Bonecrunch knew all the Prodigals, of course, had seen them all before. The great Tusker had escaped first, then the rest of them when the Isparian Candeth Martine broke free of the labs of the virindi Aerbax.

  Now they were here, staring at him, and their sadness reverberated through their common magic and heritage.

  They were not going to aid him. Never aid the drudges! The drudges would always be preyed upon, always have to fight back!

  With a scream of pure frustrated desperation and hatred, Bonecrunch threw himself at the Isparian who did not have the grace to die, Die, DIE as all non-drudges should!

  King Borelean flowed into the defensive easily and fluidly, yet his punishment of the berserk Bonecrunch did not stop as the madly attacking Prodigal Drudge gave up all pretenses of defense and just tried to rip the Isparian King apart with everything he had.

  Wounds spurted, ripping open, phantom flesh became more and more real as the energies within dissipated.

  A flick of the wrist, and suddenly one of Bonecrunch’s hands was spinning free of his wrist, trailing crimson blood going green, his entire phased arm turning abruptly pale and solid, the gray-white flesh crossed by unhealed fresh scars and his own blood.

  Another bleat of outrage escaped him as he almost impaled his skull upon the point of the Blade, and lost his glowing right eye in a spurting of bulbous pus.

  His frenzied attacks broke, the Shield smashed him backwards, a cut to his left knee popped the cap, and his footing sagged, although his unnatural coordination and strength kept him balanced on his other leg.

  Borelean was in on him, his Shield forcing Bonecrunch’s arm wide, the Isparian now pressed up flat against his chest.

  “You’ve lost,” the king hissed into his face, as Bonecrunch stared down the Sword under his throat, knowing his head was about to fly free... and the Isparian king instead Shield-slammed Bonecrunch away with contempt.

  The drudge’s frenzied rage broke as Bonecrunch tumbled to the center of the clearing there and fell. A second later, he was equally amazed when a wave of magic stole across him, and the Curse energy preventing his wounds from Healing was swept away.

  Sputtering and gasping, the natural Fast Healing of his body began to work. Shocked and startled, the Prodigal Drudge supplemented it quickly with Healing Magic to restore his body to full strength, his vitality to full, and begin the restoration of the protective field of his Health Qi before he finally clambered back to his restored feet.

  He did not understand what was going on, until the scarred swordswoman stepped forward. Unlike the Isparian king now seated on a floating Disk behind her, being attended to by his mages, she wasn’t using a Shield at all.

  She smiled as her dark hair blew back, and the scarring on the sides of her face pulsed to his spiritual sight, displaying an Evil and a Curse as great and mighty as the Virindi themselves… trapped and held hostage, tapped and bound by her Will.

  A Will without magic of its own!…

  Bonecrunch suddenly had a very bad feeling.

  “Sit there. Rest. Return to your full strength.” She crooned it in Drudgespeak, but with a purring, hungry tone to her voice that held no mews of fear, only boundless confidence and a thirst for battle that made the hateful Drudge cold to see and hear.

  The female behind her, with the drifting white hair imbued with energies that he didn’t understand and which made his restored eyes quiver to look upon, raised her Staff, and the swirling blood-red sparkles of Regeneration Life magic descended upon him... despite his instinctive attempt to resist the spell!...

  The spell which was now enabling the Fast Healing of his wounds at thrice the speed of normal. His Health Qi was even visible in sparks of greenish light, congealing out of the aether and flowing into him as his pale body once again began to flicker and go into phase.

  “I will not be denied my pleasure of facing down the Butcher of Cragstone, either,” she told him smoothly. She held out her hand, and the wall of Flaming spears behind her parted, revealing a score of males and females there, most of them armed with Swords and kite Shields, but there were two lugians towering with great Shields and massive Axes present, too!

  “They all want to face you at your best, and beat you down.

  “And when they are all done with you, and you’ve been at your best, and you’ve lost over and over to us, and you know you have no chance against us now, or in the future, then, Bonecrunch, then we’re going to kill you.”

  Her smile was too wide for an Isparian face, the eight canines seemed far larger than they were, and when she laughed, her eyes seemed to burn, and every note crashed into his nerves like a seal of doom.

  He was not a threat anymore.

  He was practice. That was all…

  He turned to look at the other Prodigals there. He felt no brotherhood with them, and did not know why, but they were merely more rivals, more enemies who picked on the drudges, beings he had to kill, to defeat and lay low, so that they could not threaten himself or his people.

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  He also knew that dangerous as he was, he could not defeat any of them as things stood. The Banderling was taller and stronger, the Isparian and Tumerok seethed with energies beyond all but the mightiest of virindi, and the Tusker, the Tusker looked down at him sadly, as if he was no more than a gnat to be stepped on, clad in so much muscle and might the fact it was true only made Bonecrunch even angrier!

  He whirled on the woman, hate rising up again, the hate that always warmed him and sustained him after all the torment heaped upon him in his life. “Will make you pay, female!” he promised, his Hollow claws clenching as the magic-denying lights on them rebuilt.

  But there was no magic upon her ornate Armor, only upon her Sword… and that Sword was, if anything, even deadlier than the one the Isparian King had wielded.

  And she was not even using a Shield!...

  “Good.” Princess Kristie’s eyes only gleamed the brighter as she replied in his own tongue. “Keep that spirit up. I’m going to enjoy it.”

  -----

  It was not a contest, him and Kris. She didn’t use her Shield, because she didn’t need it. With the Ways of the Seven Dragons at V, the Prodigal Drudge stood no chance at all. She was basically in full defensive mode, but his own defenses were so transparent to her it basically made no difference that her offense was actually less than it could have been.

  He could barely hit her, and she was so fast in return that there was no doubt who was the better swordsman between her and King Borelean.

  The Blood Rose ignited for the second time, and it was all over. The horrified Bonecrunch was nearly eviscerated as he tumbled back, both hands lost, belly opened, one eye gone, spurting blood from arteries, going to be dead in mere seconds.

  Instead of following up, Kris turned away, and the Curse Magic of Blooding stopping his Fast Healing was again Dispelled by me. Once again the Regeneration Life Magic descended. His hands regrew from their stumps, the fallen hands dissolved to dust, his wounds closed with desperate speed, and Bonecrunch crouched there, growling as she walked away, her back turned, and he was not, could not be, a threat to her.

  With a grunt, the massive fellow in Armor that looked like something harder than a castle wall stepped forward, idly spinning a massive Hammer as lightly as a willow wand.

  “Rest up, now,” Commander Briggs said to Bonecrunch, pale green eyes harder than emeralds as they fixed on the crouching Prodigal Drudge. “You’re going to want to be at your best for what’s coming.”

  Bonecrunch looked up at the, the towering male who couldn’t be an Isparian, could he?, and this time, I watched him swallow.

  --------

  We watched as he was defeated, over and over and over again.

  Everyone had seen what was required when King Borelean fought. If you couldn’t fight as well as the King, you were going to lose in front of everyone.

  Nobody lost. Even if drudges were the only foe they could fight that well, they could fight him that well.

  Even Master Ben Ten took a turn, the white bone of his face opened with his helm, letting Bonecrunch know the Cursed Dead remembered the massacre he had been part of, too!

  No others of the Legions of the Moon or the Sun took up the challenge. The Cursed Dead didn’t fear dying, but the goal was to win, and their state made it difficult to acquire the skills needed.

  Master Ben had been a great master of the Sword before his death, and his enlightenment thereafter transcended all the others. He was also able to kill Bonecrunch, his One Strikes things of sublime beauty and grace as they exchanged blows, Giri against spectral claw.

  Gros and Kopf did the lugians proud as they held up the warrior traditions of their people, literally beating the Prodigal Drudge down like irresistible forces of nature.

  Briggs, however, was the most domineering.

  Bonecrunch simply could not match his strength. Endure was a crushing force, impossible to stop, and fully capable of sending the Prodigal Drudge flying with hit after hit. Bonecrunch had never encountered anything stronger than him that was not also much larger, especially an Isparian, and he certainly hadn’t ever dealt with a heavy armor specialist in adamantine Armor before.

  Briggs crushed him impassively, coldly, pragmatically, beating him like a dog and cracking any semblance of resolve the Drudge might have left, stirring up those embers of hate as the Drudge was forced to remember the life he came from again, where Drudges were always the bottom of the totem pole.

  The Prodigals watched impassively. The fact a Banderling and a Hea were both standing there was proof that the Isparians could have accepted drudges walking among them. But when the greatest of them only wanted to kill and slay the moment he had power, that opportunity was lost.

  ------

  The final duelist and Bonecrunch’s executioner was Kris’ student Colmus, the big blond Aluvian Skeeter and Knight of the Lost Light.

  As a boy, he’d lived in Cragstone, and he had seen Bonecrunch slaughter his father, and watched his mother and sisters get dragged down by a horde of drudges on the flight from the city. A Royal Knight had carried the screaming boy away before he could die with them, and he had never, ever forgotten the sight.

  The hate in Bonecrunch’s eye never seemed to fade, even as the last of the virindi energy within him vented free from the Sword impaling his skull, this time chased with vivic energy that billowed up around his head with even more vigor than most undead went up.

  “Save the skull,” Princess Kristie Rantha said softly into the silence, everyone watching the Prodigal Drudge finally go limp. “It will make a Dreadskull.”

  The shaking Colmus exhaled a long, slow sigh. He pulled Socrun free, for a moment the Prodigal Drudge’s corpse propped on the top edge of the Jadework Shield that had kept so many of those clawstrikes at bay.

  He turned away and cut back in the same motion. There was no sound as the head of Bonecrunch was cut free of its corpse and expertly batted through the air, tumbling and bouncing across the green at the center of the Drudge Fort.

  Briggs lifted his booted foot, came down on the head, and the vivus was pressed flat and extinguished by his Sun. He toed it up to Kris, who caught it and threw it into her Masspack without ceremony.

  The Knight of the Lost Light stepped away as Harraag moved forward to take the body of the Prodigal Drudge up in his furry arms. Magic swirled up in crimson, blue, purple, and gold, and the Prodigals vanished as silently as they’d watched, bearing their fallen brother.

  Colmus slowly walked over to his Disk, and sat down there with the other warriors who’d faced Bonecrunch with naught but skill and steel, and won.

  “We salute the dead of Cragstone,” Commander Briggs stated as he lifted his Hammer, and went down on one knee.

  Silently, the thousands of soldiers around him knelt down to do the same.

  Bonecrunch had been beaten, and more importantly, he had been beaten soundly, and repeatedly. Those who had prepared for this fight had done so, and they had bested what was once the most feared single combatant in all of Osteth, responsible for more Isparian deaths in combat than any other single being.

  It meant they could now fight the very best… and others could rise to do the same!

  ============================

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