Year 215. Gortinda - Khirn

GÍLA SENGHU

Gíla turned at the sound of more feet, her ears twitching to the pattern of its encroaching stomps on the cobblestone and sun-baked blood. 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 warrior, bedecked with a 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 her snout, the Drayheller bending backward as it neared her flesh. At the same time, she batted their blade away and drove it into the stone in a downward arc. Gíla stepped forward, swinging up with a returning attack and cracking the warrior's jaw into their skull.

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. The first bit of damage in the fight. 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 one could do with a war hammer - and eyed the broad-shouldered goliath wielding the shining claymore. They were middle-aged with powerfully built arms and legs, their hair little more than a shaggy mop. Their hands were clenched around a two-handed sword, shining brightly under the momentary sunlight that peaked through the moist clouds. A shield breaker, she surmised.

Their voice broke into a clamor as they 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 weapon enhanced that factor. She evaded the attempted blow. The goliath rocked forward from the missed hit but kept pace with a spinning motion, swinging once more for their would-be prize with a horizontal laceration aimed at Gíla's shoulder.

She met them with a hard block, stopping their attack dead in the air with the fullness of her strength. She had believed that the goliath would, like their predecessors, be knocked off balance and forced into a stumble. To her surprise, they had held their ground - albeit barely. The edge of their weapon scraped against the haft of the war hammer and created flashes of sparks. The Bear Maiden slid with momentum and clacked against the sloping quillions of the claymore. Gíla glared at her opponent, and they glared back. Both waiting to see who would crack first.

"You's as strong as they said," they rasped with quick and harsh breaths. In their Khirnian voice was the trace of a pure Aqellan ancestry, perhaps a family that survived as one the last holdovers before they made the exodus. One that did not so quickly demonize riyu. She wondered if the goliath knew that. "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 warrior, no older than twenty, followed up with another strike. Gíla smacked the blade down, grabbed their coat, and threw them away like a rotten crop. They smacked back-first into a building. The breaker launched for her again, cursing as their blade missed only by inches but then succeeded in cutting down a warrior of the Duke who backed away from their own foe a touch too far. Torso fell from legs in a glut of blood and entrails. Gíla lamented the death and struck out, cracking her hammer against the breaker's mail, dropping them to their knees on strength alone. Gíla swung around, engaging two more kingsmen in their attempt to save their comrade. They fell like the rest, gurgling dying insults. Bones cracked, and organs burst.

The breaker stood still to catch their breath and scowled. "Not a warrior, eh? You fight like one. You kill like one."

Gíla sighed with disdain. "I am just a historian. Not a warrior. I do not want to do this."

Their scowl deepened. "Historian. You fucking inhumans. So 'mysterious' and inquisitive. Never doing a thing unless it benefits you and you alone. Never giving a damn about the rest of the world."

"I am here because of the rest of the world," the Bear Maiden spat. Her auric eyes somehow shone through the sunrays beaming down on her. "To see it uplifted with knowledge. Science. Mysticism. Lore. I am here to help bring about great things. I just happen to be on the Duke's side."

"You are on the side of a dog who will die for his betrayal of the King!" the breaker proclaimed.

She parried a sideways cut and another. The breaker, in turn, did the same to her, heaving their weapon as if it were her hammer. Unnatural strength for a human. Unnatural stamina. Gíla felt enamored by the experience as much as she was fearful that this human could, in fact, harm her. 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, no longer trusting her hide to protect her from the blade. The warrior 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. Around them, Gortinda burned. Alden was elsewhere. Goscelin was elsewhere. Loukas Tomasos, Eos the Colossus, Misandros Tateas, and others were dispersed and frantic.

Gortinda burned in the sun.

They moved upon her, unleashing a barrage in tandem she worked tirelessly to defend against. Metal and metal and metal, clashing and stabbing through the air. She was no warrior, but she was fast for her size. She was endowed with the endurance of the Nujant Chhank. After a strike from the second warrior connected with her arm and only served to bend the blade, she knew she only had to worry about the breaker. 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 street. She rolled until she could shift to a standing position, her hand shuddering as it clenched the hilt of her hammer. Relief washed over her as she saw the breaker finally breathing heavily and sluggishly lifting their weapon from the ground. Conversely, the shielded warrior kept moving, rushing for the Drayheller with a battle cry.

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

"Phaeop, 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 their face. Young, square-shaped, unwrinkled, and brown-eyed. They could not have been older than twenty-five - no younger than twenty. They 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 swing of her hammer to the side of their unhelmeted temple. There was a crunch of bone, denting of muscle, and the upward shunting of chips from the young warrior's head. Fluids erupted like geysers from the front of their face, and they crumbled to the street immediately and remained there, motionless aside from residual twitches of the arms.

"Phaeop! No!" the breaker shouted, their voice laden with grief and rage.

Gíla's eyes widened as the reality of it hit her like a javelin 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 the body and saw that half of the cranium was now caved inward like marble that a chisel had hit. Clear and red fluids and grey matter poured from the shredded pieces of flesh and gushed out from their 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.

The breaker attempted an advance and slumped to their knees. They were exhausted. Purer Aqellan ancestry, regardless, they were too far diluted from the powers of riyu to keep their endurance up for as long as the Bear Maiden could.

The breaker recovered enough strength to finish their movement, their 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 warrior's armored stomach. They dropped their weapon and shrieked breathlessly as the Drayheller lifted them and slammed them down onto their back in the same motion. The breaker gasped as all remaining oxygen was forced from their lungs. They struggled to regain their breath. Trickles of blood formed at the corners of their lips as they choked and coughed.

The Drayheller stood above them and puffed, a stream of tears rushing from her eyes. "Please stay-" was all she articulated before being suddenly tackled from sight.

A brute 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 hammer up in time to deflect a looping stroke that would have cleaved her in half. She knew it would have. She deflected another and then another, all the while taking what details she could of her new assailant. They were tall, wide, and far more armored than the others she had encountered, though not in plate. They were outfitted in black scale armor and bore a uniquely embossed nasal helm, the lion-drake sigil of their King plastered on the side. In their hands, they wielded a great battle axe that was as close to shattering the haft of Gíla's hammer as it was to maim her.

Harkides.

"You fucking rebels," they seethed through gritted teeth. "You worms."

They sprinted at her far faster than she could have anticipated for a human of their size in that armor. The edge of the axe 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 hammer snapped in two from the sharp deflection of Harkides' axe.

Gíla gasped and backpedaled from a vicious riposte aimed at her throat. She voided another downward slash and sent a fist into Harkides' scale-armored stomach. Something cracked against her knuckles. They bent with the punch. One hand let go of the axe, but that hand quickly grabbed her by the back of her head. A subsequent headbutt sent her reeling away from Harkides until she was fifteen paces away.

With blurred vision and ringing ears, she flung what remained of her weapon at Harkides on instinct, immediately cursing herself for such a foolish, inane move. They, of course, easily evaded it by simply pivoting their upper body to the left and resuming their sprint. Five steps away from the killing range, they reared their halberd back and howled with malignancy. The Bear Maiden reached up and caught Harkides' arms as the head of the axe dug into her shoulder again, a slowly building scream rushing from her lips.

"Inhuman shit!" they roared, unable to pull their arms free from the Bear Maiden's grasp.

"Vi kimi!" Gíla cursed, kicking her leg forward into Harkides' own to drop them to a knee. They let go of the axe, shouting as the power dynamics were switched so easily. A slice across her back kept her from finishing the captain off, turning her around to pull the axe free from her shoulder and gaze at the winded but somewhat recovered breaker.

"You killed Phaeop," they grumbled.

Rage and agony overtook her previous sorrow for Phaeop's death and the desire to leave the breaker alive. Gíla roared as loud as her voice could carry and charged the human, blood streaming by the pint from her wounds. The axe cut the breaker in half from clavicle to navel.

Gíla turned just as a fresh sword came toward her neck. It never connected.

Gíla opened her eyes 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 edge of Harkides' spare weapon and knocked it off course. Brief 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.

"Hey!" they shouted at her without looking, voice blaring with ferocity. "Don't just stand there, fight!"

Gíla recognized them immediately and nodded in gratitude. She rushed forward toward the giant, her feet clawing into the dirt and leaving craters of torn stone and grout. Harkides boomed with rage and hoisted up their weapon in a horizontal position with both hands. They shoved it forward, attempting to catch the Bear Maiden and push her back and down. They missed by centimeters. Weaving under it, Gíla tackled them with another lifting slam.

"Please do not get up," she tried to say.

Harkides 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 their arm gripped mid-motion. Gíla responded with her own attack that, had they not been wearing a helmet, would have resulted in the same as Phaeop.

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

"Stop!" she demanded, receiving a flailing slap for an answer.

Another reactive fist crushed their 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. Do not 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, they fought to free themselves with shimmies and weakly thrown jabs. A fourth punch broke their skin by way of the plate stabbing into it and a fifth resulted in the worst of it, though they were 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 their heart struggled to pump blood, and writhed in vile death throes before stilling completely and forever.

Hard and quick breaths did little to alleviate the mounting pressure in her chest and the 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 did you not stop?" Gíla screeched against the torrential storm, wiping the tears away from her eyes with her unblooded hand.

"Should have kept your hammer," said the guildmate, who halted near the Bear Maiden, seemingly oblivious to her mood. Their 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. "Glad to see you've survived, Iphino."

The rat-faced human smiled sadly and swung some clumps of gore from their blade, "Yeah. Have you seen the boy? Alden?"

Her brows furrowed as the name rang in her mind. Alden. The young one had been lost in the frenzy, drowned in that horde of meat. She had looked for them during her first moments of combat, calling out their name in the hopes that they would hear it and respond. But they never did, and her heart grew colder to the idea that they could be alive. A sixteen-year-old child with no experience, thrown into the fire. 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 one's survival hung on by a thread.

"You good to fight still?" Iphino asked.

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

"Why not just kill him together? Why make it so difficult? Why be so cruel?" she asked the air with soft forward steps.

"We humans're a bunch of aberrations given free will," Iphino commented, joining her in the march.

Gíla barked and lunged forward as she finally neared the four, striking out with a double-handed swing of Harkides' axe at one of the figures, young and green-eyed and sharp-boned. They screeched in surprise, then fell silent as the driving elbow cut of the axe collided with their stomach. The impact was incredible. Mail rang out in terror as pure biting power buried into the interlinked metal, snapping several pieces of it apart. The human snorted a single breath of air before they were 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.

In the moment it took for the others to realize what had happened, Gíla moved and swung for the smallest of the trio. Whatever she had intended to strike them down with ended up as a clean decapitation. Red spurt in river-length streams from the neck, and the human's body fell backward with as much an unceremonious thud as their companion.

Having used the opportunity of distraction, her weathered companion had reignited their offensive approach, aided now by Iphino, though the leader of the now dead duo was still impressive in defense. Even more distressing was that they were far more fully armored than their companions, possessing a mail coif under their helm for added protection. Their kite shield was also an issue, being iron-reinforced oak they carried with relative ease. Goscelin, for all their fury and tandem offense with Iphino, would never be able to break through that defense alone.

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