“Are you mad? We have no mounts! We’ll be caught flatfooted, outnumbered, fools for their feint!” Sarl’s face betrayed the conflict he felt, standing up to Victor, a man to whom he owed so much.

“They aren’t feinting, Sarl! They must have scouts or magic or . . . something! They must know that the fifth cohort is coming around from the east. They’ll crush them, just as you fear they’ll do to us! If we can catch them from behind, though . . .” Victor looked around at the lieutenants, at Valla and Kethelket, then back to Sarl. He hated how he sounded like he was pleading. He was the boss here, right? He supposed the problem was that part of him feared Sarl was right. He wasn’t totally sure it was the right move to charge.

“But we can’t catch them,” Sarl sighed, his voice losing its edge, clearly troubled by the idea that another cohort was going to die out there without his troops’ aid.

“We can catch up, though!” Victor felt his frustration mounting and heard the rumble in his voice as his rage began to seep into his pathways. “They’ll smash into the fifth, probably do some damage, but we can get there in time to make a difference, to turn the tide.”

“And if we march forth,” Kethelket interjected, “gain some distance from the keep, and they turn to charge us? You saw how fast they run! We don’t know how close the fifth is. They could be an hour or two distant.”

Victor stood straight, squared his shoulders, and looked at the dark sky. He inhaled deeply through his nose, and with its exhalation, he sent his doubts and frustrations into the air. While everyone watched him, waiting for his next words, he cleared his mind and listened to his instincts. Everything in him said to summon Guapo and charge after the black-plated, pale warriors—the late Baron Eric’s reavers. With a calm, steady voice, he said, “Valla, you will ride with me. Bring the command Farscribe Book. Captain Yarsha isn’t responding to the messages we’ve sent to the fifth; perhaps they’re already fighting, and she can’t check her book, but you have yours, right, Sarl?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will ride after the invaders, ensure they aren’t laying a trap for you, and Valla will send word via the Farscribe book. When you see the command to march, you will double-time it onto the field, and you will smash into the reavers. Get your troops ready to move.” Victor turned to the gate, hardly registering Sarl’s salute or the troubled look in his eyes—if Victor had to guess, the captain was worried that he’d burned a bridge with him by challenging his command in front of his soldiers. Victor was too stressed to think about it; it was a problem for a more peaceful night. He reached into his Core, pulling forth a ribbon of glory-attuned Energy, and summoned Guapo.

As the great Mustang burst into being, leaping out of the shimmering golden pool of Energy, Victor reached into his ring and pulled out the corpse of Baron Eric Gore Lust. The dead vampyr still gripped the smoky, evil, deadly-potent sword as it flopped onto the hard-packed gravel outside the gate. Valla and the others who’d been following behind gasped at the sudden reminder of what Victor had slain earlier that night.

“What are you . . .” Valla started to ask, but Victor was already acting, building the pattern for Honor the Spirits. The big, oddly bloodless corpse, clad in battered dark plate, and the wicked, probably living sword, flared with bright white flames, eliciting gasps and curses from the officers and soldiers nearby. The flames lingered longer than usual, flaring and surging as they consumed the man and the sword. The baron’s body was gone before the sword, almost as though it fought against the workings of the spell, but Victor’s spirit magic was strong, and with a final burst of brilliant white flames, it winked out of existence, and nothing but ghostly smoke remained.

Victor swung atop Guapo and held out a hand, hoisting Valla up behind him, and then he turned to Sarl. “Get them lined up and ready to march.” Guapo didn’t need him to kick his heels or flick any reins; he knew what Victor wanted, and he delivered, bursting into motion, streaking over the dark rolling hills, leaving a trail of golden sparks where his hooves struck the ground. Victor had ridden Guapo flat-out a few times, and he knew what he could do. Still, it brought a surge of adrenaline into his blood as the wind screamed past his face, and the moonlit countryside became a blur.

Valla squeezed her arms around his waist, burying her face in his back. Victor would have worried about her, wondering if she was afraid or angry, but he couldn’t think of anything other than the idea that he had soldiers out there who needed him. He hadn’t felt any pangs from his Battlemaster feat, but something told him he had to get out there, had to make a difference; those troops were coming to help him—how could he leave them to hang?

The wild ride through the dark proved mercifully short. After just a few minutes, they mounted a sizeable grassy hilltop with a solitary tree at its crest, and on the other side, all of Victor’s questions and concerns came into focus. At his urging, Guapo slid to a halt, tearing up a deep furrow of sod, and Victor looked down into a wide, grassy meadow upon which hell was breaking loose. On the far side, perhaps three or five miles distant, he saw the fifth cohort, beset by massive wolf-like creatures in the hundreds. Nearer, still charging toward the fight, were the black-plated reavers. In a minute or less, they’d pile into the fight, and the fifth would surely be destroyed.

“Get off,” he grunted.

“Victor . . .”

“Get down and tell Sarl to hurry.” His voice had become a growl.

“Will there be any fifth left to save by the time . . .”

“Now, Valla!” Victor reached behind himself to nudge her with one big hand, pushing her to the side until she relented and slid off Guapo’s back. “Wait here for the Ninth.”

“Victor! I know I won’t stop you from acting, but promise me you aren’t going down there to die! Think about why you aren’t taking me with you!” Valla’s words were pleading and had taken a desperate edge. They gave him pause, and he looked down at her, into her beautiful eyes, and he resolved to talk to her about his feelings again, really talk to her, not just play around with hints and hugs.

“I’m not planning to die, Valla, but I have to slow those pendejos down.” She nodded, taking the small victory, and with those final words, Victor summoned his banner and, almost simultaneously, cast Iron Berserk. As the brilliant light of his banner’s sun burst into being, illuminating the hilltop like a fallen star, he exploded with furious Energy, and Guapo grew with him. Victor urged the Mustang forward and, responding to an instinct that ran deep in his blood, roared into the night, “Ancestors! Watch me fight these mother fuckers!”

Sized as he was to accommodate Victor’s titanic form, Guapo devoured the distance between the hilltop and the charging reavers. As they tore over the grassy meadow, Victor pulled Lifedrinker free of her harness and held her high, ready to lay about himself with her smoldering blade. “Come on, boy!” he urged, willing the great Mustang to run even faster. As they thundered over the ground, everything became a blur, everything except the rear ranks of the reavers—the center of Victor’s focus. In seconds, they were upon them, and then Guapo was trampling through them like a draft horse running through a schoolyard.

The reavers screamed and flailed as the Mustang smashed through them, crushing them to the ground and sending many more flying left and right, all while Victor’s banner seemed to ignite their exposed, pale flesh. In the chaos, Victor could see smoke billowing out of helmets and the seams of dark armor, and he knew these reavers suffered even more than their late baron in his glorious light. He howled and roared, mad with wild battle lust as Guapo trampled through rank after rank. He cleaved left and right with his axe until he and his mount finally burst through the far side of the reavers’ formation.

The Mustang had suffered many gashes and cuts in his passage, but he was snorting, prancing, neck arched in a proud display of resilience as he whirled and paced in front of the host of reavers, he and Victor the only obstacle between them and the beleaguered fifth cohort. Even so, the reavers had slowed their mad charge and taken pause to examine this new threat. Victor could see dozens of broken forms lying in Guapo’s wake—victims of the mighty Mustang’s hooves and Victor’s vicious axe blows.

The idea that he was facing down nearly a thousand enemies filled him with mad battle lust, a hunger for glory that dwarfed anything he’d ever felt. Victor wanted to leap off Guapo’s back and wade into the host, wanted to feel their bones and flesh breaking under the blade of his axe, and wanted to bathe in their blood and howl with their screams of defeat. Part of him was rational, though—part of him knew he would kill many of them, but that eventually, he’d run out of Energy, and they’d overwhelm him. As Guapo pranced in front of the army, up and down their front rank, as his banner bathed them in its light, forcing them to shrink back and shield their eyes, that lucid part of his mind urged him to shout, “I’ve killed your leaders. Will you be next?”

If he’d been hoping to send them running, he was disappointed—his words seemed to enrage them. Whatever bond they’d had with the baron was still there, or at least their loyalty to his faction had survived his death. Victor could feel them gathering their Energy, could see many of them, dozens, hundreds exploding with growth, taking on vampyr forms like the baron and some of his retinue had done. He saw weapons bursting into flames or limning with other kinds of Energy, from frost and lightning to acid. Some of those who shrank from his banner’s light straightened up, shimmering with magical defenses, perhaps banking on killing Victor before their Energy ran out.

Victor saw that his shout hadn’t cowed the horde, and his heart sang with the news—it was time to get bloody. He slid off Guapo’s back and slapped a massive hand on the Mustang’s shoulder. “Good boy. You did enough. Go recover in the Spirit Plane, and I’ll call you again soon.” The horse, part of Victor’s spirit, nudged him with its muzzle, perhaps unwilling to leave him, but Victor chuckled and severed his connection, sighing deeply as the horse dispersed in a shimmering fog of golden Energy.

Victor turned to the horde of reavers and saw that the transformed creatures were starting to rush toward him, pushing past their smaller brethren. He could feel the gathering Energy of spells and knew the momentary standoff was nearly over. Soon he’d be surrounded, and though he was much larger and more powerful than these lesser vampyrs, he knew he couldn’t hold off a thousand of them for long. As he hefted Lifedrinker in his fists, channeling rage-fueled Energy into his arms and into her, he grinned. “Hope you’re hurrying, Sarl.” The reavers and vampyrs screamed in a cacophonous frenzy and charged him.

Rather than meet the elite of their number as they shoved to the front ranks of the host, Victor bunched his legs and launched himself into the air, soaring over the first several ranks. Missiles of fire and ice, lightning and magma, acid and metal tore through the air at him. Many struck home, but he shrugged them off. His mass, his durability, his armor, and his magical belt did much to mitigate the attacks. The damage that got through was quickly mended by his incredible ability to regenerate while Berserk. When he landed at the center of the armored reavers, none of whom were even half his size, he flattened one outright, and then he began madly hacking at the screaming horde.

Lifedrinker was ablaze with her own fury; her silvery blade was magma orange, and black smoke roiled in her wake. She split the reavers’ enameled plate like it was made from porcelain. She burned their flesh and shattered their bones, and with each wide cleave Victor made, she left broken, writhing, screaming reavers lying and flailing on the ground. Victor felt impacts on his back, against his impossibly dense helmet, and from every other angle. He began to amass wounds on his legs and arms, and though he was seeing red and focused on slaughter, a corner of his mind suggested he seek more armoring if he meant to battle this way in the future.

The stray thought brought wild laughter out of him, and as blood showered up from a terrible cleave he laid into a reaver’s chest, Victor wondered if there would be a future for him. Despite the broken mounds of enemies, despite the mist of their blood hanging thick in the air, the host of enemies stretched away from him in every direction. He was alone, and as fast as he could kill them, they kept coming. They, too, were wild with the desire to kill. They’d seen his devilish work, seen how he’d destroyed their comrades and boasted about killing their lord, and whatever else might be true about these invaders, they weren’t cowards.

At some point, Victor summoned his mighty bear, fueling it with fear-attuned Energy, and the powerful beast gave him some respite, clearing one of his flanks, so he turned his back to the monstrous black bear with its indigo eyes. He listened to its roars and responded in kind, the two of them drowning out the din of the hundreds of reavers as they fought. When he’d summoned the totem, Victor had seen how his fear-attuned Energy was more prevalent in his Core than the others, so he decided to use it, throwing out waves of black terror with Project Energy. The effect varied, causing some reavers to flee, others to stand stunned, and others only to grimace in discomfort.

The transformed vampyrs were the least affected, and though Victor killed them in the dozens, they were the ones to leave the deepest, most painful wounds on Victor’s flanks as they fought through their allies to get at him. He took spear stabs, axe wounds, crushing blows, and gashes everywhere he wasn’t covered by Tes’s amazing wyrm-scale armor. If not for that armor and his helmet, Victor knew the fight would have ended far sooner.

He did all he could to prolong his fight. He used Energy Charge to make space for himself, smashing through several ranks of reavers, crashing into a vampyr or large reaver with a devastating explosion of Energy, giving himself a brief break before more unwounded enemies filled the gaps. He used Titanic Leap to much the same effect; when he felt he had too many powerful enemies nearby, he’d jump away, smash into a distant section of the reaver horde, and work on those laggards for a while, slaughtering them while their stronger comrades worked through the ranks to get at him again.

So, the incredible, wild battle dragged on. Victor couldn’t possibly count the number of reavers he slew, couldn’t count the number of wounds he’d healed from. He knew he’d have a new patchwork of pale scars on his body if he managed to survive, but he was starting to believe that wouldn’t be a concern—his Energy was running low. He could feel his rage waning along with the rest of his affinities; he’d been trying to spread their usage, and he’d done a good job, but they were all drawing down, and he knew it was soon going to be over when his Titanic Leap would no longer activate.

In his blood-red vision, things seemed darker, and he wondered if it was a result of him losing so much blood; was he starting to fade? Then, it clicked when he saw that the reavers and vampyrs nearby weren’t smoking and that their wounds were mending before his eyes—his banner had faded. Victor thought about trying to choke down a heart, an arachnid one from Zaafor, perhaps, or—he laughed madly at the idea—the Ridonne heart he’d ripped out not long ago. As his deep, insane laugh rumbled out of his blood-soaked face, some of the reavers in front of him shrank back, triggering more laughter from the titanic berserker.

“What fucking fun!” he roared, and then he forgot about his Energy; he forgot about his Core and his spells, and he began to dance in earnest. He felt Lifedrinker’s joy in battle echoing his own, and the two of them began to move with a new kind of grace and rhythm. He moved with speed and power that was a pile of thermite burning next to the wax candles of the reavers. He wove between them, smooth and easy, ducking hacks and stabs and carrying with him a shard of death and destruction, leaving bloody bits and broken armor in his wake.

As the last of his rage burned up in his pathways, and his vision returned to normal, Victor found himself surrounded by vampyrs that were more massive than he and reavers he could no longer shove aside or fling about, but he didn’t care. His laughter rang out as he continued his dance. In his joy of battle, he almost appreciated the wounds that no longer near-instantly healed. He relished the bloody, painful work of fighting, and he savored each hard-fought victory. Still, the injuries began to mount, his vigor began to fade, and he knew it was nearly his time to join Old Mother on the Spirit Plane.

“Good!” he screamed, proud of his efforts—surely Sarl and his foot soldiers were nearly there. Surely, they’d come in time to mop up this army of reavers and join with the fifth cohort. They’d see what he’d done. They’d tell stories of his last battle. Valla would be sad, but she’d be free. She’d live a great life, and maybe Victor would meet her in the next one. A huge vampyr smashed a spiked mace into his stomach, puncturing his vest with one of its long barbs, and it growled savagely as Victor’s wind was knocked out.

“He fades! Kill him!” it screeched. Of course, those words brought more laughter from Victor; hadn’t they been trying to kill him?

“Come on, you fucking pendejos!” He whirled, rolling his shoulder to the left, jerking the mace from the vampyr’s grip, and then, with the weapon still hanging from his midriff, he continued his bloody dance between a pair of reavers. Lifedrinker took the head from one, and he kicked the other down to the torn, bloody sod. He whirled in a circle, swinging his wonderful axe in a wide arc, and the reavers and vampyrs hung back; they knew he was dying, but they also knew he had what it would take to bring more of them with him. “Come on! You pinché rat fuckers!” he screamed, “Abuela! Ancestors!” Tears sprang into his eyes at the thought of his grandmother among the rest of his ancestors. “I’m coming to you!”

Is your bloody work over? I don’t think so, child of the Quinametzin. I am Chantico, brave son, and I lend you my strength and my fire. Stand tall among these undead fiends. Teach them what it means to corner a titan!