The point of the golden lance passed over Kay as he ducked under it and rolled away from the reptilian beast Glowl was riding. The Blood Guard attacked while Glowl focused on Kay, a range of melee, ranged, and magical attacks lashed out at Nelam’s king. Most of the attacks bounced off his heavy armor, but a few of them elicited a response from the king. His gauntlets expanded, forming massive plates. One deflected a heavy axe that grew in size as it started coming down, and the other caught a burst of magic that resembled a pulse of ripples that caused the gold plate to shake rapidly.

Glowl shook out his hand as his head panned, looking around at the Blood Guard. “I don’t think I want an audience for this one. Go away, all of you.” The tone of the air spinning about them inside the golden storm changed, and giant hands began reaching out and grabbing Kay’s detail. Kay’s guards were dragged out into the storm one by one by the golden hands on the ends of featureless shining arms. Glowl just stared down at Kay from on top of his mount while multiple fortunes worth of gold separated Kay from the people who were supposed to be protecting him. “Now to deal with you,” Glowl sneered, and the beast charged again.

The golden lance became a broadsword and slashed down several times at Kay, who ducked and weaved to avoid it. Glowl’s mount snapped at him with its sharp teeth and clawed at him while Glowl attacked, the pair obviously having worked together for a long time. Kay was at a disadvantage with Glowl having a mobile high ground against him, but Kay didn’t have any experience with mounted combat, so even if he made himself something to ride on, it wouldn’t change much. Three figures in blood-red armor charged back through the storm, and Glowl turned to look at them as more arms emerged from the goldstorm to grasp at them. Kay took advantage of the distraction and started creating simulacra to change the numbers game of the fight. The storm of gold dust spinning rapidly around them began to thicken after Glowl once again removed the Blood Guard, and the dust began to combine into larger shapes. Massive sheets pushed out of the storm to form circulating walls that interposed themselves between the fight and anyone trying to join in. When Glowl turned back to Kay after making the changes, he found several identical figures charging at him.

“Ha! Your little blood golems are a fun trick, but they aren’t going to stop me!” Glowl crowed. He battered aside each attack with his heavy weapon, transforming it from a hammer to an axe to a sword and back while he beat off the attackers.

Kay stood some distance away, more and more blood flowing out of him into his armor, then up his arm and into his hands. A ball of blood shrunk smaller and smaller, compressing together into the size of a marble. Under just the laws of physics, compressing a liquid took an insane amount of pressure, which made it unfeasible to attempt. With magic in play, it became much easier, although Kay still needed the distraction of his simulacra to make time to complete it.

Glowl saw Kay charging a powerful attack and scoffed. He flung out his arm, and his incredibly thick gauntlet detached from his armor and flew at Kay like a rocket punch. It avoided the simulacra that threw themselves at it to stop it and aimed itself at Kay, flying at high speeds at his head. At the last second, a streamer of blood wrapped around Kay, looking like a giant water slide, which redirected the flying fist up into the air. At the top of the stream, the blood gathered around the gauntlet and began solidifying. Moments later, a red sphere dropped onto the ground and rolled to a stop.

With another scoff, as he pulped simulacra with a brutal upswing with his hammer, Glowl nudged his mount with one foot and started slowly moving toward Kay. “I thought you’d have to waste whatever that is to deal with my fist.” He held out his bare hand, and his armor began growing over it, forming another gauntlet in a few seconds. “It’s interesting to fight another manipulator with an unusual material. I usually only run into the common ones, like earth or fire. They’re simple to deal with because they all do the same things. They didn’t have to work to figure out what could be done or what was an option because they had the experience of those who came before them to draw on. People like us with rare Classes, we have to think for ourselves and figure things out. We don’t slow down when we hit the edge of what others have learned for us because we never had anything like that to rely on in the first place.”

Kay just stared back at him, continuing to compress the blood between his hands while he let the other man speak.

“Blood is an interesting one. I bet you have all kinds of tricks that a water manipulator couldn’t even dream of pulling off. But blood is nothing before gold.” He spread his arms out above his head, showing off the gleaming metal covering him and his reptilian riding beast. “Gold is the only metal that doesn’t tarnish. Gold is the basis of value. Everyone wants gold, even the dragons. It is the purest, most powerful metal there is. And I am its king.”

Kay rolled his eyes behind his helmet. They’d already figured out that at least one of Glowl’s Classes had some kind of perception element to it. Not how he perceived things but how he was perceived. Classes like Bully or Tyrant got bonuses based on people believing that the Class holder acted like that, and Amanda’s contacts in the abolitionist groups had discovered information they’d stolen from a Nelamian noble that confirmed that Glowl had a Class like that. If people fighting him thought of him as “above” them, as in better than, more powerful than, or having some authority over them, not physically above them, then he gained in strength, and the people fighting him got weaker. Monologuing about how awesome gold was and how cool he was for being in control of all the gold was just a psychological attack that wasn’t going to do shit to Kay. He didn’t want to rehash an old cliche, but the king of Nelam was just talking too much.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You’re little fiefdom could have remained up here in peace until I was ready to bring this area under my control, but those silly little fools who think they can take Nelam’s property and run away with it thought it would be a good idea to hide in your city, so you have to go.’ Glowl punctuated his statement by creating a series of spears out of the gold of his mount’s armor and throwing them at Kay.

The volley landed all around Kay as his simulacra jumped forward to block them, the spear points slamming into the ground and sticking.

“Your people would have been safe from me if those thieves hadn’t decided to drag your city into this, so please blame all of them in the afterlife.” Glowl’s lips pulled back against his teeth as he stared at Kay. “But you? You’ve been on my list for years. I was always going to come for you. You had the audacity to take my dragon!” Glowl and his mount launched themselves forward with a burst of speed, trampling over the simulacra between them and Kay. The armor around each of them extended into blades and serrated teeth that tore up anything that got too close. Glowl raised his weapon high in both hands, the head of it shifting into the form of an executioner’s axe. “Take your punishment for going against the King of Gold!”

Kay unleashed his stored attack; hundreds of streams of compressed, pressurized blood lashed out all at once like lines under pressure that had just been cut. The almost uncontrollable streams cut deep into the ground as they stretched out toward Glowl, creating a storm of slashing, cutting blades of high-pressure liquid that could cut through any metal or flesh. As they slammed into Glowl and his beast, it was as if thousands of invisible blades began slicing into him and the lizard, leaving deep gashes all over both of them. The golden armor began to crack and fracture as deep gashes were cut into each piece, revealing bare skin that was cut and abraded just as easily. Both Glowl and his lizard were covered in injuries in the space of a second, and another second passed before the riding beast collapsed to the ground, dead. The thin armor over its head had been worn completely away, and its skull was left lying in the dirt, cracked all over, with the flesh torn completely away.

Glowl slowly rose from the corpse of his mount, panting and groaning in pain and exhaustion. His body had fewer wounds than the animal’s body, as he’d pulled the armor off his mount to save himself. “Is that all you’ve got?” He asked while his armor slowly regrew. “It’ll take more than that to kill me!” He swung out with his cracked weapon, the pole extending out into a thin line of gold that held a battered and broken axe head at the end. Two arms came up to block, greaves growing into wide shields to block, but the gold twisted into a spiraling point that passed through the two shields and pierced directly through the blood-red helmet.

The golden weapon pulled back to Glowl, who smiled triumphantly. “Now then-“ He froze, the words in his mouth dying to nothing as he stared forward. The body in front of him melted into a pool of blood, leaving only empty air behind.

“Sorry about that,” Kay’s voice called from behind him, “That was all he had.”

Glowl spun about to find a completely fresh Kay standing behind him at the edge of the goldstorm.

“He was only a simulacrum, you see; they’ve only got a fraction of my actual Skills.” Kay slowly looked Glowl up and down, taking in his injured form. “King of Gold, huh? That’s a bit of a lofty title for you to give yourself. And all that talk about gold being a better material than blood? Please.” Kay turned his back on Glowl, adding insult to injury while he returned the original psychological attack back to him. “I don’t really care about the value part or people coveting it; that’s not important. What is important is that your material is limited. You have to dig gold up, refine it, melt it into shape. This storm you have here represents decades of work.” Kay raised both arms, and a red tide began to rise within and around the storm of gold flakes, stilling their movement. The walls made to keep Kay’s allies stopped as they were wrapped up and held in place as a sea’s worth of blood that Kay had called from within his body while Glowl fought simulacra rose up and consumed the goldstorm. “My body makes blood. I don’t have to mine it or do any real work for it other than staying alive. It’s always inside me, so I’ll never run out.” He looked over his shoulder at Glowl. “I wonder what will happen to you once I’m done taking all your gold away?” The dam was released, and millions of gallons of blood rushed in.

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Edric Ravenhome swore as he dodged around yet another corner, narrowly avoiding a passing patrol of guards moving through Avalon’s streets. The army made out of blood appearing on the battlefield was a distraction to everyone, including Avalon’s defenders, and it was easy to slip over the wall and into the city while the defenders gaped at the sight. Edric hadn’t planned on invading the city, but some of his people had slipped through early on, and he wasn’t going to let them charge in alone. His head was racing with doubts after listening to the Crusader Generals' reasons to ask for a parley, and he’d settled them down by focusing on the moments ahead and the negotiations that were going to occur. But everything went wrong when someone attacked Stonegnawer, and now he had to make a decision.

He had to figure out if he believed that his daughter might still be alive or if the impossible hadn’t happened, and there was now a monster running around looking like his daughter, a monster that needed to die. He had to figure it out before it was too late, and he had to catch up to his subordinates before they made his decision unnecessary. The note they’d left behind had told him their objective, to take out what was left of Alice so that he, as her father, didn’t have to deal with that burden and didn’t have to look his wife or other daughter in the eyes and tell them he’d killed Alice. But the hunting team was significantly ahead of him, and he didn’t have much time to decide.

Decide if he was stopping his subordinates or helping them.