“Nooooo!”

  I roared as I erased the last few yards between us.

  Chowwick hung limply from the end of the ridiculously long, twisted blade. Physics seemed to be defied; his form was too huge to be suspended like that. Viktor should have been pulled over, the blade shouldn’t have been able to support him.

  But he just dangled there, arms hanging limply, utterly motionless. Blood pattered to the snow like rain, steaming in the frigid air, leaving spots on the pristine white ground that were more black than red. The blood carved a path down into the snow, melting it, tunneling down into the cavernous depths, as though trying to escape the reality of the overworld.

  Piercer was a brutal but effective skill. The blow had destroyed the armor of a Shield suit as though it was paper. It had punched through suit and man like nothing. But there was a momentary expense. Much of the mass of Viktor’s suit had melted from his form and become part of the blade. For one instant, the armor around his body was much thinner, much weaker.

  I wasn’t thinking about that as I swung my sword. For once, I wasn’t thinking of much. CUT crackled in the air as the blade cleaved out.

  Viktor reacted. The tremendous mass of mystorium in the blade heaved back, trying to recompose itself into armor. The blade retracted from Chowwick, leaving his form to tumble to the ground like a dead weight. Viktor’s form began to thicken again, he began to turn, in the fractions of a second that came before my sword impacted him.

  His response wasn’t fast enough. My sword clove through the thin layer of protection that covered his skin. If he hadn’t turned, then I believe the sword would have neatly cut him in half. Instead, the tip of my glowing blade split the armor of his upper right arm, devouring flesh in a crazed destructive swing.

  Viktor staggered back from the impact, bringing his sword back up.

  I wasn’t thinking. For once, I wasn’t talking to myself. I wasn’t thinking about the consequences, I wasn’t thinking about the right move to make. I wasn’t reflecting forlornly on winning the love of that girl who’d spoken to me one time. I wasn’t thinking about what Father would have thought, or whether this would please him. I wasn’t thinking about glory, or the people of Boston, or the implications of my next move.

  I was just rage and murderous intent.

  Viktor was hurt, but more than that, he was clearly surprised. He brought his sword up to protect himself. He was a level 40 Griidlord; he shouldn’t need to move with such panic. The block saved him from another wild hack. But there was no respite, no pause; no sooner had he blocked the blow than another came. My sword rained down on him, smashing at him with glowing brutal vengeance.

  There was a sound in my ears. Like a waterfall, or a fire gone out of control. It was my voice. An endless brutal animal roar was pouring out of me.

  Viktor staggered back. Injured and off balance, he couldn’t gain the leverage to use his superior strength. He was caught in a vortex of desperate defense. I had no defense, no regard for my own protection. Every droplet of my being was directed into this storm of maddened violence.

  “W-wait…” Viktor tried to gasp.

  Somewhere I knew what he wanted. He wanted the room to kneel, the chance to voice his yielding. It must have shocked him, but those final seconds were completely lost to him. He was a veteran. He had seen the field for more years than many men would live. He was more powerful than I was, more skilled, but he was hurt, and I had an advantage that I was clinging to with the vice-like grip of madness.

  My sword raked his chest, flaking his armor, blood and sparking fire pouring from the wound.

  “Arrrgh… I…” he tried to speak, but I punched his helm with my sword hand. The surface of the helm puckered, collapsed slightly under the force of the blow.

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  I screamed at him. The sound of a hundred raging demons poured out of me.

  I think he was terrified. I think he was amazed to be terrified.

  He staggered from the punch, and I swung again. The tip of my sword bore a path of devastation over the surface of his suit. Not quite penetrating, his pulses of SHIELD and the hard shell of his armor mostly kept his flesh intact. The suit around him shredded, splashes of blood flashed from the openings as I directed everything at him.

  He gave me the opening.

  I drove the tip of my sword at his belly. There was a responding shove, a pressure pushing back against the tip of my blade, the last vestiges of the force of his SHIELD trying to deny me. Then, with something like a pop, the crackling tip of my blade darted forward, passing into his body like a kingfisher into water.

  He tried to speak as we stood close, our chests nearly touching, feet of burning, glowing steel buried in his intestines. But the only sound his helm made was a gurgling, choking noise, words drowning in blood.

  I wanted to hit him again. I could feel the desperate need to strike him again, but my sword was trapped in his body. I shoved him away in my torrent of hate. He stumbled, my blade came free. I raised the sword again as he sagged to his knees.

  I think somewhere, Alya was screaming for me to relent, that the fight was over, that I’d won.

  I didn’t hear it. Or I chose not to. Or maybe I was incapable of hearing it.

  My sword swept down toward his sagging form. As his knees touched the snow, my weapon bit into the armor of his neck. It didn’t pause, parting armor, then skin, then flesh, then bone. Blood sprayed across the snow, erupted onto me, in a geyser.

  Viktor Taurus’s head landed in the snow, tendrils of steam rising about it. In another instant, it was sinking, melting its way to the ground that lay buried beneath.

  I stood, staring at his headless corpse as it collapsed into the embrace of the frozen landscape. My body heaved with the exertion, with the exhaustion, with the emotions.

  My shoulders rose and fell, and there was nothing in my mind. No thoughts. Just a confused, staring nothingness.

  Suddenly Alya was pushing past me. Her voice was panicked, pained, urgent, as she cried, “Pembleton.”

  It came crashing back on me then. The reality. I could see Chowwick suspended in the air again, hanging from the root-like tangle of mystorium that had been Viktor’s Piercer skill. Everywhere was blood. My suit filled my olfactory nerves with the metallic stink of it, so strong and overwhelming. The blood was everywhere. The snow was pink and red with it. Viktor’s blood, Chowwick’s blood. I was streaked and painted with the blood.

  I turned to where Chowwick had fallen. Alya was crouched over his titanic form.

  I rushed to him, but the memory plays in slow motion. The fear and dread came quickly and in legion form to replace the rage and mindlessness that had held me so securely. I trudged through the snow, my limbs suddenly cold and heavy.

  The wound he had suffered was so terrible. He had suffered many wounds. Chowwick’s face had always been a mass of scars. He had been melded with chains not so long ago, and only weeks later returned to action. A suit could protect a body from bleeding.

  Some little part of me processed the idea that this would impact our ability to use the key fragments we had likely just won. If Chowwick needed weeks to recuperate, we would be badly disadvantaged.

  Horns blew on the battlefield below us. The New York forces had already been caving in. It seemed that they now had an awareness that their Sword was dead, that their Axe was ruined for the day. The strange shapes that were crowds of men started to melt and spread away from the field. Boston soldiers raced in a bloodlusting pursuit; Boston officers rode around them, herding their men back desperately, respecting the conventions that said an army retreating during the Falling would go unharassed.

  I came to a stop before Chowwick’s body and felt something break inside of me.

  Viktor had smashed Chowwick’s helmet. The bearded face was mostly exposed, dustings of snow clinging to the long hairs. His face was pallid and white, his lips already tinged with blue.

  I had known him only so long, but I had come to love this man. He respected me, mentored me, driven me. Part of the unnatural belief I held in my own abilities and my own destiny had been planted and nurtured by this man.

  In a story, there would have been a blood-choked parting. In a tale, Chowwick would have had the opportunity to impart some final words, some message for Arthur or his wife, some expression that he had no regrets, some plea for me to promise to fulfill the future he had envisioned, to win glory for the city.

  But he had no final words.

  I stood over the kneeling Alya, staring down at the ghostly white face of my dead friend.

  It started to snow again, the flakes settling around the fallen giant, adding to the flecks of white that peppered his beard.