Adam dashed uphill. Inked blood overclocked his body, turning his steps into a violent charge towards the Empire soldiers. They called out to him, ordering him to stop and surrender, but he ignored their pleas. There was no time left for words.

Yet there was time for thoughts – albeit few. His Ink heightened his rate of thinking, letting him perceive the battlefield almost as if it was moving in slow-motion.

'We're tired and outnumbered,' Adam thought. A cold, calculating tranquility suffused his being as he observed the environment with pragmatic clarity. 'Our only shot is to break through their formation and escape before they can regroup. Do you know what the Hangwoman's ability is?'

'Unfortunately, no,' Tenver replied inside his mind. The Inked emblem on their backs was connecting their thoughts. 'But she's not prepared for us, either. If you can get past Ernanda's archers, then you'll have one chance to use your Shadow Realm on her. That should be all we need.'

'Will she truly not notice?'

'She'll notice you – but not your less beautiful partner.'

Nodding, Adam quickened his pace. Beneath the heavy rainfall, obscuring vision and noise alike, he could barely even tell where he was going. His boots struggled to find ground solid enough to properly hold his weight, yet he marched on, guided by the muted sound of loading crossbows before him.

"Prepare yourselves!" Ernanda's imposing voice rose above the clamor. The Hangwoman's tone was filled with genuine zeal and excitement, as if she was greatly anticipating what was about to happen next. "Today, we give service to the Empire! By our hands shall the Emperor's will be done, and his hated enemies scoured from this world! Let none suffer the Rot or Puppets to live!"

Her words emboldened Adam to run ever faster. They served as confirmation that he had crossed the point of no return. Even if he decided that things were truly hopeless and attempted to surrender, the Hangwoman would execute him without remorse, right here and now.

It was do or die.

He'd just about made it halfway up the hill when a thought suddenly screamed inside his head, so loud and urgent that it nearly brought him pain.

'60 seconds! Make it to the top within 60 seconds or die trying! You hear me Adam?!'

Despite how jarring it was, the voice still brought a smile to his face as it resonated through his Inked Emblem. Simply hearing it bolstered his confidence. It meant that they were within range – he couldn't have heard them if they were too far away. 'How close are you?' he asked.

As if responding, a massive, oversized wooden arm shot forward. Steam burst out of Tenver's joints as a number of arrows seemed to load themselves into him. 'Don't look back,' the Knight said. 'Keep running, and I shall keep you safe.'

Ernanda the Hangwoman raised one hand, never diverting her gaze from the Painter. When she ordered her troops, it was with a commanding presence fit for an army general. "READY–"

'You don't have to tell me that,' Adam replied, running up the hill. 'I already know I can trust you.'

"–FIRE!"

Rows of soldiers fired their crossbows in an orderly, practiced fashion. A hailstorm of arrows fell from the sky, mingling with pouring rain.

'Our first defense will be the weather,' Adam reasoned, as the projectiles drew closer. 'Hitting a moving target with low visibility is hard enough, and the wind should make that even more difficult. Their odds are low.'

Low did not mean none. Twenty bolts shot in his general direction would find their mark at least once or twice, most likely. Adam could easily have been killed if a lucky bolt happened upon his chest.

Yet likeliness was the realm of Lady Luck – and the Puppet Prince hereby banished it from his claimed Empire.

"Once, I saw the sun blocked by a storm of arrows. My father died that day." The Prince's voice was fraught with restrained emotion. "This sight is similar enough to disgust me."

He raised his arms. "I declare it illegal."

'50 seconds left, Adam!'

Tenver's arrows flew overhead at an impossible speed, faster than his Rank should have allowed. His rebuke clashed midair with the soldiers' volley, knocking their arrows safely away from Adam. The way forward had been opened.

It was an opportunity that the Painter would not squander.

'I have to get to the top.' Adam pushed his feet to move even faster. 'I have to bet on my friend.'

The Royal Guardsmen froze. Well-trained as they might have been, they had just witnessed twenty arrows swept aside by the efforts of one Puppet – and now what looked to be a human-creature of Rot was rushing up to meet them. It resulted in a single moment of hesitation.

Too long of a moment.

Any moment was too long before the Painter and his Knight.

'Uncle surely trained the Royal Guard on how to slay me,' Tenver thought. Even inside his head, the thought was colored by unrestrained laughter. 'They think me a Baron of Archery. Ah, poor bastards!'

It was true that among the twenty soldiers, perhaps ten of them were Archers, while the other half consisted of Swordsmen. Among those, at least five appeared to have a Rank equal to Tenver's. In a clash between their Talents, it should have been a massacre.

But they didn't know. They couldn't have known. The inked trust that burned on Tenver's back had reached deep inside him, and from its ashes arose Adam's Talent–

The Stained Ink.

Like Adam himself, Tenver was now circulating Ink inside his body at incredible speeds, increasing how fast he moved – including how fast he could load more arrows.

'They'll curse me as a monster,' Tenver mused, 'but this arm of a Puppet unleashes arrows far more destructive than their crossbows ever could.'

'Let them choke on their ignorance,' Adam replied.

A Talent of weaker Rank could not surpass a stronger one. This was an immutable law of the Painted World. Yet Tenver's body violated another supposedly primordial rule of existence: he fought with more than a single Talent.

And the physical manifestation of that union greatly surpassed what his original birthright could have ever achieved on its own.

'If your birth gives you not what you need to reach the peak,' Tenver thought, 'then go not alone. Climb the summit with a helping hand.'

'30 seconds left, Adam!'

Ernanda stared in disbelief as her elite soldiers failed in their opening strike, the Painter drawing ever closer. "Are you fresh-faced recruits on your first day of training?!" she shouted. "He is but one man! Overwhelm him with numbers! Worry not about the Prince's covering fire – he'll inevitably lose sight of the Painter!"

It should have been true. Even Adam was struggling to see past his own hands; he'd mostly just been following the voice that commanded the Royal Guard. Tenver shouldn't have been able to see him.

Thankfully, he didn't need to.

Adam was covered in Stained Ink – and Tenver was a Puppet. His arm was made to feel the Rot's influence, able to detect it well beyond the limits of mere sight. So long as Adam maintained his Talent, his Knight would never lose track of him.

That slight difference in expectation let Adam run past the first row of soldiers unharmed, their second volley of arrows rendered just as useless as the first.

'Here's where it starts getting complicated.' The Painter grimaced. 'At close range, I can probably only take one or two of the lower-Ranked ones. And if they fight together...' At this thought, a primal fear of death crept towards him, nearly seizing Adam by his arm.

Tenver parried the emotion away. 'Don't stop,' he said. 'They won't all come at once.'

In the heat of the moment, and lacking the battle experience of the Puppet Knight, Adam truly had no idea what that meant. He couldn't remotely figure out how he would be safe running through so many armed enemies.

He chose to follow Tenver's words regardless.

Good thing he did, too.

"Your performance shames the Empire!" Ernanda bellowed at her soldiers. "Kill the Painter, lest you be tried for treason by incompetence! Kill him! KILL HIM!"

Several men tried to attack him, but surprisingly, it was never more than one at a time. The first soldier came at him with a hand crossbow still half-cocked, and a longsword swing that was doomed to never reach its target.

Adam's Stained Ink wrapped itself around his wrist, shaping itself into a hidden knife. He lashed out and deflected the strike, immobilizing the soldier long enough for Tenver's arrow to land directly in-between their eyes.

A second soldier cried out with rage at the death of his comrade. He charged forth, any notions of self-preservation forgotten. Adam extended his Stained Ink into vines, grabbed the unsuspecting soldier by the ankles, and whipped him up into the air.

Multiple arrows pierced him before he hit the ground, like a hunter shooting wild game.

So it continued. Without hesitating, without thinking, Adam pressed onward. Another soldier. Another quick exchange. Another victory.

Another step closer to the Hangwoman.

'Only 20 Seconds left – keep going!'

It should have been a quick death. Had three of the soldiers fought at once, they would have killed Adam in short order.

Yet the safety of numbers was both misleading and cruel. Each soldier was hoping, consciously or subconsciously, that their neighbor would be the one to step forward next. None of them wanted to put themselves in front of Adam's warpath. Having just witnessed his unlikely survival, having heard the bards' tales of his usurping of Penumbria, and having lived through the terror of his Stained Ink...

They viewed him as a monster. An incarnation of the Rot itself.

Perhaps he was.

"You should not exist!" Ernada's glare was more piercing than one of Tenver's arrows. "Purge him, my soldiers! Attack with all your might and cleanse this Stain from the land!"

'My lady asks this, yet herself fails to attack,' Tenver remarked. Unceasing arrows flew towards the soldiers. He would rather avoid killing if possible, but he couldn't take chances here. 'She's afraid too, isn't she?'

Fear. The knowledge of their overwhelming superiority. The suddenness of the Painter's approach. It all combined to give birth to a single, uneasy idea: that even the most well-trained guard, that even the almighty Hangwoman could not escape.

'Killing him would be simple,' Ernanda likely thought. 'But...just in case he has a trick...I'll let others handle it.'

That brief hesitation, aided by Tenver's arrows and the heavy rain, was enough for Adam to break through twenty soldiers. His never once stopping for an instant, his Ink-reinforced legs running up the muddy hill.

And now, he stood face to face with the Hangwoman.

'10 Seconds! Go for it!'

Adam could feel it, with both his Inked Emblem and his Talent. The defining moment was coming soon.

'Need to make this count – before the Hangwoman realizes it's not just me she should worry about.'

His gaze met the Hangwoman's. For a moment, as the rain fell, time stood still. Comprehension dawned on her, and danger befell on him. She's catching on fast, Adam noted. I have to act before she realizes what's going on.

But he underestimated Ernanda.

Even shrouded in confusion, the Hangwoman did not stand still and allow him a free hit. Her hand shot forward in Adam's direction without so much as drawing her weapon.

She's going to kill me. Every atom in his soul was screaming that death was approaching. Without knowing the how or the why, Adam surrendered himself to his raw instinct, placing his left arm over his chest like a shield.

And right before his very eyes, within fractions of a second, the limb became older, wrinkled, darkened, rotten.

Then, starting from his fingers, it turned to ash.

The fading didn't stop there. His hand was next, followed by his wrist. Just as it reached his forearm–

"ADAAAAAM!"

–Tenver's arrow cut through the darkness, slicing off Adam's arm and immediately halting the rot of time.

Everything seemed to hold still as Adam stared at his stump in quiet disbelief. I...lost an arm. But...it...it doesn't hurt. Maybe the pain was such that his mind could not yet process it yet.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

No. That wasn't quite right. Rather, it was that his entire body had gone numb. He could only vaguely feel anything as his knees buckled down, his world turned on its head, and his limbs started collapsing to the side.

'ZERO SECONDS LEFT! IT'S DO OR DIE, ADAM!'

Adam jolted awake at the words exploding inside his mind. With an automatic, survivalistic instinct, he shouted an internal command.

STAINED INK – STOP THE BLEEDING!

For a moment, an influx of agony nearly caused him to lose control of his Talent. He fought through it with the urgency of a man sensing that victory was near. And when he had at last regained control of himself, the Painter stood tall, as if unbothered by his grievous wound. The pain still burned, but this would keep him alive, at least for now.

Adam saw surprise in the Hangwoman's eyes, and he heard the sound of fighting behind him. None of it mattered. Tenver won't let anyone reach me.

The moment had come. Just as Adam underestimated Ernanda once before, now it was her turn to underestimate him. She had presumed him dead the moment her hand grasped his arm.

It left her unprepared for when Adam shifted with a sudden burst of energy. The Stained Ink in his veins stemmed his blood loss, the fire in his heart moved his leg forward, and his Lord Talent laid down the gauntlet.

He stepped on the Hangwoman's shadow.

"You're playing by my rules now," Adam declared. He called upon the extension of his Lordly Realm. She could no longer move away from him.

Ernanda sent him a silent, hateful gaze, before her lips twisted into a rictus of scorn. "Too late, Painter. Your Realm will not heal injuries that occurred outside of it. This does little to prevent your death."

"Worry more about yourself. You're not so strong that you can ignore my Realm's influence."

"I am too strong for you to order me to kill myself, however."

"Be that as it may." Adam put on an authoritative tone. "While you're inside my Realm, I can still order you to: Step away from me!"

Sparks of blue nobility surrounded his body, crackling and jolting against the flickering sparks of red death emanating from the Hangwoman. The blue and red battled for supremacy, neither giving an inch.

The more impossible my order is, Adam recalled, the more my power is tested. If I fail that test...I don't even know what would happen. But this is a simple order; even if you're stronger than me, you can't ignore it.

As far as Orders went, this one was both simple and nonviolent. A mere banishment – akin to what Aspreay had done to that petitioner such a long time ago. There shouldn't have been any issues whatsoever.

So why...why did he feel his knowledge of the Talent swell up so suddenly?

The Hangwoman yelled out an earsplitting screech. "I–will–not–bow–to–a–PRETENDER!" Her eyes bulged with reddened veins of mania. "Your false power does not impress me, boy!"

The clash between the Talents of a Lord and a Hangwoman was brief and brutal.

Ernanda winced at the contact, her left shoulder flinging back as if an invisible force had grabbed her by the arm. One of her legs left the ground, and only her toes kept her from being flung off completely. Yet she persisted, unyielding, refusing to be banished or sent flying away.

The Painter, meanwhile, almost fell to his knees. He'd gotten the worst of their exchange, and would have coughed up blood were it not turned to Ink. Instead, he forced himself to remain upright, his vision twisting and turning, but not quite fading.

Before he could catch his breath, Ernanda threw her arm forward, grasping Adam's forehead and rotting it to dust. Had they not been inside his Realm, this would have resulted in immediate death. As it was, the end result was only intense agony as he came back to life – still missing his arm from before.

"I'd call this an impasse," Ernanda gloated, with an almost musical note to her taunt, "were it not impossible for you to maintain this for much longer."

Checkmate, it seems. Adam gritted his teeth. My blood loss may have been halted, but I'm still affected by it. I also can't heal injuries that occurred outside my Shadow Realm. Very soon, I'll be unable to even maintain my Realm at all...and that's when she'll kill me.

"Do not hope for your friend to save you." Ernanda now spoke with a dry, disinterred air. "The Prince is occupied fighting my soldiers."

"I know he is," Adam barked out. "And I know that as long as I'm still standing, Tenver won't let a single blade be pointed at my back."

"Admirable loyalty – for a pair of monsters. But it doesn't change a thing, does it?" The Hangwoman casually reached forward. In one motion, she killed him again. "You have no moves left to play."

Adam coughed as he revived, splattering Ink onto the ground. "It's true that Tenver can't save me," he admitted, slowly. "But the thing is...unlike the rest of my life up until now...I think I'm pretty popular these days, you know?"

He let out a hoarse laugh. "Now I have more than one friend."

"What do you–"

An airship descended from above the stormy clouds.

It was in fact the sole Airship capable of such stealth, speed, and maneuverability – a prototype that the Empire had built long ago, never to replicate. Even the Painter himself only knew of its approach because of two reasons. The first was his Captain Talent, granting him knowledge of the Airship's location within a certain range.

And the other was the burning Ink on his back. Tenver wasn't the only one he'd painted a symbol of trust with.

'Adam, I'm right above you!' Solara shouted in his mind. 'Use your Talent to lower the stairs!'

He didn't need to be told twice. This entire time, Adam had been attempting to time his desperate charge with Solara's arrival. If Solara showed up too early, the Hangwoman would have destroyed their ship. And if she showed up too late...well...

That didn't matter now.

They had timed everything perfectly.

"You...the stolen prototype," Ernada mouthed in disbelief. "No. No! The living ship cannot be allowed to exist in the hands of rebels and abominations!" She raised her hand and opened her palm, stretching it up towards the ship. "My lady would have preferred death instead of seeing it be turned against–"

"Don't attack," Adam ordered. His vision blurred, his world shook – and his grin widened, as the Hangwoman froze in place. Even if I'm in this sorry state, I won't let you do as you please.

Ernanda practically snarled at him. "Painter, you–"

The sound of falling arrows silenced her. Although his footsteps were masked beneath the heavy rain, Adam could still sense him approaching slowly, with that innocent arrogance of his. Hearing his voice came as a relief, like a gasp of fresh air after running a marathon.

"The Royal Guard has been taken care of," Tenver said, through a heavy breath. "Ah, thank you, Adam. The stairs came all the way down! Rather kind of you."

"We can escape now," Adam managed to say, in a weak voice he barely recognized as his own. "Just have to board the ship and disappear through the clouds – the Empire won't be able to chase us down that easily."

Adam's next death told him the Hangwoman was not entirely in agreement with that plan. "You need to board the ship yet, damned Painter!" Ernanda's voice shook with pure, unbridled fury. "Do it. Dismiss your Realm, step off my shadow, and see what happens next. I will not permit you to merely walk away with your life."

"With all due respect, Hangwoman, I do not request your permission. I am Adam Arcanjo, Lord of Penumbria." He gestured at the enchanted staircase leading down from the ship to the ground. "Tenver, go ahead and stand by the ship's doorway. Once you're there, cover me with your arrows. I'll dismiss the Shadow Realm and make my way "

Ernanda laughed. "Do you think the Prince's Talent of Archery can keep me at bay?"

"Yeah." Adam's response was calm, quick, and without emotion. To him, it felt like an immutable fact, one of the very laws of the universe. His gaze burned with certainty, its fire prompting Ernanda to recoil. "Tenver won't miss a single shot. He will keep you away."

"As you wish, my lord," Tenver said, walking up the staircase without a second thought. "I'll make it happen."

The two didn't bother saying their farewells. After all, there existed no doubt in their hearts that they would meet again, just in mere moments. This would not be their end.

Slowly, the rain started to cease. Adam found some joy in the thought. A part of him hoped that Tenver would time his ascent with the rain. There was something beautiful about the idea of fighting for his life as sunlight pierced through fading storm clouds.

Unfortunately, the Puppet Prince was not one for sentimentality. One of his few flaws. Tenver went straight up, then turned around to shout at Adam from the doorway leading into their airship. "Now, Adam!"

The Painter's gaze never wavered from Ernanda's. Despite his battered body, the loss of his left arm, and the excruciating pain that struck at his soul with every passing second, he stayed ready to move at a moment's notice. A certain grim determination was evident in his stance; an unwavering resolve that he hadn't even known he possessed.

Maybe he hadn't, until recently.

The Lord of Paint sneered at the Hangwoman of Death, spreading his arms wide and opening his palms as if laying his cards down on the table. "Showdown," Adam declared, with a manic grin.

Then, without ceremony, he dismissed his Shadow Realm and turned his back to the living incarnation of death before him.

Both man and woman burst into a flurry of movement. Adam's was one of desperate energy, an irrational joy flowing through his wounded body, like fuel powering his limbs as he stumbled up the staircase as fast as he could.

Ernanda's was driven by pride, fury, and duty in equal amounts. She charged forward to catch him with fanatical zeal. A mere touch of her hand would be enough to permanently kill Adam, yet Tenver's hailstorm of arrows worked as both shield and threat alike. Each step up the staircase was a fight in and of itself – a series of battles where a single loss would mean his demise.

"PRETENDER! YOU WILL NOT LEAVE HERE ALIVE!" Her scream tore through the air. It was the lightning before her Talent's thunder, the certain death growing louder and closer to Adam's back.

Yet he did not look back.

Even when he caught the silver flash of an arrow approaching his eyes, Adam never thought of anything except continuing his frantic march upward. The arrow flew so close to his eye that he could feel its grim whisper, but his resolve and trust remained unshaken.

He heard Ernanda let out a vulgar curse just as he reached the doorway. It was the sound of safety. Of victory.

Tenver and Solara both immediately held him tight, as if afraid he would forever disappear. Despite their concern, though, they still allowed Adam to turn around and say one last thing before making their final retreat.

"Tell the Emperor that I am innocent of the charges he has laid against me." Adam shouted at the darkness below, his voice a mixture of challenge and contempt. "But if he insists on treating me like a rebel, then he will do war with me properly. Unless he chooses to take back his absurd claim that I am not Aspreay's trueborn son..."

A lie in at least three separate ways, he thought.

"...Then Penumbria shall bend its knees to the Emperor no longer."

Solara firmly gripped his shoulder, then shouted down at the Hangwoman. "Gama will stand and fight with Penumbria," she declared. "We will not let the Emperor commit another injustice."

Tenver stood firmly by his other side. "The Puppet Mines shall stand with Adam of Penumbria as well," he proclaimed, in a booming voice. "As will THE RIGHTFUL EMPEROR OF THIS LAND!"

There was one last thing Adam wished to say. One last thing he could say before succumbing to his injuries and passing out.

"Tell this to your Emperor, Hangwoman – tell this to Ciro," Adam thundered. "He will take back his accusations and have us repaid for the indignities he caused...or we will have his head on a pike."