The clang of the iron-banded door hitting the wall of the keep as it was flung open heralded a wave of chaos. It was insufficient a description, but it was the best word I could use to describe what assaulted my senses.

  The noise was first; the screams of the injured mixing with bellowing and panicked yells from the still hale as they did their best to add to that number, cut through by clanging metal and the hissing discharge of powerful skills.

  Then came the smell, carried on the wind a moment afterwards. Acrid and harsh – piss and shit as men and women died and lost control of their insides. A copper tang of blood and sweat, and the now familiar hint of fear underneath everything. The smell was potent enough to almost leave a taste on the tongue, and I spat to one side to clear the sour saliva that coated my teeth.

  My enhanced perception was focused mostly on vision, human that I was, and so the next sense to bombard me with information was assimilated through the lenses of my eyes. Colours flashed in the dark night, smoke from a few small fires lit from within by strange skills and magic flying around. I saw the outline of soldiers as they disturbed the dark backdrop of the sky, and the glint of light against weapons and armour filled out the picture with detail.

  Ryonic guardsmen still held the main gate, crammed along the high crenelated wall of the barbican like fish in a barrel, raining arrows and skills down at something below. I caught the outline of siege ladders and saw a man kicked full in the chest, screaming as he fell off the wall and into the inner courtyard in front of me.

  He was armoured in overlapping plates of lamellar armour, bright silks of various colours beneath now stained with blood from a gaping wound in his side. His head was bound in a turban, and a silk veil lay strewn about his broken head beneath the conical helm where he lay. I didn’t recognise the uniform, if that was what it was, and then a series of loud shouts and harsh cries drew my attention upwards again.

  A dozen men, similarly clothed and with curved swords flashing in the night, forced their way onto the wall, forming a beach head to either side as they turned the high wall into a charnel house of slaughter. Clearly in the 2nd tier by the speed they moved and the power of the skills they displayed, they cut through the guardsmen with ease. Blue flame encompassed their weapons and soon another half dozen other soldiers joined them.

  I saw Decker and another Ryonic veteran holding one side of the beach head, and three Crimson-cloaked warriors – Crimson Lions!? – stemmed the tide on the other side, but it was too late. Only a small part of the wall needed to fall into enemy control for all hell to break loose, and I watched as the defenders rapidly lost their advantage, the siege turning into a more even battle as guardsman faced soldier on the barbican wall.

  I looked to my right and saw the north tower. Across the courtyard and up the wooden scaffolding lining the inside of the castle wall – perhaps a hundred meters away – was a group of Ryonic guardsmen fighting off another group of attackers, though these were garbed in tight fitting black cloth, leaping from long poles onto the wall in waves. The guardsmen seemed able to hold for now though, and I squinted when I recognised Nathlan’s lean frame beside the hulking form of Vera.

  I frowned in confusion for a moment, but realised they too were dressed as Ryonic guardsmen, and when I looked closer still, I saw that no skills were being used. Nathlan’s flashing blade remained gleaming silver rather than the golden or dark hues from either of his powerful blade-skills. Also, despite the leaping and striking being done by both sides, nobody seemed to fall. Jorge had mentioned they were faking an attack, though it had sounded like the Sultanate’s men hadn’t been having much luck when he’d slipped into the castle keep. Things had clearly changed since.

  In any case, I needed to get to them, and only moments after flinging open the door, I sprinted towards the courtyard’s other side. I skidded to a halt as a figure – one of the soldiers I’d before seen breach the wall – landed before me, scimitar clad in blue flames and already sweeping out towards me.

  I slipped to the ground, sliding beneath the weapon and stabbing out with Resolution as I passed. Clever footwork saved the soldier from a sliced ligament, but it gave me time to flip to my feet and turn to face the man. He was swiftly joined by two others though, and I now found myself facing three 2nd tier warriors, five swords between them, and three confident smiles standing out in the night against their dark skin.

  Wasting no time, I spun my spear and threw, even as I hit the lead soldier with Axis-Shift. He stumbled in place, and my spear took him through the shoulder, spinning him around and to the cobbled ground with the strength of the throw. It had been a good cast, but one of his companions had knocked him out of the way while the other leapt towards me, twin swords flashing in the night.

  A Frozen Pyrre was active the moment I’d released my spear though, and I was already punching out with my shield to deflect the strikes even as my hatchet was leaping into my now empty fist. Shatter Point detonated on impact as I brought the hatchet up and into the lamellar armour of the soldier’s chest, and he was thrown to one side, a hole blown through his torso from my skill-empowered strike.

  I dove backwards as the third soldier swept his two-handed shamshir through the air where I had been. It held a shallower curve than his companion’s shorter swords, and a thinner blade besides, but it was near five feet long, and deadly sharp. It left a keening in the air as it cut, and the man knew how to wield it, broad sweeps keeping me backpedalling to stay out of range of his looping strikes.

  Myrmiddion Spear was not just a single technique though, and the instincts and knowledge it trickled to me over the many long days of training had instilled in me a familiarity with most styles of weapons. Two-handed swords were masters of holding position and keeping range, and so I activated Break-Step as he committed to his next swing.

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  Tracking his trajectory, I slipped aside from one strike and then beneath the next, rising up inside his guard with my hatchet in hand. I slammed it into his gut, but he was an even better fighter than he was swordsman, and had released his sword the moment I ducked his swing. His free hands came up between my axe and his armour, and the weapon bit into a magical barrier that he had cast into existence in a heartbeat rather than simple mundane armour.

  I was thrown backwards by the force of the blast that the barrier released as it broke, and rolled back to my feet next to the inner wall beneath the north tower. I had dropped my hatchet but called Resolution back to my hand even as I leapt back into the fight. The swordsman hadn’t bothered to retrieve his weapon, instead whipping his hands up above his head in a strange gesture. A moment later, a wall of pressure separated us, springing from the ground to tower over my head in a plane of force.

  I didn’t slow though, and jumped into the air, spear landing in my palm and raised above my head. Whether magical or physical, a barrier was a barrier, and I trusted in Shatter Point to see me through. The tip of my spear met his magical barrier, and his barrier crumpled, shattering at the point of impact and dissipating the moment it was pierced.

  I fell onto the soldier, dropping my spear to catch his wrists even as he pulled a rondel from his belt. We both hit the ground, his breath whooshing from his lungs at the impact and blood spurting from his mouth as I pushed the dagger deeper into his chest. He had drawn it, but my positioning and strength were superior, so I had managed to overpower him and push the dagger into his chest even as we fell.

  A shout of rage had me rolling to one side as a scimitar flashed through the space I had inhabited, trailing blue flames so hot they cauterised the very air as they moved. I looked up at the man who knelt on the ground ahead of me – the first soldier that had tried to bar my path. One arm hung limply, armour bloody where my spear had taken him in the shoulder, his second blade now abandoned and the first one clattering against the wall behind me from his throw.

  He coughed, the shout clearly having cost him, and I wondered at the degree of his injury before I saw the frost rimming the edge of the wound. Resolution was by no means a sentient weapon, but it seemed to have a life of its own sometimes, the Heart of Winter making up its head clearly having acted without my express intent. It was a potent weapon indeed, though I would need to keep an eye on it in future. Still, now was not the time for such thoughts, and I wasted no time in launching my spear at him.

  He swayed to one side, falling over with a grunt but dodging the weapon. He raised a hand my way, and I skidded aside from a ball of blue flame, but it was weak, sputtering and dissipating a few feet before it reached me. My hatchet took him in the head a few heartbeats later, and I wrenched the weapon free, turning in a quick circle to ensure no more enemies blocked my path.

  Satisfied that the courtyard was empty, though for how much longer remained in question given the frantic battle taking place above, I sheathed my hatchet, called my spear to hand, and accepted the notifications that were ringing in my mind.

  You have killed a Human (Flame of Alakir - level 73). Experience gained.

  You have killed a Human (Burning Shamshir - level 82). Experience gained.

  You have killed a Human (Flame of Alakir - level 73). Experience gained.

  Skill ‘Shatter Point’ has increased in level. Shatter Point – level 6

  I turned, determined to scale the scaffolding and make it onto the wall behind where Nathlan and Vera currently ‘fought’, but a sonic boom interrupted me. I had time to turn to the gate, and then my eyes widened, Break-Step activating on instinct more than any conscious thought.

  I watched as beams of timber, thick around as my chest, burst inwards in a shower of man-sized splinters. A Ryonic guardswoman and silk-clad solider were battling on the scaffolding near the gate and the impact threw them bodily off the wooden walkway and into the wall behind even as the gate crumpled inwards.

  The body of the duke came screaming past and thudded into the central keep. The gate, reinforced with metal as it had been, blew inwards and in strolled the Sultan, colourful silks flapping in the wind. The barbican above the gate showed cracks in the stone, and I winced as I realised what this meant.

  The duke was already pulling himself from the keep, dislodging crumbling stone all around and blood trickling from his head, but seeming otherwise unhurt. I struggled to my feet from where I had been blown across the courtyard and realised groggily that I was now on the other side of it, the north tower now blocked by two titans of battle.

  “Your wards are now broken, your walls overrun,” the Sultan said in a voice bleeding with age. He sounded like the rustling wings of a thousand moths, and it matched his appearance perfectly.

  His long grey beard was oiled and smooth, covered in gold rings every half-inch until capped by a shining red gem where it ended at his chest. He wore no armour, but his beautiful silks were unharmed, and his gnarled, ring-encrusted arms were raised to either side.

  “Silence!” he then roared, and the voice that had felt so subtle and weak was suddenly booming off every surface, echoing around until its susurration was the only thing I could hear. Men and women on the wall stopped fighting, weapons raised but no longer moving. Even the injured no longer screamed, whimpering in quiet murmurs but otherwise complying with the Sultan’s decree.

  “Bow to me,” he said to the duke. “I will accept your surrender, and you shall retain your rights to this land as my vassal. End this farce now.”

  The duke walked forwards, shaking out his hands and summoning ruby-red blades of twisted glass into each hand. To look at them was to lose yourself, as I found my eyes drawn to the fractured space within each blade, like a kaleidoscope of branching realities-

  “No” the duke replied simply, and then the blades were moving, so fast that I couldn’t track them, and the spell was broken. I blinked and looked up to see battle resuming once more above, though the courtyard was empty except for myself.

  I looked once more to the north tower, but an arrow slammed into the stone in front of my nose.

  I jerked back and looked sharply to the barbican, where I spotted an archer, war bow as tall as he was and dressed in a crimson cloak. He was swaying back from the frantic onslaught of a turban-clad warrior, and then a dagger was buried to the hilt beneath the soldier’s chin.

  He let the body drop limp off the wall and turned back to me, yellow hawk-eyes meeting mine, and bow raising once more. His animalistic eyes clashed with his dark skin, and I watched him slowly draw a barbed arrow from his quiver, a cruel smile gracing his handsome face.