The Mick was already moving in to support, seeing her having tied up the bastard’s arm. Her Null flicked on as suddenly we could hear both of them, just as she opened her mouth and bit down on the shade’s throat with enough force to make all the muscles on her neck stand out in relief.

Yeah, he was pawing at her desperately, wanting her off him bad, just as deft sleight of hand undid the top strap of his breastplate and it swung away from from his shoulder.

Bunita drove right into the opening, a lethal blow to the arteries under the arm there for a living human, something black and burning spurting free. The armored shade was trying to swing at him, spin around, but there was a supernaturally strong woman on his back, chewing into the side of his neck, binding up his arm, and ignoring the blows he was raining on her.

The Mick transitioned to the other arm and legs as the shade kept spinning, trying to keep Kris on his back between them. But the princess was staying up off the legs, and the Mick promptly cut across the hamstrings, shades of black boiling free as he worked his arms and hips as fast as he could, following the shade as he instinctively tried to spin Kris off and, failing that, started crushing her into the side of the Mansion’s decrepit walls, screaming as she worked the Blade stuck so deep into his chest.

The Mick kept his attacks low as I got off another True Casting, hyperanalyzed the shade’s magic resistance, and…

-Use normal Shards!- the princess /snarled, having no faith this brute was going to fail the save and render two spells useless.

… and my Energized, Baned, Sanctified, Blessed, Sacred, and so many other Metas Shards, wed to multiple arcs of slashing Force magic, spellwarped down into a Ray, Split on a force prism in midair, and as Kris wrenched and twisted and the Mick ducked and pivoted off to the side, drove right into the middle of the shade’s chest as she was smashed back into the foundation of the Mansion’s elevated sides, rocks and dirt exploding at the force of the impact.

He screamed in breathy, burning fashion, while Princess Kristie just bit down harder, and then a whole lot of Force, Holy, Anathemic, and Blessed Elemental energies took a ravaging swim through his insides, gouts of shadowy substance bursting in all directions, vivus raging on the wounds as the residual damage ate at him.

Yeah, trying to spellcast in this situation wasn’t doing him much better, either. The smashing force of the Toppling impact blasted him off his feet, drove the breath out of Kristie again (-Thanks heaps!-, she /groused at me) and sent him bouncing and reeling along the sides of the Veil-born motte to the ground, smoking and blazing and burning.

Kristie twisted away and let him go, her face a mass of shadow-spitting bruises. She did not, however, let his Axe go, and she let him keep Quaver stuck down the side of his neck and into his innards, blazing now with what looked like Banefire, Vivus, Flaming, and Holy all active.

The armored shade ripped his breastplate, hanging free and impeding him, off with a convulsive burst of movement, clawing for Quaver and trying to draw the Sword out as he rocked on the ground.

Kris was giving him the moves as the Mick went airborne, raised Bunita up high, and came down on the flaming-eyed fellow, all his weight on the point of his Sword.

The shade screamed again as the Weight of the Waterfall descended upon him, even if it was executed by a novice, and Bunita punched right through his chest, drove through the bloody pyreal of his backplate, and nailed the thing to the ground.

Yeah, that probably wasn’t the best place to be. Especially when the Princess came in like an eel, snaked her legs up under the shade’s arms somehow, hooked her feet behind his neck, and suddenly the writhing bastard was also caught in a Full Nelson with her legs, his feet scrabbling and kicking and not able to do a damn thing about it as she didn’t let him fight back.

The Mick reached up, grabbed Quaver, who shrank to a dagger’s size in his grip to hop right on out of that deadly wound, slammed his left fist up under the inkspot of a chin and grabbed it with his hand, then proceeded to saw at the thing’s throat in a manner both very mean and very efficient with Quaver in his right.

Whispers became gurgles as the pinned shade had his throat sawed through by a blazing Blade that wasn’t giving him any respect whatsoever. The Mick, being a prudent fellow who had no desire whatsoever for this thing to Heal itself and get back up, continued sawing the burning dagger-Sword through the thick neck until he cut the thing’s head completely off, finishing his trifecta for the day, while the muscles in Kris’ legs stood out like iron cables and prevented the shade from doing anything about it.

I walked up and watched as she gripped the shade’s helmed skull with black-nailed hands that looked very much like claws at the moment, and she ripped it off the stump as the Mick finished up. Instead of tossing it away, she beat it on the dirt, getting the vivus especially to go out and sending the helm bouncing away, although she didn’t do the same for its body.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Baneskull,” she ordered me shortly, tossing it up for me to catch… which I did, without breaking stride. The neck wounds were already ashed shut, no gooey shade blood for me!

“D’ya think the watchers are pleased with us now?” the Mick grinned fiercely, getting up from his headless opponent and watching Kris uncoil her long legs effortlessly.

“I think they put that whole scene on Holo and are asking one another how much they’d pay for the Princess to put them in a headlock.”

The Mick pursed his lips, looked at Kris’ absolutely killer legs in her shredded pants, a real counterpart to her punching bag of a face, and looked away, laughing as he did so.

“There’s something bloody wrong with them if they aren’t. If I don’t make their background pic at least, I’m going to be very disappointed!” she sniffed, tossing her hair across her currently-ruined face, shifting her hip just so, and I had to snicker and absolutely look away.

That… was a Night Rose pose that could give the unprepared a nosebleed. She’d told the Mick to look away, and I did the same, just to be safe.

She’d probably also dislocated her hips putting that thing in a leglock like she had, from that position.

“Teamwork, teamwork, rah rah rah!” I said to nobody in particular, already invoking Mana Boost to get back my Pool and replace multiple III Valences I’d had to spend. “How’s your back?” I asked her as she shrugged. Several very loud and grindy pops slowly followed, the Mick turning back to listen as she moved this way and that, and several things inside her were fit back into place.

“Better than most of my bedmates,” she admitted, and I snorted as the Mick just shook his head. “The guy had no experience with proper grappling techniques. Don’t they teach ancient shades proper fighting?”

“Felt like grabbing slimy hard cheese,” the Mick pointed out. “Who’d want to grapple the bastard?”

“Point!” she conceded to him, catching Quaver as he tossed her Sword back to her. The shade’s corpse was already burning merrily, going up en vivus like it was gasoline-soaked wood chips, or something.

With a poof!, the Axe laying off to the side also Ignited, at which I drew a long face. “Damn! Life-linked Weapons are so cheaty!” I complained. Denying us rightful plunder!

“I’d say we’re gonna make that Baneskull painful, but he’s already dead and won’t care,” sniffed Kristie at the loss. Burning enemy Artifice was a great way to earn some goldweight. The crimson Armor was starting to Burn, too, although vivus didn’t normally affect enchanted items.

“Ye think they’ll send more?” the Mick asked, looking towards Tou-Tou and the whipping funnels of shadow-stuff there with rather more confidence than he’d had before, then wincing at the pop as Kris’ hips snapped back into place.

“I think that I don’t care if they do,” I admitted. “Although they’d best wait until morning when I can go grab a couple more things.”

“Oh? Got some new ideas on how to deal with them?” Kris was definitely interested.

“Yes. You didn’t notice it, but the Lost Light from Quaver was eating into the bastard while it was stuck in him.”

“Lost Light?” the Mick piped up instantly. “Yer Sword is a Sword of Lost Light?” he asked in disbelief.

Kris raised an eyebrow as she flipped out Quaver, which grew to full length again. The swirls of forcelight around it danced hypnotically as the Mick stepped closer to peer at the proud Blade.

He glanced at us. “Ye know of the Lore about the Swords of Lost Light?” he asked carefully.

“There was a remarkable amount of information transferred to us when Quaver subsumed one such Sword,” I replied to him. “The location of the Hall of the Lost Light, and that it is waiting for a new Order to arise to battle the undead and the shadows; the source of the Infusions which buttressed the Blade and empowered it.”

The Mick was nodding. “Aye, I used to own one of the Blades meself. Actually, I owned four of them!”

Kris and I blinked in tandem. “Four?” Kris repeated wryly. “Why four of them?”

“Because they were all different,” he stated, and we paid rapt attention as he went on. “There were the base Blade, which ye powered up with the three Infusions of Blue, White, and Red Fire from the volcanoes of Dereth. Then there were the Greater Infusion of Radiance ye got from the Dark Isle, where it had been hidden away.”

I straightened up instantly. That place where the Grael he mentioned had been imprisoned?

“Then there were three other Infusions ye could apply to the Blade. The first was a Shadow-Slaying Infusion, which made the whole Blade extremely deadly against the Shadows, Shades, whatever.” He waved it off. “Then there was a Skeleton-Slaying Infusion, which did the same thing, making it a great weapon against the skellies, but, alas, ye couldn’t stack it on the same Weapon.

“The last was to Infuse it with a portion of the blood of Bael’Zhaeron.” Expecting to hear about an Infusion against the Undead, Kris and I both flinched. “That were actually the most powerful of the three. It turned it into a bloody Weapon of acid, what were called a Sword of Lost Hope. It were an Acid Rending Weapon, on top of its Biting Strike and Crushing Blow properties. Probably the best all-around Acid Weapon any of us knew of.” He coughed slightly as we stared at him. “It were my go-to Acid Weapon up until the end. The Shadow and Skellie Slayers didnae work as well as straight Renders, and were just wall trophies, for the most part.

“They all blew apart during the Fall. I didnae think any of them survived at all.”

Kris’ lips were thin at the idea he’d corrupt a Weapon of Light like that with the blood of the First Shade, such as it were, but she let it go. Obviously it had been a significant improvement over the base Sword, and the Alignments were not a factor here, nor had there been corruption of the wielders involved.

“And nobody tried to replicate the effect with other Elements?” I asked the Mick, who looked at me sharply. I pointed at Quaver. “That improved Lost Light torus there is because of the two black Stones set into it.”

“Those are Blackfire Stones?!” He immediately stepped in to stare intently at the two stones. “Damnation and fire!” he swore, blinking at them. “They are! How did ye...” He stared again, studying her Blade. “Ye’ve room for more Slots...”

Kris silently reached into her breast pocket and drew out four jewels glittering with Elemental energies.

“Atlan Stones!” he shouted immediately, holding out his hands. Amused, she poured them into his grasp, and he held the first up to his eyes. “The greater version, too! Where did ye find them? I’ve not a seen a set in years!” he exclaimed enthusiastically.

“In the muck at the bottom of the first Mansion we cleaned out,” Kris replied. “Greater versions?” she repeated from his earlier words.