As we jogged over the forested mountainside, a blur of green and brown unfolded around us. We navigated loose rocks and forest litter, pushing through underbrush and past scrappy mountain oaks. Dappled shadows cast by the light filtering through the canopy created a mosaic of light and dark, dazzling my eyes and heightening my suspicion of another ambush. But things were urgent and we had to push forward. I had to help them with their camp and maybe find a way back home after everything was settled.

Leaping over a veiny upturned root, I stomped large prints into the dirt, leading the charge. The others kept up, spread tactically, watching our flanks as we hastily made our way in the direction of the camp. The deceptive terrain played tricks on the eye. I once tripped, causing a slight drop in my Evasion skill, though not enough to lose any ranks.

I glanced back often as I ran, making sure the party was keeping pace. Kevinar moved like a shadow, soundless and agile, nothing inconveniencing him in even the slightest. Ike was much the same; he was not as agile but being so close to the ground lent him a running stability that was enviable. Brandosyeus struggled though, and I had to slow down the pace to allow him to keep up.

As we advanced, I thought of what might await us at the camp. It was definitely going to be a boss battle, probably more mobs. We’d drunk our potions and regained our various lost points, but that left us empty on refills, a concept that weighed heavily on my mind. I couldn’t be foolish about it, I’d throw everything into this battle and not worry about the next. Because if I could shock and awe whatever the enemy had waiting for us, they flee to the high hills and leave us in peace for the night.

Or so I hoped. Morale had definitely been a thing in Lords of Chaos. Given the retreat of the tribesmen from the previous battle, it seemed likely that a strong strike at the start could well run them off. I tightened my grip on my Titan-Ax-icearigama.

What do you think, Jeldorain?

My demonic companion shifted. I don’t really do plans so much as break them. Chaos and carnage are always good, I support you oh great champion.

Small woodland creatures ran from us as we crashed through their lands, stopping to regard us with shifty glinting eyes and the wind whispered through the leaves, carrying with it a pungent smell that I couldn’t immediately identify.

“That’s burning pitch,” Ike gasped, his breaths becoming labored from the strain of our relentless pace.

“The camp is another half-hour ahead,” Kevinar muttered. “But I can make it in half the time.”

“No,” Ike gasped. “Can’t risk it. We move together.”

The smell of flame and ruin became stronger as we neared. The sounds of war, of screaming, crying, metal clattering and men dying came first as a whisper then crescendos as we overcame the final ridge.

There laying before us was the flaming wreckage of what appeared to have been a well-sized city in the middle of frosty forest-ridden nowhere. A capital for the movement of which I was now a part of. And it was immediately obvious that this capital had fallen.

We’d come too late. We couldn’t save it.

Throughout the flames and wreckage small bands battled on. In the far distance we saw wagons much like the one I had been in trundling off, obviously filled to the brim with prisoners from the camp. A dozen Warg Knights were finishing off those they hadn’t bundled, and I snarled at them, remembering their arrogance and confident that I was ready to face them.

Beside me, Kevinar and Ike traded glances.

“A dozen of the bastards. The rest of their army gone, but a dozen is all they need,” Ike growled. “We’ll have to wait them gone. There’s nothing else to be done.”

Brandosyeus looked down at the carnage blankly, before apparating his panpipes to his lips and beginning a song. It growled and rumbled, a sort of pre-historic heavy war metal tune, and I was astonished to feel magical anger weave around us.

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“Brandosyeus!” Ike cried.

“We kill them here and now, save all we can,” he said tonelessly, before moving back into the song.

Hells yes, Jeldorain bellowed. I felt myself falling to the tune of the music, my stats rising around me, my anger becoming insurmountable.

Rising from depths of anger and sorrow, the panpipes tore through the air, a ballad of war and vengeance. Rumbling through the air and shaking through the ground beneath us, the notes surged and crackled, each chord imbued with the raw energy of hate. On the ground beneath them, the Warg Knights turned from their gruesome tasks, staring up at our band even as we brandished our weapons and charged down the slope.

It was killing time.

From the bowels of the icy depths, we bring to you the wrath of the infernals, Jeldorain exulted.

Without thinking I invoked Size of a Tempest, roaring like a mighty kaiju as I stomped down to meet the enemy. Around the knights, the remaining camp garrison screamed and fled, moving out of harm’s way as the Warg Knights turned and counter-charged my assault.

From my berserker-clouded mind, I marveled at their diminutive size as a number of them blasted an assortment of rays, lightning strikes, and glowing arrows at me. The spells struck, but did little damage. I roared again, kicking one off his mount and into a flaming pile of storehouse. Sweeping at another with my icearigama, it surprised me how nimbly the mount and warrior dodged my attack, scoring a running strike against the side of my leg.

Behind me, Brandosyeus blew a furious crescendo and small rocks began to rain down from the sky, which itself was darkening to a furious red. Undaunted, the knights continued their assault on me despite the furious swarm that battered them.

I leaped into their midst, engaging my whirlwind attack and sweeping them. Casements of energy flamed into being, deflecting the attack and flaring heat through my weapon. Gasping, I let go of the molten hot ax flail, watching it flying through the air into the center of the camp.

Jeldorain roared in defiance, and I felt his voice tear out my own throat. I’d broken one of the barriers in my attack, killing a Warg Knight’s mount, but the others were well on me now, hacking and slashing at my legs and ankles with a variety of master-class weapons.

Without warning, Kevinar appeared, his S-rank stealth rolling him into a brilliant backstab of the dismounted warrior. The goblin screamed out once, and fell to his knees, With his next move, Kevinar cut his feet from his legs before rolling out of the way of a charge by his companion.

In came Ike screaming like a man on fire. Grabbing a fair-sized stone, he lobbed it against the side of a Warg Knight’s helm, the clong it made resonating over the battlefield. Visibly woozy, the knight turned his mount and charged the kobold, who proceeded to slide under his mount at the last second and stab his two blades into its chest. Dragged along its underside, his legs wrapped in the knight’s own stirrups, and his weapons driven into bone, Ike audibly gnawed at the beset mount, and it fell to its side squalling.

Two companions came charging his way, and Ike snarled, tearing his blades out and turning to face them.

Around me, my hitpoints ticked down as the majority of the knights harried my ankles. Kicking and stomping, I tried to deal with them, but they dodged and weaved, avoiding my attacks. The rage of Brandosyeus’s spell was beginning to fade and I stared at the mess more lucidly, trying to think through a plan.

Ike had been right about these guys. They were tough.

Calling to my lips the Blessing of the Winter Gale, I briefly wondered if I should augment it with soul sync, like Jeldorain had outside of the temple. I caught glimpse of some of the camp survivors hiding in broken buildings, and thought of how badly Ike had been hurt, and decided against it.

Some attacks were just too powerful.

Even as one of the knights raised a hand and fired bolts of glade-green energy into my torso, I reared back and blasted the mob of them with glittering, freezing mist and tundra-force winds. While the energy blasts on my chest exploding into intensely painful fire, my body again falling into the stupor of Tremendous Pain, the ground chilled and froze beneath the enemy knights, frost freezing to their armor and mounts.

The immediate effect was dramatic.

The knights slowed drastically as the footing became slick and difficult to traverse. I stomped at one and felt him crunch under my attack. Lifting my foot and peering down, I saw the knight scurry away on all fours, evidently well-debuffed by the weight of my attack. His mount was twisted and broken, heaving but obviously well on its way out of life.

I shifted, looking for more to kill, and noticed that in my woozy haze and pause, the other knights had raised their own hands. An onslaught of fire, energy bolts, and other tearing magics followed. The energies struck all at once, and I felt a sensation akin to falling, the brink of death looming over me. There was clinking and clanking, but I was so out of it that I couldn’t even read my new debuffs or hitpoints.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, images of Casey in my mind, of Jacob and Nicole beside here, crying over my dead body in a gaming hall so far away.

Oh no you don’t, Jeldorain groaned, straining against the debuffs that encased us. ASSERT he commanded. A wave of negative energy blasted out of us in all directions, and then I passed out.