I throw my equipment onto my body. Strapping leather to leather quickly, some straps are too tight and some others are loose, but that will have to do. I take no time to select my weapons, I grab one of my older shortswords, one with very few runes inscribed upon it, just an impact and toughness rune. Then I grab my father's spear. I don't have time to grab any knives or other backup weapons as I sprint out the door, controlling my breath as I mentally prepare for a fight. Somehow I can tell, this fight is going to be one of my hardest...

[Perspective change from Isa to 3rd person narration]

"Hellstorm..."

From Godiva's hands comes a tornado of flames directed at a group of royal knights of the Kingdom of Lusthardia. They are cooked immediately by the flames, their white armor charring black from the intense heat as steel melts and their flesh is charred inside. With a quick motion, Godiva changes targets crying out,

"Thunder spear..."

A bolt of lightning leaps from her hand and into an enemy knight which had gotten far too close for comfort. Godiva doesn't have a sword with her at the moment so keeping enemies at bay is her main objective. The knight is thrown back and lands in a heap, smoking and dead.

She looks at the chaos around her and finds Blake in combat with the false hero of the Kingdom of Lusthardia. He is getting his ass kicked hard. While his precognitive abilities are keeping him alive, the skill difference is massive. The false hero despite being clad in her strange-looking armor dances around the very deliberate and stiff strikes of Blake. She appears to be enjoying the fight, laughing and taunting Blake who seems to be quickly tiring out from the dodging and fighting.

Around Godiva, various students and teachers of the academy fight unarmed and unarmored against the invading knights. Some manage to score some kills, but this battle came as a surprise, very few are prepared for battle.

The Hasslerouge Daughters work as a team. The two dark-haired younger ones dance within flames, burning enemies into nothing, Zindri uses her sword to keep enemies who get too close at bay, while Zandra works behind her annihilating any large force making their way toward them. Violet, the physical monster she is, plows through dozens of foes at a time, ripping them to bits with her bare hands, blades harmlessly bouncing off of her magically enhanced skin.

To Godiva's surprise, the Schneemacher family even came outside to join the fight. The brothers fight to keep the foes at bay, the fat one proving quite nimble despite his rotund form. Behind the two boys, the daughter leaves frozen corpses in her wake. Her curse allowed her to create an aura of freezing air around her. With slight flicks of her hands, barely perceptible under her long gown, she causes pillars of ice to impale enemy knights, or entire formations freeze in place as their blood becomes ice.

The battle looks like it is still winnable by Godiva's calculations, but there will still be very heavy losses. The few mages left on the airships above do very little in the way of giving support. Their spells target concentrations of friendly forces, but due to the lack of military discipline of the students, there are few large concentrations of defenders.

Godiva then looks at the bottom of the flagship where a strange crystal-like thing sticks out of the bottom of the wooden hull. It begins to glow with power and the enemy knights seemingly retreat. The false hero remains locked in combat with Blake, and then the crystal fires off a massive spell, sending Godiva and nearly everyone else flying as the blast devastates the defenders...

When Godiva sits back up she feels a terrible pain in her arm and right leg. Looking down she sees her lower leg bent in a wrong angle. Her ears hurt and are ringing and her ribs ache badly. Blake and the false hero remain on their feet, fighting as if the devastating attack did not happen. The enemy knights begin charging toward the disoriented defenders, easily executing the wounded on the ground. Then through the ringing of Godiva's ears, there is a terrible cacophony of shouts and strange sounds. From behind the old men come charging. The Frontiersmen who were working in the large dock that Isa had claimed, wearing various armors came charging into the enemy knights, and leading from the front is Isa himself.

Godiva sees Isa approach her as two of the enemy knights approach with their weapons sheathed. They have just enough time to turn around as one has a spear punch through his entire body and the other takes a sword through the neck. Isa tosses them to the ground, removing his weapons from their bodies. He crouches down in front of Godiva, his eyes the only part visible from behind his helmet. As she has become used to his eyes are cold and distant as they normally do when he fights. They scan every surface and show nearly no emotion, pure intelligence without any form of emotion. His blue eyes scan across Godiva and he grabs her broken leg which causes her to scream in pain. He barely moves it a few times and mutters,

"Dislocated..."

Then with a violent shove and a terrible pop, the leg is back in place. Godiva screams once more in agony and then is suddenly fine. It still aches and she doesn't feel as if she can stand on it just yet, but it's at least no longer completely busted. Isa stands up silently, his weapons shaking in his hands as if he were terrified, but Godiva has come to understand that is not the case at all.

The enemy knights continue their charge and are met with terrible fury from the Frontiersmen. Isa then joins the fray.

Godiva watches in awe as Isa dodges, blocks, and slaughters enemies. For once Godiva finds herself watching Isa fight, normally she is in combat herself and hasn't taken true notice of his way of fighting, or lack of style.

Every enemy faces a different opponent from Isa. He adjusts everything slightly based on how the enemy approaches him and how they decide to attack him. An aggressive attacker using a large weapon faces an elusive Isa who chooses his time to strike based on theirs. An enemy with a shield finds their shield is their own downfall. One-handed fast-moving knights have the pace pushed against them until they fail to defend. Multiple foes find their teamwork is used against them as their own strikes hit their ally. No two fights are the same as he glides across the battlefield trailing corpses and blood behind him.

Godiva also notes something about how Isa fights. She knows he isn't exactly that strong, especially against opponents who use magic to increase physical ability, so he never lets it become an issue. Rarely is a block done in a normal manner, his blocking is always done with movement, redirecting the enemy attack rather than bracing against it, that is if he is unable to dodge at the moment, or sees an opening that wouldn't be there if he didn't block. In most sword fighting styles known to Godiva, an enemy's attack is your cue to defend, but not to Isa, that is the time to strike, usually aiming for the underarm where there is little to no armor.

She also notes he is unable to kill with a slash or chooses not to. When he does slash it is an attempt to redirect an attack or to force an enemy to defend. When his slashes do hit they create only flesh wounds or bounce off of the heavy plate armor, but the enemy is always sent reeling from the hit as the metal rings like a bell, which in turn opens up a chance for his killing blow, accurate stabs into immediately fatal locations.

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He largely targets lungs or hearts, his spear or sword sticking deep into the ribs of his foes, under the arms they lift in order to perform their own attacks, or an accurate attack to the neck. While it is possible for him to pierce armor with his stabs it slows him down, so he nearly always chooses the easier and faster kills.

Godiva also notices that his weapons aren't the only dangerous part of his fighting style. Sweeps with his feet, and well-placed kicks, and willingly drops his weapon to grab ahold of a foe to get a better angle of attack. In normal honorable combat, this is not something that is done so the enemy knights are caught off-guard by the attacks. The strangest thing to Godiva though is how quiet he is. Normally there are sounds of exertion, spells, or banter during fights, but Isa is dead silent, his armor has no flair to it, dull brown and unpolished steel making him hard to pick out if you don't know what to look for, a deadly specter on the battlefield.

His path across the field is clear though, directly toward the two heroes fighting. The big crystal on the bottom of the flagship remains dull and without power, this is most likely due to the melee the Frontiersmen forced upon the enemy, there is no room to retreat out of the way. Slowly the injured and disoriented defenders have gotten to their feet thanks to the intervention of the Frontiersmen, they help heal one another's wounds and join the fight once more, giving ranged support to the Frontiersmen.

Godiva tries to get up, only to fall over in pain from her busted leg. After falling back in pain for a moment she looks up to see Karl in the middle of the battle. His bright blue suit showed up easily in the field. He isn't fighting, he simply is dragging a spear on the ground in a strange way, the metal head kicking up dust. Then Godiva looks over to see that Isa has reached the heroes...

[Back to Isa]

I try my best to control my breathing as I suck in wind. I did a lot of damage, but I am tired as hell from all that fighting. It has been a hot minute since I've had to fight more than a singular person or thing and my conditioning tells me I need to work on my cardio again, but I finally made it over to Blake and that armored bitch.

I have no clue what I missed, I saw a big flash and heard a big explosion, and found everyone on their asses. Luckily the old farts and other workers had come to help out, while only a few of them were warriors back in the day, the number boost was what was needed. As I approach the main character fight going on in front of me I use this time to catch my breath. They seem locked in a monologue battle while still fighting, both sides are pitiful in their showing of martial prowess, clearly relying on their magical or holy shit to win, although the armored woman does have some capability of fighting, unlike Blake who is getting his brains beaten in.

I finally control my breathing and try and find the correct moment to strike. I plan to simply impale her while she is distracted by Blake, I'll deal with his bitching later. I line up my father's spear and lower my posture, I unfortunately see no openings in her armor. It's almost impossible how well-made her armor is.

Every single plate interlocks with one another, and even her armpits have a small specially shaped plate inside of them, denying that vulnerability while not lowering maneuverability a single bit. The only truly under-armored location is the neck which uses small lames to create an articulating sleeve of metal and this is backed up by a high collar on the breastplate which further protects the lightly armored neck. The armor is also heavily rounded on all sides giving the plates angular advantage so they work as if they are much thicker in reality.

I pick the flattest part of her armor, a lower plate at about kidney level, for some reason, the sides are flattened, but the area is only about two inches across and five tall. I then lunge forward violently with the spear and my aim is true.

With a dull thud my spear strikes and I put my weight behind it and she is simply shoved sideways as I nearly fall over as my spear harmlessly bounces off the white metal.

She cusses venomously unconsciously holding her side as she turns to face me. She says in a smug tone,

"My divine armor cannot be pierced or slashed by anything this world can produce!"

Then Blake makes a desperate strike as she is distracted and his sword of light glances across her arm. The armor immediately is breached and her arm now has a nasty cut across it. She shrieks in pain and scrambles away from us. I watch as the armor repairs itself quickly. So it looks like Blake is the only one who can really hurt her... I'll have to make sure he gets a chance to gut her.

I ignore her challenges and shit-talk and I turn to Blake and say,

"You're the only thing that can hurt her as far as I know at the moment. I'll do what I can to get her into a killing spot for you."

He nods breathing heavily and I rush forward. She seems to be surprised that I won't say anything and backs up out of instinct as I stab and slash at her in rapid succession. She is unable to parry or block any of my attacks, but everything bounces off of her armor. She does make sounds upon my weapons making contact so I begin to take note of this. It appears the armor protects against penetration, but not against impact. She goes to call my attacks useless as I suddenly rotate my father's spear around and slam the heavy maul head on the back into her head. There is a terrible clang and she falls onto the ground, rolling twice before ending up facedown, but soon she begins standing up and she shouts at me in rage,

"You motherfucker! Who the hell puts a hammer on the end of a spear?"

I do not return the words and leap toward her. She is barely able to block my attack but my knee comes up from under her and the armored knee contacts her helmet. Her neck is caught by the raised neckguard but she falls back onto the ground. I kick her over and go to mount her in order to hold her down so Blake can kill her. I hear a quiet voice say,

"Thunder Spear..."

There is a sharp pain across my body as all my muscles involuntarily seize and there is an intense heat across my back. I am thrown forward by my muscles contracting violently and I eat dirt unable to move as I spasm from the electricity. I am able to see my attacker. Blake is on the ground severely injured from his own electrocution. It's Karl who stares at me with wide eyes...

[Perspective change from Isa to 3rd person narration]

Karl stares at his friend who lies on the ground twitching. He manages to stammer out,

"I'm sorry Isa... I couldn't find you... I wanted to get your support for this..."

The armored woman stands up with a groan while holding her head. She asks Karl,

"Is it done?"

He nods and replies,

"I finished the teleportation ritual spell. All we need to do is get the princess into the center and spill a little of her blood."

The armored woman nods and begins to walk toward the injured princess as her forces begin to get butchered by the defenders. A few of her airships even went down due to magical ground fire. The princess fires a spell at the approaching hero only for the flames to harmlessly go around the armor-clad woman. With the flat of her sword, the armored woman knocks the princess over, leaving her dazed and unable to use magic. The armored woman motions with her hand and her helmet disappears in a bright light.

Long raven hair flows down her shoulders, in sharp contrast to her pale skin which is marked with freckles. Her brown eyes stare at the princess in sadistic glee as she says,

"My brother is going to be so happy to see y-!"

Her voice is cut off and replaced with a muffled scream as an armored hand grabs her by the cheeks, covering her mouth.

Isa having recovered from his shock had gotten up, without his weapons, and grabbed the helmetless head of the woman. He goes to cannon a headbutt into her face but the helmet reappears, his wrist stuck in the metal as it forms around it. There is a dull thud as the two helmets meet and the muffled screams continue as it is clear Isa is tightening his grip as much as possible. He plants his feet on her chest and begins pulling. She goes to raise her sword but he kicks her arm causing her to lose her grip and drop the weapon. Karl raises his hand in order to fire another spell just as the woman makes her helmet disappear.

Isa leaps off of her chest, knocking her over and flying into Karl who is far to close. Once on top of Karl, Isa raises his right arm and Karl shouts,

"Wait, Isa! You'll understand if you let me explain!"

Isa growls lowly,

"Shut up."

Then he brings his fist down, shattering teeth as he punches Karl in the mouth. A second punch breaks his nose and a third causes Karl to go limp. Isa leans in and listens to see if Karl is alive. Upon hearing breathing, he rolls Karl onto his side so he doesn't drown in blood, yet. He stands up and turns toward the armored woman, taking deep breaths, the cold and calculating stare now gone, replaced by venomous hate...