Despite their careful planning, the opening rounds of the attack didn’t go off as planned. Lethelin’s opening arrow shot flew true, but it struck some sort of invisible shield that the caster had up already.

  “Stollar’s balls!” Allora swore beside him as the cry of went up among the squad. “He’s got arcane armor up. Looks like we are in for a fight!”

  Mitchell readied to move and cast a glance at the knight beside him. She had an almost feral grin on her face.

  “Let’s go!” he told her.

  As they closed the last twenty or so meters to the road, the screams of the troops were getting more frantic.

  “Raffin is down! Arrow just took him in the eye!” A panicked voiced yelled

  “Ambush! Get down!” another voice yelled into the thick forest air.

  “Where!” screamed another.

  “I don’t– Aggh!” The voice cut off with a strangled cry.

  “There! Thirty meters ahead. Tane, fire!”

  As Mitchell and Allora charged onto the road just behind the scattered soldiers, Mitchell saw a wiry man with lank hair tied back in a ponytail extend his hand, and a small ball of fire formed there. Mitchell had a brief thought that the firebolt spell wouldn’t accomplish much at that distance, but then the spell shot forward faster than expected, and it began to grow. Soon it was the size of a basketball, then it doubled in size again and a roar began to fill the air.

  Mitchell stared in fascinated horror as the giant ball of fire slammed into the tree where the squad thought Lethelin might be hiding, and the explosion was like a canister of gasoline detonating. There was a low whump and sharp crack of wood being blown apart. That was followed by a small black mushroom cloud that engulfed the tree as it rose into the air. The ground around the tree was splashed with fire and burned enthusiastically for about ten meters. Even from his position near the back of the column, he could feel the scorching heat of the inferno the caster, Tane, had just created.

  “And to think, I was getting bored with the same old magical attacks,” Mitchell thought wryly.

  Mitchell spared a thought for Lethelin, trusting her to not be near the blast when it came, and then they were among the rear-guard troops, whose eyes were all facing the front staring at the pyrotechnics. Mitchell and Allora gave no warning, but the one Mitchell charged for, an elven woman crouched low behind a tree, must have sensed something behind her because she started moving as Mitchell’s blade began to fall.

  She rolled at the last possible second and–in a move he recognized as one of the first things he had learned–came up facing him with her sword at the ready.

  “Behind!” she shouted, as she moved to attack him.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Allora was also engaged with a soldier, and soon the air was filled the sound of clanging steel.

  The elven woman was fast and, if Mitchell didn’t have the benefit of the heart stone, he would have been worried. As it was, though, his reflexes were easily a match for hers, and he had the benefit of superior training. He was able to meet her attack and then attack on his own, sending her scrambling back, a look of shock on her face.

  Not wanting to waste the opportunity, he fired off a round of arcane blasts to keep her off balance. He knew they wouldn’t do anything against her armor, she was much better equipped than the toughs had been back in Iletish. Still, it had the desired effect. As the bolts slammed harmlessly into the armor of her chest, doing little more than leave some scorch marks, she was pushed back a step and her guard dropped as she fought to stay on her feet. Mitchell came in low and, before she could get her sword back up to defend, thrust it cleanly into her stomach. The woman gasped, and she clutched at the blade, slicing her hand open in the process. As Mitchell pulled his sword free, she fell and didn’t rise again.

  He scanned for his next target. Tane and two other men were now converging on him. The two non-magic users were out in front, with the caster in the center about a meter behind. Off to the side, just inside the tree line, there was an explosion and a male voice screamed. The men jerked at the sudden light and sound and Mitchell charged at them just as their eyes were pulled away. They were quick, though, and had their swords ready. Tane brought his hand up in a rush and Mitchell could see a spell forming there. A crackling ball of energy that began to fill the space in front of his palm.

  “Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge!” he yelled to himself as he frantically tucked into a forward roll just as he saw the arcane lighting begin to expand.

  He landed just between the two sword users in a crouch, trying to maintain his balance, as the lighting sizzled a few inches over his head. Before the two men on either side could adjust Mitchell quickly cast Blade Burst.

  The spell released and the air around him was filled with spectral blades. The two men on his sides fell back screaming, their sliced hands losing their grip on their weapons. Just in front of him, there was an intense flash of light as Mitchell’s spell came into contact with the arcane armor that the caster had.

  The man fell back with a high-pitched shriek, and Mitchell could just barely see what looked like shining cracks in the spell that protected him through the swirling blades. Mitchell rose and targeted the man on his left who was bleeding from every bit of exposed skin Mitchell could see, and thrust his sword through the man’s unprotected neck. He pivoted and drove the sword point hard through the other man’s chest armor, and then whirled to face the caster, who had a look of sheer panic on his pasty face.

  His armor had protected him from the blade burst spell, but it had done significant damage. There were spider-webbed cracks running all through it. Not wanting to give him time to fire another spell, Mitchell surged forward and brought his sword down in a powerful overhand arc, striking the caster’s magical armor and sending out a flash of sparks. More cracks exploded out from the point of impact, and the man shrieked again. He brought his hand up and tried to cast, but Mitchell didn’t give him time to collect his thoughts.

  Instead, he set about hacking at the shield with a series of lighting fast strikes at different angles, each one clanging on the barrier that was growing brighter as the fissures spread. The fury of the assault sent the scrawny man backpedaling until he lost his footing and fell on his ass. Mitchell brought his sword down over his head like he was trying to impress a date at a carnival by ringing the bell on the High Striker, and the shield shattered in a small explosion. The force was enough to carry through the magical defense and into the man’s shoulder and torso. He died almost instantly, never getting to utter his last scream or plea for mercy.

  As Mitchell stood, he realized that the forest had gone mostly quiet. The tree was still burning enthusiastically, the crackle and pop of living wood filling the air, but the sounds of combat had ended. As he turned to look, he saw Allora standing over the form of the last three soldiers, all down on their knees and with their hands over their heads. Allora stood over them, sword at the ready, but her eyes were on him, and she was smiling.

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  “Well done, my lord,” she said, her voice thick and her grin hungry.

  Thanks to their romp in the forest a few days before, the term “my lord” had taken on a whole new meaning.

  Mitchell surveyed the three prisoners. Two human men, somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties, and a dwarf whose age Mitchell could not determine. They were beaten, but they still looked defiant.

  “What are we going to do with you?” he said to no one in particular.

  Lethelin stepped out of the tree line then, the hazy effect around her ending as she lowered her hood, and surveyed the damage. The prisoners jerked slightly in surprise at her sudden appearance, but that was nothing compared to when they saw Vras’s slinking form emerge from the forest behind her.

  “Stollar’s fucking cock!” one of the men on the ground screamed and fell back, scrambling to get away. Lethelin’s drawn bow halted him. For a second, Mitchell thought he would choose to take his chances with the arrow pointed at his head rather than sit still a meter from a shadow cat, but he froze, his face pale and panicked.

  “They have a bloody shadow cat!” the other one cried and began to tremble.

  The third man, a dwarf, actually fainted. His thick body thumping into the ground with a heavy thud.

  “Wow…” Mitchell said at the display. “You really weren’t lying about how people would respond.”

  Allora merely arched an eyebrow and gave him an “I told you so” sort of look.

  “So,” Mitchell said to Lethelin, “the illusion actually worked?”

  “Yep,” she replied with a grin. “It was still hazy but from that far away, they couldn’t tell at all. It drew their fire perfectly. I wasn’t even singed by that jivi fucker’s fireball.”

  Mitchell walked up to Vras, stepping over the unconscious dwarf in the process, and scratched him behind the ears.

  “Good job, Vras.”

  “He touched it, Dreward!” the trembling man who had managed to stay on his knees said. “He touched it! Denass, mother of night and watcher of souls, save me!”

  Vras, never one to miss an opportunity, stalked slowly up to the praying man and extended his tentacles and began to pluck at the man’s face and growled.

  The guy actually wet himself. Mitchell stared wide-eyed as the sound of the man’s bladder releasing filled the air and a puddle began to pool between his knees.

  “Oh, Stollar’s fucking taint, man!” Lethelin swore at him in disgust. “Meet your death with dignity, at least. I’ve seen dock rats with more backbone!”

  The man didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, and he was muttering his prayer over and over. The fellow who’d scrabbled away hadn’t moved a muscle – almost like he thought if he didn’t move, they would all forget he was there.

  Vras signaled to Mitchell.

  “What is it?”

  “May I claim this one?”

  That gave Mitchell pause. It was one thing to kill in battle but the men had surrendered and were captives. Even so, it wasn’t like they had a stockade to put them in. They were on the move.

  Mitchell looked at Allora, and she could read the question in his eyes. She gave him a subtle nod.

  “This is a war,” he told himself, not for the first time. “This is how wars are fought.”

  Mitchell knew that. He knew it, but he hated it. He had read enough military histories in his teen years that he had no illusions about the brutality of the whole thing. He recalled especially the brutality that the Germans and the Russians had visited upon each other on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. The barbarity of it had been… Well, Mitchell wanted to say inhumane, but it was very much a part of humanity. It always had been.

  If he didn’t kill these men, they would be enemies at his back. They would report back about Lethelin and Vras, and he might very well have to fight them again later. Or they would join up with the larger forces when the time came, and they might kill others. The attack that was a direct result of his previous attempt at mercy was also still fresh in his mind. If he had a prison camp to send them to, or a jail, that would be different, but he didn’t.

  “God damn it,” Mitchell said as he accepted the decision.

  “Do not make him suffer like the others,” Mitchell told Vras. “Make it quick.”

  Vras sneezed his displeasure, but did not argue.

  Mitchell gave Lethelin a nod as well, and Mitchell stepped up to the dwarf, who had never woken up from his dead faint.

  This was his reality now. He would be forced to take life and order others to take life.

  Lethelin released her arrow into the man’s heart, Vras lunged and took out his prisoner’s throat, and Mitchell thrust his sword into the dwarf’s heart, essentially killing him in his sleep. It was all over in seconds.

  The spent the next several minutes picking the dead clean of any valuables and came away with a good haul. The two casters had a decent supply of unused gemstones in their cekips and Mitchell and Allora took advantage to swap out their used ones for fresh. They also got a decent amount of crowns that went into the dimensional bag that they’d been carrying since Besari. Then, the ground littered with the dead and a tree still smoldering, they retrieved their jivis and pressed on.

  “Is it weighing on you?” Allora asked him sometime later as they were walking the jivis to allow them to rest.

  Mitchell looked up to see her brow creased with concern.

  “You have been quiet since the battle,” she continued. “You have been forced to fight often in the last ten-day.”

  “I just keep wondering if they had families,” he told her quietly. “Someone that loved them the way I love you and Leth. Someone waiting for them at home.”

  “It is possible,” she admitted. “It is tempting to think of them as all evil, incapable of love and friendship, but that is foolish. They did, however, choose to join the cause of an invader and attack a peaceful land.”

  “Yes. No one made them sign up. This just isn’t how I ever pictured my life turning out. I don’t feel qualified to make these kinds of decisions, but I still need to make them. It’s my responsibility. But…” he paused, “will you do me a favor?”

  “Of course,” she said without hesitation.

  “If I ever look like taking life is becoming something I enjoy doing, I want you to stop me - in whatever way is necessary.”

  He stopped walking then, and faced her. Allora’s expression had gone flat.

  “Histories on my world are filled with men and women who started with the best of intentions, but their power went to their heads. They became fanatical and tyrannical. They started to hurt the very people that had chosen them as protection from some other evil. They became the thing they meant to destroy. I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t want to become a monster.”

  “You will not,” she said flatly. “The stone would not have selected one who would succumb to such madness.”

  “I still want your word that if you think I am heading down that path, you will stop me.”

  “Mitchell, I–”

  “Please, Allora. I hope that you are correct, but I still fear what would happen if you are wrong. I just killed an unconscious man – a dwarf – and ordered the execution of two others. And those executions were carried out on my orders. On my authority. If we take back the throne and raise an army to defeat Milandris, thousands of men and women will be marching into battle on nothing more than the authority given to me by a stone in my chest. That is a scary amount of power and it terrifies me. I need to know that, if the worst happens, you will protect the people from me if I can no longer be trusted.”

  She studied his eyes. He knew what he was asking of her, but Mitchell felt like this was something he needed if he was going to trust himself with the responsibility – something or someone that would stop him if he lost his mind. He’d read the stories of Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung and Pol Pot, just to name a few. Men who didn’t start out as evil, murdering bastards, but who fell in love with their own power so much that anything became justified to maintain it. Mitchell couldn’t sit Allora down and give her a Reader’s Digest condensed version of tyrannical leaders of Earth’s 20th century, so he opted to just explain his reasons and hope that was enough.

  Finally, Allora nodded once.

  “Very well, Mitchell Allen. It will be as you say. If your fears come to pass, I will do what is necessary to ensure that Awen and the people of Awenor are safe – from you.”

  She added that last part as if she thought it not only silly, but crazy. But it did make him feel better, nonetheless. Most civilizations had given up on the whole notion of the divine right of kings and resting total power in the hands of one person. Mitchell wasn’t fool enough to think he was going to topple the monarchy and install a representative democracy and then hold elections, but he would do what he could to make sure that he didn’t become some sort of tyrant, either.

  “Thank you,” he told her sincerely.

  She nodded once and then looked as if she was trying to put the issue out of her mind.

  “Come,” Allora said. “Lethelin is getting far ahead. We should catch up.”