Well that’s a first...gulp...

His speed and skill were unreal, to say nothing of his strength. Within seconds I was already being pushed to my limits just to manage to avoid his attacks and keep attacking him.

On the other hand, the damage I was doing with my attacks was incredible—or it should have been, but even though the numbers my HUD indicated for damage were substantially higher than against most enemies, none of it seemed to faze him. It didn’t help that only slightly more than one out of three of my spells even hit him. From the very start, he had made his fists and feet glow with some kind of strange energy that he was somehow able to use to null out my attacks as they were about to reach him. I had to be completely on point with how and when I attacked for even that many to reach him, making it so multiple spells would strike him nearly simultaneously and from different angles so that either he could deal with one of them but not the other, or deal with both but in a way that would leave himself more vulnerable to my next cast.

Between that and how quick, vicious, and skillfully he struck back at me, I was under the most pressure I’d ever faced in battle. Since my Enemy Scan had failed, I had no idea how much a proportion of his HP I had worn away, but I did know that he no longer looked completely unhurt.

But just as hope started to rise in me with this realization, the wolf man utterly broke the script. Instead of continuing to cancel my attacks and avoiding them to force me to put attention on altering their trajectories, he rushed headlong at me, through a Flame Javelin and Exploding Fireball. I barely got a Fiery Deflection up, but he used a pair of lightning quick, weak jabs to get rid of it.

Too late, I realized that he’d driven me to the edge of the array that had trapped me in this duel—an array those inside couldn’t get out of any more than Mewi could get in. I couldn’t get distanced from him again now. I couldn’t switch weapons to my halberd either, and using my magic rod as a stick was hardly going to work.

The wolf man took advantage of my moment of panic...by grabbing me by the throat and lifting me up with just one arm. His glare filled my vision. “I came to deliver a message,” he said, “so listen up. You may not be weak, but if this is all you’ve got...that trinket you’re carrying won’t be enough for the Sanctuary.”

My heart was fading. My head was pounding. My lungs were two pieces of burning charcoal. Everything the Federation Alliance had feared about the circumstances of the fall of the Sanctuaries had come to life. The mysterious organization behind it was very real, and powerful and far-reaching beyond even Edwin’s most pessimistic projections. It was the only way this person could have known that I would be the first to attempt a Sanctuary.

I had to do something!

Without conscious direction, using only this feral, fight-or-flight impetus to act, I called the Power of Imagination. For just an instant, my body turned transparent, as though it was a bad hologram projection. The wolf man’s fist closed as my now immaterial neck slipped through his fingers. I dropped to the ground and rematerialized. In the next moment, I insta-cast Immolate—a casting that previously I’d been unable to break 3 seconds in cast time. The wolf man snarled in pain, and backed off from me.

I would have pursued, but I could tell that if I kept pushing myself, my Stamina would hit 0 very soon. In all likelihood, too soon to finish the wolf man before it happened.

But apparently, he either didn’t want to take that chance, or killing me had never been what he was after. He gave me the wolf man equivalent of a smile—which was entirely too creepy—as the array at our feet retreated back into his ring. “So, there’s something special about you after all, Lheticus. Very interesting. I’m sure my superiors will be interested to see how this unfolds.”

Mewi started to rush to my side and also tried a Winding Restrictions to prevent their escape, but he broke out and was too far away to try again in moments. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine...just need the health potion injectors to kick in.”

A few minutes later, the rest of the team arrived. Instead of having a lengthy discussion with them, I used the Memory Gem to show them what had happened.

“This is getting serious,” said Bruizgan, once the viewing was finished, “if, as is most likely, they were working for the organization really behind the fall of the Sanctuaries, this is the most overtly the Federation has seen them act since the start of the war.”

“I’d say more like it’s almost impossible that they’re not. They’re at least a catspaw if not an actual member.”

“There’s someone else who’s at least working with them too,” said Mewi, “Rilzian. Either he sold us out to them, or he was one of theirs from the moment Lheticus met him on the 5th Floor. The attacker mentioned ‘that trinket you’re carrying.’ I don’t think he could have been talking about anything but the totem.”

“That’s one possibility,” said Bruzigan, sounding unusually grim, “but I don’t think we can say for certain. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had some ties to this group, at least.”

“So what should we do?” said Anna, “It’ll mean some hits to our Mission Rating, but maybe we should fight together? If...if I'd been there, I could have at least tried to dismantle the enemy’s Isolation Field array.”

“Or, if we’d stuck together from the start they would have acted more drastically in order to get Lheticus alone,” Ri’legh countered, “and it would have gone even worse for us. Even still assuming they’re behind the Sanctuaries’ fall, it doesn’t seem to me that the unknown enemy’s aim is to keep them from being restored no matter what.”

“Perhaps they’re trying to scare us and slow us down,” said Arvallei, “to ensure that while maybe not forever, the Sanctuaries remain offline until the Federation crumbles.”

“I don’t know about that, actually,” I said, “that wasn’t the vibe I got from the assassin. Plus if they really wanted to scare us off of striking at the Sanctuaries any time soon, slaughtering us all would surely have been way more effective. I’m alive—we're alive...because they didn’t want me or any of us to lose a life on this Floor. The assassin was here to challenge me, not kill me. I’m certain of it.”

“But what would they possibly have to gain from playing things out the way they did?” said Anna. “Why would they go to the trouble of disabling the Sanctuaries, then act like they don’t care enough to come down hard on people trying to restore them?”

“Now that,” said Bruzigan, “is the million Brock question.”