Nic burst through the flames clad in an armor of black mercury. His entire body was enveloped by a smooth, shapeless metal that conformed to his shape and repelled the flames. Outside, silver flame raged across his skin. Inside, it was pleasantly cool, the heat only rising for an instant before it was dissipated and absorbed.

As he crashed down onto the street beyond, the veil covering his face poured away and melded into the rest of the armor. Nic breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Did I do good?” Gwungo asked eagerly, his voice vibrating across the armor.

“Yes, but- Don’t talk while I’m wearing you, okay? It’s just weird…” Nic said. Unfortunately, he didn't want the slime running off on its own, and there was no better way to carry it with him for now.

Guards were flooding down the streets, heading towards him with their weapons drawn. Nic smiled. It was too late. If they’d penned him in and been able to pick away at him from a distance, Nic might have struggled, even against foes he vastly outmatched. There was nothing in life as free as an enemy who couldn’t fight back.

And if they’d tried to kill him yesterday…

An hour ago…

They might have succeeded.

An arrow struck into Nic’s chest, piercing through the thin black armor- but not the thick scales below.

Nic reached out and seized a hold of the nearest house, ripping away with his Warform’s corded muscle. With a grunt, he pulled away a massive log formed out of a redwood tree’s core, lifting it overhead like a javelin. More arrows stabbed into his chest or whistled past him and he didn’t care.

With a single brutal heave he sent the log shooting through the air towards the oncoming guards.

It crushed two outright as it slammed into the earth and bounced up, tumbling end over end. The rest threw themselves out of the way and counted themselves lucky for the split seconds of life they’d bought themselves.

But it was just that…

A second’s reprieve before the end.

As the missile sailed through the air Nic shot forward in its wake, his six hands pounding against the ground to add even a split second’s extra speed. He swept up, rising onto his tail and carrying an unfortunate guardsman with him, able to grasp the man’s arm in one hand and lift him like a doll. The man screamed as he became a missile, hurled down at another of his comrades.

The first guard slammed into the second, tumbling across the ground in a pile of broken limbs.

One of the crowd had some bravery. He ran forward with his spear, a scream in his lips, hope already faded from his eyes and replaced by a mad desire to spill blood before he died.

Nic’s tail whipped up and hit him in the chest, lifting him off the ground as every one of the man’s ribs caved down under the impact and became a deadly shrapnel biting into his heart and lungs. He died before he hit the ground.

The tail whipped in a wide circle, kicking up huge torrents of dust and forcing the few guards struggling towards him back.

Through the rising cloud Nic came like a shadow of death, ribbons of wind and swirling dust surrounding his arms as they shot out. One after another of his captors was plucked up into the air, and Nic simply threw them down again, breaking them against the earth.

The few who survived, ran. Nic picked up the long spears from their fallen brothers, hefted them overhead, and threw.

The spears became long leaping arcs of blurred silver and black. Where they stabbed down, men were left impaled, staring at the haft of rough wood that had burst through their chests and pinned them to the earth below.

Whether they fought or they ran…

It was all the same in the end.

After days of captivity, suffering the abuses of his tormentors and looking into their smug, smiling faces sneering down at him, Nic had no mercy left in his body. He had seen how they treated him when he had no power…

He returned that favor in spades.

As for the other people… the ones hiding in their homes, gazing out fearfully… Nic left them in peace…

His alliance with this idiotic place was shot to hell, but he had his principles. Most of them had nothing to do with his ill-treatment or de Vega’s stupid confidence. They were just sheltering in the shade of whatever tree seemed tallest.

Nic wrenched the spears free from the impaled bodies. They were good enough killing tools for this body, with their long strikes to complement his tall physique and commanding reach.

Already, the real forces of the city were coming out to play.

The blonde-haired woman with the spectacles and the cold, piercing eyes stood atop a rooftop. She had donned a full suit of crimson armor, made of overlapping plates of blood-hued wood and dark, waxed leather. Roaring lions decorated either pauldron, and Nic could sense instantly this was a high-level treasure. Something from the dungeon they'd conquered.

Behind her was a smaller, less imposing girl, with amber-gold hair coming down around her face in a bobbed cut. She wore a vest and cape of lilac-blue hemmed over white, with gloves that seemed to have been cut out of the starry sky, nebulas and stars flashing within as she wove her hands through the air.

Nic guessed they'd need four or five warriors at this level to break through a dungeon this early. The chance to take out two of those on their own...

It was his chance to take.

Without hesitation he sent a spear hurtling through the air towards the red-armored woman. She lifted her hand and a shield of red energy with a lion's snarling face leapt into its path. He threw two more, but the shield flickered to catch both, vanishing and reappearing in the space of heartbeats.

Growling in frustration, Nic turned to grab hold of one of the houses, ripping out a massive timber beam...

Behind him the young girl had finished her incantation. The sky above shoom and a pool of absolute black appeared. It moved in spirals, rippling like a lake of dark water, and stars began to shine within the depths.

As Nic turned to throw, one by one the stars dropped from the dark pool and became a volley of blazing missiles, landing against his scales and burning through to the meat below. He roared and chucked the massive javelin towards them, heaving his whole serpentine form up off the earth and leaning into the blow with a goliath's unbound strength. The blonde woman's eyes went wide-

There was no stopping that.

She turned and tackled the girl off the roof as the log crashed through the building, caving the house in. Nic could only hope nobody was inside as he surged over the wreckage, chasing them down. He slithered over broken spars of wood and collapsed roofing tiles, finding the two still trying to stand back up.

His hand descended. The blonde raised the shield one final time, and cracks spiralled through the red energy barrier as Nic's palm slammed down. The damage quickly sealed itself, the woman cycling her cultivation as hard as she could, both hands raised as she fed aura to the defense.

Behind her the other girl was running as fast as she could.

Nic paid no mind. Before, when he'd fought the ogreblood, he had tried to infuse his palm strike with the same feeling that the old ghost's attacks had carried. A despair and a smallness, as if you were an ant staring up at the descending palm of an angry god.

Now that he'd found an opponent that could stand up to him, he tried again.

The strike came in two parts. The movement of energy within his body, flowing to reinforce the muscle, and the movement of the body itself. Now he added a third element. The movement of will, infusing the energy.

From his work runescribing Nic already knew that Essence and aura could contain a meaning, a word spoken from the soul. Now he tried giving meaning to his strike, a name, and that name was 'despair'.

His palm descended. This time, the sound it made as it collided with the shield was almost a wailing, a great bell ringing out, the stone doors of the underworld cracking open...

Despair for his enemies.

The woman’s face flickered, and she glanced back towards the girl. Instantly, Nic capitalized on that one moment, his tail curling around to come crashing in from the side, bypassing her shield. But before he could sweep her away, she had transformed into a star of red energy. It flew towards the girl and rematerialized into the woman…

Her second Shard was some kind of teleportation to leap towards her allies, then.

Not expecting to hit, he flicked one of his remaining spears their way, forcing the woman to once again bring up the shield. He had sensed weakness. She couldn’t move while the barrier was raised.

As he thundered towards her, ready to seek the kill this time, the girl raised her hand and a missile of starfire shot towards him. He took it across the chest, not expecting to suffer much, but in the moment the starfire hit him all the wounds from the previous strikes resonated, tearing themselves deeper into his flesh.

Nic was actually sent reeling back, slamming a fist into the ground to keep himself steady. Blood oozed down from a web of open cuts across his chest, as if the points of impact were reaching out to each other.

So that was it then.

Her attacks would add up, each blow resonating with the next, until she tore him apart.

With the blonde woman’s defense to rely on, it was a damn good strategy. Shieldmaiden and Orion, he named them. A shield and a bow.

If he’d had the momentum at first, it was gone now. Orion’s strikes had added up and his moment of fascination trying to perfect his attacks had cost him the chance to take Shieldmaiden out. He needed to close this battle, quickly, before others arrived.

Rising, Nic cracked his neck.

The two of them had slid into formation. The shield was raised to block his path, and above, the dark portal in the sky was opening again- some kind of amplification Shard that let Orion launch multiple stars at once.

A ripple of water ran across the ground. Then another, and another, emanating out from Nic. Each wave was as thin as a sheet of glass and utterly harmless. Although the enemy's faces showed confusion, they held their ground. They weren’t born fighters. The two had a simple tactic that had served them well, and they’d stick it out until the bitter end.

His tail snapped out, grabbing the post of a watchtower. With a single wrenching heave, he ripped the foundation open, and the tower began to fall towards the pair like a descending axe. As it thundered through the air, Nic dropped his Warform in order to slip aside.

The woman dropped her shield, trying to run-

The mud created by the mingling water and dust gripped her boots. Nic had created a mire around her feet, holding her down.

She looked up and saw the end. There was an impact that shook the earth and spilled grit and debris up into the sky.

Orion coughed and spat as she stumbled through the impact zone, rubbing her eyes as she limped forward, a piece of wooden shrapnel stabbed through her calf. Like a shadow in the settling cloud of dust, Nic was already above her, perched on a rooftop.

With a soundless leap he dropped down on the unsuspecting enemy.