Rivers of blood would have to flow. The Empire no longer asked that of its soldiers; it commanded. And Borus, whose world had narrowed to the arc of his sword and the spray of ichor, obeyed with a kind of brutal joy. He became a curtain of steel; a whirling dervish of death shrouded in a fine mist of gore. The empire had demanded its lands to thirst for enemy blood, and Borus sought to quench it, a grim smile plastered across his face.
Suddenly, a sense of wrongness lanced through his skull—a psychic migraine blooming behind his left eye. Instinct took over. He ducked, his shield snapping down as his eyes scanned the chaos.
Swoosh.
The air beside his head vibrated. Borus could have sworn on his mother's grave that he felt his very ear tremble. Before him, the earth shuddered and coalesced, a hulking Earth Golem ripping itself from the soil. But before its form could fully settle, it crumbled apart like a sandcastle, revealing a Minion lunging from within the collapsing rock. The creature's swing at him was clumsy, pathetic. Borus almost pitied it—until a sharp whistle from his right made him duck again.
"You were not supposed to be fast." The voice was unexpectedly smooth, a river stone worn by time. It was the golem, or the Mage within it. It giggled, and the sound was a nightmare as its face grinded into a horrifying semblance of a smile. The grinding of rock on rock set his teeth on edge.
"I am a Swordsman," Borus retorted, his voice steady. "What else can I be?"
"You can be dead..." it crooned. It blew him a kiss, performed a mocking curtsy, and then hurled its massive stone fist at his face with blinding speed.
Borus let his sword fall, his hand already closing on the hilt of his dagger—blessed be the Baron's Arcanists. He dropped his center of gravity, letting the world narrow to the incoming punch. At the last possible second, he wrenched his neck to the left, adjusted his grip, and thrust the dagger forward not at stone, but into the gaps between. He felt the satisfying slip as it found softness within. Flesh.
He pressed a ring on his finger, activated the enchantments on the knife, and allowed himself a savage grin. A protective barrier flickered blue in front of him just as, inside the Mage's body, shards of ice crystallized around the dagger's tip before exploding outward, shredding organs at a terrifying velocity.
The Golem detonated in a spray of rock and gore, a foul rain tainting the air.
A Battlemage had been slain by a Swordsman, and she would only be the first of many to follow.
As if in answer, a sharp pillar of golden flame erupted into the sky, announcing the brutal entry of the Baron's own Battlemages.
The hunters had just become the prey.
"Swordsmen, spread out!" his captain's voice boomed across the field. "Scour this land and root out these traitors! Do not fear their traps. Our Battlemages are your eyes and your shield! Be brave, boys! The land is thirsty! Satiate its thirst!"
The City Guard now added their own cry for vengeance, demanding their pound of flesh. Borus felt a grim elation. Picking up his sword, he activated a rune on the hilt. For a moment, nothing happened. Then he took a step—and reality blurred. He reappeared directly behind an enemy Minion, his dagger already plunging into its back. Another step, another teleport, another kill. To the panicked Minions, Borus was no longer a man; he was Death itself, and the battlefield was a paradise through which he walked unopposed.
"You annoy me." A new voice, laced with malice, hissed directly into his mind. Borus could not have cared less. Taking another step, nothing. The teleportation fizzled.
"I have commanded the elements not to listen to your pathetic Commands. How about you, uh, speak the Primal Tongue?" The voice continued. "You kill one of us, and what do you do? You cherish and rejoice in her death! You thump your chest with pride."
Borus gasped, but the air around him had turned to solid glass. No matter how he strained, his lungs found no purchase. A terrifying pressure built in his chest as the blood in his veins simply… stopped. He watched, disbelieving, as his own body betrayed him. His nerves screamed with a prickling fire, the dual agony of suffocation and stagnation. Within minutes, his world dissolved into a static haze as his heart stuttered and failed. A cardiac arrest.
But that was the moment the "watching" Battlemage finally intervened, a streak of incandescent power slamming into the enemy Mage who was crushing Borus's life. Borus had not even noticed where the enemy Battlemage had been.
"Runner!" shouted Torrin, one of Borus's drinking buddies, his voice tight with panic. "A bad one! Fetch a Biomancer, now!"
Torrin tore off his helmet for a single heartbeat, his eyes sweeping over Borus's prone, twitching form. He slammed it back on, falling into a protective stance over his friend. The circle of enemies who had gathered to finish Borus off was still there, and Torrin began to swing his sword in wide, devastating arcs, determined to thin their numbers.
Yet, a cold panic began to gnaw at him. What if another enemy Mage decides to try their hand? A tremor ran through his sword arm, but he forced it to steady. He was a Swordsman of Aethergard, the gateway to the Iron Valleys. The Baron had spared no expense in their forging, contracting the finest Arcanists and Biomancers to build his cohort. They were the best.
Where is this Biomancer? The tremor returned, quelled only by a surge of rage. Torrin gripped his sword tighter, his movements becoming more fluid, his eyes straining with hyper-focused vigilance, and his swings brutally efficient. His eyes strained, his world narrowing to the dance of parry and strike. He killed until the bodies formed a grisly, circular wall around him. He made sure that anyone who tried to cross that wall became a permanent part of it.
Finally, a medium-built man, radiating a scholarly air despite his leather armor, rushed to Borus's side. By all rights, Borus should have been long dead. Yet, a faint, stubborn spark of life remained.
"How long?" the Biomancer asked, his voice clipped and professional.
"Like five"
"He's a Swordsman?"
"Yep!" Torrin grunted, nodding for emphasis between swings. Borus loved being a Swordsman. To lose that, to lose the life he cherished, even if he survived… the thought was a different kind of death.
The Biomancer shook his head, his eyes analyzing the catastrophic damage. Being a Swordsman had given Borus a supernatural resilience, expanding the pool of possible treatments, but the damage was profound. I can jump-start his heart, but I cannot restore what is lost. Why can monsters like Hamus raise the dead, yet I cannot fully mend a single organ?
Steeling himself, the Biomancer began his work. His fingers flicked intricate sigils in the air as he intoned the Words of Assertion. The philosophy was simple, yet profound: no matter the injury, the body always strives to heal. Sometimes, the gap is too wide, or you just bleed out before the process can begin. Still, the body always tries. The sigils and the Words of Assertion he spoke provided the raw energy and sustenance, acting as a catalyst to accelerate nature's work a million-fold.
Torrin watched as a wave of relief washed over Borus's contorted features a second before the man went completely limp, unconscious but stable. The Biomancer had chanted for a solid fifteen minutes. Throughout it all, Torrin, his panic hardening into lethal focus, had become a deadlier machine. The circle of bodies had not expanded outward, but it had grown significantly taller.
The Biomancer drew two coins, flicked sigils over them, and whispered Words in the Primal Tongue. He tucked one inside Borus's armor and tossed the other into the air, where it vanished in a streak of light.
"A stretcher is coming," he stated flatly. Without another word, he knocked down a section of the gruesome wall, his eyes already scanning for his next patient before he sprinted away.
A profound sense of patriotism washed over Torrin. For all its flaws, the Empire had crafted the finest military machine in the world, and he was a cog within it. He had just witnessed its ultimate benefit: the unyielding power of a reliable organization.