I’d come so far from the forest outside Talos, long ago.

Back then, Flash Step had been a trial in focus and control, a white-knuckled grip on the reins of a wildly bucking steed. One false step, one wrong move, would have led to massive internal damage.

But I was no longer a novice, now. And just as my Attunement with the brutal Mover Blessing changed, so too had our relationship.

It wasn’t as natural as breathing, but no longer did it resemble a feral animal either, a storm-made-flesh that fought viciously any attempts to control. Draconic Blood might be more reflexive, more efficient, Fang more autonomous and obeisant, but nothing made me feel more alive.

Flash Step was power. It was freedom. It was everything I needed, everything I wanted to be.

In an instant, I was behind one of the knights, and Fang was coming across. I split the Guard in twain at the midsection, slicing cleanly through without a hint of resistance.

Fearing a potential detonation, Bullet Time whirred to life, and the screech of exotic metal shorn apart by my blade deepened in pitch accordingly. I pushed it lightly, keeping its Entropic draw at a mere sixfold dilation, my greatest interest that of preserving my own stores.

But the robot showed no signs of exploding.

Amidst the slowed time, I watched shimmering, viridescent oil gout from the ruined machine’s innards, sparks flying as it collapsed in two separate pieces.

Fwoom.

Twin eyes flickered to life, and Sensory Projection screamed out a warning.

Red lightning surged, and I was ten feet away.

A massive, orange tech-sword occupied the space where my head had just been, plasma venting violently from twin exhausts at its base, blistering heat distorting the air around it.

The second knight rose from its crouch, its failed surprise attack, turning towards me at disturbingly normal speed. From beneath twin slits in its mouthless alabaster helm, glimmering golden sensors locked emotionlessly on to my new location.

The eight other knights were just as statuesque as they’d ever been. Thank the Priest for small mercies, it didn’t seem as if I’d be forced to fight them all at once.

Good thing, too.

Knight two was fast.

Even with my perception accelerated to six times the normal rate, its movements were scarcely slower than a mundane human’s. The white-plated machine sped towards me without delay, each step pushing off the floor so powerfully that the marble ground warped like soft silk.

I groaned with effort, desperate to react.

It was an exercise in futility. The air was thick as honey. Bullet Time might have allowed me ample duration to consider the white death racing my way, but it did nothing to enhance my own motion.

I groaned a second time, my vocal protest turned into a deep base echo in the slowed time. I shoveled Entropy into Draconic Blood and felt it rip tendons and tear muscle fibers, forcing my sluggish limbs violently into action, unraveling them in the process.

It wasn’t enough.

I couldn’t match the knight’s speed. Before the first corpse had fallen, it was upon me. I’d barely managed to raise my arm.

Knight two took one final, earth-shattering step, and thrust its blade-arm towards my heart.

Internally, I grimaced. Its swordplay was basic. Remedial. Ugly. In a fair fight, it wouldn’t have been able to touch me. With my own enhanced abilities, I even wagered I could’ve killed it despite its speed.

Probably.

Eventually. In any other setting, an opponent like this might have even served as good practice. But I didn’t have time to spare, and this wasn’t a fair fight. This was the World Titan.

It wasn’t interested in isonomy, but then, neither was I. As death approached me, I made no attempt to defend, instead angling my sword just right–

Flash Step.

–to bring it screaming across from behind.

Knight two whipped around, attempting to duck and weave, to avoid my blow and return with one of its own.

But it wasn’t fast enough, this time. Not quite.

As muscles strained and protested, as my own flesh tore itself asunder, my strike exploded through the Guardsman’s head, little remnants of red lightning scattering off its alabaster armor. Superheated shrapnel from its shattered mechanical brain showered the lavish marble floor.

The stroke spun me right into its awaiting blade.

Red-hot steel skewered me through the gut, and I gasped in pain. But it was a short-lived pain, purely physical in nature and thus no stranger to me.

My sword arm dangling uselessly at my side, I used the other to wrench out the sizzling steel, which slid smoothly from the cauterized hole it’d punched through my midsection. With a flicker of will, I released Bullet Time, leaving Draconic Blood to heal the grievous wound.

Noise returned to the world, and with it, my other senses followed suit.

An uncomfortable itch plagued me as charred skin was purged and remade, and I drank deeply of the sterile air. My chest heaved. Sweat dripped from my every pore. Adrenaline saturated my circulation, making me slightly lightheaded. Panting, I spun around.

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Something was wrong.

Fwoom.

A third knight’s eyes flickered to life as, expectedly, it stepped forth. But it wasn’t alone, this time. The foul puddle of oily blood and steaming silicon organs my first kill had left behind was bubbling, rippling, shifting.

Something was rising up from it.

With the moaning screech of steel on steel, the first knight’s bisected halves slammed into one another. Its sliced-through wires re-connected, its circuits soldered themselves back together, its body jerked, seized, and shuddered, and its burning golden eyes snapped on to me.

Fwoom.

Fully healed, and ready for round two.

Fang growled.

I gulped.

The first knight blared a battle cry, a shrill, tinny klaxon that pierced the air. The third knight joined in its inhuman wail.

As one, they attacked.

Immediately I reactivated Bullet Time, slowing their midair approach to a still frighteningly-rapid crawl. Too late. They were too close now, and I couldn’t outrun them. I’d no other choice.

Flash Step.

My vision warped and flickered as the Mover Blessing brutally accelerated my body leagues away. In slow motion, I watched the two knights impact the ground where I’d just been, their multiple-ton machine-frames spewing white shrapnel every which way, disturbing the magnificent room’s otherwise peaceful atmosphere. Once more their helms twitched, and spasmed, and snapped towards me.

Panicked thoughts whirled unbidden through my mind, yet one dominated them all.

They can regenerate.

Each time I kill one, another activates, and they can regenerate.

A shiver ran down my spine as I imagined drowning in a tide of metal bodies.

I’ll have to end them quickly.

Was such a thing even possible? Near as I could figure, less than half a second had passed between my slaying the first knight and its revivification.

Now I had to kill all ten, that quickly?

Back in the forest outside Talos, I’d managed to cut down twenty mannequins with Flash Step, but that’d taken me over five seconds. And, back then, I wasn’t wrangling any more than a single Blessing at once. Now I had to run both Bullet Time and Draconic Blood simultaneously. Now I had to accomplish the same feat in one-fifth the time, with three times the active powers, against opponents even faster than me.

All without taking damage.

A second shiver raised goose-pimples across my skin. A half-second still hadn’t elapsed. Knights one and three were swiftly approaching, but I still had time. I was burning through an alarming amount of Entropy, though. My reserves weren’t quite hurting yet, but I couldn’t keep this up for long.

Before I fought them, I needed to verify my theory.

Lightning surged, Entropy crescendoed, and another Flash Step took me to the other side of the room, far from my machine adversaries. Tirelessly, without a hint of frustration or complaint, the knights re-oriented themselves to chase after me.

I ignored them. Sensory Projection would tell me when they were close enough. All my focus was fixed directly on the broken corpse of knight two.

Nothing happened.

As the milliseconds raced by, as the half-second mark came and went and went again, and again…nothing happened. Knights one and three drew ever closer, but the second knight, the one whom I’d decapitated, didn’t flinch. It didn’t move.

Why?

All of a sudden, an abrupt hope bloomed from within, tempered somewhat by confusion.

I destroyed its head.

I was a regenerator myself, and I knew almost for a fact that the only way to kill me was via the brain. Mechanical though it was, the creature surely had one, too. Perhaps, without it, it wasn’t able to call upon whatever esoteric power was responsible for its resurrection. Or, perhaps it was too damaged to do so.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter.

Knights one and three were upon me, now, but I met their arrival with a savage grin, this time.

I knew how to fight them, how to kill them, how to make them stay down. Taking on two in melee at such close proximity was a foolhardy decision. Flash Step or no, the time it’d take me to execute one would surely allow the other ample opportunity to kill me.

But I didn’t need to fight them hand-to-hand. After all, they were right next to one another.

Knight three swung at me from the left. Knight one, from the right. They weren’t even a foot apart. They didn’t try to surround me. They knew I wasn’t fast enough to dodge.

My grin broadened, and my fingers twitched.

I didn’t need to call the Lightning, this time. Much as I was using Flash Step, it already ran thick through my veins.

All I had to do was direct it.

Just before they reached me, my teeth grit tight, and my hand curled into a claw. Blood and electricity burst from the tips of my fingers in a sanguine spray, the latter lancing directly towards the incoming machines.

The attack cost a significant portion of my invaluable reserves, but the effect was immediate.

And devastating.

The room erupted in crimson glory as lightning arced between the Guardsmen, melting their metallic insides, liquifying their copper circulation, and causing gold trim to run in rivers down the channels of their alabaster plate.

The sickly-sweet smell of ozone filled the air.

In eerie unison, the metallic husks that had once been knights one and three crumpled to the ground, a pair of puppets with their strings cut.

I released Bullet Time and grinned, striding swiftly across their steaming corpses, my eyes darting to the room’s center, where the remaining seven knights stood still, waiting for the inevitable. I’d take my time with whichever one activated next, and the rest would follow. I’d destroy them completely, and make it back to those who needed me.

I’d nothing to fear.

Fwoom.

From its kneeling stance, knight four jerked, shuddered, and animated.

I twirled my sword and cracked my neck.

“Come on, then,” I beckoned, still grinning. “I have your measure now.”

Fwoom.

Knight five spasmed to life beside it.

My mouth dropped open, and I stumbled back.

“Woah, wh–why are–,” I stammered, fearfully.

Fwoom.

Then, from the corner of my vision, I saw it.

Knight two’s disintegrated mechanical skull re-appeared, forming from nothing at all to rest atop its rising frame. Lurching forth from the cracked, ruined ground, it stood tall, mouthless helm snapping towards me.

A narrow, golden gaze guttered alight, and locked upon my own with just a hint of vengeful fury.

Bullet Time screamed back into action, and my eyes widened as, at last, a flood of revelations graced me all at once.

I was wrong.

When knight one died, knight two awoke. When knight two died, knight three awoke. But this time I’d slain two knights at once. Two knights dead, two knights activated.

Each kill activates a sleeping knight.

When knight two died, knight one revived. When I killed one and three, knight two revived.

Each kill re-animates all fallen knights.

My breaths came faster and faster, sharper and sharper, my focus falling apart.

It was worse than I’d imagined, so much worse. Killing these three would awaken three more, and resurrect the two that I’d slain. Before I knew it, I’d be fighting all ten at once. And killing them all, even within the span of one second, wouldn’t be enough–they’d just revive. And keep reviving.

There was only one path to victory.

I have to kill them all at the same time.

Three of the Kingsguard howled their inhuman battle cry, and attacked.