Leonidas smiled in satisfaction when the assassins leaped out of the windows, and his right hand extended to his side—wrapping the lurking Haelfar that had remained inside near the door in bands of [Psionic Force], and ripping them into the open through the entrance to 17 by knocking the door outward off of its hinges.

  The elf was dropped, groaning in a feminine tone, into the grass a moment later.

  At the same time, Leonidas looked among the four assassins populating the manicured lawn in front of number 17, then toward the other five male and female Haelfenn who came running toward the commotion from various nearby vantages, choosing numbers over stealth.

  “{Ten of you, hm? A full Dagger. Interesting.}”

  “{Nine, now, but still enough, Terran,}” the leader of the group said grimly, while glancing at the Psi-wrenched form in the grass.

  “{Tell me,}” Leonidas said while he counted down in his head toward his armor’s summoning, his stance spread and right hand idling at his side, awaiting his sword’s manifestation. “{Have any of you ever heard of the term—}” his armor and sword materialized in a flash-spark of red and purple lightning, bleeding aetheric energy as they manifested over his body—helmet on—and into his now-armored right hand respectively “{—’Suicide by Archon’?}”

  The Haelfenn hesitated at his words, and Leonidas planted his blade in the grass calmly when silence greeted his words.

  “{No? Then let me explain how this will transpire: anyone who attacks me will die, or wish they had died. That is the essence behind ‘Suicide by Archon’. I will defend myself and the Terrans within these domiciles. If you wish to flee, you may do so now.}”

  The Haelfenn looked between one another at his words, and then one of them chose the bad option, whipping out a hand crossbow and firing it at Leonidas from close range.

  The second the weapon appeared, however, Leonidas exploded forward with a [Chivalric Charge] to the alarmed flashes of their collective mind-glows.

  His [Archon’s Psiblade] cut down toward the crossbow-holding dark-leather-clad Haelfar with every iota of his enhanced Agility, Dexterity, and the sword’s evolved [Epic] classification. At the same time, Leonidas incarnated his [Psionic Swordforce] along its edges mid-swing, just as Ceruviel had been teaching him to do.

  “{Block it!}” one of them shouted. “{Get around his—}”

  The shrouded elf in front of him attempted to block the [Archon’s Psiblade] with one of their long-daggers, and the bastard sword’s Skill-enhanced blade sheared through their dagger like it was made of paper, claiming the assassin’s crossbow-wielding hand in the process with a seamless cut, and sudden eruption of fountaining scarlet.

  The other Haelfenn stumbled in shock from the suddenness of the violence, but Leonidas was already moving within that narrow, one-to-two-second window of surprise as two of them hurled throwing daggers at him to try to push him back from their companion.

  Mistake.

  “{What the hell is h—}”

  His [Psikinetic Shield] ability flashed to life with a flex of his mind, and he snapped up a rectangular shield behind two of the assassins with a push of his left hand, twisting his wrist and yanking it back toward him as if pulling a rope. The shield smashed into their backs before they could do more than begin to duck, sending them staggering forward as his Psi dropped within his HUD.

  Mercilessly, Leonidas activated his [Chivalric Charge] once more, followed by a twinned casting of [Coup de Force: Premier] into [Coup de Force: Deux], slicing once and then twice, with three times and then six times his normal speed and strength. The first of the assassins spun away through the air without their legs past the knees, shrieking, and the second exploded; their body’s midriff detonating in a spray of blood and gore as they were sliced in half, and the Cataclysm Mana he injected reacted to the magic in the Haelfar’s blood.

  Leonidas glanced down at the soon-to-die Haelfar and only lifted his sword, turning his head as he pointed it at the remaining six Haelfenn.

  “{Surrender, and I will spare the life of your wounded compatriots,}” he said in a cold, battle-meditating voice devoid of emotional inflection. “{Legs can be healed, so can hands. I am afraid the third has already committed suicide by Archon, however.}”

  At the same time as he spoke, his Cataclysm Mana cycled itself into Psi at a rate of 5 for 10 per second, rapidly restoring and reducing his Psi and Mana bars respectively. He stopped when his Psi was back to full, reflexively, and slowly looked around at the hesitating Haelfenn.

  They had expected a fight, clearly, but not this.

  There was an advantage all its own to pure, terrifying displays of overwhelming force. While they could probably overpower him if they worked together, the very idea of it had been banished from their minds—first by his question of ‘Suicide by Archon’, used strategically to distract them and dismantle their coordination with the natural fear the word ‘Archon’ inspired.

  Then he had used sheer brutality and economy of action, while maintaining a solely defensive combat pattern, to shatter their cohesion and nail home the wedge that shattered their confidence.

  “{Choose,}” Leonidas demanded flatly, while shifting his shimmering blade toward the spasming, legless Haelfar’s throat.

  “{You’re him,}” one of the Haelfenn said in a hollow feminine voice. “{You’re the Black Knight.}”

  “{Oh?}” Leonidas asked with an edge of sarcasm that bled through his Battle Meditation, and gestured to his obsidian warplate. “{What gave it away?}”

  “{Suicide by Archon…}” another of them muttered, looking down at Leonidas’ blade, and then abruptly tossing their knives to his feet, lifting their hands and settling down to sit cross-legged. “{Hell with it, this job has already gone to shit after losing Jaren, I won’t lose Kyrael too. I can see a pyrrhic victory, if even that, when one’s clearly before me. Word says you’re an Earl, right? I’ll trust in the honor of House Latherian, then, Black Knight. I am called Lothran. You have my surrender in return for his life,}” Lothran said, while gesturing to the legless Haelfar lying nearby the already-dead, bisected and detonated Jaren.

  Five down, including the surrendering one, what about the rest?

  Tension thickened in the air for several moments before something unheard passed through the remaining Haelfenn, and, as one, they made their way swiftly toward where their surrendered companion had seated himself. There, they tossed their weapons at Leonidas’ feet and sat down cross-legged in kind, folding their arms and refusing to meet one another’s eyes.

  Leonidas nodded at the clear surrender, and the [Psionic Swordforce] coating his weapon vanished. The laws and traditions governing Haelfenn society were at times very confusing. Still, some were quite clear: like the fact that anyone who falsely surrendered would be marked as honorless and stripped of their lineage, living as a rejected pariah for the remainder of their life—potentially several long, miserable centuries.

  The way Haelfenn treated martial tradition was religious in its level of reverence.

  All in all, the conflict had taken less than forty seconds. A new record, if he thought of it that way, and against relatively competent foes as well. It wasn’t a bad addition to his combat history at—

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  A dagger streaked toward his faceplate, and Leonidas calmly reinforced the almost nonexistent bubble of [Psionic Force] he’d kept around himself passively, solidifying it far faster than he could have manifested a new Skill. The act was as reflexive as twitching, and the dagger was caught in the suddenly dense, effectively solid wall of force; ever-so-slightly wobbling in the air from the sudden, jarring halt of momentum.

  The seated Haelfenn froze when he turned toward the culprit, and all eyes shifted to see the assassin that had been lurking behind the door staggering to their feet.

  “{What are you all doing?!}” a furious, familiar woman’s voice demanded. “{He’s alone! It’s a perfect time to get rid of the bastard!}”

  “{Cerynia, he isn’t the kind of person we can—}”

  “{Cowards!}” the woman shrieked, in a very familiar screech. “{You’re all COWARDS!}”

  Leonidas idly reactivated his [Psionic Swordforce] at the repeated shrieks coming from the now-standing Haelfar, and largely depowered the [Psionic Force] wall that had protected him—rendering it intangible and non-draining once more.

  “{You should heed your companions}” he said in calm, certain tones. “{I have no desire to deprive the colony of a skilled combatant. Speaking of which—}” he paused to conjure a pair of healing potions from his [Spatial Storage Ring] and tossed it to the Haelfar who’d identified himself as Lothran.

  “{For your companions, the one named Kyrael, and the handless one,}” he said mildly, and refocused on ‘Cerynia’. “{I do not relish killing children of Dawnhaven, as I already stated. There are enemies outside our walls that our blades would be better served fighting.}”

  “{SHUT UP!}” Cerynia shouted, pointing her blades at him with a faint wobble of lasting shock from the damage he’d done ripping her from the house. “{It’s all your fault! You disgusting Terrans! All you do is whine, moan, and whinge about equality as if this is some reality where your miserable species would have a chance at it. Pathetic! You are all pathetic! Monkeys, fools, disgusting, malformed simians with no concept of gratitude!}”

  Leonidas lowered his sword slightly into an easier response stance, one often mistaken for lowering his guard, and glanced over at Lothran while keeping his [Psionic Focus] at full power. “{Is this a common thread of belief, Lothran?}”

  “{...common enough, Earl Latherian,}” the Haelfar responded wearily, seemingly content to defer to Leonidas’ authority following his surrender—though the occasional glance at Jaren’s remains seemed to be helpful for his willingness to cooperate. “{The reticence your species has shown to our attempts at assimilation and uplift has left even the most enthusiastic of cohabitation advocates less than motivated. Terrans make Savage Orcs look downright reasonable sometimes.}”

  “{Your people transmigrated here expecting a wild frontier, and found a civilization that remembers its glory, Lothran,}” Leonidas answered coldly.

  At the same time, his mind worked over the problem, and he intentionally ignored the panting figure of Cerynia, whose mind-glow was growing more and more irate by the second.

  “{That is not your fault to bear, I acknowledge, but the consideration of culture shock may be something you should work on. At our zenith, these United States of America boasted the greatest military in Terran history—by several orders of magnitude, as well as the planet’s wealthiest economy. It is not so easy to forget that which was, when it defined your entire life from infancy.}”

  Lothran seemed thoughtful after Leonidas finished and idly picked at some of the grass beneath him.

  “{I’ve heard these things before, Earl Latherian, but somehow hearing it from you feels different. Before it was broken Haelfennyr or poorly-understood Terran from books or proud malcontents. The way you tell it, however…}” the haelfar trailed off and sighed, shrugging his shoulders a little. “{Culture shock, you say? Perhaps, my lord Archon. Perhaps.}”

  Leonidas turned back to Cerynia at last after Lothran’s words and began advancing toward her, his sword still held with lethal readiness low at his right side. “{One of you has already been forced to pay the ultimate price,}” he said to her while striding forward, one armored boot after the other, and allowing his attached cloak to ripple in the afternoon breeze. “{Do not force me to send you to join him in death.}”

  The Haelfar gripped her blades at his words, and her weapons shook, her mind-glow vacillating between intense hatred and intense fear so rapidly he almost felt dizzy following the emotional turbulence.

  “{You do not have to do this,}” Leonidas said gravely, carefully articulating each word. “{There is no shame in living to fight another day, against a real enemy, not one of your pride’s invention.}”

  Cerynia looked toward Lothran, toward Jaren, toward Kyrael, and all the already-surrendered Haelfenn, and finally let out a scream of frustration, anger, and resentful hatred.

  Leonidas sighed in regret.

  Cerynia charged with a wild shout.

  Leonidas lifted his left hand, thrust it forward, and slammed a cocoon of [Psionic Force] upon the charging Haelfar, freezing her in place without a word. His footsteps crunched grass as he approached her, and behind him, Lothran spoke—his voice a little unsteady, seemingly due to realizing how easily Leonidas could have murdered them all.

  “{You, ah, should be careful with that one, Earl Latherian. She is the daughter of Count Cartellis. They are the ones who hired us for this.}”

  “{Oh?}” Leonidas asked, while turning toward Cerynia, who was straining against the [Psionic Force] cocoon with spasming limbs, her face hidden behind a hood and mask.

  “{Yes. I see no reason to obfuscate,}” Lothran said simply. “{Our task was to wait for the Dawnguard to arrive with a sympathetic Dagger of personnel, and then hand over the children to them. When the parents resisted, we would subdue them, and Lady Cartellis would ‘accidentally’ kill the mother in front of the teenagers, which would give the Dawnguard the pretext to arrest them for disturbing the peace—and give them to House Cartellis for ‘corrective rehabilitation’, as some other Terrans have been subjected to.}”

  Leonidas went very still at that, and his grip on his sword tightened.

  “{Why are you telling me this, Lothran?}”

  “{Because I watched you in the arena, my lord,}” Lothran said simply. “{I watched you kill a tier Two Hydra, then survive Tribulation, and walk into a room with the most powerful people in Dawnhaven—only to appear here, unharmed, with a Highborn Title and the Heir-title of a House second only to the Crown bloodline itself.}”

  “{If you knew me, then why did you fight?}” Leonidas asked coldly.

  “{Because knowing what you can do and knowing what you can do are two very different things, my lord.}”

  Leonidas turned back toward Cerynia and then inclined his head.

  “{I accept the rationale behind your answer, Lothran.}”

  “{Thank you, my lord Archon. I hope—}”

  “{Yet, you still agreed to this sickening plot.}”

  The Haelfenn that had surrendered went still at his words, and Lothran licked his lips nervously, their mind-glows shifting to wary fear.

  “{We did, my lord.}”

  “{Then when the Dusk-Lord and Princess-Royal arrive in just under an hour, you will repeat everything you just told me to them, and they will decide your fate. The alternative is to try your luck fleeing from me—which I assure you, Lothran, will be an unpleasant experience,}” Leonidas promised in a tone he did not need much effort to fill with naked bloodlust, thanks to his [Cataclysm Core] raging within his dantian.

  “{I—I understand, Earl Latherian,}” Lothran said in a weaker voice. “{We will await the Dusk-Lord and Princess-Royal.}”

  A murmur of assent came from the other Haelfenn, followed by a collective sincerity igniting across their mind-glows, and Leonidas returned his attention fully to Cerynia.

  His [Cataclysm Core] snarled and roared within him as he looked at her, its energy suffusing him, needling him, threading into his mind, his soul, his very essence. Rage. Disgust. Fury. Incontrovertible hatred threaded through him in a seething river of magmatic loathing, and he felt something in him snap at the thought of what she was going to do to the innocent, Untempered parents still sheltering in the house with their son and his friend.

  “{As for Baroness Cartellis…}” he said in a dangerous voice, reaffirming his grip on his sword.

  Leonidas stepped forward, released the [Psionic Force], and conjured a [Pskinetic Blade] which he punched through the Haelfar’s abdomen at the same time. She spasmed when he did, and Leonidas channeled his Cataclysm Mana in a very specific thread of cruel castigation to target her dantian and the Core within with savage, ruthless precision.

  “{...she may live for the rest of her life wishing she had been kinder to children,}” he said with a low, hateful snarl, “{armed with the knowledge she will never again be a Haelfar worthy of bearing them. Reap what you sow, you malodorous wretch.}”

  Cerynia screamed at his words and cried out in primal agony as his Cataclysm Mana devoured and withered her Core until it shattered, as if he had set fire to her very soul. Horrified, terrified silence was the only reaction from the other Haelfenn as they watched it happen, and more than one vomited into the grass.

  Leonidas had done worse than kill Baroness Cartellis.

  He had destroyed her worth as a Highborn in every way that mattered.

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