I ducked the huge hammer, and studied the way the man shifted his feet.

For someone with his build, his height, he was standing far too perfectly. His toe-to-heel stance was flawless even though strained and stressed… it was something drilled into his very bones. Something he could do in his sleep.

He spun the hammer around, to shift to another stance. The massive hammer was as long as he was tall, and the huge head of the hammer was as thick as my thigh. It had several sharp points, like spikes, on its sides and back, while oblong and rounded on the front.

A very non-typical weapon… but perfect for a non-human. It allowed him to utilize his immense strength and endurance.

He slid his hand down the hammer’s shaft, and gripped it in a way that told me he was about to attack again.

Yes. He had definitely been trained by someone from the Empire.

But how…? And by who?

The man grunted, spun, and swung the hammer overhead at me. The move made my eyes water as I stepped forward and to the left, to dodge it by a hair.

How long had it been since I’d seen my old militaries movements…? It’s a miracle I’d even recognized them, it’s been that long.

“Shit…!” the man grunted as he pulled back the hammer just in time to keep it from delving into the ground made of rock and getting stuck, or broken. Although he pulled it back before it fully connected with the ground, it still skidded along the jagged ground. Sparks flew out as he stepped forward and spun again, this time to swing the hammer around in a full circle. Likely as to spin around several times.

I stepped back a single step and then purposefully slid. My whole body fell downward, as if I’d genuinely fallen, as the man did a complete circle and the hammer swung above me. It wooshed past, where my shoulder and upper body would have been.

He noticed, but was in mid attack. He kept on spinning, and although tried to change his momentum and direction, all he accomplished was awkwardly swinging the hammer down at an angle on his next revolution. By the time it came crashing down where my head had been, I had already regained my footing and dodged out of the way.

The huge hammer slammed into a large wooden dresser after it missed me. The whole thing exploded into bits of wood shrapnel, as clothes of all kinds flew outward. Some got stuck on the hammer, wrapping around it and the shaft, others flew off alongside the broken pieces.

“Son of a…!” the man roared in fury as he hurriedly stepped back. He quickly went to trying to shake the hammer, as to dislodge the thick pelt stuck on its northern spike, but it wouldn’t budge. It had pierced the thing, and was thoroughly stuck.

I smiled at the sight as the man glanced behind him, over to Yangli and his enemies. For some reason the man before me, my enemy, was more concerned with him than me.

Which was hilarious… since he’s been swinging that giant hammer at me for many minutes now, and not once has gotten close to having it connect.

Though… I’d not retaliated yet, either. I was slightly enjoying watching the man attack me.

It made me feel young again. His technique reminded me of the past… of when I used to train the soldiers.

Yangli struck down another man, and my new friend with his hammer shouted wordlessly at the sight of it.

He was genuinely furious over Yangli killing his fellows. It seemed not only was this man trained properly, he himself was a proper man too. He cared for his fellow mercenary bandits.

I’d think him the leader if I’d not already knocked out the real one. She was lying in a mess of a tent not far from me. I had focused on her first so that Yangli wouldn’t accidentally kill her before I got to her. Several people had ran to her tent, to alert her of our attack. They had shouted her name alongside the term boss as they did.

“Who the hell are you two…!” the man with the hammer shouted angrily at me as he finally got the thick pelt off his hammer. He left the few other clothes wrapped and tangled upon it, but that was likely because they were just thin undergarments. Nothing that would impede the lethality of his weapon.

Though… that pelt wouldn’t have really done anything either. He was swinging that hammer with enough force that I bet even Yangli wouldn’t survive a direct blow from it.

“My name is Vim. And to be honest right now I’m rather interested in hearing your story, instead,” I said.

“My… what…!” he shook his head and I realized the poor man was distraught. His mind wasn’t clear. His left eye was half-closed, from both anger and stress.

Before I could say anything he rushed forward, to renew his attempt on my life.

I sighed and wondered if I should just kill him. I’d not be able to spare the man… not after the way he’s shown such frustration over the death of his crew. He’d likely never forgive me or Yangli for what we’d done, and were doing. Plus a man like this would likely come for revenge, just like I did, if I let him be.

Yet…

I dodged some more wild swings, and then had to duck and side-step a massive thrust. One that was quickly followed by a roll of the arm over the shoulder, rolling the hammer’s long and heavy shaft over the shoulder in such a way that resulted in a very quick and heavy blow.

Although I dodged that attack as well, I did so by slapping it away instead of outright dodging it.

The hammer flung to the left thanks to my slap, and since the man had such a strong grip on the thing he too went sliding away. He let out a shocked yelp as he was actually lifted off the ground. The hammer and he both flew about half a dozen feet, and then crashed into one of the few tents still standing.

He shouted in pain as he was quickly buried by the collapsing tent and all the junk attached to it. Someone had connected that tent to the cliff wall and had layered it with not just clothes, but dried meats and half skinned birds.

The man fumbled in the tent, shouting through clenched teeth. I could tell by the sound of his anger that he was actually hurt. He had most likely broken many bones in his arms and hands in his effort to not let go of the hammer.

But that was no surprise. He’d have died outright from such a forceful throw and landing had he been human.

As the man tried to untangle and free himself from the tent I glanced across the open cavern. A small fire had started past Yangli, and it was growing in size. It’d either engulf the whole encampment or would go out quickly thanks to a lack of oxygen. But because of it the scene was a little… well…

Studying Yangli as he fought a group of people, as they all danced and battled through the mess of the camp with the fire behind them… I had to wonder how it had come to this.

The people still left all looked non-human. Yangli was fighting… six of them. I had the man with the hammer. Two more were between us, but they were incapacitated. One being the woman who they all called boss, and another a younger man with bloody stumps for legs. He was trying to crawl to a tent, but I wasn’t sure if he had an actual goal or was just… acting on instinct. His sliced off legs were untreated, and from here it looked like his bleeding had severely slowed. Odds are he was bleeding out and wouldn’t last much longer. Not even a non-human could survive such blood-loss.

“Damn you…!”

I turned to face the man full of hate and rage. He was standing, but heaving in exhaustion. His hammer was on the ground, for the first time since our fight began. He leaned on the hammer’s long shaft more than not, using it to help him stay on his feet. A part of the tent crumbled behind him, and one of its support beams bumped into his back as it collapsed. The impact wasn’t too rough yet it almost sent him back to the ground.

Seemed the fall had hurt him far more than I had thought. He was wobbly, and his face was wracked with pain. He was now sweating profusely, and had a strange pale look to him. I’d think he was suddenly bleeding out like that other man if not for the fact I couldn’t see any such wounds.

Maybe he had broken his back or something in the fall. It was possible. There had been enough momentum in that hammer when I had slapped it away to cause such a breakage. Spines were strong, until they weren’t.

“Who taught you how to wield that thing?” I asked him, unable to contain my interest.

He had to be old. I hadn’t even heard my old empire’s name, or seen its crest, since returning to this land. It was one of the many lost relics, forgotten and buried by time.

I wasn’t foolish enough to think that he had been taught by someone from the kingdom… There was no way anyone, even a non-human, had lived that long. But it wouldn’t surprise me to hear it was some family art or something. Something passed down through the generations. Something even they didn’t remember or know where it had originated from.

“Damn it…” the man mumbled an answer, and I knew there was no point pressing the matter.

He was out of it. He wasn’t even looking at me, and instead at the ground nearby. The man was about to fall over.

Studying his legs, and how stiff they were, I decided he was done. Odds are what little strength he could muster from this point forward would be used entirely on just keeping himself upright.

Looking away from him, I returned my attention to Yangli.

The lad had pinned one of his foes beneath him. He was stabbing down with his sword, killing them. But in his furious assault he was left open and undefended. Two of his other attackers used the opportunity and rushed at him.

Hesitating a small moment, I stopped myself from rushing forward to help.

Yangli was fine. He noticed their attack a little late, but he dodged the first thrust of the sword and parried the spear that followed. He spat and cursed at the two as they exchanged a few blows and then separated again.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Hm… he’s tired,” I noted. Yangli was showing exhaustion. Not as bad as the man with the hammer, of course, but it was enough that I likely did need to step in and finish it for him. Otherwise he might get hurt.

He had three remaining enemies, but on a brief glance it looked to me like he was losing. Two were women, and one of them had a spear… and she looked like she knew what she was doing. She harassed Yangli as the other two attacked with large swords. The spearwoman’s quick movement and insight kept the other two alive. She intervened each time Yangli found an opening to kill one of the other two, and kept her comrades alive.

Now that was interesting. Her style was not of the Empire’s, like the hammer man’s had been, but it was also not common in this era either. Nowadays spears were used as ranged weapons. A very useful, and war winning, tactic… but this was another great utility of the spear.

To allow one to harass an enemy, while providing back-end support for the front-line. And that was exactly how this woman was using her spear.

And she was performing her duties masterfully.

Yangli was nicked in the arm by a sword, and only just barely dodged the spear that shot forward for his neck. If not for that spear he would have been able to step forward and maim or kill the one who had cut him. He cursed as he backpedaled several feet, to both catch his breath and re-assess his situation.

As he did, his three attackers did the same… but only for a short moment. They re-positioned themselves, with the two with swords on the flanks and the spearwoman in the center. They strode forward, ready to push Yangli into a corner and defeat him once and for all.

Yangli lifted his own sword, ready to face them… and although was grinning in confidence, I knew better.

Time to help. The lad was going to die on his own.

It was startling to be honest. I had known Yangli had been bruised and hurt before we engaged these people… but I had not expected such resistance.

These people were a rarity. Especially in today’s age.

I could see how Gribs and his people had been killed by these warriors.

These mercenaries weren’t just random people. They weren’t just warriors coasting on their non-human member’s strength and lethality. They had training. Experience.

Odds were this group was, or rather had been, the greatest mercenary band of this age.

The man with the hammer alone would have been enough to fend off most human armies. Let alone a full regiment of fellow, similar skilled, individuals.

Remembering the man with the hammer, I turned to look at him one last time. To kill him. To deal with him before going to help Yangli.

Yet right as I turned, instead of finding a half-dead man… I instead met face-to-face with the head of the hammer.

“Ah.”

The huge hammer hit me square in the chest and face. My whole upper body was hit with more force than most monarchs could even muster.

I felt the ground fly away from my feet. I felt the rush of hot, stinky, air flush past in a rage. I felt bones break, muscles tear, and organs rupture.

I felt my teeth shatter. I felt my jaw dislodge. Lights flashed in my eyes, and then they went dark. My head rang out in an orchestra of pain and shock, and for what felt like an eternity… I felt the whine of a lack of air. My body screamed not in physical pain, but resistance.

There was no air. And my whole body, every organ, every drop of my blood was screaming to rectify the problem…

A problem that I couldn’t do anything about.

After a few moments of what I could only describe as hell, thoughts other than pain returned.

Although my mind returned, my sight didn’t. But that wasn’t a surprise, yet. My eyes usually healed first, the fastest, but that blow I had just received had likely done a lot of damage. The type of damage that needed prioritizing. My eyesight might not return immediately… not until my heart and other more important stuff repaired themselves.

Yangli was going to laugh at me. Had he ever seen me get hurt…? Like this? I don’t think so. The boy wouldn’t let me live this down.

Actually… when had I last gotten so hurt…? Even the last few battles and even monarchs hadn’t resulted in such injuries.

That man must have summoned every ounce of strength. Every drop of pure spirit and anger.

Bastard.

Stuck in the darkness of pain, I felt what was likely a lung resetting. I felt a strange rush of stinging air where my mouth and throat were. Likely my first real breath since the blow.

But the breath had the opposite effect that it should have. Instead of feeling a rush of relief, I felt instead my body panic even more.

As if I had taken a breath, and there hadn’t been anything to breathe.

For a few long moments I tried to imagine how that was possible. Even if the hammer blow had completely crushed my head and neck, by now they should have healed enough to breathe. Especially if I could feel my lungs trying to function.

Yet as the moments continued on… and my body slowly healed… I kept feeling the mind numbing panic of a lack of air.

Fascinating. Maybe I was on fire…? Had they perchance killed Yangli, noticed I was healing, and then set me aflame…? But if so why didn’t I feel my skin burning? When healing like this, I should be healing nearly as fast as the fires burnt me. I felt pain, of course, but not that familiar pain. Was I underwater…? There had been a slight dampness in the cave, but I had not seen any deep ponds or wells.

Moments lingered and went… and I still needed air… but my body was now adapting. I felt the way my insides squirmed and pulsed… similar to how it felt when I was deep in the ocean for extended periods. As if there was an outside pressure crushing me, and my body was adjusting as to properly handle it.

Which made no sense.

I squirmed, or at least tried to. I could feel stuff all around me… just like the depths of the ocean. I felt the squeeze. The pressure. But that was impossible. There was something akin to a heavy, firm, blanket all around me. Had they wrapped me up or something?

Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s tried to deal with me. The few times I’d been hurt enough to become incapacitated, a few of my enemies have tried to cut me up or bury me. To see if that’d stop me.

It never worked.

But…

Then I felt a familiar itch.

Squirming some more, I felt the frown and not just imagined it.

My face was healed. And the proof wasn’t just that I felt my face, but I felt a very familiar and peculiar itch. One that could only be possible if my eyes were fully healed.

Something was in my eyes. Dirt, maybe. It was a terrible itch that made me want to reach up and wipe them clean… yet I couldn’t move my arms.

Shifting a little, I groaned as I realized exactly what was wrong. With my head now fully healed, so too was my hearing.

I was buried, in a sense. I was surrounded, covered completely.

But not by dirt.

But rather rock.

Pure, hard, rock.

Groaning, I felt and heard the sounds I make reverberate along the cold rock all around me.

I was stuck in some kind of crevice or crack… and…

Yes. I was upside down. I could feel blood trickling down the side of my back, rolling down my back and along my neck. It ran into my hair, tickling me.

Okay. This explained the weird feelings, and my lack of air. It wasn’t that there wasn’t any, but there was so little there may as well be none.

Wiggling my feet, I felt some space around my left leg… and what was likely rubble shifting.

Had… had they stuffed me in a crevice…? Or had the blow been so powerful that I had been sent flying into the nearby wall, and into it?

Surely not…? This cavern, this mountain, was solid rock. My body was a tough thing, but you’d think such a powerful blow would have made me simply squish against the stone more than impale it.

Though…

Shifting some more, I groaned as my lungs began to burn. Since I had no air, they were adapting. Though it was as if they couldn’t tell what to adapt to. It wasn’t like there was water to inhale, after all.

Great.

Stuck in a mountain. Literally.

Yangli was now the least of my worries.

My body was healing quickly, and I could feel my strength returning. Moving my legs with enough force made more room for me. I was dislodging and breaking pieces of the rocks around my ankles… but…

That was about it. I could move my feet, but not my knees. I was that stuck. I could wiggle a tad, move fingers…

Strange. It was as if I was stuck in a hole not even big enough for my body. How had I got in here…?

I couldn’t hear anything. My ears were deafened by the sounds of me trying to squirm and free myself. It was like hearing millions of rough sandpapers scraping against coarse wood all around me. It was almost painful.

All because I had been distracted…! I had thought the man done. A defeated foe.

Through the pain I heard my father. He was giving me one of his long winded speeches about how I shouldn’t allow pride to ruin me. How I should not discount my foes, just because of what and who I was.

“Damn…!” I barely got the word out, and doing so brought more pain. My lungs were now without air completely, and unable to suck in more. The feeling of asphyxiation quickly became almost unbearable. Although my lungs were still adapting, they had nothing to adapt to. They adapted, changed, and then had to do it again when it didn’t fix the problem.

Such a trait usually saved me… but right now it was causing more problems than solving them. My lungs adapting was painful, and distracting. It made my mind blank a bit, and made it hard to think and…

Then I felt other organs begin to burn. As they too started to change.

Stupid body. Just stop and let me figure this out…!

I needed out of this hole. Out of this situation.

Out of the whole mountain.

But how…? I was stuck. Far too good… For all I knew my feet weren’t even dangling out of the wall, but just into another small crevice. I had no idea how deeply I was buried.

What of Yangli? The man with the hammer…? Yangli had been getting pushed back by just those three, if that powerful man stepped into the fray as well…

If they killed Yangli, then they’d escape. They’d run. I’d never find them again. Even if they think Yangli and I were dead, they’d know others could be after them.

If they were cunning they wouldn’t just go into hiding… they might slowly start to target other members of the Society. To kill them, before they were killed instead.

They’d be more cunning about it. Right now they weren’t actively hunting the Society. They had killed Gribs and his people but I had no proof that such a thing had been intentional. It was why I had pulled my punches. It was why I had wanted to capture that woman.

But all of that was pointless if didn’t get out of here.

Wrecking my mind for a solution, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. For all I knew I’d been buried down here for hours anyway, as I healed from my wounds.

Whatever had happened had happened. I now needed to fix my mistakes. I had to get out of here, and either capture those mercenaries again or kill them.

The world was far too chaotic for me to linger here. I couldn’t wait to be found, or slowly weasel my way out of this hole. Such a thing could take me days if not weeks, depending on how deep I was stuck.

So…

No more hesitating.

Summoning all my strength and force, I gritted my teeth and decided to just brute force my way out of this.

I tossed the people out of my mind. I forgot all about Yangli. I forgot about the woman and her mercenary band. I forgot all about my current goal… and simply began to push.

Pushing outward, I forced my body against the stone suffocating me. The jagged stones cut skin and tore muscle. The hard stone pushed back, and cracked and shattered bones that couldn’t endure the force being applied… yet I continued to push without hesitation.

Then, I heard it. Like a giant tree snapping in two… I heard and felt a crack.

It ran all around me, opening up the area around my waist. Where my arms and elbows were. I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the opening, and pushed outward with them. I dug my elbows and forearms into the widening crack… and summoned even more strength.

For a few seconds absolutely nothing seemed to happen. No rock broke. No new cracks.

And then, like a thousand trees falling… like a hundred landslides…

The whole mountain collapsed around me.