Tristan sat on a pile of Roman bodies.
The mound beneath him was made of the fallen dozens of soldiers who had tried to kill him and failed. Their armor clanked softly as he shifted, their dead limbs sprawled in unnatural angles, their blood still warm and spreading beneath them.
He was surrounded.
More Romans stood in a wide circle around him, their weapons raised, their eyes wary. They had seen what he could do. They had watched their comrades fall one after another, and still they pressed forward. Still they fought.
But for how long?
Tristan stared up at the grey sky, his chest heaving with each breath. Blood covered his entire body his own blood mixed with the blood of a hundred enemies. It matted his hair, dripped from his chin, pooled in the hollows of his armor.
He panted heavily.
His eyes were tired. So tired. The kind of tired that went beyond the physical the kind that settled into the bones and whispered give up, rest, stop fighting.
He could feel his heartbeat slowing.
Thump... thump... thump...
Each beat was weaker than the last. Each breath was harder to draw. He had pushed beyond the limits of a human body, beyond what flesh and blood should be able to endure. As a warrior, this was the highest point of battle the moment when everything else fell away and only will remained.
He stood up.
His legs shook beneath him. His vision swam. But he stood.
He looked at the bodies around him at the weapons scattered among them. He bent down, his joints screaming in protest, and picked up two items from the fallen.
The first was a bronze shield. It was heavier than it looked, solid and well made. But it was the inscription that caught his attention: a sun, carved into the metal, its rays spreading outward like the dawn.
The second was a long double-edged sword. Roman make shorter than his own blade, but sharp, well-balanced, deadly.
Tristan held them both and smiled.
"It would be really refreshing," he said quietly, his voice rough with exhaustion, "if it were to start now, wouldn't it?"
He looked at the sky.
"A cool shower of rain. To wash all of this away."
Nothing happened. The grey sky remained grey. The battlefield remained bloody. The Romans remained surrounding him.
"Honestly," he sighed, "I'm tired."
He looked at them at the ring of soldiers who had been trying to kill him for what felt like hours. His eyes locked onto one of them.
It was the moment when a hawk locks its target in its vision. Unavoidable. Fatal.
The soldier flinched.
Something had changed.
When this battle began, the Romans had fought with unending will. They had been relentless, fearless, empty soldiers who didn't know pain or doubt or hesitation. They had pressed forward wave after wave, and Tristan had cut them down wave after wave.
But now...
Their unending will was over.
This was a battle of will. Between them and Tristan. And Tristan had won.
He had proved that even when the body is beyond weak, the mind will always push on. His mind was impenetrable. Unbreakable. Infinite.
And they knew it.
They feared him.
One of the soldiers the one Tristan had locked eyes with began to shake. His sword trembled in his grip. His face went pale.
"A monster," he whispered. "He's a monster."
The soldier's eyes went wide. His pupils dilated. And then
He dropped his sword.
It clattered to the ground, a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the sudden silence. The soldier turned. And he ran.
He ran like death itself was behind him because it was. He ran without looking back, without thinking, without anything but fear driving his legs.
Tristan smiled.
That smile that simple, tired, satisfied smile planted fear in the hearts of every soldier who saw it.
Their legs began to shake. Their pupils dilated. Their grips loosened on their weapons.
Another soldier broke.
He saw the first runner disappearing into the distance, and something in him snapped. He turned and ran too. Then another. Then another.
The circle began to collapse.
Tristan watched them run, his smile never wavering. Then he moved.
He held the shield up the sun shield, bronze and beautiful. In the motion of a man about to throw a discus, he wound up his arm. Every muscle in his tired body coiled.
Then he launched.
The shield flew.
It spun through the air like a blade, like a discus, like death. It found the first runner the one who had dropped his sword, the one who had started the rout. It cut through his neck like butter.
THUNK!
His head separated from his body. Both fell separately, tumbling across the sand.
The shield kept spinning.
It rotated in the air, maintaining its deadly arc, and found the second runner. The one who had followed. The one who had thought he could escape.
THUNK!
His head joined the first.
The shield continued its momentum carrying it in a perfect curve and then it returned. Tristan's hand snapped up, and the shield slapped into his grip as if it had never left.
He held it. Looked at it. Smiled.
"It fits really well." He turned it over in his hands, admiring the sun inscription. "I love it."
He raised the long sword, pointing it at the remaining soldiers.
"I love this new set of weapons." His smile widened. "I'll keep them."
He counted them with his eyes. Thirty-three. Thirty-three soldiers who had not yet run. Thirty-three soldiers who were frozen in place, watching their comrades' bodies twitch and bleed.
"Now," Tristan said quietly, "you all will die."
He jumped.
Not high just enough. Just enough to close the distance to the nearest soldier, a big man with a gauntleted fist and terrified eyes. The soldier raised his gauntlet to block, to defend, to survive.
Tristan's foot came up.
CRACK!
His kick caught the soldier under the jaw, snapping his head back, lifting him off the ground. His guard dropped. His body went limp for just a moment a moment that was all Tristan needed.
The long sword plunged forward.
Into his heart. Through his heart. Out his heart.
Tristan cut across a savage, brutal motion that opened the soldier's chest from sternum to spine. Blood exploded. The soldier fell.
Tristan didn't pause.
His shield flew again not thrown, but spun to the side, its edge cutting through the skull of another soldier who had been trying to flank him. The man dropped without a sound.
Tristan rushed toward the shield.
He grabbed it mid-spin, his momentum carrying him forward, and stabbed with the sword not at a soldier, but at a leg. The blade pierced through muscle and bone, pinning the soldier to the ground.
The man screamed.
Tristan ignored it.
His free hand shot out, grabbing the soldier by the neck. He squeezed. Fingers found trachea, found windpipe, found life. He choked the life out of him in seconds, the soldier's struggles growing weaker and weaker until they stopped entirely.
Tristan released the body. It slumped to the ground, still pinned by the sword.
He pulled the blade free. Wiped it on the dead man's tunic. Counted again.
Twenty eight left.
He turned to face them shield in one hand, sword in the other, blood covering every inch of his body, his eyes burning with an unearthly light.
"Five down." His voice was calm, almost conversational. "Let's run through the rest, shall we?"
The soldiers stared at him.
And for the first time, none of them moved to attack.
They just stood there, frozen, waiting for death to come.
The chapter ended there in the space between predator and prey, between the hunter and the hunted. Tristan stood at the center of it all, a figure of pure will wrapped in blood and bronze, and waited for them to make the first move.
They didn't.
They couldn't.
And somewhere behind him, the darkness where Lancelot had floated was finally beginning to settle, and a king with an awakened blade was turning his gaze toward the mountain where a Roman general watched.
But that was another story.
For now, there was only Tristan, and his thirty-three, and the battle that was already over they just didn't know it yet.