“You murdering bastard! You take one step further and I’ll shoot your eye out. See if I don’t!”

  “You already lost, Ivan. The college and all within are now the property of the Inquisition! Now I will claim the treasures of this school, and your daughter will lead me to what I seek, since my hound has proven herself too weak to claim what is mine... or both of you will be burned as the witches you are!”

  Eric stumbled through the mist, glimpsing a scene of horror.

  Chief inquisitor Hatson was staring at Agda and her father in mocking triumph, holding a doubleshot crossbow in one hand, and a chain leading to the collar around the neck of a stick-thin girl wearing nothing but a dirty linen smock and a steel collar. The poor child, not even twelve, wore the haunted gaze of someone whose life had been reduced to living nightmare.

  By their feet were three crumpled inquisitor knights, looks of horror upon their bone white ancient faces… and one fallen Oliver, taking bubbling gasps of air with the crossbow bolt lodged in his chest.

  Eric’s gaze hardened, seeing that Hatson still had one bolt left… covered in odd sigils with a bolt head of silver.

  And just before the entrance to the maze, staring down Hatson with his a bayoneted rifle he had claimed from somewhere after the Inquisition stole his first, was Ivan with a terrified-looking Agda holding her sobbing child, and half a dozen fully armed and armored glaring knight-inquisitors, surrounding them, all of them with halberds held high and hate in their gazes, looking desperately eager to cut Ivan and family down.

  The psychopath abruptly grabbed the stick-thin waif and held her upright. “So shoot, fool! Waste your bullet on this vermin and my men will cut you down!”

  Agda quailed as the half dozen inquisitors readied to charge.

  “You monster!”

  Hatson laughed. “You lose, girl. Now get me my prize!”

  “I can’t!” Agdelina sobbed. “I told you, the maze is locked to us. Someone else is already daring enigma!”

  “Impossible! You think I don’t know the secrets of this place? You think you can keep the Dragon’s Eye away from me? Men! Take her brat from her and if her fool of a father shoots, the rest of you cut him down!”

  Agda screamed.

  Eric knew he was out of time.

  He squeezed tight the shaft of the polearm he had claimed as he charged forward, before the knights had dared a single unified step forward as a furious, frantic Ivan put the gun on all of them.

  Eric’s silent commands sent his hounds into action even as he raced for his prey while Hatson chuckled coldly and fired his crossbow, sending Ivan crashing to the ground.

  “You did exactly what I knew you would, fool!”

  “Father!”

  Eric howled in silent mental fury as the armsmen raced forward to make a brutal end to this tragic tale.

  It didn’t matter that Agdelina held a the key to unlocking so many mysteries, that if his opponent had had even a shred of decency, he really could have had a bloodless run.

  All that mattered was the burn in his thighs as he and his revenants closed, whipping the axehead of his polearm with all the fury and grace that 23 Strength and hundreds of hours taking on Louie and Drake when not pounding the absolute fuck out of his reinforced lizard hide pew had granted him. Every last ounce of force and fury concentrated on a single devastating strike

  Not for the armored torso of the fanatical inquisitor even now spinning about to reveal the terrified countenance of a girl who already knew she was doomed to die, tossed his way as Hatson struggled to draw his saber...

  Before stumbling over with a cry when Eric’s halberd struck its target with the same focused killing intent that would have scent a certain pel flying, beast hide ruptured.

  Even steel armor would have warped and split, had Eric aimed for the cuirass.

  But Eric’s target was the knees…

  And Lord Hatson was wearing no leg armor at all.

  Eric’s bardiche cleaved through flesh and bone as effortlessly as shattering fine chinaware, his weapon not even jolting as Eric cleaved completely through the patella of one leg and the tibia and fibula of the other before the halberd head slammed into the maze flagstones, the polearm only jolting as stone was cracked and shattered.

  Yet Eric was already springing forward, hands free of weapon as he caught the panicked girl flung at him as a wild-eyed Hatson shrieked in the extremis of sudden, unexpected, and overwhelming agony, gazing down in horrified dismay as his lifeblood spurted from the stumps of his legs.

  “Now!”

  Eric’s silent command was obeyed as a half dozen momentarily flat-footed men found their halberds torn from their surprised grips as Eric’s revenants latched on, tearing them free with their powerful 200 plus pound bodies and within seconds half a dozen inquisitors were stumbling back at the horrific sight of a half dozen fiery-eyed revenants surrounding them as the others brought Eric their prizes.

  Eric glared down at Hatson’s dying form before racing to a groaning Ivan and a shrieking Agda as Agdelina raced close.

  “Eric, you can’t let those things kill the soldiers. It will doom us all!”

  Eric winked at a suddenly pale-faced Agdelina. “Why do you think they’re still alive?” He flashed a hard smile. “Just in case.”

  Agdelina’s eyes filled with desperate panic as Hatson gave a gurgling sigh.

  “Please, my son! Eric you must let me—heaven’s mercy!”

  She froze with a look of awed wonder on her face as Eric’s hand gently touched the crossbow bolt, ignoring the sound of panicked soldiers and growling revenants, circling their prey.

  Ivan gazed up at him with a dazed half-smile, blood trickling down the corner of his lips.

  “Father!” Agda screamed.

  The man met Eric’s gaze. “Thank you for saving my family, Eric. I’m sorry this foolish soldier couldn’t see this—”

  Eric’s eyes grew strangely intent. “Do I have your permission?”

  Ivan blinked at this. “What?”

  “To do whatever needs doing.”

  The man’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “Yes, Eric. Yes, you do. My daughter needs a strong m—god that hurts!” He gasped even as Agda gave a piteous cry before her eyes widened in wonder, clutching her baby close as Eric slowly, carefully, drew out the silver tipped bolt.

  Without a single drop of blood being lost as Eric worked with desperate, feverish intensity to pull a precious life free of the jaws of tragedy. Such that when the crossbow was pulled free, countless sliced vessels were held together with the gentlest of fibrin webs left in its place. The most delicate of patches as Eric plucked free the prize with a tired sigh, before meeting Agdelina’s gaze. “He’s fragile, Grandmother. Very fragile. We’ll need a board or stretcher to move him inside later. But for now, stillness will serve him best, so long as he’s not chilled.

  Congratulations! You continue to surpass the limits of Enigma! Baseline Blood Mastery has improved 1 full rank!

  Agdelina bowed her head. “It will be as you command, honored one.”

  Eric frowned, not bothering to read into those words as he approached a wheezing Oliver, who was giving Eric a bloody smile before slumping over.

  “I’m glad you’re here. If only you had come a few minutes—”

  “Shut up and give me permission to heal you.”

  This earned a bemused blink, but the man gave a tired nod before his eyes rolled up and he collapsed.

  But it was enough. Enough for Eric to pour every last ounce of concentration he had in squeezing shut multiple ruptured vessels after coaxing pooling blood to trickle from interstitial tissues back where it belonged once more.

  He was surprised by the growing weariness he felt as he pushed himself even further, commanding weary lungs now drained of excess fluid to properly inflate, and a doomed man on the brink of death took his first pain-free breath, even as he hovered still upon death’s door.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Oliver gave Eric an awed smile even as a surprisingly dizzy Eric stumbled on his ass.

  “Shit, that took a lot more out of me than I thought it would,” he declared with a shuddering sigh.

  “Eric, you saved them! You saved them both!”

  He blinked in warm bemusement to find Agda’s arms wrapped about him, even as Agdelina tutted on, now carrying her great grandchild.

  “Of course you’re tired, foolish boy. Daring arts beyond any mortal, twice over!” She shook her head and sighed. “And still they’ll both be bedridden for several days, even with my best tinctures.”

  She turned to glare at the half dozen disarmed soldiers glaring Eric’s way with terror and fear. “The question is, what shall we do with them?”

  “Necromancer.”

  “Witch!”

  “You will not get away with this, you monster!”

  Yet Eric’s bitter smile became a look of horror as the air rang with cold laughter.

  Even Agdelina’s eyes widened with horrified dismay. “No. Impossible! Your legs were cleaved off!”

  Eric blinked, heart hammering as he forced himself back to his feet, momentary daze washed away by the icy jolt of seeing Chief Inquisitor Hatson lurching back to his feet.

  Now looking quite different than he had before, grey eyes replaced by eldritch embers, teeth blackened by malice and hate.

  “Did you truly think such a paltry blow would stop me, fool?”

  Eric’s lips curved in a fierce smile as fear turned to furious exhilaration, the last of his transient fatigue washed away as he pricked his thumb upon the blade of the closest bardiche his revenants had placed by his feet and covered it with blood. Twice over. Before the weapon head erupted into flame.

  Eric cocked his halberd in high guard, arms spaced for maximum leverage as he angled his hips to meet the abomination even now unsheathing its saber.

  The young girl Eric had rescued screamed and fainted.

  Even the half dozen Inquisitors were gazing at the sight in wide-eyed horror.

  “Chief Inquisitor! What have you done?”

  “Our lord has fallen. Our order is doomed!”

  Despite the horrified mask worn upon so many features, Eric felt only fiercest joy. “So, the supposed elite Chief Inquisitor is actually undead. I can’t tell you how fucking AWESOME that is to see!” Even as he spoke, the blood flowed from his pricked thumb, splattering against the grass by his feet as he stepped back toward Agda and her family.

  “Silence your blasphemy, Necromancer!” Hatson roared. “I walk the path of righteousness! I posses the cross and the grail! Artifacts assuring that I shall never fall to vermin like you!” Snarling lips curled in a feral grin. “And now I will claim the greatest prize at all. The prize that will open the gate to heaven’s majesty itself and you will be the ones to bring it to me, and you will do so now!”

  Agdelina gasped. “No. Such twisted artifacts… you’re a fool to posses them! Now your soul has been nailed to the ruin of your flesh for eternity! You will never join Enigma now. You will never know eternity!

  Eric blinked, gazing nonplussed at the fanatic horror before him. “This asshole found a pair of artifacts that wards off Enigma… that’s how he made it through the mist. That’s why he needs us to enter the maze. Because he can’t! But what the hell is this prize he seeks?”

  “He seeks the Dragon’s Eye,” Oliver said with a tired grimace. “He thinks it’s hidden in the maze, somewhere. I tried to tell him that its no longer there, if it ever was, but he refuses to listen.”

  “You lie!” Hatson snarled, even as his blade took on a bitter, icy hue. “I know you lie! I was told of your lies, your trickery. I know you have the prize! It was revealed to me by sources that cannot lie!”

  The man glared at the hedge maze. “This tainted gate between worlds, this pustule upon god’s earth was the foul taint where you found it so easy to hide a treasure that should never have been allowed free of the church’s gentle embrace! And it is I that shall reclaim this treasure and hand deliver it to the angels even as I’m risen to join their number!”

  Eric took a measuring breath, before nodding Agdelina’s way. It was time to bring this to a close.

  “Hatson! You wish for the key to unlock the greatest mystery of your life? Then allow me to give it to you!”

  The revenant glared when Agdelina held up the leatherbound journal with the crest so plain upon its surface.

  Hatson’s eyes widened, eldritch flame flaring ice cold as it blinked in surprise.

  “That is my family crest!”

  “It is,” Agdelina declared, before tossing it Eric’s way, her limbs too weak, with two young charges now in her care, to toss it any futher.

  Eric caught it one handed and flipped it to the revenant, his other hand firmly on the grip of his weapon, held in effortless high guard, just in case.

  Hatson glared at Eric with furious hate… before flipping open the journal and reading the passages within.

  The inquisitorial soldiers had grown silent and still, gazing at Eric and their former master both with looks of defeat or horrified dismay, Eric’s revenants not breaking their vigil for even an instant, most especially his largest, grizzly-sized wolf, half hidden in shadow, calmly watching over them all.

  For long moments there were no sounds save for the sharp inhalations of men who had been so recently pushed to the point of exhaustion, a young girl being soothed by Agdelina, and Emily nursing in her mother’s arms.

  A page flipped.

  Hatson’s features had gone deathly pale. “No. Impossible. I would know if I had a daughter. I would know!”

  “You may no longer remember her,” Agdelina caustically noted. “But she clearly knew you and your habits and temper… and the names of your sons. Ernest and George.”

  “Impossible!” The man snarled.

  “And yet they are written right there,” Agdelina insisted.

  Hatson stiffened, trembling hands holding the journal, his gaze one of horror, no matter the fires in the pupils of his doomed gaze.

  Then Eric felt it. The gentle flow of wondrous possibility as cool light emanating from the maze itself.

  He gasped, eyes widening as he took in the gently swirling mist, glittering with the soft light of a starry night sky.

  “Fool! Daring to take your eyes off of me like I was nothing! Fall before me, you wretch!”

  Eric turned to glare at the blustering man. “Shut your trap and look at the maze entrance.”

  The revenant, lich, whatever he truly was, the Enigmatic pressure so great Eric couldn’t be certain, still held himself as the mortal he so recently was. The mortal he still thought of himself as.

  And that man was shaken to the quick to find before him a ghostly beauty with doe-like eyes and silky black hair giving the man who looked so much like her the saddest of smiles.

  Hatson’s eyes widened. He lurched back a single step. “No. Impossible! If you were… her… I’d remember you as more than just a dream!”

  The ghostly girl flinched, then bowed her head. She gave her father a sad, despairing look, before stepping back into the maze.

  Eric sighed. “You wanted to go inside, right? Well I think whatever pressure was blocking you before is gone. Maybe you should go inside. Find whatever it is you truly seek.”

  The inquisitor, however, was gazing at the maze with horror. Already falling to his knees. “It was just a dream. She… and her mother… dreams that haunted me for so long. So very, very long.” He clenched his fists tight with bitterness, glaring Eric’s way. “It’s because of you that things are this way. My wife perished to corruption! My children fighting wars a continent away! The ghost of my wife’s stillborn child haunting my dreams… my nightmares… a whole life dreamed only to torment me. Well, I will not fall!” Hatson’s eyes flared with fanatical zeal. “I will not falter! I will remain true to my grand quest! The Dragon’s Eye will be mine and I will ascend to heaven, my wife restored, my life redeemed!”

  Oliver, still prone, gave a pitying shake of his head. “You won’t find the Dragon’s Eye in the maze, you stupid fool. I don’t know what sad waif or former student you tortured to hear such rumors, but any prizes or artifacts found on academy grounds have already been claimed and brought to our central chapter in Great Britain, decades ago. But maybe you can find peace with your daughter’s ghost. Maybe even your fallen soul can find redemption. But you won’t find either out here. So enter the maze, and claim whatever prizes bring you peace.”

  Hatson glared at the slumped over headmaster for long seconds, the air tight with tension thicker even than the mist… before he took one lurching step forward, then another.

  Not toward Oliver or a tightly wound Eric, nor towards Eric’s charges, so stepped on no carefully laid sigil of blood.

  The dead man’s footsteps instead lead him unerringly to the edge of the hedge maze where the air grew thick and luminescent and for just a glimpse, Eric thought he saw the gently smiling face of a doomed teenage girl once more.

  Then the mist thickened in a swirl that left nothing behind save rustling leaves.

  The inquisitor knights gazed at the sight in dismay. “Lord Hatson’s gone.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he truly fall?”

  “Who knows?”

  “So, what will happen to us?”

  Eric closed his eyes and smiled. Even with his interface highly muted in this time and place, he sensed the completion of something significant and profound.

  He turned to catch Agda’s brilliant, relieved smile, Ivan’s rough, tired nod, and the acknowledgment in Agdelina’s gaze.

  He swallowed, all but tasting the words ‘quest complete’ echoing in his psyche, knowing that a certain prize would soon be his.

  It was a promise in Agda’s eyes.

  A key, and so much more, should he choose to claim the precious heart of a woman brave, beautiful, and true.

  So why was his heart now racing?

  He took a sharp breath, feeling a sudden spike of dread that his wolves immediately sensed, and he couldn’t even say—

  “Stop thief! Stop!”

  The air rang with a desperate shout as the priceless stained glass windows of the collegium erupted in a shower of glass and wildly laughing Contender and Eric froze where he stood. Unable even to move, overwhelmed by a shockingly powerful aura that had Agda crying out, Ivan cursing under his breath as Agdelina crumbled against the trembling waif of a girl they had rescued, little Emily sobbing in her mother’s arms.

  It was all Eric could do not to crumple himself. And the most chilling and horrifying aspect of it all wasn’t the crushing weight upon his psyche… his soul… that he was somehow utterly unprepared for, utterly overwhelmed by, even as his ignored interface screamed messages he didn’t bother scrolling through.

  He already knew the source of the overwhelming pressure.

  Because a wildly grinning Jim was suddenly before him.

  His presence absolutely crushing Eric’s own.

  Moving so fast that he couldn’t even blink before the man was suddenly… there! Gazing at Eric with his brilliant hazel eyes, nostrils flaring, short curly hair covered in glass fragments and blood.

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