The hinges froze on the third gate of Amaranth. With a mighty blow, the Berserkers shattered it. The Twins' Champion followed shortly after, howling in agony as giants harried its sides with cold iron and blood-red ice. The dual-headed Ettin Wolf leaped back, snarling at them all as the Paladin atop it swung his two-handed bludgeon.

Giants fell back, their blood red ice cracked by the Paladin’s incredible Strength. Evie dodged beneath a swipe of Ettin Wolf's claws, bending so low she nearly face-planted on the ground. With a quick slap of a hand she flipped back up, reducing her own mass and sending it arcing to the very tip of her flung chain.

Undine Grace is level 99!

She rose, vaulting up and over Ettin Wolf. They had fought for what felt like ages, ranging across the city as her giants and the Champion of the Twins traded blows while maneuvering through the retreating army.

Evie had hounded the creature, followed by her giants and the Nagafolk as they charged into Amaranth. They had killed every godslave minion they saw, spreading through the streets as they pressed ever inward toward the center. The other godslaves died quickly, frozen and shattered by their Skill and Strength, but the damn Champion refused to die.

It was pissing Evie off.

That mace swung for her again and Evie shot out her second chain, altering her trajectory and dodging the blow with a fluid grace.

I bet everyone else already killed their Champions. So annoying!

She had considered more than once asking the Deepking for help. Even now the immense Abyssal Serpent was slithering through the streets of Amaranth, devouring monstrosities as he went. He would most likely make short work of the Champion—but Evie banished the thought as she soared through the air.

I can do this myself!

Harn had taught her well. His lessons had taught her to leash her rage…and when to unleash it. It was cold and brutal, like ice in her heart, and it would not be denied.

Her chain shot outward, wrapping around one of the Ettin Wolf's heads before sprouting blade-hooked blades that dug into its thick, furry hide. The Wolf yelped, hauling back from the weapon, but Evie tensioned the chain and sank the blades into the Champion’s flesh.

Tooth And Claw is level 98!

She yanked hard, pulling herself back towards the Wolf's shoulders, weaving her second chain around herself in a defensive pattern. The heavy chain smashed back the second head of the Ettin Wolf as it tried to snap her up, clearing her way to the saddle on its back, where the Paladin stared at her in baleful surprise.

“Why do you not die!?” he cried.

Her chain dropped on the man, his Twinblessed armor sparking with every hit. The lance he had once carried had shattered several blocks ago, and the mace was useless at close quarters. The Paladin hurled it to the side and it crunched into the pavers of the road. The chains tightened.

“Justice of the Strong!”

Evie’s hold on him slipped, the chain shunted backward by a flare of force Mana, freeing the Paladin’s arms. He punched forward, his gauntlets sparking with blades of blue force that extended a span from his fists. The blade caught Evie in the side, slicing at her breastplate and striking a shower of sparks from the arcanite. She twisted, taking only a glancing blow as her heel found purchase on the overextended elbow of the Paladin. Evie pulled the mass from her chain and put it all into her foot—the Twinblessed armor sparked, whining as first its protective coating cracked, followed by the man’s elbow. The Paladin screamed, clutching at his arm and the Ettin Wolf reared back, nearly throwing Evie from its saddle.

She swung around, her chain biting into its second head as blood poured down. She made a circuit around the Ettin Wolf, swinging free before hurling her weapon back downward. "Loquis, catch!"

The young half-orc captain caught the chain. “Got it!” Evie soared up into the sky, carried forward by sheer momentum as lightning played across the mage's hands. “Levinchain!"

Electricity sparked across her chain and up into the Ettin Wolf, burning across its fur and igniting its ears as it yelped in horrified pain.

Evie could only laugh. The captain was good.

The Paladin jerked, lightning coursing across his armor and blasting apart the blue metallic glow that limned him like sunrise peeking over the horizon.

"Take that, you pompous ass," Evie said, flipping herself around as she brought her second chain to bear. It smashed into the Paladin, bashing him forward into the pommel of his saddle, just as Battlelord Ari and his Berserkers rammed into the Ettin Wolf's legs. Their axes, crimson with blood ice, sliced into its weakened hide like chopping into a tree.

The Wolf howled and fell, its four legs severed, and Evie flung her chain into the second mouth, spikes biting deep into its tongue and gums before she dropped it.

"Seize!" Ari commanded, and the Berserkers leapt up, grabbing the ends of both chains and yanking down with their immense strength. The beast's jaw snapped with a sound like thunder.

Evie landed on the ground, seizing her charred chain and unwound it from the first broken head. "Beef told me about a device, you dumb wolf."

She whirled her chain around herself as the Ettin Wolf lunged forward, despite it’s broken and hanging jaw. "I don't think you'd like it."

She kicked the chain forward, its weighted end launching down the beast's throat in a single, easy motion. It gurgled in surprised agony. "It's called a blender. Tooth and Claw!”

Minds of the Mad is level 98!

Tooth And Claw is level 99!Bonds of Dominion is level 98!

Spikes and blades burst from each link, and Evie flexed her Will. The chain spun rapidly, rotating within her grasp and down into the Ettin Wolf's insides, churning it into puree.

The Champion fell, spitting blood.

"Vile unbeliever," the Paladin leapt off of its falling body, seizing the mace that still stuck from the earth. "You will die here today!"

The weapon tripled in size, its form taking on aspects of blue force that gleamed, solid as true metal. Evie dropped her chain and leapt back. With a speed that belied his previous attempts, the Paladin swung for her spine.

“Protective Rage!”

The mace rebounded off of a shield of red ice.

Battlelord Ari grunted in pain, his twenty span frame hurled to the side by the Paladin's Strength. The man laughed, his voice and Spirit twisted into something visceral and unclean. “Not even your great size matters in a fight of the Divine, beast.”

He strode forward, mace dragging through the flagstones with every step. “Now watch as I kill your little leader.”

The Paladin lifted his weapon in a single, smooth motion—

—and found it stopped, a blue-skinned hand clasping around its ungainly haft. Ari stood over him, chest bloodied and shield abandoned, his eyes burning as if made of smoking ice. "Do not touch the Kyria! Wrath of the Destroyer!"

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Ari brought down his own red-ice club, smashing the Paladin into the flagstones, cratering the earth and bursting the man's flesh like a wineskin.

"Fulmination of the Southern Skies!" Loquis cried, hurling his arm towards the earth. A murderous bolt dropped from the heavens, burning through Champion and Paladin alike. They shook, flesh baking, until it charred away into nothing more than cooked meat.

You Have Killed A Twinblessed Paladin!

XP Earned!

You Have Killed A Champion Of The Twins!

XP Earned!

Evie, Loquis, and Ari stood panting around the corpses. "Burn me, that took forever," she huffed.

"We're not done yet," Loquis reminded her. "We need to get down those blocks and connect with the bulk of the invasion. The other ships should have touched down north of here.”

Evie shouldered her chain. "Right. So we—”

“Get down!" Ari cried, throwing his shield above them. A golden light scoured across them, and all three were to the blown side as the earth was rent asunder.

For a time, Evie only saw sparks.

Flashes of white wouldn't leave her eyes, and there was a ringing in her ears that overwhelmed everything. She stood up, groggy, seeing but not comprehending. Ahead of them, the street had been melted to a river of molten stone. The edges cooled rapidly, oozing into hardened slag, and a nearby building was nothing more than rubble lit aflame.

She looked up. Hierocratic Manaships. Blighted Night.

Their cannons fired down into the street, chasing after her people. Bolts of golden light were washing down the avenues, tearing through everything. Giants died. Nagafolk were ripped apart.

Evie tried to swallow, but found only what felt like sharp knives in her throat. They were being overwhelmed.

"Blood and ash—run!" she commanded. "Find cover!"

"You want on board?" Harn growled. "You gotta come through me."

A flock of Sporeflies buzzed toward the Manaship where Harn stood amongst the members of his Legion. Shadowbeasts and fungal godslaves attacked them from all sides. Skills and magic sparked all around him, but Harn put them out of his Mind.

There was just him, the enemy, and his axe.

He hurled the weapon. It blasted through a serpentine shadowbeast at the head of the Sporeflies, igniting its flesh with silver flame. With a surge of Will, it shot back, clipping the side of a Sporefly and spilling its rotten ichor. Harn caught it with a grunt.

Starsteel's Descent is level 99!

Sporeflies buzzed at him, their mandibles clacking and claws scraping, but he caught them on his forearm, bashing the strikes away. Even as the men on their backs swung at him with hatchets and short swords, and hooked short swords. Those armored foes were once human, but now they were heavily infested by tumors and slick ichor that obscured their faces into nothing more than bestial rage. They screamed in inchoate fury at him. Harn said nothing. He simply killed.

His axe found joint after joint, severing lims at elbow and knee, forcing the once-men to fall back in unthinking agony. The Sporeflies, however, would not relent. They came at him in twos and threes, slashing into his arcanite armor, until sparks surrounded him in brighter splashes than his own silver flames.

Flesh of the Wakened Earth is level 98!

With a grunt of effort, he caught their claws on the head of his axe, slicing through their chitinous claws. His axe burnt argent. "More!"

He hit another Sporefly, the blow carrying through a second and third, severing their heads as if he were chopping a rotten melon. Ichor caught flame, igniting into an inferno.

More! Solidify! He struck again and again. Solidify! The flame is a hammered edge.

Harn moved faster. His axes swung in controlled arcs. A Sporefly buzzed at him, and he hurled one of his weapons, the fire trailing like a comet. It burst through its rotten thorax, erupting in tongues of flames that cut through its buzzing wings. It fell.

Blood of the Everflame is level 97!

The axe leaped back, slapping back into his hand as silence fell on the prow. His enemies were all dead. Harn looked around, hopeful, but they were still getting hammered from all sides. The Hierocratic Manaships were beating them back—their fleet had already been reduced to twenty.

Not only that, the godslaves were overrunning their decks. Thousands had died, and the Vessels hadn't even shown themselves.

"We need your help, Felix,” he muttered. “Any time now.”

Behind him, the Legion struggled against the godslaves, but a point of brilliance had Harn throwing a hand over his eyes. A bright orange flame swirled around an elderly Hobgoblin—Heva, he believed.

Rotten, putrescent beasts and shadow-slick monstrosities surrounded her and a dozen others, but her Scorching Hydra sliced up the lead Sporefly in seconds, dropping its rotten ichor onto the deck and fouling the footing of the Vulgar Knights that tried to hack into their sides. Sigils flew and twisted men and beasts alike froze, paralyzed by magic just as an icy mace and a blazing fast sword lopped off limbs and heads in equal measure.

Harn grunted, surprised that when the older hobgoblin stood, her normally golden irises glowed a bright blue-white.

What is that? He almost gave voice to the thought, but more monsters charged from the sky. "Look out!"

He ran, but the beasts were faster. They dropped onto Heva, claws extended and strange mouths snapping—and found no purchase. The woman's limbs had lifted and were somehow clad in a red-gold light…a red-gold light that formed scale-like armor around her. The hit carried through, the claws shattering the scales a mere moment later, but it was enough to give them pause.

A small Goblin hit them with a paralyzing sigil, seizing the foes up before the tall one bashed it with the shield before freezing their feet to the deck with her swinging mace. The Orc followed through with her blade, slicing open the hapless creature’s belly.

"No! Kill it with fire or light!" Harn shouted, catching their attention. "Sporeflies aren't the end!”

As one, the Claw members stepped back as the creature they had just disemboweled mutated. Their insides flipped outward, congealing into a new, fetid growth. Fungal Horrors crawled out of it, growing to man-sized within seconds.

They screeched and leaped for them, but the Hobgoblin was fast.

"Five Talon Retribution!" she called. Her Scorching Hydra dropped, the Mana reforging into five vivid spikes that curved inward, slashing at the deck where the foes stood. In a single motion, she obliterated them all, searing the rot into ash until the entire deck was burnt clean.

Harn slowed to a stop as Heva reached down and helped other Legionnaires to their feet. "Stand," she said with a smile, "we have more foes to face." The soldiers got up, pride and determination ringing in their Spirits.

Harn grunted appreciatively. "Good teamwork," he said. "Better technique."

"Thank you, commander," the woman said, suddenly flustered. There was a moment of calm around them as the godslaves had been driven free from their ship.

"What was that Skill?" he asked.

"Oh, it's a Mana Skill I developed," the older woman blushed a bit. "It's based on how Emperor Nevarre fights, but I can't manage shaping magics."

Harn grunted. "I wasn't talking about the fire claws. What was that armor?"

Heva swallowed and glanced at the others who looked equally interested. "I... I don't know.”

“What?”

“It's not a Skill I have, it just happened."

Harn spat to the side. "Be glad it did, I guess. It saved your ass. Don't put yourself in that position again, you hear?"

“Aye, sir—”

An explosion rocked the sky as a Manaship to the port side was torn apart and set aflame by beams of golden light. Harn shielded his eyes as the ship sank, crowded by shadowbeasts that dragged it from the sky. With a splintering crash, a Hierocratic ship rammed through its hull, its heavy, gilded prow gleaming with blood and golden light.

"Damnation," Harn swore. The other ships nearest them were piled onto by more Sporeflies and their Vulgar Knights, as well as a bevy of shadowbeast serpents as thick around as any Avum.

"Pilot, set a heading for that ship!” he commanded.

"Aye, sir," came the ragged cry, and their Manaship turned toward the enemy galleon. "On me, Legionnaires."

Their craft shot forward, their speed boosted by the Mana engines whining below the decks. A hundred span became a dozen in half as many heartbeast, and Harn blurred ahead, running toward the gunwales.

He leapt across the gap.

The man soared through the air, axes burning before he sank them into the side of the Hierocratic ship. He yanked one free, slamming it higher before pulling himself up the gilded hull. Behind him, he could hear Heva and her team shouting.

He looked back, just in time to see the Hobgoblin lead the other Legionnaires into a leap as their ship drew closer. A wave of blue-cloaked soldiers arced across the sky, landing on the deck just as Harn climbed over the banister. They found twisted monsters and redcloaks in equal measure.

"Legion! Kill them all!”