He pushed the [armiger] away as the [Skyshard] fell toward him. He caught its shaft in his good hand and flipped it overhand and drove its spike into the [armiger]'s chest. The [armiger] dropped the [pistol] and gripped the [Skyshard] with both hands and began to pull the spike from his lung. Orc tore it from his grasp and flipped it again. His hand slipped in the warm gristle as he swung its adze in a three yard circle as if circumscribing the molten sphere around them from floor through zenith through the back of the [armiger]'s neck. The spine severed. The head fell off its cleaved backbone, loose in the skin of the neck. The shoulders and chest followed and the [armiger] collapsed in a disjointed heap on the floor with his face twisted around the wrong way.

Orc breathed hard. He looked at his maimed hand and the people around him. With her hair still smoking and tears steaming off her eyes the [pyromancer] knelt over the dwarf saying things he wished he couldn't understand. The [bosun] dragged himself with both arms toward Orc. His skin flaccid and his body trailing fluids across the pavers as if he was made of melted candle wax.

Orc turned to the woman. She watched him come. Her hands were ruined. Blackened and cracked and bleeding. She held both before her with their heels together like a penitent. Perhaps they had melted together.

He looked at her then looked into the dwarf's glassy eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said.

The woman nodded at the [Skyshard]. "That's all she wanted."

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He laid it in the dwarf's limp hand. The fingers didn't close. "It wasn't worth it."

"It's her father's."

"I know."

Behind him the [bosun] made a long and desperate wail.

"I'm coming mate," he said.

He turned and he saw the [bosun] covering his head with his hands and he saw the armiger rising to a knee and raising his [pistol] at Orc's face with his head swinging loose against his chest like a pendant. He heard the woman shout, "Back," and she clubbed her arms across his chest and shrieked as blue fire writhed up her hands and [lanced] outward to the [armiger] and the [pistol] exploded its powder and what was left of the man was enveloped by unnatural flames that consumed his skin then flesh then bones in an instant. Nothing was left but ash on the pavers. Amid them Orc saw a faceted black stone no larger than his fist. The [bosun] saw it also and from his belly he reached for it and closed his hand around it.

As Orc watched the dead man was transformed. He drew a breath. His skin fattened and pinked. Moisture returned to his dry eyes and mouth and his jaw retracted to its proper place as if drawn upward by a string. The [bosun] rolled onto his back and looked at his hands and laughed a full throated laugh, and from where he lay he said, "Catch," and tossed the stone at the woman.

She snatched it out of the air as if by instinct and her hands' cracked skin and their layers of scars on scars and their blisters all smoothed. Her fingers regrew their nails. She dropped the stone to cover her mouth with her hand. It bounced against the pavers and landed on the fallen dwarf.

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> +5 [Renown]: As soon as I first seen him down on the beach I figured we was saved. I figured ain't nobody stood before him ever and ain't nobody gonna stand before him now. It's too bad that armiger never did show up that night at Booky's. Orc coulda just done him then and there... (9/10).