Runeblade

The devastation Kaius had witnessed at the eastern gate followed him as Kenva led their team further into the city.

Oh, it wasn’t as severe. Most of the structures by the wall had been leveled — leaving little more than rubble and foundations. Blocks away, the buildings still largely stood, but not unscathed. The ubiquitous smog of fire and ash hung like a funerary shroud over Deadacre.

It hid little to his Truesight. Terraced houses, once the proud homes of the working men of the city, were slumped and browbeaten. They stood, barely, but only by the supporting presence of their neighbours propping them up.

Roofs had collapsed, rubble was strewn in the streets, and everywhere he looked he could see the evidence of death.

A twisted wing, hanging out of a broken window. The gutted corpse of a wolf being dragged behind a team of half a dozen men. Pale faced guards carried on stretchers as medics sprinted for the hospitals that had been set up in the centre of the city.

One caught his eye. A young man, features hidden by his helm — all except for the shock of blue visible through his visor. His chest was bandaged tightly, bright carmine still weeping through the thick wrapped dressing. Pressed tightly to the wound, Kaius could see that same red oozing through his fingers.

Even with health, a lack of relevant Skills and low Vitality left many injuries deadly. They simply killed faster than they healed.

Kaius saw a flash of golden mana to his right. Ianmus.

The mage wove his Ray of Tender Recovery quickly, as he had every time they had come across the wounded — a terrifyingly frequent occurrence. The Tyrant may have given them a reprieve, but the wounds still remained to reap their due.

At his current strength, channeling a simple first tier spell was quick, only a couple of seconds. Following a short pulse of energy, a warming beam flashed across the street, smelling of lilacs and spring growth.

The guard gasped as the magic washed over him. The medics carrying the stretcher stumbled, their gaze snapping to the source of the magic as they slowed their sprint.

Kaius could see their hesitation — if their charge was healed, even enough to just barely live, they needed to leave him and find others. Triage was a pitiless thing.

Ianmus shook his head sharply, “Go! I’ve only restored his health — it does nothing for the injury!”

The lead medic nodded, and they took off at a sprint.

Again, Ianmus’s staff pulsed. Every few moments, a ray would burst from its tip. Sometimes, it moved fast — tearing straight through a gap in the crowd to splash over a prone body or limping form. Other times, it slowed to a trackable pace — curving up and over the crowd as Ianmus used Lightweaving to direct his healing to where it was needed.

The mage winced, “My mana’s dropping — my regeneration is good, but I can’t keep this up indefinitely.”

“Keep at least enough for your keyseals. Any less and you’ll be risking more lives than you’ll save now if the Tyrant returns before you can recover.” Kaius replied, the ash in the air tasting thicker than he remembered.

It was a bitter order, but one they all knew was wise. Ianmus was a competent healer, but his skills were poorly suited for something like this. Tender Recovery was swift and fast, but was only truly helpful for stabilising those rare few whose health was running dry, but would survive the trip to the hospital if they had it.

Actually treating wounds directly required him to freecast — a long and costly process. He would save far too few, and then leave them open for tragedy if an unexpected strike came. As much as it stung, it was the simple reality of the situation. No matter his or his team’s abilities, there were lives they could not save. An unavoidable cost in blood and breath.

Every broken home and twisted body they passed hammered it in deeper. It was a bitter nail, driven so deep he could feel it pricking at his heart.

The agony it brought only inflamed his fire. His aspects had been burning bright ever since his confrontation with the nightscale. Rather than simmer and still, they had grown hotter. A fierce conflagration that towered within him as essence surged.

Long before rising to Silver, he’d known there was a certain responsibility that came with prominence and capability. People looked to you for guidance, stability, and certainty. Often, for the most dire and needed of tasks, you would be one of the few capable of responding to the call.

Today, he had learned that those expectations came with a terrible weight. It was no yoke — no chain of expectations that forced him to act against his own wishes. No, that would have been far more tolerable.

It was the anchor of inadequacy. The burden of failure.

All he had achieved, every scrap of strength he had scrounged, hadn’t been enough. One man couldn’t turn an army. He couldn’t stop the fires, the destruction, the death. It burned all the worse for the fact that no one expected him to.

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Right this very moment, he could see a dozen sets of eyes staring at him and his team. Warriors who’d been battered and broken, who’d fought and died in droves to protect their homes. People, who’d been thrown into the charnel house, and survived all the stronger for it.

Yet there was no recrimination in their eyes. They looked at him, and they stood tall. Jaws hardened, shaking breaths grew deep and smooth, and quaking hands stilled.

They didn’t care that he hadn’t saved them. They cared that he had stood and fought, that he would fight.

How could he collapse under the weight of the dead, when the living still begged him to be tall and unbroken?

He refused to bow. Never had he crumbled before fear, never had he faltered, simply because death lurked in the uncertain future. He knew himself — through tribulation he had found deep in an Ascendant’s lair, that much was certain. He could not save everyone. So be it.

That failure was only more fuel for the fire.

Almost unconsciously, Kaius started to cycle. It was rote now, a weaving of essence through his pillars. Already, he was at a precipice. Each rotation was slow, his pillars so saturated with essence that they struggled to take more in.

His need was great, so he shoveled more in any way.

Every lost soul and every desperate stare only urged the flames higher, and his cycling swifter.

For now, it required little of his attention. It was hard to tell when it had happened, but the cycle of energy had grown familiar. A groove had been cut, and energy flowed through the path that had been made for it.

He knew that would change soon. His true breakthrough would require focus, but he wasn’t there yet. Not quite. He let the pressure build, staying steadfast in his course.

Porkchop gave him a sharp look, likely sensing the violent activity within his soul.

Kaius shook his head softly. “Soon,”

Porkchop gave him a nod, before switching attention to Kenva at their head.

“What happened at the end of the assault? We couldn’t exactly see much, but Rieker made it sound like it was rather intense.”

Kenva sighed and shook her head, gesturing that they should take the next right as she lead them to where they could rest.

“It was madness. The Tyrant put a lot into that final attack, it wasn’t just the nightscale. Some horned thing as large as a house made a breach to the north, while a pack of Silvers leapt over the wall to the south. We got hit hard too — nothing extravagant, but a full flock of high Steels seemed hellbent on keeping us and the mages from helping out the wall.”

Half-distracted by the building heat within him, Kaius frowned. “Sounds like it was trying to tie up our elites.”

“It was, I'm sure of it,” Ianmus replied, another flash of light cutting through the street from his staff, “Whatever suspicions you and Porkchop have, I'm almost certain that I share them. The wall was hit hard, but right when it looked like we were going to be overrun. It could have been a coincidence. The nightscale and the pack Arc and Ro were dealing with fell at almost the same time, but it felt far too targeted.”

“Lets hold off on that for a moment, there’s our inn.” Kenva replied, nodding to a building halfway down the street — the inn Ro had commandeered.

It was relatively untouched by the devastation that had spread through the city. A few broken windows, and the awning over its door had been smashed, but other than that it was standing strong — the only fire present glowing gold in its hearth. Even its sign still remained — the Plucked Hen

Some of that would have been how far they were from the walls, but most would have been luck. More than a few other buildings on the street had suffered far more.

Porkchop shrunk using his natural magic. His shoulder level with Kaius, he fit through the door. Just.

Hurrying in, they found a dozen defenders bustling through the common room. At its centre, five tables had been pulled together. A familiar man sat at its head. Fyfen, the governor's chamberlain. The man was barking orders, leafing through reports.

“Ah, you’re here. Good.” Fyfen said, looking up at them as the door swung shut behind them. “Take the top floor, it’s a suite that’s large enough for the four of you. We have a command meeting in the morning, so get whatever rest you can.”

“You don’t need help?” Kaius asked, eying the bustle in the room.

“I’ll be fine — I’m not the one that’s been fighting all night.”

Kaius didn’t press the issue — not when his pillars felt so full of essence that they were about to burst. All he needed was a little more.

Hurrying upstairs, he barely paid attention to the state of their rooms. All he did was rush straight to a plush leather chair sat next to their private common room’s fire and collapse into it.

His team followed.

“The Tyrant’s testing us, isn’t it?” Ianmus said, taking a seat at Kaius’s right. “We passed some bullshit challenge, and it pulled back to give us some breathing room. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”

“That’s what we think too — Rieker does as well.”

“That’s just great,” Kenva replied, “What does it want though — and when’s it coming for us? Dross made it damn clear that it’s got some kind of fascination with essence.”

She looked at Kaius for comment, only to pause and narrow her eyes. “Why are you so quiet?”

Kaius clenched his jaw, focused on the sensation of pressure within. Just a little more…

He forced another revolution of his essence. With it packed so densely into his aspects, it was almost impossible to retain the state of automatic cycling he’d achieved earlier.

One, final mote drifted in.

He felt a click, followed by a tremor that shuddered through all three of his Aspects. It grew in intensity, a chiming resonance that began to build — one joined by the familiar tone of a system notification.

**Ding! Sufficient Essence Saturation of Aspects Achieved! Begin Refinement?**

Kaius grinned. It was a bloody thing, all teeth and hunger. Regardless of when the Tyrant came. He would be ready, and he intended to pay back the blood debt it had wrought.

“I’m about to refine,” he replied.

Ignoring his team's surprise, he closed his eyes, and shifted his will to the notification.

Yes.