…but, if you must fight, win.

* Shadows of Inveritus training manual.

Sal threw force at the air and a torrent of wind blew out the fire like a giant blowing out a candle.

“Move,” Sal snapped. He didn’t wait for the others. He was already heading for the door.

A great cloud of steam was coming into the bedroom as Lukas’s heat boiled the water they had dumped on the house. It wouldn’t be long before the whole place was on fire, and Sal wasn’t waiting for that. He moved quickly through the hall and into another bedroom on the other side of the manor. He opened the window and climbed out onto the roof.

A mounted archer spotted him and called out to his fellows. Sal tossed the man off his horse with a wave of his hand and went for the edge of the roof. Sarina and Kalissa were right behind him.

“We jump together,” Sal said. “Ready?”

Sarina nodded. Kalissa looked down for a moment and hesitated, then she nodded too.

“Jump!”

The three of them leapt of the roof and Sal bounced force off the ground to cushion their landing. It was tricky to get all three of them at once, he had to compensate for their relative positions to himself. But Sal was a true master, and he did it without tossing any of them back into the manor’s wall or anything like that.

“You have a plan?” Sal asked Kalissa. That girl was uncommonly clever, maybe almost as clever as Sal himself, and combat was certainly more her thing than his. She was his best chance.

She nodded. “I think so. It could take a little time though.”

“I’ll give you it,” Sal said, walking back to where the Tower’s thugs were. “Just do something before Lukas kills me.”

So Sal, alone and running low on force, went to face close to thirty trained soldiers and an insane zealot who could fry him with a wave of his hand.

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Men poured into the manor. They had breached the front door. One of the guards had been run through. Carrus and the only guard who was still standing had fallen back. They hadn’t even had time to get their arrowshot comrade to safety. They made a few barricades along the way which would buy them some time, but not much.

They scrambled up the stairs, avoiding the few remaining caltrops, the sound of soldiers behind them.

Carrus reached the second floor and a Lhintish spear stabbed up at him through the hole in the floor. He jerked to one side and avoided it, but the Lhintish were already stacking up lumber to climb up after them.

Less time than we thought.

They ran into the room they had hid in earlier when they were fighting the Hunters, and barricaded the door behind them.

Carrus took a moment to lean against a wall and sunk down it to the floor. His breathing was ragged and he felt like he had been running for hours. The guard he was with was in no better shape.

All too soon they heard men in the hallway outside and then they were trying to break down the door.

Carrus reluctantly got to his feet and readied his spear. He didn’t want to fight anymore, but he wanted to die even less and those were his only options. The guard joined him, looking scared. Carrus felt he should say something, but he couldn’t think of anything. Knowing that, in all likelihood, they would both be dead soon.

Then he saw smoke wisp its way in under the door. The house was on fire. Which meant they couldn’t just hold out against the Lhintish. They had to get past them and out of the house before they burned to death.

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Sal came around the corner of the manor, which had apparently caught fire already, and was faced with six armed men. He didn’t wait for them to take notice of him, and instead threw a blast of force into them that knocked them to the ground. He opened his Siphon and absorbed force from one of the nearest one’s legs as he tried to get up, leaving him flopping about on the ground as Sal walked past.

One of the few remaining archers saw him and drew back an arrow, aiming at him. Sal waited until the last possible moment and then released force into the air and at an angle, guiding the arrow to pass just around him.

“Saladeen Zareth Hadon!” Lukas roared. “You are guilty of the highest heresy! For this, you must burn!”

The soldiers got out of the way once Lukas spoke, practically falling over each other trying to get away from what their master was about to do. Only the two soldiers protecting Lukas with their shields stayed where they were, just pivoting to allow Lukas to round on Sal and point his right hand at him. Lukas unleashed a blast of heat that set the air shimmering as it came roaring towards Sal.

Sal did what any sensible person would do in that circumstance. He ran. He bounced force off the ground and sent himself tumbling through the air. He landed hard a dozen feet away, not wanting to waste any force to soften his landing.

He scrambled to his feet and kept moving, chancing a look back to make sure Lukas was still focused on him. He saw that the ground he had been standing on before, as well as a huge swath of grass in front of it, was smouldering and black.

Sal ran for his life, but he couldn’t get far. The Lhintish soldiers had formed a perimeter around the fight. All he could do was stay ahead of Lukas’s attacks and try to buy Kalissa and Sarina time. But he was already slowing, running out of energy. He needed to try something else.

He turned back to Lukas, who was getting closer now. Lukas let off another blast of heat, and Sal threw force against the superheated air. The force turned the air back on Lukas and his companions.

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And nothing happened.

Damn, was afraid of that. By the time the blast of wind hit them, the heated air had defused somewhat, and Lukas was able to reabsorb the heat easily through his grotesquely large Siphon. So, while Sal could use force to defend from Lukas’s attacks, he couldn’t turn them against him. And Sal was almost out of force, so he couldn’t even use it to defend himself for long. Plus if Lukas got within twenty feet of Sal, the range a heatshaper could project heat in vis-state, then he could hit Sal with the heat directly and there would be nothing he could do about it.

Sal grimaced and kept running.

Then he heard the glorious sounds of hoofbeats as the Snake Pit’s whores and bouncers broke through the thinly-dispersed line of Lhintish soldiers and charged Lukas. One of them loosed a crossbow bolt at Lukas while his guards had their backs turned, but it went far wide and struck the manor instead. The Pit’s staff may have been loyal and courageous, but crack-shots they weren’t. Still, they were armed and mounted and charging, so they were plenty threatening.

Until Lukas turned and raised his hand towards them.

“Shit,” Sal swore, changing course and running for all he was worth. He couldn’t get within range of Lukas in time, but then he didn’t have to. He ran for an intersect point between Lukas and the Snake Pit staff, reaching out his hand and opening his Channel. He released force just as Lukas released heat, and Sal bounced the force off the ground and sent the column of superheated air up and away from his new allies.

Unfortunately doing this had brought him closer to Lukas than he intended. Too close. Lukas turned around and raised his hand to burn Sal to death. Sal didn’t have time to escape. He didn’t have enough force left to fling himself away and moving the air wouldn’t do him any good at this range either, as the heat would hit him straight out of vis-state and cook him before he could do anything about it.

Sal saw the hand come up and knew it was over.

Then an arrow struck Lukas through the hand.

Sal’s head whipped towards the direction of the shot, only to see Sarina, standing over two throat-slit Lhintish soldiers off to one side. Sal nodded his thanks to her before turning back to Lukas.

He was cradling his hand and staring at the arrow. The shot was brilliant, as per usual, and at the angle Sarina had shot him, the arrow had destroyed his Channel. He couldn’t heatshape. He began to scream.

The other Lhintish soldiers looked near breaking point. They had lost about half their number, and fear of Lukas was the only thing keeping them from running. The people from the Snake Pit were almost upon him, and Sal backed away, trying to be unobtrusive. Eve, Carrus’s right-hand woman drew a sword as she barrelled down at Lukas. The two guards that had been protecting him stayed firm, but they wouldn’t be able to stop a charge by multiple mounted opponents by themselves.

Then, still screaming, Lukas drew the Frozen Dagger from his robe. Mist billowing in its wake, he raised the blade and brought it down on his own hand.

“No!” Sal screamed, feeling physically sick at the very idea of it.

Sarina fired again, trying to make a lethal shot, but one of the soldiers protecting Lukas happened to move at just the wrong time and took the arrow through the head instead of it continuing on to kill his master.

The Dagger plunged into Lukas’s hand and he made a short, ragged cut from his palm down to his wrist. It bled a lot, though not as much as a wound like that should. He raised his bloody hand and Eve, the man behind her, and both of their horses, burst into flames.

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Carrus got outside, though he was the only one. The guard hadn’t made it, dying as they fought their way out.

He was just in time to see his only friend die. Eve screamed as her skin blackened and her body burned. It was a horrible sound and, though he was some distance away, Carrus was sure he could smell her cooking from where he stood.

There are a lot of ways one can respond to seeing a friend die horribly. Some might cry, some might be sick. Carrus was sure that if he survived the next few minutes, he would be doing plenty of both of those things. But at that moment what Carrus did was let out a cry of anguish and charge directly at the man who had killed her.

The Lhintish soldiers were rallying, coming back to defend their master from the remaining mounted attackers as well as Sarina, who was standing off to one side, bow at the ready. The others from the Snake Pit had split up to come at Lukas from different directions. One of them fired a crossbow at him, but they weren’t close enough and they missed. Lukas was screaming, sounding like a dying animal. He pointed his hand, which was bloody, torn, and had an arrow protruding from it, and Brogue died screaming. Then he turned towards Sal, who was running as fast as he could away from him. He hadn’t noticed Carrus yet.

Carrus ran for everything he was worth, ready to drive his spear straight through the Lhintish bastard. His people had died because of him. Eve had died because of him. Enough was enough.

Lukas seemed to hear Carrus and turned around to burn him to death too. The Lhintish man raised his arm but then another arrow sprouted from it as someone shot him through the hand again. It was amazing shot, but Lukas seemed beyond pain now and it only slowed him for a moment.

But it was the moment Carrus needed to close the distance between them. He took those last few steps, shifted his balance, and thrust the spear with all he had.

Only to have it be deflected at the last second by a Lhintish soldier’s shield. The man followed up by trying to smash his shield into Carrus’s face and Carrus was too off-balance to fully block. He took a hit to the side of his head and went reeling.

Lukas pointed his hand at Carrus to finish him off and Carrus desperately whacked his arm away with the shaft of his spear. The soldier moved to get between them, which would allow him to defend against Carrus’s attacks while Lukas burned him with impunity.

Carrus tried a last desperate stab past the soldier and into Lukas, attacking recklessly without regard for how easily the soldier could cave in his skull even if he was successful. It didn’t work. The soldier knocked the spear aside with his shield again and then drove it forward into Carrus. Carrus felt his nose break and he sprawled on the ground, dazed. He looked up hopelessly as Lukas raised his bloody right hand.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Carrus saw Kalissa throw something small and fuzzy at Lukas. He realized what it was in time to roll limply away.

Then there was a deafening noise, a blistering heat, and a wave of air pressed Carrus into the ground. Something wet and warm rained down on him, and when he turned around, Lukas was dead.

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Kalissa killed Lukas, and the Lhintish soldiers broke. She had taken a big risk throwing the bombat, as it could have just as easily blown up in her hand, but it had paid off. The Lhintish had clearly decided that they had lost enough men for the day, and they ran for it. They weren’t to know how few arrows Sarina had left, or that Sal was out of force, they only knew that they had gone through their comrades like a hot knife through butter. They weren’t to know that the staff from the Snake Pit were bouncers and whores, and collectively had a sum total of zero military experience or expertise, they only knew that the enemy they had been taking horrible casualties against had just received mounted reinforcements. In short, the situation from their perspective was a lot worse for them than was the reality, and they ran for it.

Kalissa, Sarina and the others waited until they were out of sight and then collectively collapsed, exhausted from what they had just been through. Kalissa was sore all over from falling off that staircase, and the exertions of combat had done nothing to make her other wounds feel better. Carrus was sick on the grass and then went to exchange embraces and solemn words with his employees, sharing their sorrows over their fallen friends. Sarina pulled a bottle of something from a pouch on the side of her quiver and took a long drink. Sal just sat, trying to catch his breath.

The manor burned behind them. Lord Bermont, or whatever that skard was calling himself, could cause no end of trouble when he finally got back. But perhaps they could make themselves scarce before then. Once they had a chance to catch their breath and recover.

They didn’t get the chance. After what seemed like barely any time at all, somewhere close to forty men in city-guard uniforms marched up from all directions, surrounding them.

“Carrus son of Thebus,” the sheriff said, riding up on his horse. “For the crimes of theft and murder, and arson apparently, I hereby sentence you to death by hanging. All those conspiring with you shall meet the same fate. Men, arrest them.”