“Always keep some tricks up your sleeves when you could afford to. You never know when those would come in handy.” - Benjamin “Benji” Morgenstern, former mercenary captain.

While the rest of her little detachment dealt with the remaining ten guards at the foot of the command tower - taking them on two or three against one, and even then they struggled quite a bit against them - Elfriede went around to the back of the tower where the ladder to the top was located and began her climb. Their target for the mission was to take the head of the enemy commander, one way or another, and she had no intention of failing her mission.

The command tower itself was not that high, only about three-quarters the height of the walls of Fort Kazka, and was made out of wood, with a small watchpost at the top to survey the battlefield from. It was also clearly mobile, judging from the eight wooden wheels that supported the structure at the bottom. Fortunately for Elfriede the rungs of the ladder were built into the tower’s back rather than being a rope ladder or other easily disposable method of ascent.

With her wind-based senses, she noticed how a female officer peeked out from the top and looked down her way, which was not unexpected as it was difficult for her to hide her approach either way. She felt how the woman picked up a crossbow and aimed down at her, firing a bolt straight towards her face.

Elfriede calmly grabbed one of her weapons from storage and cut the bolt in mid-air before it could reach her, then continued her climb unaffected. The officer at the top managed to fire a second shot when she was but three meters away, but Elfriede deflected the bolt to the side, where it only whizzed by her face close enough to leave a slight cut on her earlobe but little more.

The female officer drew her sword and tried to hack at her when Elfriede reached the top of the stairs. All that while she noticed that there was another man at the top, who was fussing with something that looked like liquids in vials, which she couldn’t exactly prevent. The man imbibed the contents of the vial he mixed up just before she reached the top.

With one hand, Elfriede caught the officer’s sword between her own weapon’s blade and the crescent-shaped protrusion from her weapon’s handguard, and yanked it to the side. With her other hand, she used the scythe-like protrusion near the top of her weapon to hook the woman’s rib cage from behind, and tossed her down from the high platform with a heave while she hooked her leg around a rung to keep her position on the stairs.

A shrill scream accompanied the female officer on her way down, only to be cut off abruptly when she landed on the hard ground. Her body was contorted into a decidedly unhealthy shape, and Elfriede could tell that the fall had likely killed the woman instantly, given the shape she was twisted into. With the obstacle gone, she used her weapons to hook the floor of the watchpost on top of the tower and pulled herself up with both arms.

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“Always… Always the fools refuse to see and try to understand what flies over their limited reasoning,” grumbled the man who was now the sole inhabitant of the watchpost as Elfriede lifted herself up. The man seemed hunched over in a menacing way, and his body felt strange to her senses, almost as if the man’s muscles squirmed and tried to break free from the confines of his skin. The hunched figure nearly screamed his next words, before he suddenly lunged at her. “They want their proof so much… I will prove my worth to them!”

Elfriede reflexively dodged to the side when the man lunged with superhuman speed towards her previous location. He struck the floor where she stood with his gloved fist, and the solid wooden floor shattered under his blow, while her attempted counterattack only left a gouge on his chestplate. Clearly he was rich enough that not even a mithril-edged weapon worked that well against the armor he wore.

“Fuck dammit,” cursed Elfriede as the clearly enraged man rushed at her once more and struck one of the corners of the watchpost. The way his fist punched through the solid wood gave her no illusions about what might happen if one of those punches caught her directly. “I knew we’d be dealing with a lunatic, but I didn’t expect this much crazy.”

Her words apparently registered despite the maddened state of her opponent, as he glared at her viciously with bloodshot eyes that leaked blood from the corners. He gave an inhuman scream even as he tore another part of the watchpost’s wooden walls and hurled the sizable chunk straight towards her.

Despite the man’s inhuman, guttural screams, Elfriede noticed that he did not seem to have completely lost his mind, as he retained the capacity for tactics at the least. The man had launched himself behind the projectile he threw, probably intending to use it to cover him from her sight for a moment. If Elfriede had relied on sight, she might well have fallen for the trick.

Instead, she calmly distanced herself from both the projectile and the charging man. The man noticed that she avoided his trick, and immediately launched himself at her once more. He was faster than her, and most likely far stronger, yet Elfriede managed to get by as she sensed the beginnings of his motions, and avoided them accordingly. Her blades left scores and cuts on the man’s armor, but failed to find anything fleshy despite her efforts so far.

In truth, Elfriede mostly intended to stall for time. Whatever concoction the man had imbibed that led to his current state, she doubted that it had no side effects, so she only needed to wait until those manifested. However, her plans went awry when one of her cuts found a previous one she left on his armor and cut deeper, scoring a bloody wound along the man’s chest.

The man seemed to have gone berserk when he was wounded, and struck with even wilder ferocity. Soon enough, his brutal strikes had compromised the structural integrity of the watchpost, and it shifted beneath them as it began to crumble. Left with little choice, Elfriede leapt out from the open front of the watchpost. Despite the height, she was somewhat confident that she could land well enough to avoid any serious injury.

What she had not expected was to see the man dive out from the watchpost and run vertically on the side of the tower as he went after her, with a gleaming saber in his hand. Caught in mid-air, she could not avoid it when the man leapt at her and sliced with his blade, and she was left with no recourse other than to cross her blades in an attempt to block his strike.