The Paladins were not blinded for long. Yet, by the time they regained their vision, the tables had turned drastically against them. Though they had heard Lorian's speech to the army below, they had been far too occupied with their sudden, unnatural blindness to counter his words.
Even so, the situation was far from hopeless for the Council. On the stage, they still held a overwhelming qualitative and quantitative advantage. There were only twenty Throne Guards facing forty elite Paladins- warriors far superior to standard soldiers.
The Veridians knew this all too well.
The Lord has done more than we could have ever asked for, Kaelen thought grimly, catching his breath, He neutralized seven hundred Valorian Guards. Now, it is our turn to prove our worth.
"Throne Guards, hold the line!" Kaelen's voice roared as the Paladins charged, finally shifting their deadly attention away from Selena Stormhold.
Kaelen threw himself directly into the teeth of the vanguard, fighting like a man possessed. He abandoned his usual flawless grace; his style became jagged, brutal, and desperate under the sheer pressure of numbers. His greatsword met the descending blade of a massive Paladin with a sickening, bone-rattling crunch. Sparks showered the air, but before Kaelen could recover his stance, two more Paladins lunged from his flanks. A heavy iron shield slammed into his shoulder, throwing him off balance. Baring his teeth, Kaelen ducked beneath a horizontal slash that tore the helmet clean off his head. Utilizing the raw, vicious instincts he had absorbed from training with Jax, he drove his boot into a Paladin's knee with terrifying force until the joint snapped backward with a loud crack, before ripping his blade upward through another man's throat. Dark, hot blood sprayed across the platform, coating his armor. He was fighting like a beast, but for every Paladin that dropped, two more took their place.
Slowly but surely, the Throne Guards were pushed back, forced into a tight, suffocating circle around Leo and Torin. Their boots repeatedly slipped on the rapidly spreading pools of blood.
On the flanks, the battle devolved into primitive butchery. Jax and Zara fought like literal predators. The Paladins were trained to fight humans or mindless monsters- not humanoid beasts possessing human intellect. Only a few veterans among the Order had any experience fighting Beastmen, and unfortunately for the Council, those men were currently tangled up with Kaelen. Consequently, the knights on the flanks found themselves completely overwhelmed by a pair of cornered predators who had abandoned all civil form.
Yet, bravery could not erase the disparity in numbers. A Paladin managed to pin Zara against a marble pillar, his heavy gauntlet choking the breath from her lungs.
"Jax!" Zara choked out, just as another Paladin's mace narrowly missed her skull, shattering a section of the pillar into flying shrapnel.
Jax kicked the Paladin in front of him squarely in the stomach to disengage. Lunging from the blind spot, he threw his entire weight onto the knight pinning Zara. With a savage, guttural roar, he shoved his claws into the visor-slit of the helm, gouging blindly, before slamming his teeth down into the exposed flesh of the man's neck. The Paladin shrieked, releasing his grip as a torrent of blood erupted from the wound.
Zara dropped to the floor, instantly slicing her daggers through the hamstrings of another advancing knight. As the man collapsed to his knees, Jax seized the rim of his breastplate and brutally slammed his helmeted head against the stone table until the iron cracked and the knight went still.
Despite this brutal display of savagery, the sheer desperation of the Beastmen was evident. Jax was bleeding heavily from a deep gash on his thigh, and Zara was limping, her old wounds tearing open under the strain. Her breathing had turned ragged and shallow, entirely overwhelmed by the relentless momentum of the heavy-armored zealots.
While the Throne Guards fought with steel and precision, and the Beastmen fought with tooth and nail, Baron Torin turned his corner of the stage into a monstrous wrestling ring. He didn't even bother drawing his sword. Standing as a towering mass of pure, dense muscle, the Baron fought like a rabid brawler, treating the elite Paladins like ragdolls. He lunged into the silver-gold ranks, his massive arms wrapping completely around a fully armored knight. With a monstrous roar, Torin hoisted the man straight over his head and violently slammed him across the edge of the stage, snapping his neck instantly. He threw his massive shoulders forward, pushing, thrashing, and bulldozing through anyone in his path. The Paladins had never been trained to handle a pure brawler, making his unorthodox, devastating movements nearly impossible to predict.
Yet, even a monster had his limits. The grueling style of combat was rapidly catching up to him. Every time Torin's bare fists smashed a visor or ripped away a breastplate, he was lifting and crushing nearly three hundred pounds of solid steel and meat. His breath turned into a heavy, burning wheeze, and the thick muscles of his back and forearms began to cramp. As fresh waves of Paladins closed in, Torin's swings grew heavier. His massive frame slowed down just enough for the silver-gold tide to begin pushing him back.
Lorian observed the battlefield closely. If he did not act soon, none of the Veridians would survive the onslaught. He could not match the martial prowess of the knights, but he could use his mind- and, of course, his boons.
Lorian blinked, activating Weak Point Revelation.
Instantly, his vision was flooded with pulsing, razor-thin red lines slicing across the Paladins' heavy full-plate armor- highlighting the gaps beneath the armpits, the narrow seams behind the knees, and the structural joints of the throat-guards. But Lorian knew these were no undisciplined pirates. The Paladins were martial experts. Even in their fury, they maintained flawless poise, keeping their shields high and constantly shifting their weight to cover those tiny vulnerabilities.
The boon was not going to be an automatic cheat code to victory this time; it was a desperate, narrow lifeline just to keep his men from being massacred.
"Kaelen! Left flank, three o'clock!" Lorian roared over the deafening clash of steel. "The brute with the warhammer- his left pauldron is loose! Strike the shoulder rivet when he lifts for a swing! Now!"
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He parried a devastating downward blow, but instead of counter-striking the chest, he trusted Lorian blindly. Shoving his broken shield into the Paladin's face to break his posture for a fraction of a second, Kaelen drove his sword directly into the loose shoulder rivet Lorian had called out. The blade penetrated deep into the flesh, wrenching a death-scream from the giant.
"Jax! Zara! Don't go for the throats, they're baiting you!" Lorian shouted, ducking beneath a sweeping halberd as he dragged a bleeding Throne Guard backward to safety. "The knight in the vanguard- his back-knee piece is cracked! Zara, low sweep from behind! Jax, shatter the helmet when he drops!"
Zara threw herself into a low slide across the blood-soaked marble, her dagger striking exactly where Lorian had instructed and forcing the Paladin to one knee. Before the knight could recover his guard, Jax descended like a rabid animal, slamming his iron-gloved fist directly into the visor-slit with bone-crushing ferocity.
"Hold the circle! Tighten up!" Lorian bellowed, his eyes scanning the entire field, guiding his men second by second. "Under the armpit on the thrust! Behind the elbow on the parry! They are faster than you, but they are heavy! Make every drop of your sweat count, or we die on this plaza!"
It was no longer a standard clash of soldiers; it was a brutal game of inches. Lorian's tactical callouts were the only thing keeping the Throne Guards alive, barely leveling the playing field against a superior, numbers-heavy force of holy executioners who refused to yield.
Seeing the Veridians refuse to crumble under the weight of numbers and martial prowess, the High Paladin pointed a blood-stained hand down at the plaza.
"Soldiers of Valoria!" he shrieked in a panicked frenzy. "What are you doing?! They are butchering your Council! Draw your weapons and purge the stage! Protect the Order!"
Below the stage, hundreds of Valorian city guards clutched their spears. They had received their orders. By all the laws of the city, they were supposed to march up those steps and crush the intruders.
But the guards did not move. Sticking to their newly realized duty, they remained a shield for the citizens, completely ignoring their Paladin superior.
The High Paladin stared down at the stagnant troops in disbelief, shaking his head in sheer frustration. Left entirely to their own devices, the disappointed and enraged Paladins grew rabid. The fight on the stage became a frantic, closed-circle slaughterhouse. The white marble floor turned entirely crimson, slick with pools of blood and severed flesh. The heavy clanking of iron armor mixed with the desperate, final gasps of dying men. Kaelen was losing ground, his movements slowing from absolute exhaustion, his shield battered to pieces. Locked against the stone table, Jax and Zara stood with their chests heaving, completely surrounded by a closing ring of silver-gold steel.