Kalas’ eye was screaming in pain now that his brain had finally begun to process what was wrong. The man was a hazy mess. Kalas felt completely disoriented, his senses sending conflicting information to a brain already struggling to understand that half his visual field had just ceased to exist. Depth perception? Gone. Peripheral awareness on his left side? Nonexistent.

  Blood kept pouring down his face, getting into his mouth, where it tasted of copper and failure before splattering onto the ground, mixing with the mud. His vision—or at least what remained of it—kept trying to compensate, his right eye darting frantically to cover angles his left eye should have handled as he waited for Lysandra to make her move.

  Because he knew she was going to make it, and she was going to make it soon.

  As Kalas felt his head start to swim with a wave of nausea, it was clear this horrid woman was toying with him. She was missing an eye herself, but Lysandra had already adapted to her new reality, unlike him. His head swam with a wave of nausea so intense that Kalas thought he might vomit. The destroyed eye socket sent fresh lances of agony through his skull with every heartbeat, every breath, every tiny movement of his facial muscles.

  Kalas's hand gripped his newly found bardiche’s elvenwood shaft in an iron grip and stabbed downward, planting the weapon in the mud to steel himself with a strength born purely of desperation. A deep breath left his mouth as the world slowly stopped spinning. Luckily, Lysandra simply stood there, that damned sword pointed at him, as if she were waiting for Kalas to get his shit together.

  After a minute or two, Kalas finally started backing up, putting some distance between himself and that glowing sword. He knew just how dangerous that thing could be if she got too close, and luckily, Kalas had something that could keep her away.

  While Kalas moved, several of those blackened soldiers shifted with him, their weapons coming up slightly, tracking his movement. A few started backing up as well, maintaining their perimeter distance, clearly not wanting to get caught up in whatever was about to go down, but they were more than content to just sit back and watch.

  Kalas could not help but curse their discipline. They never left an opening or strayed close enough to be taken hostage, but Kalas could see that beneath those masks and gear, they were curious. They wanted to see how this would play out. They wanted to watch Lysandra carve Kalas up.

  Another step back. His boot caught on something—a root, a rock, debris from the compound—and he nearly went down again, catching himself at the last second with the bardiche. His remaining eye tried to focus on Lysandra, but the glowing sword kept casting afterimages across his vision, purple spots that made it hard to tell where she actually was from where his damaged brain thought she was.

  A growl built in his chest—part pain, part fury. Kalas knew he was a dead man walking. If Lysandra didn’t run him through, these demons were going to put him down like a dog, but he refused to die on his knees in the mud like some common criminal. He shook his head violently to clear the disorientation, then immediately regretted it as fresh waves of agony radiated from his ruined socket, and blood sprayed in an arc, mixing with the rain.

  But the pain sharpened his awareness. It brought back every sense and focused it into a deadly point, and he was going to need every bit of lucidity if he were going to take Lysandra into the grave with him.

  Yanking the bardiche from the mud, Kalas finally felt the weight of the polearm for the first time since he'd grabbed it. The weapon was a Northern design—barbaric by Imperial or Holy Dominion standards, yet brutally effective.

  The damn thing was brutal. Basically a cross between a glaive and a poleaxe, with a crescent-shaped blade so absurdly oversized it looked like someone had forged it to both hack and stab. The forward-curving cutting edge swept nearly two and a half feet from base to tip, the inner edge honed to a razor while the outer spine was perforated with a line of circular holes to reduce weight.

  Conventional wisdom had one believing that putting holes in a weapon like this would severely compromise its structural integrity, but Kalas knew better. The Northern savages knew their stuff, and the damn thing was faster than sin when it cut through the air. Made of Mithril and loaded with an ungodly amount of Northern Runes, any swing that landed with full force would cleave through any armor.

  And luckily, though he didn’t quite make it into their ranks, Kalas had been trained as a Crusader. A holy warrior of the Holy Dominion. Before his fall, before the betrayal, before everything went to shit, Kalas had trained with polearms for years. Halberds, glaives, partisan spears, poleaxes—they all felt like extensions of his limbs once you understood the principles. The weight distribution, the leverage points, the way momentum could be controlled and redirected… This weapon felt like home, even with its strange blade type.

  Kalas gripped it tightly with both hands, one near the base for control, the other higher up, in the middle of its length, for leverage. Then he closed his remaining eye and reached for the arcane within himself—that pool of power every practitioner carried, the well paladins drew from to enhance their combat abilities.

  The bardiche responded immediately.

  The North script etched along the weapon's length began to vibrate and hum with a strange power, casting a bluish-gray light that matched the weapon's strange metal. A low, resonant tone you felt in your bones more than heard with your ears made the air around the blade distort, rippling like heat haze in summer, except this was cold.

  The rain hitting the weapon's edge seemed to bounce off in strange directions as droplets scattered at impossible angles. The atmosphere itself was disturbed by whatever power the runes channeled, creating a sphere of warped space that extended perhaps six inches from the blade's surface.

  Knowing he had managed to snatch a real weapon was a boost of confidence Kalas desperately needed, but it was still a far cry from his father's holy longsword. Across from him, Lysandra kept the thing pointed directly at his chest, yet the weapon in her hands was doing something equally unnatural.

  Something he’d never seen it do before

  The white metal had shifted from glowing to shimmering in waves. It was as if afterimages of the thing were pulsing outward, struggling to get free in a way that made Kalas's remaining eye water and his brain hurt. His depth perception was already fucked from losing an eye, but it became even more unreliable as the sword's strange visage cast false shadows with its phantasmal dance.

  This was bad. Kalas knew—knew with the certainty of someone who'd fought alongside Lysandra when she was a retainer for his father—that the woman in front of him was a nightmare in battle. Whether in single combat or a full melee, Lysandra had always been good. Better than good. She'd been his father’s. Lord Ithyca’s, right hand for a reason, and that wasn't just politics or favoritism. The elf could kill you with a dozen different weapons, in a dozen different ways, and make it look easy.

  And not only did she have that sword, but she was making it do things he’d never seen before. The blade that had been forged by literal angels before being bestowed upon his father when he became a Paladin. The weapon that had killed Wyrms, enemy champions, demons, and, more importantly, devils, as if wheat before a scythe.

  In a clean fight, Kalas was screwed. He knew it. She knew it. Everyone watching knew it.

  But Kalas had never been a clean fighter. Honor? Chivalry? Fair combat? Those were luxuries for those with the upper hand. He'd learned a long time ago that when you were outmatched, you used every dirty trick in the book, took every advantage, and unashamedly abused every underhanded tactic you could.

  His left hand shifted slightly on the bardiche's shaft, twitching toward something tucked into his belt beneath his rain-soaked tunic. Tucked away and concealed was something blasphemous, handed to him by something more foul than a Devil. The wand. The Wiced, he'd called it privately, though he'd never spoken the name aloud because even thinking about where it came from made his skin crawl.

  A creation by that godforsaken witch Verra, a necromancer who'd crossed more lines than existed and even violated boundaries set by the Unseelie Court. She used flesh proxies—constructs made from harvested body parts, animated by methods that violated nature and, more importantly, every protocol the Court of Death had established over untold millennia.

  The things that vile apostate created were abominations that shouldn't exist even by necromantic standards. And her reanimated dead... those weren't the clean, purposeful resurrections the Unseelie permitted. They were wrong in ways that made experienced combat veterans refuse to fight them, opting for execution rather than face what she conjured.

  The Unseelie themselves were the Keepers of Death, Fae who held dominion over necromancy and all things related to the end of mortality. They had rules. Strict ones. Procedures for how their magic was to be used and contracts that bound practitioners to specific limitations. The dead could be raised, yes, but only under certain conditions, for certain purposes, and only in ways that maintained the fundamental balance between life and death.

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  But Verra's work didn't follow those rules. Either she'd broken the terms of her Unseelie contract—which should have brought consequences so severe that death would have seemed merciful—or she'd made deals with something else entirely. Something outside the Courts and beyond mortal understanding. Vile aberrations from the spaces between realms, entities that predated the Fae themselves and cared nothing for balance or order.

  And the wand Verra cursed and gave him as payment for... services rendered. The damn thing, however, had been far too unpredictable for Kalas to use. He was afraid to cross that line and unleash whatever was in this horrid thing. The magic it channeled didn't feel like it came from any recognizable source. It felt hungry.

  But Kalas didn't really have a choice now, nor did he get another moment to think about it as Lysandra decided she was done waiting and moved.

  She closed the distance in the blink of an eye and thrust forward with his father's sword. The movement was textbook dueling form, the kind of precise, economical strike you'd use with a side-sword or rapier, driving the point toward his center mass with pure speed.

  But something was wrong.

  The world slowed as Kalas's life flashed before his eyes. Every sense and instinct screamed at him to parry a sword that was far too far away to strike him, while his fingers were still moving toward the wand. For some reason, Kalas felt that gripping that cold, malevolent artifact would be his last act, even though Lysandra wasn't moving forward anymore.

  She was still in her thrusting position, arm extended, but Kalas realized she hadn't closed the distance at all. Lysandra was exactly where she'd been standing before. The movement had been several phantom projections of the swords moving along her form as she thrust, forming a crown of blades above her head.

  Kalas remaining eye went wide as he realized what he was seeing.

  The sword had thrust forward, yes, but not the actual sword. Instead, an image of the sword—light shaped into the blade's form—extended from where the physical weapon remained, and the glowing projection came straight at his chest.

  Instinct took over. Kalas twisted the bardiche just in the nick of time, placing the flat of the massive blade against his chest to intercept the attack.

  The sound that erupted was apocalyptic. It was as if Kalas was young again, running around the massive Bells that adored the tops of the grand cathedrals scattered around the Holy dominion. However, it was as if he was inside that very massive bell when it rang and the sound was of physics breaking down as divine power clashed with magic in ways that shouldn't happen. A metallic clang amplified a thousand times, mixed with the screech of tearing reality, underscored by a bass note that made the ground shake and the rain momentarily reverse direction.

  Kalas went flying.

  Not pushed. Not knocked back. The force of the attack lifted Kalas off his feet and launched him horizontally, shooting backward through the air as if hit by an explosion. The world spun as sky, mud, lights, and darkness blurred together as he tumbled through space.

  Operators scrambled, diving out of the way as a full-grown man moving at a velocity that would break bones, threatened to crash into them. One was nearly clipped by Kalas's boots, and another almost had his head taken off by the still-humming bardiche as he threw himself flat into the mud to avoid being hit.

  Kalas's back slammed into the wooden wall of one of the prefab shed cabins with enough force to make the thing explode, and he slammed into a solidly built log cabin. What little air remained in his lungs shot out through his teeth. He crumpled, landing in a heap in the mud, but Lysandra wasn't giving him breathing room.

  The woman was already moving, closing the distance with inhuman speed, bringing the sword around in a horizontal swipe aimed at where his neck would be when he tried to stand. And there it was again—that extended flash. The projection of the blade traveled through space as Kalas was getting to his feet.

  Light carved through the rain in a horizontal arc as Kalas brought the bardiche up desperately. The weapon's runes pulsed painfully, screaming with power and exertion as the projection struck the enchanted blade.

  CLANG.

  Another reality-breaking sound resounded as another impossible impact was absorbed. However, the bardiche wasn’t the only thing the projection hit. The cabin wall behind Kalas—thick logs stacked horizontally—split in a clean cut, as if a hot knife had sliced through butter. The logs then blew apart as the force of the magical collision created a shockwave that propagated through solid wood before the sword completed its arc.

  Kalas felt his bones nearly fracture under the pressure of the parry, but he didn't have time to process it because Lysandra was already swinging again.

  The first swipe was followed by another in the opposite direction as the projection flashed through his vision. He twisted his body to angle the bardiche toward it. His arms couldn’t take another vicious hit, so Kalas angled the bardiche to redirect the blow rather than block it head-on. When the weapons connected, he was met with another ear-splitting crash, but the blade of light was directed upward, cleaving the logs and roof in half. Still, the force sent Kalas tumbling sideways, rolling through mud and debris as more operators scattered to avoid being caught in the magical maelstrom.

  He came up, struggling to get to hands and knees while using the bardiche as a crutch. Kalas had to get up. If he didn’t get to his feet and his weapon ready, he was dead. Blood poured from his destroyed eye socket, and his entire left side felt as if it had been hit by a wyvern, but at least he was still alive. The bardiche in his hands was still humming and vibrating with power, but it wasn’t resonant anymore.

  Instead, the weapon was screaming in agony if such a thing could feel it. The magic enchantment was maxed out, letting out a shrill, desperate warning. The runes along its length were pulsating so fast they were almost strobing, creating a flickering, grayish light that suggested the weapon was nearing whatever threshold its enchantments could handle.

  Lysandra huffed in pure, malicious indignation. She kept her distance at a good two dozen meters, yet kept walking around him like a Worg circling its wounded prey. Lysandra wasn’t rushing. No, she was taking her sweet, leisurely time, walking with the confidence of someone who knew this was already over.

  The sword was lowered at her side, but it bounced playfully while the white blade still radiated that eye-watering light. It was still creating projections and afterimages as if trying to escape that made it impossible to tell where the actual weapon was.

  "Pathetic," she said in their tongue, her voice cutting through the rain. "Get up, you disgusting parasite."

  Kalas tried. His legs shook and his vision swam, but his body, along with the bardiche, felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

  But he got one foot under him before pulling himself up with the other. With the screaming weapon in his hand, Kalas was determined not to die on his knees, groveling like a dog.

  Especially to that woman.

  Seeing how much he was struggling, a mock smile graced Lysandra’s face, but beneath it was the look of pure, undiluted disdain as she came to a stop. She stood there for a few minutes and gave Kalas the kind of look you'd give something you found rotting in a gutter. Something beneath notice, beneath consideration. To her, Kalas was a piece of filth that needed to be removed expeditiously.

  The shock of what she made that blade do left Kalas’ mind reeling in ways he couldn’t comprehend. Had his father always been capable of… this? As a million thoughts rushed through his mind, what made his blood run even colder than it already was wasn't the incredible, phantasimal blow he’d just taken… no, it was what was floating just above her head.

  While the sword remained in her hand, more sword projections followed her. Three ethereal blades—identical copies rendered in pure radiance—floated majestically behind Lysandra's head in a triangular formation, hovering like a crown. Each was angled slightly differently, denoting a different type of sword, yet all pointed outward, creating a corona of deadly light that framed her face regally.

  Kalas had carried that sword for decades. Had wielded it. Had used it to kill. And he'd never—never—seen it do this.

  Lysandra huffed again before she spat into the mud with deliberate contempt. "What?" she sneered, her voice dripping with mock surprise. "You're surprised the blessed blade can do this?" Her singular eye tracked to his face, reading every expression of confusion and dawning horror. "Did you truly not know what you had, little knave?"

  That title—knave—hit like a slap. A reminder that he was lower than a commoner, part of the bottom rung. A failure who couldn’t just pass the trials, but someone who disgraced himself in the process, was deemed unworthy and subsequently exiled.

  Kalas's teeth ground together hard enough to hurt, his jaw clenching so tight he thought his molars might crack. He got his other foot fully under him, using the screaming bardiche to lever himself upright even though every part of his body was telling him to lie down and die.

  Lysandra's sneer widened into something cruel and mocking. "Tell me, knave. How—how—could you ever have called yourself a man of God? How could a wretch like you even be considered being a crusader?" She gestured at the sword, at the crown of floating blades behind her. "And not understand what you possessed? Not comprehend what this weapon truly was?"

  She took another step forward, and her voice dropped into something quieter but infinitely more cutting. "Did you even know who your father was? Were you that deaf, dumb and blind?"

  Kalas opened his mouth to respond, to snarl something back, but Lysandra cut him off by raising one hand to her mouth in an exaggerated gesture of mock surprise.

  "Oh!" she said, her eye widening theatrically. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I misspoke." The hand dropped, and her smile turned vicious. "I meant to say: a former fledgling."

  Fledgling. Not even a full Knight, let alone a Crusader. Someone who'd barely begun their training.

  "BE QUIET, WHORE!" Kalas barked, his voice raw with rage and pain. "What do you know about the Order?! What do you know about—"

  "I know," Lysandra interrupted, her voice suddenly cold as winter ice, "that you backstabbed a man who was nearing sainthood."

  The words hung in the air between them, sharp and cutting.

  "A man who had offered himself completely to his faith, to righteousness, to a path of service and sacrifice you couldn't even begin to fathom." Her sneer became something savage, something that showed teeth. "Lord Ithyca Morvayne, Paladin of the Holy Dominon, bestowed this blade by the Sacristans, candidate for canonization by the Servant of the God themselves."

  She kicked off the ground, her boots launching her forward with supernatural speed, and her free hand thrust out as if throwing something invisible.

  One of the floating ethereal blades shot forward like a missile.