In one heartbeat, Nic had appeared, cut down one of the enemy, and vanished in a cloud of poisons. The waters rippled as he dropped under.

Beneath the lake, Nic saw the face of slaughter. Legions of wretches were fighting, desperately, for the chances at life. Five kills made you a survivor; fifty made you a monarch. It was a microcosm of the world the System had created on Earth.

Nic rose, pulling his way onto an island.

Behind him the priest and Tharsa were still coughing violently, doubled over and struggling to move as the poison infected their lungs. The priest pulled out a gourd of medicinal waters and drank till they spilled from his chin; Tharsa shoved him and took the gourd away, chugging down the last.

The fight had descended into four-way chaos. The wretches, the Westdawn Clan, the dhampir assassin…

Him.

Everyone fighting, everyone clawing, to come out on top.

If it had been a straight fight with any one of the factions, Nic couldn’t have been sure; but in a battlefield this chaotic, what mattered most was being able to keep your footing on changing ground. Nic knew he could survive.

“Old Thirteen!” Rakhdat called. They’d chased the assassin from island to island, forcing the dhampir back wherever they collided. The slave and his master provided raw force, while the shadowy goblinoid appeared and disappeared at will, harassing the assassin with insidious cuts that came from strange angles.

But now Rakdhat pulled back, bringing out a pill in a slender vial. He crushed the glass and pushed the medicine into his mouth. “Go and kill the pink one. I’ll handle this.” As soon as he swallowed the pill his body began to grow, runes appearing on his dark skin.

The slave nodded, turned, and shot towards Nic.

“Tharsa! Noeme! Help him when you can!” Even as he spoke Rakdhat was advancing. His palm extended into a brutal blow; his staff swung down; his hand swept down again, this time with a descending chop; the assassin was blown about like a leaf trying to dodge the storm of attacks.

Nic braced for impact. Of all the combatants here, Old 13 didn’t have the most explosive force or the quickest movements, and his techniques were limited to simple strikes…

But those simple strikes carried the force of falling mountains, while his body seemed unbreakable.

Nic swept the paintbrush through the air, conjuring inky energy in a defensive swirl around him. With a simple, sweeping strike that came from low at his hip, the slave scattered Nic’s defenses aside. Only his Mistwater Step kept Nic alive. The attack broke through and tore his head away; but it was only an illusion. The real Nic was a half-inch to the left, escaping by the skin of his teeth.

For a moment they danced. Nic’s footwork had advanced by leaps and bounds, and he was able to survive again and again, moving in the wind generated by his enemy’s attacks, lost in a rhythm where he never had room to attack, only to dodge…

It was a losing game; eventually the staff struck him across the shoulder. Nic was lifted off the ground as bone and flesh ruptured, his arm going limp as the joint was pulverized into mincemeat.

He was flung through the air.

“Lasso!” He pointed with his remaining hand. Gwungo shot out and anchored him to a nearby stalagmite, pulling him to safety with an elastic spring.

He landed, panting, blood trickling down the useless hang of his right arm. The paintbrush hung in his limp fingers, adhered there by sticky tar. Slowly he forced those fingers to clutch, working strength and life back into them.

Old 13 was already closing in, rushing across the water to deliver another implaccable strike. There was no winning with his current strength; there was no answer to such brute, impossible force.

But Nic wasn’t done yet.

He transformed, four new arms ripping their way out as his pink skin turned translucent and peeled away from the muscle and bone beneath, leaving room for scales to grow, hard orange-blue armor that covered his serpentine form as his legs became a coiling tail.

Six death-dealing hands. Six furious blows.

Scarseeker was held in the uppermost pair, stabbing down from overhead like a scorpion’s tail. Blades of light lashed through the open air between him and his foe, trying to force him back, trying to hold the advantage of reach. His blows aimed low, trying to trip the slave’s legs.

The staff spun and deflected each in turn, scattering the beams to shards of light.

It swept in a wide crescent, bending as it carved through the air towards Nic’s skull.

Nic deflected with his Sandrider Blade, one of two sickle-like khopesh swords held in his middle hands. The other swept into the old slave’s stomach and crashed against his iron skin, lifting the skinny bastard off his feet and sending him stumbling back.

For the first time the tempo of the fight reversed.

The slave’s feet sunk down to the knees, his ability to stand atop the lake briefly faltering.

In Nic’s left-lower hand, the resonant greatsword swept along the rippling surface, gathering up a long, flexible water-blade. It lashed out like a whip and caught hold of Old 13’s leg, yanking him off balance.

In his final hand the paintbrush made quick, darting strokes across the air, conjuring strands of inky black energy that tied around the quarterstaff to immobilize his enemy’s weapon.

Scarseeker swept down from above like the descending guillotine. It slammed into the slave’s chest and threw him down beneath the dark waters, leaving a trail of froth in the lake as he fell.

Nic roared in triumph.

In the distance, thunder boomed as Rakhdat swung his staff. He had broken away from the dhampir for a moment and was frantically killing off the wretches; from his bag he pulled out beads of red crystal and flung them into the water where the beasts were beginning to swarm.

They were like a crawling horde of insects. One or two were harmless, but if they got a grip on you, if they pulled you down…

The beads erupted into flame and annihilated huge swathes of the wretch population. Still more were coming; they fell from above in rivers of screaming flesh.

At the same time, Tharsa was moving. She had peeled away the red belt that restrained her sister, instantly expanding to massive size as the second head pushed from her first with a grisly, cartilaginous series of cracking, twisting sounds. Together the two stood above the poison fog, regeneration stitching together her damaged lungs as she coughed out blood from both mouths.

“Talqua…” The first head gasped out. “Help me kill this idiot pink thing and I’ll give you a day…”

“You’re such a lying bitch…” Her sister spat back, but already the rune on her forehead was beginning to glow, forcing her to comply. Her eyes turned bloodshot as she groaned and tried to resist, the light bleeding from the rune growing more and more intense until it began to scald her flesh, forcing her to roar out, “FINE!”

With huge, wading footsteps, they shot across a narrow bridge of land submerged under the lake’s surface. Nic barely had time to breathe and recover before they came crashing down on him. Tharsa led with a swift, agile sword; Talqua followed with her brutal, heavy fist.

It was two against six, but each of the ogreblood’s arms had their own will, executing techniques independently. In moments, Nic realized he was outmatched. His frantic, lightning-quick strikes wove a web of steel around his body, entangling the enemy strikes before they could reach him, but he was failing, he was taking thin, glancing blows that chipped away at his body…

With a single twisting swordstrike, Tharsa entrapped his Sandrider Blade and flung it from his hand. In the opening, Talqua slammed her open palm down, forcing him to block with his spear and the remaining khopesh. The impact jarred down through his bones and made his arms turn numb.

There was nothing else for it.

He had to play his hand.

All this time, Nic had been holding his aura in reserve. Against so many enemies, spending it all to kill one or two would leave him locked down and unable to escape. But now…

If it meant two kills with one stone…

Power surged into his throat, circulating into the nodes for Primordial Mist to build up a single, killing blow. His mouth snapped open, the naga’s trifurcated jaw spreading apart like a deadly flower of teeth-

Old 13 burst from the water below. His staff swung up as he rose, kicking off from the lake’s bed and shooting into the air with a single leap. The staff’s edge struck into Nic’s open mouth, and with a brutal, dizzying flash of heat and pain, Nic felt half of his jaw be torn into shrapnel.

As he reeled back from that blow-

Talqua’s fist hammered into his chest, caving in ribs. The stalagmite Nic clung to for solid ground was torn into a spray of rubble, sending him crashing down into the lake.

Nic sank.

Blood trailed through the water from his ruined jaw. Beneath him, underneath the lake’s dark surface, there was a vision of hell. The first E-Classes had emerged from the chaos; they moved like shadows of death, annihilating the unevolved wretches and devouring them by the dozens. Where they clashed, the depths turned to froth and confusion under the weight of their struggling bodies.

He turned his gaze up.

Above, he watched as the assassin darted across the sky, pulled in all directions by his bone hooks. The massive Rakdhat gave chase, his staff slamming against the walls and bringing down crashing rains of rubble…

The dhampir had really underestimated their opponents.

Maybe Nic had too.

But he still had cards to play.

Inkspur. Come out. He whispered in his mind, and the tiny wyvern appeared, floating through the waters.

It was time for some trickery.

With a kick, Nic shot back towards the surface, erupting through the lake’s face. His swords swept out, cutting beams of bronze and silver through the air. Tharsa twisted to defend, throwing up a quick and yet impenetrable wall of steel.

An attack slipped past and tore into her hip. The illusions of the Mistwater Step weren’t just good for defense, but they made his attacks slippery and elusive as well. She snarled. Her sister’s fist shot upwards, wrapped in a layer of strange and vibrant green energy. Nic blocked with Scarseeker’s haft and the blow whipped him up into the air, sending him sailing backwards. His broken ribs ached like jagged streaks of fire in his chest.

Before he could hit the the ground, Old 13 arrived. The slave leapt into the air to intersect with Nic and swept him aside with an easy, almost lazy staff blow.

Nic was hurled across the water, crashing into a miniature island. For a moment his long, serpentine form didn’t move. The pain and exhaustion had built up into an impenetrable black wall, resisting his attempts to stand back up, to keep fighting.

With a roar Nic pushed through and jolted awake.

Old 13 was rushing towards him, bare feet slapping the surface of the lake as he ran across water.

But behind him…

Behind him Tharsa had realized something was wrong. Clinging to her second head, like a bedraggled cat, was Inkspur. The little wyvern had crept up while she fought with Nic, and now perched above Talqua’s forehead.

With a single stroke of his tail, he dragged a line of ink through the rune controlling the second sister. With the stroke of a pen her shackles were broken.

Both sisters’ eyes widened at once.

And then they moved.

Talqua’s hand shot upwards, seizing Tharsa’s face in a grip of implacable iron fingers. Talqua’s sword stabbed upwards, piercing her sister through the forearm, the tip of the blade ripping its way out on the far side and beginning to squirm and drag about, trying to sever the tendons.

For a moment the ogre was hunched over onto one knee, screaming in pain from both mouths, both sisters intent on annihilating the other…

And then with a hideous, fleshy crunch, Nic saw Talqua’s fingers crush down and tear her sister’s head apart, flinging the gory remains away.

“HAAAAAA! I WIN! I FINALLY WIN!”

The roar of triumph brought even Old 13 up short.

“Yes yes, you’ve TRIUMPHED! They’ll never enslave YOU again! But its all thanks to my master, remember that?” Inkspur crooned. “If you want to pay him back, just start your GLORIOUS CAMPAIGN OF VENGEANCE with that RAGGEDY OLD SLAVE over there!”

Talqua grinned. It was the hideous, crooked grin of someone who had spent years doing nothing but dreaming of vengeance. It was a sickening expression, beautiful only to her. “With pleasure.”

She shot forward.

Old 13 was forced to give up on Nic, turning about and bracing himself to deal with the victorious sister.

And just like that, the battlefield changed faces yet again.