I tossed the Blessed bandit’s disembodied head at his partner’s feet after finishing off the last of his men.

It rolled a while, then came to rest looking up at the metal giant, eyes wide in shock and confusion. The villagers were still watching me with fear, even after I killed all but one of their enslavers. I didn’t know if they recognized me. In hindsight, I hadn’t had a bath since entering the Maw, and was probably pretty bloody.

I didn’t blame them, though. They were right to be afraid. I was no longer one of them, not anymore. I’d killed scores of creatures in only the last day, more than I could count. And now I’d added my fellow man to the list.

I didn’t care. All the anger and grief I’d borne over the past twenty four hours of hell had condensed itself into a marble of ice-cold hatred deep within my gut.

Fuck the Labyrinth. Fuck the bandits. Fuck my stupid fucking dream.

It was blind luck that I’d survived the dungeon, blind luck that I’d stayed alive long enough to trigger, and blind fucking luck that I did trigger in the end. If I hadn’t gone, if I’d remained here with Ewan, maybe the two of us together would have been able to do something. Better yet, if I’d taken his side in convincing Aldwyn, maybe no one would have left at all.

The benefits were plenty good on their own simply for reporting a Maw. With everyone here, we might have had a real chance against the slavers. We might’ve survived the attack, and Uther’d have showered us with gifts when they arrived, turning our small village into a proper town to plunder the nearby Maw.

But that didn’t happen.

Didn’t happen, because I didn’t want it to. Because I wanted to be Blessed. Because it was all about me, and fuck everyone else. Even in death, Master Ewan was right. I was a child, and a fool.

I could’ve lived a nice, peaceful, quiet life in manufacturing. Bought myself a house in the big city. Raynie would have come with me, I know she would’ve. We could’ve raised a family together. I’d have had the chance to be a real father, unlike my own. We could have lived out our days together, safe, happy.

Well, Raynie wasn’t here, not anymore.

Most likely, she was dead. I hadn’t counted her among the chained up villagers. No doubt she’d fought back, been unwilling to be taken slave. No doubt she was one of those already burned, her corpse not even present anymore to give a proper burial.

My fault.

And now, my responsibility.

This had all started with me, and one way or another, it was going to end with me as well. I raised my Soulbound Weapon once more towards the man possessing the same Blessing. Flange’s emotions were hard to discern underneath the massive helm he wore, but he regarded his beheaded partner’s face with what I could only describe as resigned acceptance.

He looked towards me and nodded once.

“It’s laughable,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Your Blessing. Laughable.”

He prodded his mace in my direction emphatically.

“No one can copy powers. No one.”

“Enhance ‘em, shut ‘em down, maybe. But copy ‘em? No one. Never.”

He paused, tapping a thick metal-encased finger on his equally metallic chin, producing a soft, clinking sound.

“‘Cept the Vile, I suppose. But I never seen that, myself. ‘Sides, you ain’t no Titan, are you, boy?”

I didn’t reply. I was done talking. He shrugged, massive pauldrons rolling.

“Laughable, but can’t deny it. That there, what you just used to kill ‘im,” he said, “that was Surge’s Blessing. Know it anywhere. Recognize it plain as day.”

He tilted his head, staring at me.

“Reckon that sword you got there’s mine, too.”

He chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound.

“I see, now, what Flange was tryin’ to tell me,” he said, stroking his soulbound mace casually. “Blood, indeed. Only, shame I didn’t see it sooner.”

“Still,” he nodded at me once again, “Can’t complain. Can’t be sloppy, not in this line o’ work. All sorts a’ powers in the world. Gotta be ready.”

He nodded to his late partner’s head.

“He got sloppy. He got arrogant. He got dead,” Flange declared, nodding once with each phrase, as if he spoke the penultimate truth of the world.

His body relaxed, easy but ready, mace held lightly in one hand, tower shield in another. “Can’t complain,” he repeated. “Can’t let you live, neither. You understand.”

He raised his mace above him in a high stance, shield held at the ready.

“Reckon you feel the same, anyways.”

Slowly, he began walking towards me.

I mirrored his gait. We circled each other in the square, only the two of us left.

The fire snapped and popped as it blazed forth into the night. The only sounds were of our making and the inferno that surrounded us. The subtle creaking of chafing leather. The soft squishing of shifting soil. The gentle rasp of our shallow breaths. The slaves watched us both with bated breath and eyes wide with terror.

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Seconds ticked by, and the pressure mounted.

I eyed my foe warily. I hadn’t fought many humans before, but I could tell Flange wouldn’t be a pushover. Unlike his late partner, he was calm. Steady. He wasn’t anxious to make the first move. His song was steel, pure and simple. Strong. Sharp. Flexible. Hardened from years of pressure and practice.

I struggled to find a weakness, a chink in the armor. My sword might not cut all the way through it, so my only option was to use Flash Step as an opening. But it was a strong Blessing. The strongest one I’d encountered so far.

Too strong.

It moved me near instantaneously, but did so by coursing electricity through my form, propelling my mortal flesh forcibly through space. It wrecked me with each use, ten times more damaging than the song, and was energy intensive besides. I couldn’t afford to throw away my Entropy, not with so little left. The one time I’d used it already, to kill his partner, had ravaged me. And that one was short range. Surge must have had some way to mitigate its effects.

All of a sudden, breaking me out of my contemplation, Flange attacked.

In a blur of motion, he reared back and hurled his mace towards me, the steel screaming like a comet in the air. I barely managed to dodge, straining my muscles as I did so, watching it caress my matted hair as it barreled by. Seemingly unconcerned at his miss, Flange snapped his fingers, producing a metallic ‘tink.’

My only warning was a slight pain in the small of my back before my chest burst.

My own guts and gore poured out of me in a great tide, gushing from the gaping cavity that now was my midriff. In a visceral shower, Flange’s steel mace ran me through entirely from behind, flying back to the giant’s waiting palm.

I barely had time to feel the pain before Draconic Blood absolutely flooded my chest, consuming a ruinous amount of Entropy in moments to recreate absent flesh and organs. I shuddered, struggling to think straight, the phantom feeling of a missing midsection flashing through my mind unsettlingly.

“Brute 5. Regenerator” Flange muttered, spinning his mace fluidly in his hand.

No more.

I couldn’t afford to drag this out. He was too fast, too strong. He was too well-rested. I’d been fighting nearly straight for over twelve hours. I was exhausted from ceaseless combat. I needed to end this in a single stroke.

Centering my mind, I called once more upon the song within me, focusing on the sound of speed, blistering speed. Eyes narrowing, red lighting enveloped me, and Flash Step activated. My surroundings blurred, my muscles ripped and tore, and my stomach lurched violently.

In a single step, a crimson fulmination, I was behind my foe. Gritting my teeth amidst my body’s protest, I thrust my sword viciously towards him, replicating Aldwyn’s attack from the dungeon.

But Flange was already waiting.

He moved faster than I believed possible, faster than anything should have been able to move wearing that much plate. His shield intercepted my strike easily, sword biting deep into the hardened steel and sticking within. As I suspected. My mistake was trying, even for a moment, to yank it out. I should have retreated immediately.

Now it was too late.

I didn’t see his wicked, flanged weapon come around towards my face. All I saw was a flash of grey, then white. Then pain.

AGONY.

For a terrible, ceaseless second, my world was nothing but pain. It suffocated my thoughts, drowned out all sentience, rendering back down to my natal form, a wailing, helpless, babe.

Then, with a choking heave of air, I came back to myself.

The strength of Flange’s blow beggared belief. It’d sent me flying straight across the square, colliding me with the remains of one of the burning cabins that encircled it and nearly demolishing the structure.

I gasped furiously, panicked breaths coming so quickly that they nearly asphyxiated me. Parts of my body were spasming uncontrollably.

I’d almost died. No, for a moment, I had died. I’d been braindead. The mace must not have pulverized my mind entirely, allowing just enough material for regeneration. But it had cost me everything. I’d effectively no Entropy left.

And Flange had never stopped moving.

He hadn’t given me a moment’s peace, racing towards me at top speed from the very moment after he’d struck. He didn’t stop to sneer. He didn’t gloat. He didn’t take any chances, didn’t consider victory a sure thing. He wouldn’t give me any time to recover. He hurtled forwards, almost upon me by the time I regained my senses.

Desperate, out of options, I tried the trick that Flange had demonstrated before, calling out for what was mine, by birthright.

Fang, my Soulbound Weapon, shined like a bone-white beacon in my mind, wiggling slightly from its place in the dirt, before taking off towards me like an arrow. Thankfully, mercifully, it appeared my weapon would reach me before my enemy did.

Except it didn’t.

Twisting with impossible grace despite his full plate, Flange lashed out at my blade mid flight as it rocketed past him. His mace demolished the blade in a single strike, shattering it into countless pieces. Like he could somehow see it coming.

Not pausing for even a moment, he continued towards me, steps slamming into the ground, expression indiscernible from within his greathelm. He was a mountain of metal, an avalanche of cold steel. He was inevitable.

He was death.

I didn’t have time to move. I didn’t have time to attack. He was upon me, and I was out of options. I was still lying on the fucking ground. I was weaponless, armorless, out of Entropy. His mace descended mercilessly from above.

I cursed myself for using my Flash Step so early, so stupidly, when I could have used it now to escape. Twisting to one side, I barely avoided being brained for the second time, the mace embedding in my shoulder instead.

I shrieked in pain as I felt my flesh squish and my skeleton splinter, tiny fragments of bone shooting across my chest like little lines of fire. Flange paused, then twisted, driving me to deeper depths of agony, as he withdrew the weapon with a wet squelch and raised it once more.

I was weak. I was paralyzed with pain. I had nothing. For one final time, I saw the end approach me. But now there was no way to escape it.

Our village burned, and I would join it in oblivion. The fire crackled and snapped around me.

The Fire.

I was a fucking idiot.

I’d been trying to fight him like a man. But I wasn’t a man, not anymore. I was Blessed.

I whipped my hand out in front of me, flecks of blood from my shoulder wound guided by what little Entropy remained to slide perfectly through the gap in his visor, striking his eyes. Blinding him. He staggered back.

I didn’t have any Entropy left after that, but I called the flames all the same. Called them to form, to shape. It raised a rout of pain from something deep inside me. I lacked the means to produce them, or enhance them, but I didn’t need to. I didn’t need to create anything. Fire was all around me, raging, seething. I only needed to direct it.

The inferno swelled upwards, and engulfed the enemy Blessed. His armor was thick and strong, nigh impenetrable, but beneath it his flesh was human.

And he wasn’t a regenerator like me.

Flange moaned, incredibly fighting back against the pain as he cooked within his armor, still slowly lurching towards me. Thankfully, for once, his will wasn’t strong enough. Not to overcome reality itself.

He dropped his mace as his flesh melted, muscles liquifying, blood and fat running down his glowing plate in great streams. He collapsed to the ground. His cries of pain faded away as my mind drifted, strength entirely spent.

For the third time that day, I lapsed into an unwilling slumber.