enhanced that factor. She evaded the attempted blow. He rocked forward from the missed hit, but kept the pace with his spinning motion, swinging once more for his would-be prize with a horizontal laceration aimed for Gíla's shoulder.

She met him with a hard block, stopping his attack dead in the air with the fullness of her strength. She had believed that the man would, like his predecessor, be knocked off balance and forced into a stumble. To her surprise, he had held his ground - albeit barely. The edges of their weapons scraped and created flashes of sparks. The Bear Maiden's blade slid with the momentum and clacked against the sloping quillions of the claymore. Gíla glared at her opponent, and he glared back. Both waiting to see who would crack first.

"You's as strong as they said," he rasped with quick and harsh breaths. "Stronger even. You'd've made a fine warrior for the King."

"I am no warrior," she replied curtly before breaking their lock to avoid a vicious slash from behind. The assailing woman, no older than twenty, followed up with another strike. Gíla smacked the blade down with her own, grabbed the woman's coat, and threw her away like a rotten crop. The breaker launched for her again, cursing as his blade missed only by inches but then succeeded in cutting down a rebel who backed away from his own foe a touch too far. Torso fell from legs in a glut of blood and entrails. Gíla lamented the death and struck out, clashing her blade against the breaker's mail, dropping him to his knees on strength alone. A shock of arrows landed nearby, preventing her from even considering putting him down. Another shock drew her back, one striking her upper arm. She pulled it free, blood dribbling from the mark in her hide. Panic filled her at the sight, her heart thumping against her sternum again. First part of my ear...now my arm. Ukka osh ar.

The breaker stood still to catch his breath and scowled. "Not a warrior, eh? You fight like one. At least better than the rest of you rebel fucks."

Gíla sighed with disdain. "I am just a malfaring documentarist."

His scowl deepend. "Documentarist. You fucking Drayheller. So 'mysterious' and inquisitive. Never doing a thing unless it piques your 'fascination' with us. Never having a real goal."

Is it still my goal? Or must I lie? "The Duke's rebellion is my goal," the Bear Maiden spat, lying to herself and the man before her. Her auric eyes somehow shone through the sunrays beaming down on her. "To see what will come of it."

"Only thing that will happen is his death!" the breaker proclaimed, breaking the lock with a hard shove.

She parried a sideways cut and another. The breaker, in turn, did the same to her, heaving his weapon as if it were a hammer. Around and around they fought, neither connecting with anything other than the ground or each other's edges.

Gíla groaned as the sound of another approaching crackled in her ears. Responding, she dodged an attempted strike from behind. She growled as the man from before rejoined the fight, now wielding a splintered shield to accompany his sword. He grunted in turn as the blade missed and sidestepped to stand next to the breaker. They shared a look and nodded to each other, a savage grin shared between them. A trickle of blood dripped from Gíla's brow onto her cheek. It ran freely from her wounded ear, a stark red on the blackness of her fur. Proof that a Drayheller could be hurt.

Outnumbered. Two to one. The middling man is easier to tire. Keep voiding, keep parrying. Get him down, incapacitate the second. Don't kill unless necessary.

They moved upon her, unleashing a barrage in tandem. Metal and metal and metal, clashing and stabbing through the air. Gíla was no warrior, same as them, but one on one she had some chance. Against two? She could not escape thin cuts across her exposed body parts, and soon the blackness of her fur was dotted and lined with deep maroon.

A wide and wild hack from the breaker sent the Bear Maiden flying back in a formless way. Gíla snarled as she collided with the earth. She rolled until she could shift to a standing position, her hand shuddering as it clenched the hilt of her sword. Relief washed over her as she saw the breaker finally breathing heavily and sluggishly lifting his own from the ground. Conversely, the shielded man kept moving, rushing for the Drayheller with a battle cry.

"For the King! For the true monarch!" he howled, his face red with exertion and passion.

"Rannulf, wait!"

It was too late. Gíla reacted quickly, batting away the young combatant's attempted diagonal hit. Time slowed for a tenth of a second, granting the Bear Maiden a chance to see the face of the man. Young, square-shaped, unwrinkled, and brown-eyed. He could not have been older than twenty-five - no younger than twenty. He could not have had a chance to experience true advancement in the world. No chance to leave a legacy behind. She felt herself screaming to stop her arm as it reared back. She could hear pleading and begging and sobbing. None it stopped her, and for a moment - for the briefest of instants - she felt the crack of a sadist's grin cross her face. She cracked down with a punch of her free hand to the side of his unhelmeted temple. There was a crunch of bone, denting of muscle, and the upward shunting of chips from the young man's head. Fluids erupted like geysers from the front of his face and he crumbled to the earth immediately and remained there, motionless aside from residual twitches of the arms.

"Rannulf! No!" the breaker shouted, his voice laden with grief and rage.

Gíla's eyes widened as the reality of it hit her like a hammer to the chest and all noise from the battle became muffled. Her heart thumped, froze, thumped, froze and her arms tensed with stupefaction. Auric eyes welled with tears and her fanged mouth opened slightly to form words that could not form. She looked down at his body and saw that half of his cranium was now caved inward like marble that had been hit by a chisel. Clear and red fluids and grey matter poured from the shredded pieces of flesh and gushed out from his nose and eyes like a reservoir of death. Images that were now locked in her mind forever. She inhaled sweat-thick air and felt a trace of nausea in her belly alongside that all too familiar stomach-knotted emotion. Her attention returned to the breaker, her brows curved and mouth open as if to say: "I am sorry, I didn't mean it."

He attempted an advance and slumped to his knees. He was exhausted. A double-handed sword, like the claymore the breaker wielded or the even larger greatsword, was good for a shield wall and breaking it, even for short skirmishes. But history showed that using it without technique or proper stamina in lengthy combat would wear a person out faster than many other weapons. He should have chosen something lighter.

The man recovered enough strength to finish his movement, his face pale with grief. The Bear Maiden bounded forward and ducked a frantic horizontal chop for her head. The earth bent under the weight of her momentum and vibrated against the impact of her shoulder tackle into the man's armored stomach. He dropped his weapon and shrieked breathlessly as the Drayheller lifted him and slammed him down onto his back in the same motion. He gasped as all remaining oxygen was forced from his lungs and struggled to regain his breath. Trickles of blood formed at the corners of his lips as he choked and coughed. The Drayheller stood above him and puffed, a stream of tears rushing from her eyes.

"Please stay-" was all she articulated before being suddenly tackled from sight.

A man almost as large as a small tree had rammed into the unsuspecting Bear Maiden, knocking her away into a tumble. She scrambled to her feet as quickly as possible, barely bringing her blade up in time to deflect a looping stroke that would have cleaved her in half. She deflected another, and then another, all the while taking what details she could of her new assailant. He was tall, wide, and far more armored than the others she had encountered, though not in plate. He was outfitted in black scale armor and bore a uniquely embossed nasal helm, the lion-drake sigil of his King plastered on the side. In his hands, he wielded a great halberd that was as close to shattering Gíla's sword as it was to maiming her. Chips of the blade had been removed from her panicked deflections, and it would not be able to take much more.

"You fucking rebels," he seethed through gritted teeth. "You mongrels. You worms. You maggots."

He sprinted at her, far faster than she could have anticipated for a man of his size in that armor. The edge of the halberd caught her shoulder with a grievous gash, blood squirting from the wound and streaming down her thick bicep. She reacted with another parry attempt.

The arming sword snapped in two from the sharp hit on the haft of his weapon.

Gíla grumbled and backpedaled from a vicious riposte aimed at her throat. She voided another downward slash and sent a fist into the man's scale armored stomach. Something cracked against her knuckles. The Bear Maiden gasped and lost focus, fearful that she had just killed another. He bent with the punch and let go of the halberd with one hand that quickly grabbed her by the back of his foe's head. A subsequent headbutt sent her reeling away from the giant until she was fifteen paces away.

With blurred vision and ringing ears, she flung what remained of her weapon at him on instinct, immediately cursing herself for such a foolish, inane move. He, of course, easily evaded it by simply pivoting his upper body to the left and resuming his sprint. Five steps away from the killing range, he reared his halberd back and howled with malignancy. The Bear Maiden caught her breath and closed her dazed eyes.

The halberd never connected.

Gíla opened to a slowly healing vision at the sound of screeching noise and released all the breath trapped in her throat. A member of her guild appeared from nowhere. In their blood-caked hauberk and surcoat, they swung their brilliantly gore-covered longsword down into the shaft of the halberd and knocked it off course. Sunlight beamed like an explosion of holy rays upon them, blessing them for the next few seconds. Gíla stood motionless initially, dumbfounded by the picturesque sight, and hyperventilated to replace the released air.

"Bear Maiden!" he shouted at her without looking, his voice blaring with ferocity. "Don't just stand there, fight!"

Gíla recognized him immediately and nodded in gratitude. She rushed forward toward the giant, her feet clawing into the dirt and leaving craters of torn grass and rocks. He boomed with rage and hoisted up his weapon in a horizontal position with both hands. He shoved it forward, attempting to catch the Drayheller and push her back and down. He missed by centimeters. Weaving under it, Gíla tackled him with another lifting slam. She could not penetrate his armor with any weapon lest it was a spear, which was nowhere to be seen, and even then it was of far greater quality than that worn by his allies and enemies. He was too quick with his offense to allow her to even grab at that opportunity. This was the only way she could get him down.

"Please don't get up," she tried to say.

He punched up, connecting a gauntleted fist with her face that chipped a tooth and then another that broke one off completely. A moment of silence passed between them, the Bear Maiden feeling the rise of frustration in her chest. The giant punched up once more, only to find his arm gripped mid-motion. Gíla responded with her own attack that, had he not been wearing a helmet, would have resulted in the same as Rannulf.

The giant yelled in pain and attempted a hook to Gíla's jaw with his free hand, only to find another fist connecting with his face. His nose was crushed instantly under the bending of the helmet's nasal plate.

"Stop!" she demanded, receiving a flailing slap for an answer. Don't kill him!

Another reactive fist crushed his nose even further until it was nearly flattened. Another crack of a sadist's grin formed on her face, bringing a burning nauseous disgust in her body. Don't kill him, she told herself. Yet, she did not stop. Something told her, deep within her brain and surging in her fists, that she could not stop now. The giant's yells had melted into gurgles accompanied by bubbles of spit. Still, he fought to free himself with shimmies and weakly thrown jabs. A fourth punch broke his skin by way of the plate stabbing into it and a fifth resulted in the worst of it, though he was no longer alive to react. Flesh and bone and metal caved in under the impact, the skull reducing to mulch as her knuckles traveled until they hit the back of the cranium with a resounding crunch.

The giant twitched from the severing of nerves and synapses, shuddered as his heart struggled to pump blood, and writhed in his death throes before stilling completely and forever. Hard and quick breaths did little to alleviate the mounting pressure in her chest and stings of wounds across the Bear Maiden's body. She removed her fist from the fleshy cave-in and looked up at the sun-beaming sky to wail out another release of stomach-knotted emotion. Any soldiers of the King that would even think about rushing her in this moment of inaction stopped at the horrible noise and backed away, a delay that allowed them to be attacked and distracted.

"Why didn't you stop?" the Drayheller screeched against the torrential storm, wiping the tears away from her eyes with her unbloodied hand.

"Should have given you a hammer," said the guildmate who halted near the Bear Maiden, seemingly oblivious to her mood. His breathing was as quick and hard as her own. "Would have kept your hands clean, done the same thing."

The Bear Maiden kept the explicit sorrow of it buried. "I was expecting a bigger weapon anyways," she finally said as she lumbered to her feet. "Glad to see you've survived, Goscelin."

The weathered man smiled sadly and swung some clumps of gore from his blade, "Yeah. Have you seen the boy? Alden?"

Her brows furrowed as the name rang in her mind. Alden. The young boy had been lost in the initial frenzy, drowned in that horde of meat. She had looked for him during her first moments of combat, calling out his name in the hopes that he would hear it and respond. But he never did, and her heart grew colder to the idea that he could be alive. A sixteen-year-old boy with no experience, in the backlines of the guild, away from any threat thrown into the worst possible situation. Gíla shook her head and peered at the nearby surrounding masses. She felt the pieces of skull and brain matter drip from her clenched fist, and she sighed inwardly as the vestiges of optimism for the young boy's survival hanged on by a thread.

"You said you needed a bigger weapon?" asked Goscelin. "I think I see one over there."

Gíla knew what he was referring to and proceeded without another word, catching her breath as her mind raced with tales of the old warlords to replace images of Alden's possible corpse. King Rhagabe was a behemoth of a warrior known for his skill with the larger weapons, his personal and semi-legendary blade allegedly being seven feet in total length. A testament to the size and strength of the man. The Bear Maiden, upon reaching the prone breaker, considered how much a creature like Rhagabe would have enjoyed a battle like this. Surely nowhere near the number of souls that he would have been used to fighting alongside and against, but enough carnage and passion to quell any disappointment from that lack.

She stared down at the middle-aged man. His face was red in the sunlight, his mop of hair splayed like wet noodles, and his mouth was open with broken inhalations and blood. "Please don't kill me," he pleaded. "Please."

"I am not going to kill you," said the Drayheller in a low, wavering voice. "I just want your weapon."

Whatever he said in response was mute to Gíla's ears as she bent down and picked up the claymore with ease. Blood dripped from her fist as she examined the steel. It was simple in design, lacking anything ornate or embellishing. No scripture could be seen, though it did reek of holy oils, and bared only her blood upon its edges.

Angry shouts from close by drew her attention back to the present, and the Bear Maiden looked to Goscelin and discovered him in combat with three figures wielding axes and swords and shields. One was exceptionally well built; dominant in his visage; the leader of this trio. Goscelin appeared to be having a much more difficult time with him than the others who danced and feinted around him in attempts to steal his attention for the larger man to land a killing blow.

Why not just kill him together? Why make it so difficult? Why be so cruel?

Gíla barked and lunged forward, striking out with a double-handed swing at one of the figures: a woman, young and green-eyed and sharp-boned. She screeched in surprise then fell silent as the driving elbow cut of the claymore collided with her stomach. The impact was incredible. Mail rang out in terror as the pure biting power of the Drayheller's attack buried into the interlinked metal, snapping several pieces of it apart. The woman snorted a single breath of air before she was lifted from the momentum and thrown yards away, clattering to the ground with an unceremonious thud. The Bear Maiden's heart throbbed again at the brutal sight. Stop! You can't stop. Fight. Keep fighting.

In the moment it took for the others to realize what had happened, Gíla moved and swung for the smallest of the trio. A man. Whatever she had intended to strike him down with ended up as a clean decapitation. Far higher than whatever she intended. Red spurt in river-length streams from the neck and the man's body fell backward with as much an unceremonious thud as his companion. More drum beats from the heart of the Drayheller and she felt more tears well in her eyes. Sho tîng! Sho tîng! Sho tîng! She blinked them away and faced Goscelin.

Having used the opportunity of distraction, her weathered companion had reignited his offensive approach, despite the larger man being impressive with his defense. Even more distressing was that he was far more fully armored than his companions, possessing a mail coif under his helm for added protection. His kite shield was also an issue, being iron-reinforced oak he carried it with relative ease. Goscelin, for all his fury, would never be able to break through that defense alone. And where he had saved her from an imposing foe, it only felt right for her to help him defeat one.

With this acceptance in mind, the Bear Maiden let loose a brittle, sobbing bellow and advanced.