Lord Zarik leaned on the stone sill of the window in his quarters breathing heavily.

He had finally managed to track down the leather case in his adventuring trunk where he kept a number of potent vials of healing potions and heal-all. In his desperation, he had drunk enough of them that he would surely come down with potion sickness, but he saw it as an acceptable cost. It had been a strong poison. If not for his high level and the expensive potions he had just downed, his fate would be the same as his men.

The spell was broken now, and he could remember hazily how he had let the woman guide him to do her bidding. Sly…

She was more than she seemed, and dangerous. Even now, he could not help but think of her fondly despite his knowledge that she had been his undoing.

He shook his head to clear it of his wandering thoughts. How could his will be so weak that even now his thoughts trailed to that woman’s delicious…

He chuckled wryly when he finally looked up to behold his realm. The village was aflame. Well, not all of it. Just the places where his men frequented and lived, which was mostly focused in the center of the village. There were pockets of fighting down there and all up through the castle grounds.

Zarik knew in his bones there was no salvaging the operation. Five years of work were ruined. In his condition, and with his best men likely dead by poison, escape was his most prudent option.

He scoured his rooms for essentials, and hastily threw together a travel kit. He then moved to his private armory and began to don his armor.

The door to his room opened and he heard the familiar slow swish of a woman’s dress. The bed creaked slightly from her weight as she splayed on the bed.

“Perhaps there is a god,” said Lord Zarik, taking his sword from its rack and stepping out of his armory and into the main chamber where Sly lay on his bed. “That He would grant me the small mercy of getting to kill you before I have to leave this place.”

Sly wore a long, sleeveless red and black flower-patterned robe garment that crossed her chest and flowed lightly over her upper thighs before opening to reveal her smooth, creamy legs. Wrapped around her tight waist was a broad, red sash tied into a large bow at her back. She propped herself up on the bed with an elbow, and with slender fingers, pulled the edge of the garment at her chest to reveal ample bosom and just the hint of nipple.

“I’m so glad to see that my lord has survived his food poisoning,” she said, drawing attention to her lush lips by touching them gently with her index finger seductively. “You know, you would have been a bad boy, leaving me so unsatisfied.”

Her scent filled the room. A sugary, deep smell with a light musk that pulled at the senses.

“You’ll not charm me again with your wiles, woman,” Zarik growled, though the strain of resisting her was plain on his face.

“Are you saying you don’t want me?” Sly said. She brought one her knee up and spread her legs suggestively, allowing her dress to slip open further, revealing the tender flesh of her inner thigh. Her free hand, the one that wasn’t supporting her head, wandered dangerously close to her happy place.

“Your boldness is commendable, your arrogance is not,” Zarik said, his face flushing. “The blow you struck me today will set me back, but I will persevere. The name of Mudalal will rise again. You, however, will not.”

Sly spread her legs just a little wider and pulled the bit of garment still covering the pink folds over her snatch. “Oh, yes. I can see that you will rise again. Can you really say no to a woman who wants you so badly?”

Zarik’s eyes wandered and he felt the bulge strain against his pants.

“Oh, you think you’re clever, don’t you?” Zarik spat, drawing his black-bladed sword from its scabbard. “If you want me to fuck you so badly, then allow me to penetrate you with the tip of my sword.”

The black blade emitted a low hum before spewing flames as he activated his flaming blade skill. With a shout, Zarik lifted the sword and plunged it into the wretched woman’s exposed bosom.

He bristled with savage pleasure at her wide eyes as he felt his blade sink through her and into the mattress. It caught fire and spread over the fine bedding that had on many occasions been covered in their love juices.

Thoughts of their love juice still on his mind, it took him a moment to register that something was wrong. It had been too easy. She had been too open. Too vulnerable. For a woman who had already bested his senses once, she shouldn’t be able to do it so easily again, but that did not mean he should lower his guard.

He caught movement from the corner of his eyes and twisted out of the way, just as the tip of a long, tapered thrusting dagger slipped behind his armor under his right armpit. He felt a sting and reflexively backhanded his attacker, breaking the already unstable illusion.

Sly stumbled backward at the blow, but she kept her footing. A thin trickle of blood dripped from her nose and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.

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Lord Zarik glanced down at the burning bed with his blade protruding, to find it empty and bloodless, albeit still burning.

“A neat trick,” Zarik said, reaching under his armpit to touch his new wound. It was bleeding, but shallow, having missed hitting anything vital. “If your blade is poisoned, it’s unlikely to be very effective.”

Zarik’s blood was still saturated with the effects of his potions and would be for some time. Her poisons would have to be truly exceptional to overcome his resistance.

“We’ll see,” Sly said, smirking.

Zarik pulled the blade free from the bed and held it in a fool’s guard with the tip of the blade pointing at the ground.

“Murat alsuwra,” Sly muttered the inantation then flung herself toward him, knife raised in a reversed grip.

In a flash, he lifted his sword, and once again expertly pierced through her chest. At least, that was what he thought should happen. Instead, the blade passed through her body like mist and in an instant, she split. He was suddenly facing two identical versions of the sexy assassin, one to a side, each attacking a different vital point high and low.

He twirled his burning blade, slashing wide and cutting down the Sly on his right even as he stepped back to create distance. The struck copy of the seductress vanished in a blur of mist and split just as the first. He now had three enemies who changed position with each other as they encircled him in a move reminiscent to the shell game played at carnivals and army camps that was sometimes called shuffle cup.

“I never liked this game at carnivals,” Zarik said. “The shuffler is always a charlatan. He lets you win once to hook you into playing again, then tucks the ball up his sleeve or disappears it with magic when he doesn’t want you to win.”

The three versions of Sly laughed, a playful happy sound in sweet harmony with each other.

“I think maybe you’re just not good at the game. You should have laid with me. Then, at least you could brag to your friends in the afterlife that you died with your cock in my …”

She attacked mid-sentence, causing him to step back and parry. His flaming sword blazed as he danced through his sword forms with lethal grace, establishing tempo, creating distance or an opening, then passado to strike.

Meanwhile, Sly was proving to be more than just a cheap illusionist looking to land a lucky blow. Each of her copies had produced a small cloak around their left hand. She used it to mask her strikes and create distraction. She dodged and parried, and occasionally caught his blows in her crossguard. Even if she did not have the strength to stop her from receiving a blow, it was enough to force him to lose a tempo as he backed away from her other copies.

Every copy he managed to cut down became two more until he was dueling eight copies of the most beautiful woman he ever had the privilege to face in mortal combat.

Most of Sly’s thrusts seldom landed more than glancing blows on his armor, and yet a few of them had already stung him, while his own attacks only managed to pierce mist. He was bleeding from his arm, the back of his knee and a scratch on his cheek just below his eye.

Having spent much of his life fighting in skirmishes and wars for one prince or another, he was accustomed to fighting vastly different types of enemies. Even if a close quarters illusion wielder was a rare and dangerous opponent, it was one he had faced during his first crusade, where the cult of Hashashin had been a frequent enough enemy. Therefore, he had expected the mirror image spell once he heard the familiar incantation. He had not expected it to manifest so differently than he was used to, as he had never known the illusions to split this way after he struck copies.

It was to be a battle of attrition and endurance. Zarik was more than a match for one of Sly, but eight was proving to be a burden on him, more so because he was still feeling sluggish from having been poisoned.

He was certain that the weapon she now wielded was also poisoned, and so he decided he needed to end this fight before his resistance wore out. Rather than make it a game of swordplay, he would simply overwhelm her.

Zarik drew in his intention, colored it with his disdain then projected it outward, activating his dark knight version of aura of conquest. It required no words of power, and, with a shout, ethereal black flames exploded outward from him in a wave of oppressive force.

The illusion of Sly’s mirror image spell was broken as all her copies took damage. All eight copies disappeared, revealing that Sly’s real body had not been among them. A conjured dagger floated midair for a few moments before it was summoned toward its owner across the room, where she had been lounging casually on a heavily cushioned bench.

“I guess this means we have to with the Plan C,” Sly said, snatching the poignard dagger from where it hung in the air, then lazily got to her feet.

“You’ve been over there this whole time?” Lord Zarik laughed out loud, genuinely impressed. “Well that’s enough play time. Now I have you cornered and you’re all out of tricks. You made a mistake coming after me alone. Even with your impressive tricks, you were never a match for me. Now you’ll pay for it.”

He stalked forward with his black sword raised, no longer in flames now that he had been forced to activate a different skill. His presence was ominous, but the initial force of his aura was much diminished.

Sly didn’t seem to be intimidated in the least, and stood her ground.

“Of course you made a mistake of your own, my little lord Zarik,” she said, smiling coyly.

He paused in front of her, assuming a fighting stance. “Really? And what would that be?”

“You assumed I came alone,” she said.

Zarik’s eyes widened as he turned on his heels, just in time to be hit by a heavy silver mace in the chest plate. It dented inward and thrust him back several steps, but he was much more used to taking blows than a certain bandit captain had been less than half an hour ago in the dungeons of the Mud Castle.

He quickly found his footing and resumed his stance, careful to keep his back to the wall as he regarded his new opponent.

“We certainly love teh make an entrance, don’t we, mah lady,” Johan said, shouldering his mace casually. “In all my years, ah don’t think ah’ve felt like a hero as much as ah have today.”

“Who are you?” Zarik said, spitting a gob of blood. “I don’t know you.”

“Apologies, me lord. But ah don’t believe formal introductions are really necessary at this time. Jes think of me as the ol’ crooked cleric who’s come teh bash ya into pulp. All t’ impress that pretty lady over yonder. A man’s got to do what he’s got to do for love, yeh kin?”