A horn sounded, echoing through the empty streets of the outer city ring, and a bell tolled. Soldiers left the wall and sprinted back into the streets, aiming for the inner ring. Already, archers were taking positions on the higher walls and drawing back their bows. They targeted Dominion soldiers and fired volley after volley, but the gate was open, and the weaveling lines were spent.

Pirin flung volley after volley of wind back at the approaching soldiers, but he couldn’t use too much of his gnatsnapper Essence yet. The sun was rising, and the city would still stand for a few more days if he had anything to say about it. Clouds of smoke and steam rose over the city, glowing pink in the rising sun.

He kept up the rear as the weavelings and Sirdians made for the inner city walls. They raced in through the gates—a two-storey tall archway with double doors to protect it. Soldiers pushed the gates shut, then slammed a large beam in place to hold it shut.

Pirin took a few steps back, panting, but it wouldn’t last. He immediately resumed an Essence gathering technique. He drew in the Eane as quickly as he could and purified it, then pushed it down to his core and filled his Essence storage.

Once the technique was stable, he turned around and surveyed his surroundings. Beyond the gate was a simple open street intersection with a statue at its center. Low-marshals and middle-marshals swarmed about, instructing weavelings and Sirdians into ranks and forming up a defensive position.

More archers sprinted to the wall, and, while gathering more Essence, Pirin and Gray followed them.

At the top, on a lookout platform, they found Marshal Teanor delivering orders to messengers. Nomad joined them, leaning on his flute-staff and panting.

“It has been a long defence, my lord,” Teanor said. “But I’m afraid we won’t last long.”

Now, what’s this doom and gloom? Gray exclaimed. You tell him not to be cynical. Maybe he’s got a dragon in him, too!

“They lost a lot of wizards,” Pirin replied. He’d recovered about a fifth of the pure Essence he’d used.

But a pressure weighed down on his shoulders, and his senses cried out. Something emerged at the edge of his perception. A Wildflame.

It was time.

He shut his eyes and concentrated his will and Essentia, and his armour disappeared in a flash. He rubbed the pommel of his sword, ready to daw.

“Keep steady,” he told Marshal Teanor. “We can still—”

The smoke clouds above the city burst open, and a pair of enormous greenblood techniques roared toward him. Pirin pushed Marshal Teanor to the side, but the dragon-bat-shaped shattered the battlements and flung him and Nomad back down to the street below. Soldiers scattered, raising their arms to protect themselves from the rubble.

The second greenblood technique smashed into the gate with such force that it shattered the doors. It flung them off their hinges and sent shards of wood flying into the city. They raced through the streets, smashing into houses, shattering windows and walls. Civilians screamed, and clouds of dust rose up in huge streaks beyond the gate.

Pirin gasped, then jumped up to his feet. On the other side of the gate, the Dominion army marched down the main thoroughfare. They aimed straight for the open gate.

“No!” Pirin hissed. Gray squawked and fluttered up to her feet. “Hold your ground!” he shouted. “Hold your ground, and fight for your lives!”

But, ahead of the approaching army, descended a singular dark-cloaked form. He threw off his cloak, revealing a bare chest, rippling muscles, and bright green knotted tattoos. His cloak fluttered away in the wind, and his dragon-bat scampered back up onto his shoulder.

“Ah, there you are!” he shouted, staring directly at Pirin. “Let’s settle this.”

“Pirin,” Nomad warned. He staggered to his feet, using his staff to hold himself up. “You’re not a—”

A bolt of greenblood Essence shot out from Lord Three’s hand. It speared through Lord Three’s chest, then pulled out and stabbed twice more. “Good riddance,” Lord Three grumbled. “We’ll call it even for emptying my core and delaying me.”

Nomad’s eyes bulged, and he heaved forward with a gasp. “Pirin…”

“No!” Pirin shouted. He rushed forward, trying to reach Nomad, but a tendril of greenblood whipped the ground, keeping him back. “Nomad, don’t—”

“Pirin…remember who you are.” Nomad coughed up a spout of blood, and a trickle rolled down his chin. “Advance.” He toppled to the side and fell motionless in a pool of his own blood.

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Pirin couldn’t fight Lord Three here. It was exactly what the Wildflame wanted. A fight in the city, killing the innocents of Northvel and the refugees from the Sirdian countryside. Pirin couldn’t allow it.

“Gray?” he whispered. “We need to push ourselves. If battle is an impetus to advance, then so be it. We need to face him.”

I’m with you, Pirin. Let’s deal with this bastard once and for all.

He pushed from behind with wind, turning them both into a dart. They shot out the inner city gate like an arrow and struck Lord Three in the chest with a Winged Fist, catching him off guard and making him stagger. The wind seemed to condense around Pirin’s fist, then compressed and snapped against Three’s chest.

With a crack like a whip, the Unbound flew back into a building, smashing through the cobblestone wall of the bottom floor and causing the half-timbered upper level to collapse onto him. There was no one inside. Pirin needed to keep the fight in the outer city ring, away from civilians, as much as possible.

He and Gray jumped up onto a shingled rooftop and perched on the brink, watching Lord Three rise from the rubble. He brushed himself off and cracked his knuckles, then tilted his head side to side. The remains of the building groaned and creaked, then collapsed into rubble behind him.

“You liked that one, didn’t you?” Lord Three asked. “Was the old man special?”

“You know who he was!” Pirin snapped. He held back a bout of sadness. The same sadness he’d felt when Mr. Regos died, or when Kalénier died. Again. Yet again, another person who’d tried to help him, suffered death at the hands of the Dominion.

No more.

He filled himself with an old resolve. He still hadn’t been strong enough to protect Nomad. But he wasn’t going to let this city fall under his watch.

He condensed the rage and confusion and anger and frustration and sadness, and compacted them all into adrenaline.

He might not have been a Wildflame, not yet, but he needed to push himself. Remember who he was, and fight for his kingdom. For the lives of everyone within the wall who were as lucky as Nomad.

“Yes, yes, that was the Aremir outcast,” Lord Three sneered. “He got what he deserved. Traitors hang, or…get impaled by a volley of arcane techniques, whichever suits them best. He’ll be better off with a quick death.”

Pirin pulled off his mask and switched to his Embercore form. He maintained constant effort and expenditure of Essentia to keep supporting his inner world and his soul fortification technique.

It was working. For now, it would appear that he just wore a gambeson, and despite the weight on his soul, his armour effectively didn’t exist.

“You, on the other hand?” Lord Three said. “I’m sure you’ll put up quite the fight, and that means you’ll have a long, protracted, painful end.” His dragon-bat chittered and perched on his shoulder. “Nice eye, by the way.”

Pirin turned his head to the side slightly, pretending he couldn’t detect anything on the scarred side of his face. Lord Three grinned. It was working.

“This should be easy enough,” the Unbound strode out of the rubble, then flung his arm up, launching a Greenblood technique at Pirin and flinging him back across the rooftops. Pirin activated the Fracturenet as he slammed into a domed roof, protecting his spine and the back of his neck. The sandstone shattered beneath him, and shards of an ancient roof-painted fresco fell down to the cavern below.

Lord Three descended through the hole Pirin had left, supporting himself with the greenblood in his tattoos. Gray swooped down behind him, talons outstretched, but he shifted to the side and swatted her in the back, driving her down to the ground. She landed beside Pirin, cracking the floor.

Ow… she groaned. We need a plan. How do we kill that?

“We have to lure him in close, then deploy all our tricks. He’s a good ranged attacker, so we need to close the distance.”

Then stop hitting him so hard with your techniques. Don’t fling him halfway across the city.

“He deserved it.”

Well, don’t do it again.

Pirin reached to his hip and drew out his reforged sword. Lord Three raised his eyebrows, then chuckled. “You got desperate in the forge, did you?”

“You could say that.” Pirin flourished the blade, then held it down by his side. It was slightly heavier than he was used to, but his enhanced body compensated for it, and he barely felt the difference.

He leapt off the roof of the house, then activated the Fracturenet, and a glow of blue flared up around him. He closed the distance between himself and the Unbound, ducking and dodging from greenblood techniques and dragon-bat head outlines. He dispersed a barrage with his Shattered Palm, then ducked under another and slid along the ground until he reached Lord Three’s feet.

Lord Three charged, throwing a punch at Pirin’s chest, but Pirin blocked it with the flat of the blade. It rang and warbled dangerously. If that’d been a full strike from Lord Three, it would’ve shattered the blade.

But instead, a flurry of punches followed, lighter but faster. Pirin blocked two more before the Ichor-steel fillings of the blade cracked, and the sword bent and its midpoint, holding on with only a single stubborn tab of golden steel.

Pirin sensed the blows approaching from his blind side, but he tried not to react in a way that would give away his ability to sense them. That meant, when Lord Three delivered a punch straight at Pirin’s left shoulder, he had to take it. At the last moment, when he saw it in his eye, he flinched, trying to soften the blow.

The fist struck and flung him back across the main thoroughfare of the city. He crashed through the marching Dominion army, scattering soldiers and equipment.

He crashed through a storefront on the other side of the street. The cobblestone walls broke beneath the force of his impact, and the upper floor collapsed in a puff of dust, but he scrambled out the other side, escaping the plume of dust.

Lord Three was standing there, waiting for him. He caught Pirin by the throat, hoisted him up, then threw him back onto the ground. The alleyway flagstones shattered beneath his fortified flesh, cratering.

“Pathetic,” Lord Three sneered. “Absolutely—”

A low, woody tone echoed over the wall and washed over the city. As it sounded, it rose in pitch, before cutting off entirely.

A war horn. It came from outside the city.

And it wasn’t Dominion.