The air tasted of blood and ozone.
King Blaze twisted, his royal blue cloak flaring like a bruised twilight. A pulse of raw force erupted from his outstretched palm. Not as a crude shove, but as a focused ripple in space. It was his domain ability [Force Field]. And backed by the mana reserves and skills of a Grandmaster, it was devastating.
The three Adept ranked imperial soldiers charging him didn't fly back. They just crumpled like dolls, their armor groaning as if squeezed by an invisible giant. Their bones snapped with a series of sickening cracks.
He didn't pause to admire his handiwork. There was no time. There hadn't been time for weeks.
Another fireball, this one a sickly green, wrapped in the signature of a voidwalker's corrupter mana, screamed toward him. Instead of dodging, Blaze pivoted on his heel. His own fire, a brilliant gold beast frolicking its tongue in hunger, lashed out like a whip. The two spells met with a concussive boom that sent tremors through the scorched earth.
He used the ensuing cloud of dust and emerald sparks as a veil. Then he weaved his mana in the patterns of his Stealth affinity to create a trick of light and shadow to hide himself in order to create some distance between himself and his pursuers.
The imperial grunts, their eyes wide with a mixture of fear and battle-lust scanned the empty space where a King had stood a breath ago.
Too slow.
Blaze reappeared behind their flank. His soul-bound sword, Lionheart, already a blur of sliver and gold. It sang a song of endings as it sliced through the gaps in their armor. One, two, four, more soldiers fell. Their throats opened with surgical precision. He was a phantom. A whirlwind of deadly grace. Moving with an economy of motion that belied the burning exhaustion in his limbs.
But for every ten he cut down, twenty more took their place. The horns of the Redlotus Empire were a constant droning dirge in the distance, promising an endless tide of bodies.
His body was slowing down now. His vast mana reserves almost depleted, and his breaths shallow. Every step which should have been nothing, was an effort. Every blade strike which should have been blinding, was a mere shadow of its prominence.
His kingdom was no more. The Empire had taken over the Kingdom Stone by the end of the first week of the war. He had been too focused on helping the citizenry flee from the worst faces of the war, and the Empire had capitalised.
By the end of the second week, he had lost most of his standing army. All brave soldiers reduced to rubble and dust, as the Empire's army had ran over his little kingdom like locusts.
All that was left now, was a final, desperate dance on the grave of the home he had built, at the side of handful of his remaining friends.
"Your Majesty, to the left!"
The voice belonged to Gareth, his First Commander, his oldest friend. Blaze didn't need to look. He trusted the warning implicitly, as he dropped down into a low crouch as a volley of enchanted arrows hissed through the air where his head had just been. They thudded into the bodies of the men he had just lain to rest.
"Getting sloppy, Gareth!" Blaze grunted. Pushing himself back to his feet. He allowed a sliver of Force to coalesce at the tip of his boot and kicked a nearby rock. It shot forward like a cannonball, taking out the knee of an advancing knight sending him howling to the ground.
Even though Blaze had not used a spell, this little use of his mana almost made his head swing.
Gareth appeared to his side. His shield a battered wreck of steel and splintered wood. His face a grim mask of sweat and blood. "Forgive me, my Liege! I am a bit busy keeping an entire legion off your royal arse."
A dry, humorless laugh escaped Blaze's lips. It was a harsh, grating sound.
"Just a legion? I am insulted. I was hoping for atleast three."
They fell into a back to back stance, a familiar rhythm from a hundred battles fought together. But this wasn't a battle. It was an execution. They both knew it. The Empire knew it. The last of his Royal Guard, a mere dozen men, had formed a tight, bleeding circle around them, buying their king seconds with their lives.
The same King who had bled countless times on the battlefields for them.
Blaze's gaze swept the field. He saw them then. Standing on a low ridge overlooking the slaughter. Five figures. Cloaked in shadows that seemed to drink the very light. The voidwalkers. Their presence felt like a stain on the reality, a discordant note in the symphony of the world. One of them, a tall slender figure, gestured lazily.
In response, the Imperial soldiers before them began to glow in a putrid green energy. Their movements became faster, stronger, their eyes burning with an unnatural fervor. They were no longer just men; they were puppets, their strings pulled by beings from across the veil.
"They're empowering them," Gareth snarled, his shield, or whatever remained of it, deflecting a blow that would have shattered a lesser man's arm.
"The cowards won't even fight for themselves."
"They don't need to," Blaze replied, his voice grim. His reserves of mana were screaming. There were no healing or mana potions left in his storage rings. He had forgotten for how many days he had been fighting this battle. More of an running retreat, that seemed to end here, in this desolate valley of death. Every spell, every pulse of force, every flicker of stealth that he was wringing out felt like scraping the bottom of a dry well.
A Royal Guard to his right screamed as a corrupted blade slid through his chest. His armour melting like wax. Another was engulfed in green flames, his agonizing cries cut mercifully short. The circle was shrinking.
Gareth met his eyes over his shoulder. The message in his stare was clear. There was no victory here. As if he didn't know! Only an end.
"Blaze!" Gareth said. His voice dropping his usual royal pretense. In this moment, they were just two boys who had grown up together, dreaming of adventire. "You remember the promise?"
Blaze's heart clenched.
One of us always walks away, to come back stronger!
"Don't you dare, Gareth!" He warned, his voice dangerously low.
"There's no us left to walk away," Gareth countered. A sad smile touching his lips. He slammed his shield into the face of an oncoming soldier, then drove his sword into the man's gut.
"But a King can. The kingdom is gone, but the King must live. There is always another war to win back what we made. Or always another frontier to claim. One of us always..."
Before Blaze could argue, two more soldiers leapt up. Blaze's sword made a short business of them.
Gareth nodded at him and then bellowed. "For the Lionheart! FOR BLAZE!"
It was a signal. The last of the Royal Guard roared in unison. A final, defiant cry of loyalty and friendship. They abandoned their defensive formation and charged, a suicidal, glorius wace of doomed courage. They threw themselves and everything they had, abilities, spells, amulets, at the empowered Imperial line. This time, not for glory, but to create a single, fleeting opening.
"Go! NOW!" Gareth roared, shoving Blaze hard in the back, pushing him towards the gap his men were carving with their life and blood.
For a heartbeat, Blaze froze. Every instinct screamed at him to stay, to fight, to die with his men. To die with his friend. But the cold, calculating part of his mind, the part that made him a king, saw the logic in his friend's words. Their sacrifice was a gift. To waste it would be the ultimate betrayal.
With a guttural cry torn from the very depths of his soul, a sound of pure, unadulterated rage, Blaze moved.
He didn't run. He exploded into motion.
He poured the dregs of his Force into his limbs, his body becoming a streaking blur. He passed through the gap just as it was closing, the sound of Gareth's final, defiant stand echoing behind him. He didn't look back. He couldn't. If he looked back, he would stop.
And if he stopped, their sacrifice would be for nothing.
Pain flared in his side. A stray arrow, empowered and vicious, had found its mark. He ignored it. Adrenaline and grief were a potent, fiery cocktail in his veins. He ran, his armour falling in pieces, his robe tearing on grasping branches as he plunged himself into the dark embrace of what the cartographers had called the Gloomwood.
The sounds of the battle faded. And they were replaced by the pounding of his own heart and the ragged gasps of his breath. He ran until his lungs burned, until the wound in his side was a hot, searing agony, until the world began to blur at its edges.
He finally collapsed at the foot of an ancient, moss-covered monolith. Part of some ancient temple. He was miles away from the battlefield. Hidden deep within a forest known for swallowing caravans whole.
But he knew that he was not safe here. They would hunt him. The veilwalkers would not leave the king, the symbol of this world's resistance, alive.
His body screamed in protest as he pushed himself up, leaning against the cold stone. The arrow in his side was a nasty looking thing. Barbed and humming with a faint, corrosive magic. Void. He grit his teeth. Snapped the shaft. And with a roar of pain, tore the head out. Blood, dark and sluggish poured from the wound.
He had no healing potions left in those rings, he checked again, but there was some alcohol. He poured some over the wounds while downed the rest. Then he pressed his hand over the bandage and tried to channel a trickle of fire mana, to cauterize. The smell of his own burning flesh filled the air, and a wave of nausea washed over him. It was a crude, brutal fix, but it would have to do.
Then he used whatever bandages he could find in his storage to make sure that the wound held up.
For the first time in his life, he cursed his affinities. Force, Fire, Stealth. He had focussed too much on the arts of a warrior-king, and not worked on even a single affinity that could offer him a healing spell.
But this was not the time to dive on the memory lane. Darkness was falling. And the forest, which was just an hour ago, a place of tranquil beauty, had started seeming menacing. Its shadows filled with unseen threats. Exhaustion, heavy and absolute pressed down on him.
He needed to rest. Just for a moment.
He was a king of ashes and ghosts, haunted by the faces of the death. Yet he had survived again and again.
But as the last light of the day died, and the cold of the night began to seep into his bones, Blaze looked at the unforgiving darkness of the woods around him and knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than any winter wind, that survival was only a prelude to the next, and perhaps the final horror, death.
The hunt was on.
And he was the prey.