Ten miles. Ana could do ten miles. Twenty miles at a dead run had almost killed her three weeks earlier, but ten? She could do ten and still be fighting fit. Especially with her Shaping making her lighter. At least she hoped so, because she was committed now, her Party far behind her and following at their own best pace. She hated leaving them behind, she really did, but as much as she liked most of the people in that Party, Messy ranked far above all of them put together.
Even if they hadn’t, they’d urged Ana to go. Because it wasn’t just Messy in danger. The first thing Ana had done when she felt Messy’s fear was to ask the Wayfarer what was happening. An attack, the goddess had said. Then, a little later, The northern gate has been destroyed, swallowed by the earth. The Earthbreaker has beat you there!
With the word of a goddess to go on, no one had objected to Ana running ahead. She would have even if they had, but it was nice to have their support. They had made her promise not to suddenly leave the Party unless it was a matter of life and death, but that was a concession she hadn’t minded making. She still felt like a bit of an ass since the first time.
Then Ana ran. Not as fast as she could, but as fast as she dared in the dark and uneven forest. She couldn’t say how fast that was, but she’d had a number of close calls where she’d only barely avoided slamming into a tree before adjusting her speed to something more survivable. She was still sure that she was cannoning forward by at least a dozen feet with every step, and those steps were coming fast.
Ana was feeling pretty good about her pace and couldn’t imagine that she had much further to go when the goddess spoke up, unprompted, to tell her, They’re preparing to fight! Hurry! and Ana increased her pace
Then Messy’s fear was joined by pain, and Ana left caution behind entirely. She broke into a dead sprint, and when even that felt too slow she manifested her wings. The ethereal glow coming off them bathed the surrounding forest in a soft white light, and with a leap and a few rapid, powerful beats she smashed her way through the canopy of the trees, arching out high above the forest.
She’d been right. The outpost wasn’t far. She could see the few spots of light marking it in the near distance — it couldn’t be much more than a mile. And then Messy lost consciousness.
The wind roared and whistled around Ana, her clothes whirring and snapping as she drove herself to fly faster than she ever had in her life. Her vision blurred as the wind forced her tear ducts into overdrive. But with only empty air in front of her she didn’t need to see. She knew where Messy was. That was enough.
The forest ended, and Ana shot across the clearing. It couldn’t have taken more than twenty seconds, the screaming wind competing with the roar of blood in Ana’s ears to deafen her. She passed over the ruin of the northern gate, torches, lanterns, and magical lights indicating people clearing the rubble. She paid them no mind. To the west, the tall, domed roof of the bathhouse was conspicuous in its absence. She barely noticed. As she approached the outpost, Messy’s direction had begun shifting from straight ahead to noticeably ahead and down.
Ana knew where she was going now. The square. Of course it was the square. The Earthbreaker has probably gone after the Waystone, just like they’d feared.
At the speed Ana was going, the distance between the palisade and the square passed in the space of a breath. She had only the moon to light the scene, but a few things were clear despite the low light. Every entrance to the square had been blocked off. The surface of the square had been torn up in dozens of places, a crazed assortment of piles and walls and pits scattered across it. And the Waystone still stood, but Administration was gone, replaced by a shapeless smear that extended halfway across the space.
People were impossible to identify; all that Ana could see were indistinct figures, some upright, others on the ground. Some were locked in close combat. One of the recumbent figures, she knew, was Messy. She didn't know what Messy had been doing there; something desperately brave, most likely, like when she'd carried Ana to Touannes a few nights earlier. It didn’t really matter. Messy was out cold, most likely hurt, and Ana had to get her out of there. Fortunately, Ana didn’t need to be able to see any detail. Devotion led her right to Messy; she was one of two figures lying close together to the southwest of the Waystone. There was a third figure approaching her — friend or foe, Ana had no way to tell.
Ana’s plan was simple. There was a fight going on, and she was going to end it, but first she needed to get Messy to safety. To that end she homed in on the dark, still shape that Devotion told her was Messy. She ignored the figure walking toward her. She could have struck it, but there was still the chance that it was an ally and not an enemy. Either way, Ana intended to be in and out so fast that there wouldn’t be time for either attack or conversation. Then she’d return and figure out who was who, and kill anyone who wasn’t Bluesky. Simple.
Sure. Man plans, and God laughs.
As Ana passed the top of the Waystone she flared her wings, slowing as much as she judged necessary for a safe landing. It probably saved her life; a lot of pain, at the very least. As she approached the ground at a speed that would have broken most people’s legs, but which Ana hoped would be, at worst, a bit hard on her knees and ankles, a spear of stone erupted from the ground, timed and angled to skewer her. If she’d been going any faster, it probably would’ve gotten her. As it was, Combat Acrobatics gave her just enough of an edge to roll to the side, saving her from being run through.
Unfortunately it also put her almost horizontal to the ground and perpendicular to her direction of travel, throwing off her landing horribly. Her approach had already been reckless; now she didn’t even have her legs under her as she impacted the ground. She did her best to tuck and roll to bleed off her momentum, but it still wasn’t so much a landing as it was an impact. She didn’t just hit and roll, either; she skipped off the cobbles and spun wildly, beyond anything even her Attributes or Enhancements could compensate for. Only Iron Grip let her hold on to her shield and her weapon, which she clutched close to her chest. She stopped when she slammed back-first into the wooden shutters of a small food vendor’s shop, which cracked and splintered but held well enough for her to bounce off onto the ground.
For a very short moment, Ana hated Split Focus. In the vast majority of circumstances it was an absolute blessing, one of her favorite Enhancements. Being able to focus on two separate things or trains of thought simultaneously was amazing, and would have been unbelievably useful while Ana still worked for Mr. Stamper. All it did for her as she lay stunned on the cold stone was to allow her to scream at herself, Get up! Get the fuck up! Whoever did that is going to want to finish the job! while at the same time marvelling at how she could have been so unbelievably stupid. She’d seen first hand what the Earth-mages on her own side could do, and yet she hadn’t even considered the possibility that anyone might attack her indirectly. It wasn’t even that she expected the Waystone to suppress the mana too much for anyone to Shape; she was honest enough with herself to admit that the idea hadn’t even crossed her mind.
The attack had been smart, too. It had used her own momentum against her. She’d had a choice of impaling herself, ditching the way she just had, or trying to abort, which would have slowed her, or stop entirely, both of which would have opened her up to ranged attacks.
And while she thought all that she was painfully aware that she was still on the ground while the fight was still going on. She could hear heavy footsteps approaching, and a storm of grief and rage slammed into her, growing stronger as the footsteps approached. She was on her hands and knees with one foot under her when those footsteps stopped thirty feet away. A woman’s voice, raw with emotion yet still managing to sound refined, said, “Stay down! Making an enemy of the gods-damn Wayfarer is the last thing I need, but I’ll kill you if I have to.”
“You going to surrender?” Ana asked, her voice rough and tight. She’d probably gone and messed up her ribs. Again. Touanne was going to be disappointed.
The woman’s first response was an incredulous little laugh. “No!” she said. “We’re winning! We’re going to leave, whatever that takes, and then we’re going to forget that this worthless backwater even exists. But first I’m going to destroy the bitch who killed my friend. Gods, I hope that she’s got a high Vitality, because I’m going to break every fucking bone in her body, and I want her to feel it!”
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Ana raised her face to look at the woman. She didn’t look like the kind of person who’d talk about torturing someone to death. From the little Ana could see of her, she looked ordinary; hair in a practical bun, wearing an equally practical dress. Her most distinguishing feature was that she was maybe an inch taller than Messy — five-eight, five-nine or so. If not for the rage and pain on her face, she’d look harmless, like a strict teacher or librarian at the very worst. But Ana herself was a prime example of looks being deceiving, and this woman’s label when inspected read [Human Iron Warrior (31)].
Ana would know how dangerous the woman truly was in a moment.
Ana didn’t get up. She didn’t move, except to slump a little as she pointed at the shape that she knew to be Messy, some thirty feet behind the Iron Warrior. “The woman over there,” she said, groaning as she played far more hurt than she was, “is she the one you’re going to kill?”
The woman didn’t take her eyes off Ana. By the soft light emanating from her wings, Ana could see the cruel glint in her eyes as she answered, “The one you were trying to get to? The swashbuckling cunt who killed Thomé? Yeah. And if you stay down, you won’t have to join her.”
The woman didn’t even hesitate to sign her own death warrant. That meant one of two things; either she was out of her goddamn mind and thought that Ana would just sit there, or she was supremely confident that she could take Ana in a fight and was trying to provoke her. From the way she held herself Ana suspected the latter. Whichever it was, she was wrong.
Ana didn’t bother with banter. She’d learned all she needed to.
As soon as Ana moved it became clear that the Iron Warrior had never expected Ana to stand idly by while she killed someone. Judging by how quickly she reacted she must have been shaping as she spoke. In a repeat of when Ana first arrived, cobbles exploded in every direction as a thick spike of stone speared out, angled to impale Ana as she came at the mage. Only, Ana didn’t come directly at her. She came over and around.
Ana still had her wings out. In the weeks since she got them, Ana had mostly used them to take Messy for short flights above the outpost, but she’d trained, too. And between her Strength, Agility, and Combat Acrobatics perk, Ana had excellent control in the air. So when she launched herself off the ground she didn’t do the predictable thing. Instead she kicked off so that she launched herself up and to the side, then used her wings to shoot forward in an arc that had her coming down at the Iron Warrior at high speed, and at an angle from above and to the side. Then, at the last moment she flipped herself so that instead of coming at her opponent head first, she led with her heels, intending to smash the woman into the stone surface of the square.
Credit where it’s due, the Iron Warrior didn’t just stand there when her first gambit failed. She either couldn’t create another spike fast enough to intercept Ana or didn’t bother trying, but it wasn’t her only trick. In the two seconds she had to react she managed to not only circle around the spike she’d already created, putting it between them, but as she moved she screamed, flung out her hand, and with a sound like someone driving a sledge into a pile of gravel she shotgunned a spray of small stone shards at Ana. She even led her attack with enough precision that, if Ana hadn’t flipped when she did, the high-velocity cloud of sharp rock would have taken her in the face and neck. It could have blinded her, or worse. As it was, the shards tore into Ana’s boots and trousers, tearing through leather and cloth and leaving Ana with a multitude of small cuts, some shallow, some deeper, all of them annoying.
That was bad enough. It would have been far worse if Ana had to actually feel her pain. The few shards that penetrated to the soles of her feet might well have been debilitating. But thanks to Fight Through — probably the single most important Perk Ana had, for how many times it had let her fight on when she should have been a wreck — the worst thing Ana had to worry about was that she was likely going to have to replace the boots. Even Merv’s best value-for-money work cost a decent bit of silver, and she’d be buying her third pair in as many months.
Ana finished her turn so that it took her around the spike, twisting in the air and throwing her legs out so she’d be landing sideways. Her legs bent to absorb the impact, her ability to ignore most pain letting her stay on her feet, and then she took that absorbed energy and threw herself at the Iron Warrior, this time much closer, and much more directly.
Ana got the first two in a series of surprises then. First, her opening low sweeping kick didn’t connect. The Iron Warrior had reacted quickly enough to jump just high enough to avoid it. Second, that jump hadn’t been straight up or backward, but forward.
Ana didn’t know how much the Earthbreaker and his mages had been told about her, but unless they were completely ignorant she had to admire the chutzpah of this woman. It might be prideful of Ana to think so, but she was sure that no one in the Splinter could possibly be ignorant of what she could do in close combat — especially not anyone still gathering information for the Sentinel, which she assumed would be these people’s primary source of intelligence.
Ana let the mage close on her, responding with a backhand from her buckler as her leg finished its sweep, and got a third surprise as the woman blocked it. It was a reflexive slap, mostly Strength and Dexterity, but there was some visible technique there. The woman didn’t just slap Ana’s buckler away; she struck at Ana’s wrist and moved forward to get inside her guard. And it worked!
Despite her surprise at suddenly finding herself no more than a foot from an opponent, despite her vengeful anger, despite her determination to kill this woman as quickly as she could so that she could get Messy to safety, Ana got excited. Whoever this woman was, she could fight. Ana had her armor, her buckler, and her weapon, and this woman felt confident enough to engage her barehanded and in just a shin-length dress with her sleeves rolled up — and a pair of slightly mismatched shitkicker boots. And for all the unarmed fighting that Ana had done in the past three months, willingly or not, none of that had been against anyone who had the remotest idea what they were doing. At best she’d done some very slow and very gentle sparring with her students, but now here she was, with an opponent inside her guard and a forehead driving for her nose. The woman was trying to headbutt her!
When receiving a headbutt, a lot of people said to lower your head and try to catch the opponent’s brow or even nose on the top of your forehead. These people, Ana’s teachers in more than one art had told her, probably didn’t know much about grappling. Rather than do that and risk timing it wrong and getting a concussion or getting the bridge of her nose smashed in, Ana swayed forward and to the left, catching her attacker’s face in the crook of her neck and trusting to her Ironskin Shaping and neckguard to protect her in case the woman felt bitey. She wouldn’t put it past her; as close as they were, the sheer grief coming off the woman was almost enough to make Ana sick, and that was to say nothing of the much more familiar feeling of rage. Ana had bitten people before in desperation; who knew what someone in the Iron Warrior’s state of mind might do?
Not that Ana intended to give her the chance. She may not be in anything resembling an ideal position for a throw, especially not with her hands full, but once you learned enough of the mechanics of a throw you could start to improvise a little. And with her Strength just a hair below 100 with her bonuses active, Ana figured she had a hell of a lot of leeway when it came to proper leverage and where exactly her opponent’s center of mass was.
Which was why what happened next might have been the biggest surprise of all.
Ana felt that she’d had a very solid base to stop the mage’s charge so that she could then snake her leg around behind and trip her with a push of her shoulder. Thus it came as quite a surprise when she found herself knocked backward hard enough to send her horizontal, forcing her to use her wings to right herself as a fresh ache in her chest and shoulder told her that she’d just been hit at speed by something far more massive than that woman had any right to be. She must be using the same damn Shaping Ana had been struggling with for weeks!
Well, so be it. Ana had grappled with people heavier than her since her first day on a mat. She’d wrestled goddamn elk and bears since coming to the Splinter. This was no different.
Ana’s feet came to rest several feet back, leaving enough room for the two to size one another up. “Gods, but I’m glad you didn’t stay down,” the woman growled, with a crazed excitement in her eyes that matched Ana’s own.
Ana responded with a feral grin, twirling her weapon and getting into the shield-forward ready stance Brosden had taught her before her first Delve — much improved now, of course, by practice and her own experience. She let the mage make the first move, and then the fight was truly on.
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