In the midst of battlefield chaos, a woman stands on a pile of the dead. She is determination itself, struggling through mud thick with blood and viscera that sucks at her boots. Onward she battles, past clusters of soldiers engaged in bitter melee, through smoke and unnatural mists, towards certain doom, towards the enemy general.
At her left side is Malmus Rust, the disgraced wizard, desperate for redemption. On her right is Yura Bold Aspect, a greatsword in each of his giant hands, undeterred by the javelin sticking out of his side.
An ogrit champion lunges at the heroes and Yura cleaves its head from its shoulders with effortless grace. Another monster appears from the battlefield fug and is liquefied by an utterance from Rust.
The woman twists a band on her wrist and a translucent screen hovers in mid air.
“Miracles” the woman says, and the screen displays a list.
Necrotic deluge - spent
The House of Nine’s Wrath - spent
Defy the Fates - primed
“Just a little closer” she tells her companions. “There! I see the witch general’s standard. Just fifty yards more and we will cross swords, and I will weave her a different destiny than the one the Fates have ordained.”
A horn sounds, and the ground shakes. A huge shape appears in the mist, lumbering towards the heroes.
Rust twists his band and says “Identify.”
A screen hovers.
Great Lakka
Level 20 Gladiatorial demon.
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Avoid.
“Vulnerabilities” says Rust and the screen responds.
None
“A challenge!” Yura roars, sounding almost gleeful as a giant beast launches itself forward on skeletal wings. It is a thing of terror, a void of hope, all claws and blades and teeth and the blood of the vanquished smeared on its golden skin.
It attacks with a wild sweep of a double bladed axe, enchanted with runes to seek its foes with a ruthless thirst. But Yura is quick, rolling underneath the weapon’s wicked arc before springing into a battle stance, ready to retaliate.
Yura pulls the javelin from his flesh and hurls it, striking the demon in the largest of its many eyes. The beast throws back its head and laughs at such a petty wounding.
Ignoring the taunt, Yura wastes no time in leaping upwards at the open throat, hacking a great gouge out of it with both swords. He is rewarded with a shower of black blood that blisters the silver of his helmet.
“Malmus, open the wound,” shouts the woman. “Magnify it,” and the wizard obeys. With hand gestures and wyrds of power, he pulls at the wound’s edges, stretching the flesh with arcane forces, until the bones of its spine are exposed.
The woman’s crossbow is already off her back. She says a quick prayer as she aims, before letting a Bolt of Larajae fly.
It strikes true between two of the demon’s vertebrae, severing nerves and causing it to slump to the floor like a marionette with cut strings.
They leave the monster in the bloody battlefield mire, undeterred by its failed assault. Though the heroes are awash with the wealth of XP that it gave them, the demon barely broke their stride.
“Look!” Malmus shouts, pointing at a figure ahead clad in crimson armor, loosing great bolts of mortar lightning up into the sky. “There! The witch. It is time.”
The woman ignores the nerves that tighten her stomach. Malmus gives her a boon, casting discharging shell to shield her, causing the air around the woman to crackle with static electricity. Yura speaks a wyrd in the woman’s name - peerless heroics - and the woman feels the power surge within her as her stats double.
It is now.
It it time.
She drops her crossbow, and draws her sword once again. It may look unassuming, but it is Tol’s Razor, a famed weapon that has put an end to threats many times more dangerous than the witch queen ahead. Though admittedly, those previous victories were at the hands of other heroes.
The woman closes her eyes, casts Defy the Fates, and with sword held high, rushes her sworn enemy.