With a trembling hand, I reached up to touch my collar. I found that it was only loosely hanging onto my neck. Gripping it, I slowly took the collar off of my neck to cradle it in my palms. Gazing down at it, I found I had to suppress involuntary tears. God..

We’d done it.

Right now, every slave in Addersfield had no doubt just noticed that their collar had come loose. I had no doubt that many were celebrating, even a little, in the midst of this chaos.

Speaking of celebration.

Violently, Bleddyn reached up and yanked off his own collar and flung it as hard as he could away from him with a howl of victory. It spun end over end before embedding itself in the wooden wall of the now dead Orinbar’s office.

Bleddyn turned to look at me with bright, fervent eyes. “Freedom!” He nearly hissed at me. He was trembling from pent-up emotion.

“Y-yeah…” I said breathlessly, just letting myself revel in the feeling for a moment. I shook it off, though. I took a deep breath. “We’re not done though,” I said to Bleddyn. “We still have something to do before we get the hell out of here.”

Bleddyn smiled viscously at me. “Magnus.”

I nodded at him in anticipation. “And the wards. This town…these people…they’re going to get what’s coming to them.”

………………………………………

This time while we were racing through the manor, we didn’t bother being quiet. With our collars gone, I don’t think either of us were very scared of the manor inhabitants any longer. As far as I knew, the only person that could even threaten someone as strong as Bleddyn was Stonebreaker. And hell, the two of us might even be able to take him. Scintillant Blade might not be able to break chains, but it could still break defenses.

I, uh, retained enough presence of mind to realize that was a bit reckless. But the high from breaking the tablet was too strong. I felt like I could fly from the adrenaline pumping through my veins and lighting up my brain. Even though I wasn’t exerting myself as Bleddyn and I dashed through the halls to the third floor, I could feel my heart pounding a mile a minute.

We weren’t quiet as we dashed down the third-floor corridor. It hadn’t changed since my last infiltration. There were still only two huge doors. The one on the right was Magnus’s, while the one on the left led to the Ward Stone. For a moment, I was sorely tempted to deal with Magnus first, but as much as I wanted him dead, he wasn’t as important. Yet.

“Left door,” I breathed to Bleddyn as we flew down the hall. He sped up, throwing a grin as he passed me. I watched as he reached the door, and without stopping lowered his shoulder and blew it in with a tackle. The doors nearly exploded in a massive crash. Wood shards flew everywhere.

Well.

If there was anyone left in the mansion, they sure as hell knew where we were now.

As I reached the door, I didn’t slow down as I reached behind my back and drew the Ward Breaker. I charged through the ruined door with the oversized fork held in a stabbing position in my right hand, passing Bleddyn who had stepped off to the side. He had an eager grin on his face.

No pussyfooting around with this.

With the Ward Stone in sight, I lunged at it. I stabbed down at the brilliant shining gemstone floating above a plinth. With a shriek of metal on the stone, the Breaker slid into the stone, stopping its spinning in place. At the same time, I pressed down on the activation rune.

The stone exploded instantaneously.

I’d been warned that this would happen, so I’d already thrown up an arm to protect my face. Good thing too, as I felt stone shards lodge themselves in my forearm. I hissed at the pain, but I disregarded it a moment later and lowered my arm. I’d felt something in the air.

I don’t know what I was expecting when the wards didn’t just fall, but overloaded. But it wasn’t this. I could see a pulse expanding out through the air originating from the position that the stone had been spinning at. Somehow, I could also feel something shattering, just out of phase with the material world.

It was a damn odd feeling. But I reveled in it.

Bleddyn must have felt it too, from the wild grin on his face. I smirked back at him, satisfied. It looked like my weeks of work had paid off. But we still were done.

Speaking of, I heard a crashing noise from the room behind me. Magnus’s room. I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He was still in there? Even with the fire devastating his town? I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. But of course, Magnus wouldn’t lift a finger to actually help anyone else. He’d probably been sitting on his balcony sipping wine or something, enjoying the warmth of the fire.

But he was going to regret that soon. He’d just told me where he was.

Still, I’d had an idea while we were sprinting up here. I motioned Bleddyn closer, causing him to approach me eagerly, eyes hungrily watching Magnus’s door behind me. I was going to have to let him down, unfortunately. I reached behind me and exchanged the Ward Breaker with the Bond Breaker. Taking Bleddyn’s hand, I put it in it.

“Sorry man,” I said to Bleddyn, actually a little apologetic. I spoke quickly though, aware we likely only had seconds. “I think you should get out of here.” Bleddyn looked at me quizzically, but I spoke before he could. “Collars are gone, but the rest of the slaves are still bound. Take that, puncture the skin with it, and press the rune. They’ll have their Statuses again.” I smirked at him. “I’ll deal with Magnus.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Bleddyn’s face fell at my words, and indecision warred on his rugged face for a moment. Eventually, he nodded at me in defeat. He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Tell me how it happens later.”

I expected him to exit out the way we both came in, but that wasn’t what he did. Instead, Bleddyn turned around and broke out into a sprint directly at the large, shadowed window on the far wall. My eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets at what he did next.

Bleddyn bodily jumped straight through the window with an enormous crash and fell out of sight, plummeting to the ground. I lurched, nearly running to check on him before I stopped myself. He…probably knew what he was doing anyway. Yeah. Anyway, I didn’t have time for that anyway, judging by the stomping noises I could hear from across the hall. I could feel my blood pressure spike.

Magnus.

I needed to get into position.

Swiftly, I backed up and flattened myself against the wall next to the door. For good measure, I also activated Thorn Cloak. It might have been meant for stealth in a forest, but it couldn’t hurt.

I also drew my main dagger and held it in an underhand grip.

Seconds later, I heard the door across the hall crash open. Magnus came sprinting through the door wearing only a pair of pants, uncaring about the shattered remains of the wooden door underneath his bare feet. He stopped to gape for a moment at the empty plinth.

“What the hells happened?!” I heard Magnus say before he spotted the shattered window. He raced over to stand in front of it and leaned over the windowsill to look out of it. He hadn’t seen me at all.

Now.

For the first time, I activated my new skill.

Sylvan Vigor.

I felt a wild grin spread across my face at the surge of incredible strength that I felt flow through me. You know, now that I think about it, Bleddyn had given me an idea. I needed to hurry though, as I could tell that this was going to be temporary. I braced a foot on the wall behind me and launched myself at Magnus’s back. As I flew across the room, I readied my blade and my most important skill.

The Scintillant Blade.

Magnus must have seen or felt something, because he tried to turn around in the milliseconds before I impacted him. It was too late though.

I tackled him out of the window, and at the same time, I felt my blade slide into place. As we sailed out of the window, it felt as if time slowed to a crawl. I could see for miles around us. Over the top of the burning trees, I could just barely make out of the epicenter of the fire that Azarus had set. In the center of the clearing where Azarus’s house had rested, the blaze seemed to be burning hottest. Even now, all that was left of the house I’d spent months living in were fractured timbers and shattered bricks.

The fire had engulfed nearly the entirety of the town at this point. There were still scattered attempts by the guards to extinguish the flames, but for the most part, it seemed like they had given up. Most of the population of the town seemed to have fled to the large fields on the outskirts of the town proper instead, where most of the residential areas lay. It didn’t seem peaceful in that area though, as even from this distance I could see fights breaking out among the dwarves.

In town, Van’s shop was nothing but cinders by now. So was the coach-house that Gren owned. Instead, it seemed as if there was a long line of wagons forming just outside of the wide-open front gates. There was fighting happening there as well, but it seemed to be a small group against several squads of guards. I couldn’t make out any more than that.

But what was happening in the forests surrounding Addersfield were the most important of all. Shadows were gathering all along the tree line, as if something was only waiting for a signal to strike.

Time sped up.

Magnus and I plummeted through the air, with me riding his back to break my fall. In seconds, we slammed into the ground at the foot of the manor, causing my vision to white out momentarily. When I came to, I was still clutching my burning dagger, embedded into Magnus, and slumped over on his bloodied back. I fought my way through my disorientation. I needed to see where I had gotten him. Looking down, I felt an unhinged smile crawl across my face.

My dagger had punctured straight through his left side at an upward angle, no doubt bursting a lung and hopefully his heart.

A killing strike.

My practice with Azarus had paid off.

He wasn’t dead yet though. I could hear Magnus gurgling in his own blood beneath me, face down in the dirt.

Good.

I wasn’t done with him yet.

I leaned down until my mouth was level with his left ear. “Cease your caterwauling, blood bag,” I hissed to him, in his dying moments. “Be grateful you only get this much.” Wrenching him onto his back using the dagger as a pivot point, I leaned over Magnus, letting the light of the fire illuminate my face.

I saw realization steal across his face, pale from rapid blood loss. Slowly, a noise began to escape him. Though it was mangled by the sound of him drowning in his own blood, I could still recognize it.

Laughter.

I stayed there, leaning over Magnus, as he laughed himself to death. I never let go of the dagger. Eventually, the light left his eyes.

I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

Deep inside myself, I could feel something happening. Against my will, I felt something intrinsic to my very soul begin to resonate. Through the resulting panic, I was actually able to place the feeling.

It was my racials. They were reacting to something.

First, I felt The Scintillant Blade intensify in strength, causing the blade in my hand to flare brighter. It grew so bright that I could see the outline of my dagger inside Magnus’s still, dead chest. Next, I felt Dream of the Infinite activate. I had no idea it even had an active portion. The world grew hazy, and I began to physically see a pulse all around me. I recognized it as the pulse of Aether that I felt during a meld, only actually visible to me this time. Finally, I felt Hidden Amidst the Spheres come alive.

Only, this time it was different.

It wasn’t activating like it normally would, when I pulled up my Status. The well of strength that was intrinsic to the skill was building up, in a way that I had nearly forgotten it could do. But it didn’t stop and fizzle out like it had when I had first discovered it could do this. No, this time, it continued, and began to do something else.

It started to draw in the surrounding Aether.

Slowly, I could see the Aether around me bend to layer over my form. I tried to yank my dagger free of Magnus, somehow aware that it was the initiator of this event, but I couldn’t. More and more, Aether spilled from the environment to accumulate on me. At an unseen signal, all of the gathered Aether surged to the point of contact of my blade with Magnus’s corpse.

I felt it, when something shot up from that point, and infiltrated my Status.