Perhaps the only thing that saves Prince Thaddeus's party from immediately falling to pieces is the fact that Valkyrie Brightsky is as surprised as anyone else about Pulg's sudden betrayal. Well, perhaps not quite as surprised as Linda Cogswell herself, judging by the look of shock on her face as her companion's blade makes its way into her left lung. The mage doesn't cry out at the betrayal - the knife in her lung probably having something to do with it - but the rest of the team certainly makes up for it.

Tizzy is the first to react, her scout instincts kicking in, but those instincts primarily tell her to get the fuck out of the danger zone and the half-imp quickly scampers over towards the edge of the arena. Lei seems frozen at the sight of the attack, but Thaddeus's tactical mind immediately tells him that the group needs to get moving. The Valkyrie is on one side of them, some distance away and currently paused, but likely to resume her attack soon. Pulg stands to their rear, within melee range, but that's a poor place for a shaman to be. Linda is critically wounded but not yet dead, but the party's best healer was Pulg and their second best was Linda. If there's to be any hope of saving the mage, she needs to be given healing potions immediately, which will be a bit of a challenge while fighting opponents on both sides. In a second and a half, the prince begins giving orders.

"Lei, take down Pulg! Tizzy, distract the guardian, buy us as much time as you can! I'll aid Linda!" He doesn't wait for confirmation before moving, and his first step in aiding his companion is to turn his own blade against the shaman. Pulg ducks backward, avoiding the swing and leaving his knife sticking out of Linda's back, but forcing the man to give him some distance was all Thaddeus was hoping for. One more swing drives Pulg back a few more steps, and by the time Linda begins to crumple to the floor Thaddeus is already in position to catch her with one arm.

For her part, Tizzy focuses on the task of distracting the Valkyrie before the guardian can launch her own attack. She briefly considers using an arcane blast or two before discounting the idea, knowing that the heavily armored woman could probably deflect the blasts with her shield while charging ahead as if they weren't even there. Instead, she focuses on one of her other specialties - illusions. With a rumbling sound stone spikes suddenly appear to grow from the ground in between Brightsky and the party, growing twenty feet into the air and placed every few feet apart. They're not a solid wall across the arena, as that would invite Brightsky to try to break her way through, and the illusions wouldn't hold up to that sort of test for very long. Instead, paths and openings here and there seem to tease a way through from one side to the other, and the Valkyrie pauses briefly to try and consider her route, or whether she ought to attempt to take to the air.

Meanwhile Lei eventually recovers from his shock in time to pick up with where Thaddeus left off, charging into combat with Pulg. As the man's only weapons are his fists the martial artist moves into a much shorter range, one where the less athletic shaman should be at a significant disadvantage, but to Lei's surprise the half-orc is remarkably agile with his staff, deflecting Lei's blows one after the other. "What in the blazes is this, Pulg!? After all this time, you turn on us now? What have you been hiding from us!?"

The man grins, apparently unconcerned about the fight for his life, and his eyes take on an odd, widened appearance. "Lei, the Iron Palm! Yes, you've long served in Prince Thaddeus's cause - but did you serve for grandmother's benefit? Haha, I think not! What did you have back home, a mountain of gambling debts, half a fortress, a handful of sycophants and slaves you hadn't driven off? Your eyes positively gleamed when the prince made you his promises, didn't they? An estate, gold, a noble title! No, you joined this cause to serve yourself!"

Confused, Lei furrows his brow even as he continues his attack, scoring only occasional glancing blows. "As if you were any different!? A mere grandson of a minor warchief, aye? No inheritance but your spells, wasn't that right? Maybe it was Thaddeus's magic that drew you to him rather than gold, but that's still only serving yourself!"

"Indeed, Pulg was an amateur and knew it quite well! He talked the talk of a wise shaman well enough, wore the trappings and spoke the words, but the man didn't have half the magic of a proper tribal shaman! He would've done anything to fill that hole - but anything was done to him first!"

Thaddeus is doing his best to apply a healing potion to Linda's wound even as he slowly removes the blade from her back, but the last part of the nearby exchange does manage to draw his attention for a moment. "The blazes are you - what happened to Pulg!? Who are you, really?"

Lei finally lands a solid hit to Pulg's chest, audibly cracking a few ribs and sending the half-orc sliding backwards, but the man continues to grin as if he hadn't felt a thing. "We rarely spoke much before my death, my lord, so I'll forgive you for not recognizing me. But then, I'm not quite myself, am I? Perhaps I should shed some of this excess skin..." With that statement Pulg begins to twitch, his bones cracking even without Lei's assistance, but the illusion or even shapeshifting spell Thaddeus is expecting doesn't occur. Instead, long, spiky legs burst from the shaman's back in a spray of gore, repurposed bone and meat hollowing out the man's torso in order to provide him with new weapons. For a second time everyone in the arena pauses to stare at the former man with horror, but his lungs still seem to work well enough for him to shout out to Opal. "Come, Valkyrie! Let us shed blood in grandmother's name!"

For her part, the Valkyrie in question isn't quite so eager to play along. Halfway through the bramble of earthen spikes, she takes a moment to glare at the monstrosity taking form on the other side of the arena. "I don't know why you think I need the aid of some boneshifter to...wait." Brightsky peers at Pulg closer, using her more divine senses, and things suddenly start to become much more clear. "...Yulia!? What in the name of Theolif do you think you're doing!? How did you do that?"

"Simply taking advantage of opportunities as they come by! Which you - hrnf - should be doing as well!" While her transformation did buy her a few more seconds of shock from her former companions, her new form isn't quite an immediate game-winning move. The long reach of her new limbs puts Lei at even more of a disadvantage in a melee, but the martial artist is no faker - he easily dodges the first three swipes Yulia makes at him with her spear-like legs, and on the fourth attack it's actually Yulia who's wounded, as a blow from Lei's fist shatters an improvised limb into shards and dangling flesh.

"I knew those Bogdanovs were crazy, but this is really fuckin' pushing it!" Tizzy starts to feel herself on the edge of panic, but it's not the first time she's been in a tough situation. She starts tossing off a few quick magical blasts at Brightsky, more to slow her down rather than to actually injure her, while at the same time she begins to weave a protective bubble around Thaddeus and Linda. "My best shields are personal ones, but maybe that'll buy you a hit or two! But the sooner you can get into the fight, the better!"

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"One more moment! Almost there!" With one final movement the ritual knife emerges from Linda's bloody robes, and the prince dumps out the rest of one of his best healing potions onto her back. The mage is hardly in any condition to join the fight, despite her mending flesh, but Thaddeus is relieved to see at least that she doesn't seem to be in any immediate risk of dying. Assuming she doesn't get stabbed again in the next sixty seconds, at least. "Keep your shield up around her, I'll take on the guardian!"

With that declaration made Thaddeus prepares his shield and sword once more, and charges in Brightsky's direction. Knowing that Tizzy's not an earth mage, he doesn't slow down in the least for her spiky barriers, and the Valkyrie's eyes are clearly surprised as the man barrels through them as if they were nothing more than mist. Defense is still her strong suit though, and her shield is more than ready to meet his first swing. The second, third and fourth swings follow up perhaps a little more quickly than she was ready for though, and it's only with a flurry of her wings that she's able to prevent any of them from making contact with her body. That doesn't mean the Valkyrie's wings go unharmed, however, as each impact tears a score of shield-like feathers from her limbs, the metal fragments jingling as they bounce onto the stony ground.

"Gah! Never - never had a sword hit me like that, before! Perhaps I'll see if I can keep it as a trophy, princeling!" Brightsky does her best to recover the initiative, swinging one of her wings in from the side as a distraction for her sword, but Thaddeus's enchanted boots simply slide him out of range of both attacks in the blink of an eye. They then return him back to where he stood almost as quickly, and once again Brightsky finds herself losing yet more feathers to his enchanted blade.

It's a battle of attrition the Valkyrie is plainly losing, but their personal duel is briefly interrupted when Lei makes a surprise appearance, flying through the air and almost landing atop Thaddeus and Brightsky both. Thaddeus takes a moment to glance backwards towards what's left of Pulg's body, and finds it to be a barely-mobile walking corpse at this point. Every new limb Yulia grew out of the orc's ribcage had been broken off by the martial artist, and at least one of his normal arms was bending the wrong way as well. Yulia seems to feel no physical pain though, and had apparently found the strength to grapple and throw Lei one last time before her body collapsed for good. "A present for you, Brightsky!"

Thaddeus quickly glances back, realizing he was distracted for a moment too long, but unfortunately it does him no good. "Agh! One more good blow should do her in, prince, just let me - ah!" Lei realizes too late just how close he landed to the floor's guardian, and barely has time enough to roll to make it so that his shoulder takes the hit of Brightsky's sword rather than his neck. The brief chance at reprieve the still-grievous injury grants him isn't enough to save his life, however, and the next swing of Brightsky's blade sees his struggles brought to an end.

"Dammit! This - this was not how I wanted this to go! This is not a proper duel! But we will not be denied! We will prove the strength of our cause!" Brightsky seems prepared to answer Thaddeus's exclamation with one of her own, but the intensity of Thaddeus's second round of attacks puts his earlier swiftness to shame. The man is a blur around the arena, darting in and holding still only long enough to strike yet another tearing gouge into her wings, before again dashing out before she can hope to hit him back. Taking to the air is far beyond her capabilities at this point, even with her magical nature, and so the Valkyrie is left with only one last option.

"In the name of Lord Theolif! The Eternal Shield Never Falters!" It's no spell that she utters, but a divine blessing, and all around her the fallen feathers that once made up her wings float once more into the air. As they gather they pick up speed, and soon form a metal dome around the Valkyrie, part shield and part weapon, a maelstrom of metal that threatens to tear apart anyone who comes too close. It's such an intense sight that Thaddeus barely even notices as a final supercharged blast from Tizzy disintegrates what little was left of Pulg's mutilated form, but his own course forward seems clear.

"No victory without sacrifice - so be it!" With a mental command Thaddeus's magical cloak comes to life, wrapping itself around the prince, and the man charges directly into the storm. Four, nine, fifteen of the flying dagger-like feathers slam into his left side, but the cloak bundles up before each impact, taking the brunt of the damage even as the blows quickly rip the enchanted fabric to shreds. It's not a defense that can hold up for long, but it doesn't need to. The moment Thaddeus makes it into the calm at the center of the storm, his boots send him forward into one final dash. The wounded Valkyrie is too slow to lift her heavy shield in time to stop him, and as Thaddeus's sword plants itself into her neck, the storm begins to die down once again.

As the last feather shard jingles to the floor, followed soon after by the Valkyrie's corpse, Thaddeus turns back towards Tizzy and Linda. "Good work with...with Yulia, apparently. Dammit! How long were we being played!?" He shakes his head, quickly refocusing. "No, not important right this moment. How is Linda, Tizzy?"

"I think the doctor prescribes more healing potions, but she'll live - if we get out of here right now, that is. I take it we're done for today?" The scout gives a nervous grin with her false goblin face, but even with the illusion on Thaddeus can tell it's a fragile thing.

"Yes. We need to...reconsider and regroup. But we'll be back!" Thaddeus shouts his last statement up towards the ceiling, knowing who's certain to be listening in. "We'll prove our cause to you, Xenia!"

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The man gets a response, even if he doesn't hear it. "We'll see about that...you don't wise up by the next time you step in here, you'll find yourself playing a very different game. ...As for me, seems like I have a spidergirl I need to have a talking to..."

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INTRUSION SCORE:

MORTALS SLAIN: 1

MORTALS ESCAPED: 3

NEW CONSTRUCT PATTERN QUALITIES ACQUIRED/UPGRADED:

UNDEAD (MORTAL): A+

LIMITED ITEMS OBTAINED:

RUNIC FISTWRAPS OF THE IRON PALM

MORTAL SOULS: 1

MANA CAP INCREASED BY 10 to 360

KNOWLEDGE OBTAINED:

LIGHT COMBAT SKILLS: IRON PALM MARTIAL ARTS (UNRANKED)

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