Calerus leered at Ursus’ unit on the hill like a predator that had just about run its prey to exhaustion. His retinue was formed up and ready to charge, as were those of his fellow nobles in this Octavian detachment. With the advancing Legion finally coming into visual range to the north of the hill, they were finally ready to bring an end to Ursus, who had caused them no small amount of grief during the siege of the Augustine camp.

But there was one large problem that had to be addressed before anything could happen.

“Why is that Legion here?” Calerus asked, glancing at his superior, the woman who was leading the detachment, the Duchess of Vesontio.

The Duchess had come to the front with her retinue of twenty thousand, which had, so far, not taken part in this operation at all. The same for the Duke of Lentia’s retinue, which had been held back in reserve. On the one hand, Calerus could understand that with their immense numerical superiority, holding some forces in reserve was a wise decision, but emotionally he couldn’t help but somewhat despise Vesontio and Lentia for their inaction so far.

Not that he’d say anything about that out loud—he was only a Count, after all.

“The 2nd Legion was dispatched from the capital to reinforce our position,” the Duchess coldly replied, her lips only moving as much as they had to in order to form those words; the rest of her face remained as stoic as if it had been carved from marble.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this?” Calerus angrily demanded, though his tone remained controlled. “This was an unpleasant surprise, and if I had known that they were friendly, I would’ve already dealt with that barbarian rat!”

“We only got word of their deployment after you had split off for your flanking maneuver,” the Duchess explained, not once glancing in Calerus’ direction.

Calerus quietly rolled his eyes at her aloof attitude, but he said nothing about it. Instead, his concerns were more practical.

“Then, my people are ready to charge on Your Grace’s word,” he said, effectively signaling the end to his questions.

“Once the 2nd closes to within fifteen hundred feet of Ursus’ position, then you may charge,” the Duchess said in her flat, almost uncaring, purely informative tone.

“Very well,” Calerus replied. He proceeded to turn around and return to his unit not far away, sparing the Duchess only one more glance over his shoulder.

She was a gorgeous woman, with long blond hair, an hourglass figure, a perfect heart-shaped face, and a pair of the warmest brown eyes that Calerus had ever seen. Calerus wasn’t usually attracted to women, but even he had to admit that she was breathtakingly beautiful, at least on a physical level.

However, her attitude left much to be desired, in his opinion. She was practically a walking, talking statue for all the emotion she showed. That attitude was all well and good among the commoners and peasantry, but when she was among her peers Calerus found it quite off-putting.

He couldn’t help but wonder if she was truly loyal to Prince Octavius, or what it might’ve been that Octavius had promised her to keep her on his side. Her cousin was the Brimstone Paladin, after all, and from what few reports of the Northern Front that he’d heard, Brimstone and Dame Minerva were making the lives of the Octavian armies up there hellishly difficult.

Once they’d dealt with August, Roland, and Ursus, Duronius’ armies would secure Ariminium, then move north. The Legions would take Ironford and secure the east while the nobles would continue into the Northern Territories.

That was something that Calerus wasn’t looking forward to, given how intensely the fighting had been reported to be.

But that was a future concern. As Calerus returned to his perfect position to charge at Ursus, who stood waiting for them upon the hill, he refocused his attention to the problem at hand—namely, the destruction of Ursus’ remaining troops, including the remnants of those damned giants. Calerus could see that the giant with the blue streaks running along its body was sticking close to Ursus, and he knew that if he wanted to make the barbarian a head shorter, then he’d have to get past the giant, and that wasn’t going to be easy. Calerus wasn’t too worried, though—he’d fought the giant off once before, and he was confident he could do so again.

It was an excruciating wait for the Legion to close the distance. Ursus’ unit did nothing but wait at the top of the hill. Calerus could understand that decision, they hadn’t the numbers to do anything but. However, he did see the giants carving a few ditches and low walls in their path, but Calerus knew it to be wasted effort. Ursus’ group had nothing left, they were finished.

Finally, the moment came for Calerus to announce his charge, and announce it he did, shouting, “CHARRRGE!!!” for his entire retinue to hear. Without missing a beat, he began to run up the gentle slope of the hill. So eager was he to finish this that he barely even noticed, let alone cared that Vesontio’s retinue didn’t move.

Calerus led his people from the front, easily clearing the pathetic obstacles the giants had put in their path. His eyes were locked on Ursus, and his killing intent soared higher than it had ever done before. His heart beat in his chest like a drum, and adrenaline flooded his body with energy all for the purpose of killing the savage.

Ursus’ people remained at the top of the hill, just bracing for the charge. As they closed the distance, the few mages that Calerus had left that could use elemental magic opened up, killing a handful of Ursus’ people in their charge. Calerus himself launched an ice spike at Ursus, but he never seriously thought that it would land. Indeed, the blue-tinted giant simply swatted the ice spike aside like it was nothing more than an annoying insect buzzing around its master’s ear.

Ursus led the counter-attack, hurling a golden bolt of lightning at Calerus. The Count conjured an ice plate in front of him, blocking the bolt.

With that, neither side had much time left for another salvo; a moment later, Calerus’ retinue crashed into Ursus’.

To Calerus’ right and left, it was carnage. Blades bit into soft flesh or slid off hard armor, men and women screamed in pain and the exertion of inflicting that pain, and the sickly-sweet scent of blood filled the air.

But Calerus noticed none of this. He had eyes only for the barbarian.

Only for Ursus.

Ursus didn’t move to intercept him. The barbarian clearly felt the Count’s killing intent, but he seemed content to wait for his charge, staring Calerus down as he rapidly approached, Calerus’ magic power flooding through his noble body like he was a conduit for the Endless Ocean itself.

Twenty-five feet from Ursus, Calerus drew back his blade, then swung it like a club, sending a wave of biting water washing over the grassy hill. Ursus staggered, the wave pushing him back just slightly. Taking the opportunity, Calerus rushed forward with all the speed he possessed, the tip of his sword lunging for Ursus’ exposed throat…

… and clanged off the solid stone arm of the blue-tinted giant. Calerus barely had the time to reel back to avoid the giant’s retaliatory swipe, its stony fingers brushing past the visor of his helmet.

Calerus backed off, his eyes turning to the giant as it advanced. The nobleman’s wave of water hadn’t affected it in the slightest. Calerus snarled as Ursus took the opportunity to slip away, seeming to trust that the giant had this handled, and charged into battle, his lightning making short work of three of Calerus’ fourth-tier knights.

Roaring in anger, Calerus conjured a head-sized sphere of water above his head and threw it with a flick of his wrist at the giant. The giant didn’t bother moving, allowing the water to splash across its torso as it pulsed with earth magic.

Calerus, recognizing the pulse for what it was, threw himself back once more just in time for a stone spike to erupt from the ground and skewer the air where he stood but a moment before. He wasn’t deterred; he glared at the giant and snapped his fingers, causing all of the water that had coated the giant to freeze.

The ice cracked and snapped, and the giant slowed. Calerus lunged forward, his blade disappearing in a flash of light to be replaced with a borrowed war hammer. Calerus closed with the giant, dodged a slow grab, and slammed his hammer into the monster’s leg. He was rewarded with a spiderweb of cracks spreading over its leg, but a moment later it lifted the injured leg and slammed it back down, shaking the earth and throwing Calerus to the ground.

Calerus, acting purely on instinct, shouted incoherently and rolled through the grass, narrowly avoiding a stony impalement. Pushing himself back up to a crouch, Calerus abandoned good footing and leaped into the air, easily clearing the giant’s head height, and summoned the largest ice plate that he could just below him.

Once gravity reasserted its dominance over him, he and the large ice plate fell. The plate was bigger than a rowboat, but still small enough that the giant easily caught it. However, a moment later, the ice shattered in its grasp, and Calerus landed upon the giant’s head.

He brought his hammer crashing down upon the giant. It rumbled as its head cracked, trying to shake him off, but Calerus braced and conjured even more water, flooding the cracks. A second later, the water flash froze, forcing the cracks to open even wider.

Calerus hit the giant again, and this time, it was thrown to the ground. He threw himself back to the ground just in time to avoid its massive ice-encrusted fist, but then he was upon the giant again, turning the giant’s head into pebbles and shards of ice with one more titanic swing of his hammer.

Spikes of stone burst from the ground around his feet, pushing him around and sliding off his armor, but he was unharmed. The ground around the giant rippled and began to crawl over it, trying to hide its injured form, but Calerus wasn’t having any of it.

In the hole where its head once was, Calerus saw flashes and sparks.

‘There!’ he thought, and he lunged forward one last time.

Dropping the hammer, Calerus conjured a jet of water and lunged. Backed by his sixth-tier power, the water battered the giant, sinking into every hole and crack it could, even as a stone spike finally managed to break through Calerus’ armor and rip a chunk of flesh out of his chest as it slid past his ribs beneath his outstretched arm.

An instant later, the water flash froze. Ice exploded out of the giant’s body, shattering it. The elemental wisp within flashed and sputtered, and a moment later, vanished as if it had never been there.

The giant’s aura seeped from the giant’s broken shell, no longer propelled by any will. Its magic dissolved into the chaotic surroundings, lost in the battle’s bloody aura.

The giant was dead.

Calerus had no time to celebrate his kill, though, for once the giant had fallen he felt the specter of death turn its eyes toward him; a wave of killing intent more intense than anything he’d ever felt before hit him like a tsunami.

He smiled. He’d hurt Ursus by killing his pet giant. And he was about to hurt the barbarian even more.

—

The moment Lapis fell, Leon knew. He didn’t see the fight, but he felt the giants passing washing over him like a wave of electricity. It was almost lost in the battlefield aura of thousands of battling mages, but Leon was familiar enough with Lapis’ aura to know what it was he felt.

With a quick flash of his blade, Leon finished off his opponent and turned in Lapis’ direction. As his eyes landed upon the heap of stones that had once been the giant’s stony shell, time seemed to slow down as Leon stopped and stared.

Lapis was gone. The loyal, friendly, abundantly accommodating giant had died, killed at the hands of the sixth-tier ice mage—obviously a nobleman of some rank given his enchanted full plate armor—standing over its fallen form, as if he were gloating, reveling in the death of one of Leon’s most ardent supporters.

Or, perhaps, one of Leon’s most supportive friends?

Leon wasn’t sure how to define his and Lapis’ relationship, but he thought quite highly of the giant, and as the reality of the situation crashed down upon his mind, his mind descended to a dark place where no coherent thought could be found. All he saw was red.

Not too far away, an Octavian mage, hoping to take advantage of Leon’s distraction, lunged forward, his spear aimed for the back of Leon’s neck in the gap between his cuirass and helmet. However, Valeria’s glaive came sweeping in from the side, deflecting the blow and sending the mage reeling. With a quick follow-up, Valeria took the man’s head, then turned and shouted, “Leon!”

In that instant, killing intent exploded out of Leon’s body. Everyone around him, Valeria included, felt it wrap around them and weigh them down, sapping their will to resist his wrath and making it hard to breathe. A few of the weakest mages were even forced to their knees under its tremendous weight.

And then Leon was gone, vanishing in a flash of light and leaving nothing but a deafening clap of thunder in his wake.

He reappeared a moment later behind the ice mage that had killed Lapis, his blade already in mid-swing. The mage barely had time to move his arm to block Leon’s strike, but stuck in the mire of Leon’s killing intent, he moved sluggishly. To Leon, he practically moved in slow motion.

But Leon’s sword still hit his forearm, scraping along the metal, rending and tearing the gauntlet as he went. The mage screamed, but Leon didn’t care. All he wanted was blood.

He rained a flurry of blows down upon the mage, who cycled his magic power and managed to fight off the worst of Leon’s killing intent. Leon’s blade scratched and ripped his armor, the Adamant metal powered by his wrathful power cleaving through his defenses like a hot knife through butter.

Needing distance, the mage threw himself back, but Leon was faster. It was all the mage could do to defend himself as Leon’s furious blows rained down upon him. Only when the mage managed to form icy armor over his body was he able to gain a hint of breathing room; Leon’s sword had a much tougher time slicing through ice than it did steel.

But Leon was undaunted. With a flick of his wrist, Leon deflected the ice mage’s sword, thrust out his off-hand, and fire burst from his fingers, searing his wrath into the mage’s body. The heat was intense, and most of the mage’s icy armor melted and vaporized in it, scalding the nobleman further.

Again and again the mage attempted to defend himself, but Leon was just too fast. He switched from lightning to fire effortlessly, taking full advantage of the speed boost from lightning magic while incinerating all hopes of victory or escape with fire.

Making a last-ditch attempt to escape, the mage allowed Leon to hit him with another gout of flame. Instead of focusing all of his energy on defense, the mage leaped for all he was worth, landing upon the chest of Lapis’ empty shell.

Leon wasn’t going to let him get away that easily, though. Only a moment later he was on the mage again, his fury rising as he was forced to fight upon Lapis’ corpse.

And then his moment came. The mage was on the ropes and Leon swung for his sword, intending to disarm. However, the mage shouted in anger and pushed back and their blades locked together. Leon simply hit him with fire once more, sending him reeling.

To Leon’s lightning-augmented eyes, this moment seemed to last an eternity. He watched as the mage’s arm was jerked away, leaving his vulnerable armpit open. There was no ice there, no steel plate, only mail and cloth padding—easily pierced with his sword.

Without hesitation, Leon seized the moment, driving his sword deep into the mage’s armpit, piercing clean through the mage’s mail, slicing through the many layers of cloth in his gambeson, breaking skin, and biting deep. Past the mage’s ribs slid Leon’s sword, impaling first the mage’s lung, and then his heart. But Leon didn’t stop there, he kept pushing deeper, his magic power flowing through the blade, the Adamant metal responded to his violent rage and resonating with his power, heating up.

For the first time in its existence, the blade began to burn as it pierced the mage’s other lung. Bright orange fire erupted from the metal, reducing the ice mage’s internal organs to ash in an instant. He never even had a chance to scream, to so much as exchange a single word with Leon. Leon doubted he even had time to process his death as Leon’s fire consumed everything within him. Fire filled his body, hardening his skin and erupting from the cracks, frying his muscles, racing up his esophagus and out his mouth, coursing into his head and destroying his brain, boiling his eyes into vapor, and bursting out of his ears.

A second later, Leon pulled his sword from the ice mage’s body, letting the burning corpse collapse in a charred heap upon Lapis’ chest, the mage’s scorched armor the only thing holding his corpse together. Leon stared into that conflagration, feeling nothing but sorrow. His enemy was dead, but so too was Lapis. So too were so many others that Leon had been counting on.

His giants were all gone. Leon was vaguely aware of that, though he was unsure of how he knew. All that remained of his unit were a few dozen. None of the Barons were still alive, and what few people he had left had formed a defensive circle around Lapis’ body.

In the distance, Leon could sense that the approaching Legion had closed to about six hundred feet and were getting ready to fire their arrows. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for what seemed like his end.

So consumed was he that he barely registered that his blade still burned, and deep within the crackling, sparking, raging orange fire, down near the guard and only an inch or two away from his fingers, was the barest hint of black flame.