Seth's eyes glazed over as he grappled with Hanson’s words. They knew we are coming. Facing them in the open would be a death sentence.

“Of course they do. This is just perfect” Brick said, massaging his nose bridge.

“We should head back,” Sera said a bit too quickly. “It would be foolish to walk into whatever trap they’ve set up.” She glared at her captain though she knew Hanson was watching. “Everything about this is wrong. I said it last night, and I will say it again, we should not be here.”

Ellie took a step forward and said with a growl, “We can’t turn back. We are already here, Sera. I will not throw 11 years of service away just because you are afraid. This changes absolutely nothing. We will die if we don’t succeed, whether it’s by the vampires-” she paused, and regarded Hanson, “- or by the General’s hand.”

Their collective attention whipped towards Hanson, and Seth’s eyes widened in understanding. Hanson was the General’s failsafe. He was to help them should they cooperate and kill them should they decide to flee. The General was too experienced to trust such a vital mission to a team knight candidates, regardless of how experienced they were. Hanson’s stories, words, and warnings-- they all hinted at what he was. He didn’t just pay enough attention.

“None of you deserve the General's favor,” Hanson snapped, taking a bold step forward. He pointed at Sera. “Your anger and stupidity will cost the team greatly.”

He turned to Ellie next, “you are lacking as a leader. Your control over your team is tenuous at best, even after four years of service. How did you manage to outperform the other teams?”

Then, his ire fell no Seth, “and you. You reek of fear and uncertainty, and I won’t even bother with you,” he finished with a scoff at Brick.

His voice sank dangerously low. “The General didn’t need to order me to kill you. I would gladly end every single last one of you if I thought it compromised the mission.

“What more incentives do you need? You’ve been offered runes, a chance to grasp at true power, magic itself, and you show doubt? Fear? Hesitation? Thousands would kill to be where you all are now. Do not squander this opportunity. We will not have this conversation again,” his words had a grim finality to them. It caused all present to shiver. He’d made his reservations clear. They were on thin ice, and he wouldn’t hesitate to sink them should they fail.

“We are not leaving,” Seth's voice stirred with a confidence that surprised even him. He doubted they could take on Hanson and outrun the vampires. His eyes briefly met his Sister and decided that their squabble could wait.

“We decided to fight the vampires together last night and the time for second-guessing has long passed. They know we’re coming, so I say we rethink our plan before they find us.”

Seth held his breath while he waited for the junior knight’s response. When he finally spoke, Hanson’s voice was easy.

“Seth is right. What we need is a new strategy. Do any of you have any ideas?

The faces of the Raven turned pensive with nervous thought, Brick spoke up after a brief pause.

“We know the edges of the forest better than they do. I think we can set up the diffuser there and somehow lure them into it.”

Seth's eyes widened and he added, “It would work for the two teams, and could help us take out both vampire knights if we timed it right. After that, dealing with whoever is left in the temple will be easier. I just don’t know how far we could stretch the barrier without wasting most of the magic.”

Ellie rubbed her chin and answered. “A few more yards, I think, given the device's potency, but each boundary peg will take more time to set up. I can peel back the outer coating to pump more mana into it, though. All we need is for someone to deliver the payload and another to lead them to the exact location.”

Ellie’s eyes fell to Hanson, waiting for his approval. He spoke after a moment of thought.

“It seems you’re all more capable than I gave you credit for. It’s a passable plan, everything withstanding, and I think it could work rather well.”

“We promised our best, and are just trying to live up to that promise,” Ellie said.

“I’m sure,” Hanson answered dryly and threw her a crystal. “Choose a good spot and set up the perimeter. I will keep them occupied while you work, and bring them to you in time. I will signal you when if you don’t hear us approach.”

He turned away from them and began towards the ruins. “For all our sakes, I hope you don’t disappoint,” he added before he disappeared into the mist.

They all stood there in a daze for a second, before Ellie broke their reverie with a clap and urged them to move on. Seth noted the dark look on all of their faces, Sera’s face was especially sullen.

“Are you okay?”

She gave him a look and just said, “this mission cannot be over any sooner,” and stalked ahead breaking formation. Seth slowly drifted to the back, joining Brick.

“What do you think we’d be doing now if Ellie didn’t get us into this mess?”

“Probably marching slowly to Brightmont, telling bad jokes, and flirting with lady soldiers that want nothing to do with us.”

Seth thought about it briefly but did not protest. His mind went back to the conversation they had the night before he ran into his sister.

“The gods might have been listening to last night at the feast...while I shit talked.”

“I should thank you then. You just handed us our greatest opportunity, then,” Brick nudged him. “That or you just killed us,” he chuckled.

Seth let out a laugh too, though his was less sincere. He wasn’t as good at keeping his mind off the battle as Brick was. He could only hope Hanson could buy them enough time for the plan to work.

---

“Those fools,” Hanson muttered, the misty chill of the forest air muffling his hoarse voice. He'd wanted a team of knights or scouts to control, but instead, the General paired him with ungrateful, half-baked knight candidates who were too stupid to realize how fortunate they really were.

He'd lied to the knight candidates when he told them about the Blood God and he grew up with no wet nurse. No one in his borderland village did. He’d heard the story in bits and pieces growing up, and he’d said what he’d said to make a point. In his experience, half-commitments and promises lead to death and waste. His village had been assigned one of those half-knights along with a dozen other soldiers for protection. They were a half-measure and were not enough to protect his village when the vampires came.

General Ludrick Heartfire, the man he served under before Roko, was his greatest lesson in the wastefulness of half-measures. Ludrick’s accomplishments on the battlefield were legendary. While he was still a Major, he faced hundreds of enemy knights and half-blood spawn by himself after most of his soldiers got wiped with his incineration ray.

He made General after he pushing back a large invasion and he reclaimed several resource-rich lands that’d been lost for decades, but his inadequacies shone through when he was given full control of an army.

He had a tenuous grasp on Military strategy, and with everything he’d achieved, was bull-headed and refused counsel from his advisors. The Emperor allowed him to keep in spite of his shortcoming because of his support at court, and his overwhelming might. He stripped his army of most of the most competent knights and strategists and left him with greenhorns and rejects. Hanson thought they rationalized that he couldn’t screw up too bad, since he was powerful enough to fix his mistakes.

Hanson lost childhood friends under that man’s leadership and rejoiced and panicked in his heart when lord Lucre, one of Vraphen’s ruling lords came for his head. Heartfire was stronger, without question, but Lucre was more cunning. He made endless shadow apparitions and whittled him down until he was a dried husk. His death left their army without direction, and the remaining soldiers, fearful for their lives, broke formation, exposing them to the enemy.

Hanson fled from the field when the frenzy and slaughter were at their peak. Powerful people who took half-measures again took everything away from him, and he’d almost deserted the army when General Roko and his army joined the fray.

He bombed the already weakened vampire hoards with long-ranged Light spells, and devastating Fire and Wind spells. He slowed them down with a mud field he created by himself, hardened it, and ran them through with his Calvary. He went on to face and kill General Lucre in single combat. Hanson had been mesmerized watching the General lead and understood what a competent and devoted soldier could achieve with proper education, soldiers, and power.

His soldiers were like an extension of him, and Hanson longed to be complete, to be like him, and that was why he begged the General to take him under his command. He’d devoted himself to the man since, and when the opportunity to advance came, he’d taken it and became one of the General’s knights.

When the General offered him this mission, he’d been glad to take it, and the promise of another Profane rune was not his biggest motivator. He simply wanted to please the General and prove to himself he could lead as well as he could fight. The new developments frustrated him more than the knight candidates could ever know, but he conceded that complications were unavoidable.

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With a long breath, he let the memory of the battlefield and his raging emotions recede and focused his mind on the task at present. He peeked behind the tree he stood, the patrolled base of the temple in full view.

Eight guards gathered at the western front of the temple, casting cursory glances at the adjoining forest, where the team would’ve approached from. The vampires knew they were coming, but they didn’t rush ahead. They didn’t underestimate them, and Hanson felt it was only right to regard them in kind. He briefly considered conferring with his team to restrategize but decided that it was too much of a risk. They could move before we finish, and we’d lose time, he thought.

Each of them wore black matted armor and chainmail, and their dominant hands held their main weapon. It was different for certain soldiers. Three carried glaives, two hefted greatswords, one palmed a single-edged saber with runes dancing the length of its handle, and the last one wielded a hefty Warhammer. He wrinkled his nose. “Knights,” he hissed. They never bothered to hide their runed weapons, but he still relied on his senses to sniff them out.

Their helmets covered their entire faces, only the metal horns woven onto the very top hinted at their ranks. All bronze horns, equivalents of junior knights. They led most charges during the war.

Confronting them would’ve been a death sentence if he was limited to the four runes every knight received at judgment, but the general’s sorcerers fixed him with two extra runes, the most important one being the Reinforcement rune. It allowed him to push his body and his elemental runes to the limit, transforming his fire into a sweltering, red-hot plasma stream. He would have had to advance to Arch knight before he could have added this rune to his path.

He drew in another deep breath, and this time, he held it. He was ready to earn his keep. His accumulation rune-- his fount of fire mana-- flared along with the reinforcement rune, transforming the cold air in his lungs to hot heat. They burned so hotly, his armor glowed a dull red. With a sharp breath release, the heat rotated, spinning faster and faster. Another exhale turned the runes white-hot. Raw heat shot into two identical fire stream runes in his hands and legs. They let him channel his violent mana and release it in streams, with fine controlled, bursts. His final rune laid dim on his chest, covered in layers of steaming armor. He would not use it unless he was forced to.

Hanson nearly bit off his tongue trying not to scream and reminded himself he’d been through so much worse. With a flick of his right arm, his second gifted rune flared. It was a dark rune for item storage. It glowed under his pauldron and his spear popped into existence onto his waiting palm. It was gold haft to the blade and was covered in several fire-resistant and strengthening runes. It needed to be sturdy if it was going to handle his heat. He let the spear soak up the fiery energy that churned in his chest and revealed a grizzly smile. His entire body felt taut, ready to burst with destructive heat, and he set forth to complete his mission.

Hanson then pushed off the tree. Falling low, he disappeared behind a tangle of bushes. His glowing fiery eyes scanned through the enemy squads, and he picked his target. A glaive-wielding bronze horn. He was the most physically domineering of the batch, and likely matched a vampire knight in strength alone, but he had no remarkable affinity for darkness magic, none that he could smell. He was the third biggest threat after the two knights, and he was the biggest threat he could end with one attack.

He fired his armor’s full runic protection. Two Fire Enchantments, two healing waves, and Earth reinforcement. He needed all of them if he was going to survive what he was going to be attempting next.

He forced the heat in his leg runes to sink into his muscles. They lit up like torches, and his armor audibly creaked under the pressure. His pale skin turned sickly red, and sweat poured from him but the reinforcement rune held on, giving the healing wave runes enough space to mend his muscles and ligaments as they burned. His reinforcement rune was not supposed to be worked this hard, but it was the only way he could build the power he needed. Some of the heat rolled off his skin and just as the cloth under his armor began to smoke, he released the heat and exploded forth in an audible boom.

He crossed hundreds of paces in a single heartbeat, and he was nearly unconscious from vertigo, but he was lucid enough to set up his attack. He forced the heat in his arms into his golden spear, leaned fully into the momentum, and slammed into the glaive-wielding scout with the force of a dozen horses. The attack ripped through the vampire’s black steel armor and eviscerated him, sending thunder roaring through surrounding trees and shrubs, pushing the fog back.

Hanson was thrown so far ahead from the force of the blast, he crashed near the base of the temple. His entire body screamed in pain and he dry heaved as he struggled to get a hold of his breathing. To his left, he saw a dark figure blur, and the runes on his armor flared to the limit with a single disjointed thought just in time.

A kick rammed into his side and sent him flying. He tucked his body midair and recovered from the crash with a graceless roll through the bushes and shrubs that dotted the forest floor. He spun to his feet, lacking most of the grace General Roko’s knights had drilled into him over the years, and broke off into a ragged half-sprint, the Earth Reinforcement rune on his armor flickering dangerously.

“One or two more hits, and it will be done,” he groaned and spat a bloody phlegm to the side. He summoned another runed weapon, a longsword this time, and one bottle of healing potion, which he promptly downed. Sniffing the air, he flared his leg runes and shot ahead just as a war hammer came down. His body left a faint trail of fire as he spun to face the foe, and charged. With a two-handed grip, he closed the distance with a thrust, which his opponent dodged. He stringed that with several other cuts, all of which the knight danced and blocked through with her war hammer shaft.

As they exchanged blows, Hanson studied his enemy. The Hammer knight was shorter, and more lithe-looking than the other vampires, but he didn’t question its strength for a moment. Her blows grew faster and deadlier the longer they fought, and he placed distance between them with some footwork and a beam of concentrated fire when she nearly overwhelmed him, retreating deeper into the forest. These are no ordinary Vampire knights.

“Coward!” a gruff, but an undoubtedly female voice called out, but he ignored it.

The weapon, strength, voice, and scent-- he’d studied most vampire knights in the enemy’s forces, he was certain he was not fighting one of them. Did they bring in new Vampires? Hanson wondered, but he knew he’d get his answers soon enough.

I can’t take her, not without enough time and ample space. The fight would have gone vastly different if he had a runed light blade like the knight candidates had gotten, but the general’s Runescrives were half an Empire away, and weapons that could instantly butcher a pure-blooded vampire was in short supply. The Knight candidates would have all mutined without it. Focusing back on his pursuers, Hanson decided to target the foot soldiers instead and kill them when he saw opportunity.

He forced more power into his runes and dashed in the direction where the team left. He flared the dark rune under his pauldron and summoned the communication crystal. Several geometric runic shapes spun to life, and rendered a small version of the forest, highlighting their position on it. He disappeared the crystal with another thought and cleared the forest floor with a fiery thrust with his leg runes. He switched to the treetops and traveled in a long arc towards the location of the team.

Hanson rode the murky brown branches of the sturdiest trees until he smelt massive darkness discharge in the air. He’d made it a point to train himself to smell darkness magic when he discovered he had half-blood ancestry. It was not uncommon for Night creatures, half-blood, and other races to mate with humans. Sometimes, their spawns were blessed with magical talent and robust physiques-- those ones are usually hunted-- but he'd inherited a hypersensitive nose.

Hanson pushed ahead with another rune flare. The branch he shot off exploded, and an instant later, an etheric blade swept through the tree and several others around it in a wide crescent. What in the gods name… that was no junior knight technique. The trees fell to the forest floor an earth-shaking rumble, and Hanson looked down to spot the vampire responsible. It was the second vampire knight. He was clad in dark and silver armor, sitting in a deep stance with his saber drawn. He was glad he had the foresight not to charge any of the knights.

The hammer-wielding vampire flashed beside the saber wielder and gave an order that spurred the remaining five soldiers. They rushed through the fog and charged Hanson.

Two glaives pushed through the mist, racing towards Hanson, and he avoided both with a flame-propelled spin. He flared the runes on his wrists and retaliated with two thin jets of concentrated fire. It hit them, but they didn’t fall.

Guided by the shadow magic he could smell on their armors, he dropped from the air onto the knight on the left. He rolled to avoid Hanson’s stomp instead of stepping back and tried to unsheathe his blade. Big mistake, Hanson thought.

He kicked his elbow to sabotage the guard’s draw and plunged his longsword into the vampire’s eye socket. He flared the rune on the blade, and it steamed his head in his helmet. The guard’s dead body crumpled to the floor.

The second scout roared in rage. His helmet was half-melted from the concentrated fire shot Hanson launched ahead. He slashed forward with a wild cut, and Hanson stepped back, narrowly escaping and dissuaded the scout from pursuing with another causal heat bolt.

A roar of challenge echoed through the fog behind Hanson, but he ignored it. The plan was clear. He had to lead them to the trap, the team was waiting on him. He disappeared into the fog, gliding above the treeline. Cautious not to be caught by another attack, Hanson flared his runes even hotter to gain more distance, but the vampires were relentless.

The forest screamed out in pain as trees shattered and sprayed, and the fog churned. He switched trees, ducked and blocked attacks from the other enraged scouts, and liberally burned man to weave through attacks from the two knights, and the remaining four guards.

“You will pay for what you did to Argos,” the vampire with the half-melted helmet called out as he charged from Hanson’s flank.

Hanson resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he filled his runed blade with heat and slid under the charging cut with a well-placed parry. He’d expected the telegraphed attack. Even without his senses, an enraged soldier was easy enough to predict. He took off his head with a devastating counter-cut that slid under his armor and burned through his chainmail. His body plopped to the floor, and for a split second, before he flared his leg runes, he was open.

The saber-wielding knight zipped onto the branch he stood on and struck with a devastating shadowy thrust, aimed at his heart. His Earth protection rune failed, and the blade drilled through most of his chest piece. Hanson saw unmistakable satisfaction in the blue irises of the vampire as the blow struck and he coughed blood. The blowback sent him dozens of paces in the direction of the team. He felt his elemental runes flicker and his consciousness fade as his body traveled. He whipped through branches, thick as his waist and twice as strong, but the pain barely registered.

His mind traveled as his body did, and he found himself on that battlefield again.

He was embroiled in the smog of war, multi-colored runes flared around him and the profane smell of shadow magic choked him. He found himself before the monstrous bulk of Lord Lucre. The vampire Lord that nearly wiped out the army of the first general he served under. His armor was formless and etherious, set alight with rivulets of dark runes that burned so hot they glowed white. Only his golden horns felt tangible.

It was the day he thought he would die and met General Roko, the man who saved his life and reforged him. He owed it to himself and the man to see his mission through and that gave him the jolt he needed.

His eyes snapped open. They shone like the sun, and he whirred mid-air, righting himself. He flared his leg and wrist runes and pushed upwards in a golden fiery jet that softened his crash into the leafy undergrowth of the forest. He was not helpless, and he’d never failed a mission or his General, and he had no intention to start.

He reached for the accumulation rune on his back and noted it was half empty, barely enough enough mana to meet up with the team and fight a little. He flared his leg runes and continued on in broad arc towards the meeting point. More attacks came, but he was better prepared for them. He angled around trees, bushes, roots, and pushed his mind to the limit to avoid the heavy attacks of the vampire knights.