"Pain? Pain's just an old friend. It's how your body tells you that you're still alive, and able to fight more. It's when you don't feel any more pain that you need to start worrying." - Celeysria Ambervale, the Blood Demon, circa FP 684.

Ying Xiao noticed at once that the portal was not situated where they had planned it to be. She was supposed to land directly on the walkways, but the portal was a few meters short for that. Fortunately the momentum of her leap pushed her close enough that she barely managed to grasp the edge of the wall with her left hand and hung on with her fingers.

It was a precarious hold, as she clutched to the wall solely by her fingers' muscles. It was not enough for her to pull herself up while a crenellation was in the way for her other hand to reach the wall.

As if it wasn't bad enough, several nearby soldiers had noticed her, and spears jabbed at her from above. Most failed to penetrate her armor, but a couple caught her near the base of her neck and another pierced her cheek.

She ignored them. Instead, she clenched her muscles around the spearheads as she kept her magic circulating. Her blood flowed around the spearheads as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and she caught another between her teeth.

Then one of the soldiers above had the bright idea to pin her hand to the wall with his spear. That was a mistake. The spearhead that pierced through her hand and bit into the wall gave her the leverage she needed, as she heaved and pulled herself up with her injured hand.

The force was enough to throw her over and onto the walkways, and she brought her halberd out of her storage artifact before she even landed. A brutal swing cleared most of the soldiers in a half-circle before her, even as another spear caught her in the right armpit.

Ying Xiao ignored the injuries. Her blood magic meant that she could fight with injuries far worse than these, and the pain… they were nothing compared to what she had been through before. She swung her halberd once more, as enemy soldiers struck by the shaft were hurled into the air, some to fall to the ground far below.

Those struck by the blades of her halberd were torn asunder. Her weapon was sharp, but it was high purity adamant steel, enchanted for durability rather than a keen edge like her mentor's halberd. The blade ripped and tore through armor with her magically enhanced strength driving it, often tearing her enemies into halves as well.

With how crowded the top of the walls were, it took Ying Xiao a while to fight her way off the walkways. She had taken several other injuries in the meantime, and both her weapon and armor were drenched with blood, though none of them were her own.

The gatehouse was situated directly above the gate itself, almost like a short, flat tower on the wall structure. She had seen the gates. They were ridiculously thick steel gates, the sort that would have needed many, many people to budge at all, and had judged that it was most likely controlled by a mechanism from the gatehouse.

It was not easy to reach the gate controls however. The insides of the gatehouse were built like fortifications themselves, and the moment she entered she was greeted by a couple dozen crossbows opening fire at her.

Reflexively, Ying Xiao covered her eyes with one arm. Most of the bolts failed to find purchase as they broke on her armor. Several found gaps and pierced into her body however. Still nothing she worried about.

With the close quarters inside the gatehouse, Ying Xiao found it hard to use her halberd properly. She stored it back and pulled out her blade and hammer instead, and descended on the archers like an avenging god before they could reload.

Her blade viciously cleaved through flesh. Limbs and heads parted from bodies where it passed, as even her one-handed swings carried oppressive force behind them. The hammer in her right hand pulverized bones and skulls, armor rendered mostly pointless by the blunt force trauma she inflicted with it. More than a couple of her victims has their ribcages crushed even through their armor.

It took her a long time to finally reach the mechanism, mostly because the gatehouse's inhabitants kept barricading their doors along the way. Precious time was spent to break those doors down, while more time was wasted fighting off soldiers who pursued her into the gatehouse.

When she found the mechanism, she was surprised to see that it was a manually operated one. A massive iron wheel with handles on its perimeter was placed atop a pillar, on which the thick chains coiled around. The wheel looked like it was made for ten people to turn.

Even with her magically enhanced strength, Ying Xiao struggled to move the wheel. She had barricaded the door to but herself time to move it, but already she could hear enemy soldiers breaking down her makeshift barricade.

Finally, with a grunt and a push that took all of her strength, the wheel moved. She heard a loud crack of wood splintering from below, and immediately found the wheel much easier to turn. A glance from a window that allowed her to see the gate from above told her why.

The gate had been held closed by a large slab of wood, which was why it had been so hard to turn. The wood had shattered from her efforts, and the gate slowly opened as she kept the wheel spinning.

Enemy soldiers broke through her barricade around then and charged into the room. Ying Xiao brought her halberd out and swung it one-handed as she fought them off, even as her other hand kept the wheel turning.

Finally, after a few minutes, the wheel turned no more. The gates were wide ajar, despite the efforts of some soldiers who tried to push it shut desperately. Ying Xiao saw those soldiers get shot down by arrows as the Imperial army approached.

When she spied Rafiqa leading the army through the gate, Ying Xiao pushed the soldiers back with a violent swing, then grabbed her halberd with both hands and struck the gate mechanism as hard as she could.

Her blow bent the mechanism, which rendered it inoperable, and at the same time struck fear into the enemy soldiers. They pushed each other and tried to avoid her as she moved to exit the gatehouse.

Ying Xiao fought her way towards the top of the gatehouse. She had spied several ropes running between the gatehouse and the main castle in the center of the fort. She saw that they were connected to bells as she fought her way to the top floor, and realized that they must have been a messaging system.

She had other uses for them though.

As she reached the top of the gatehouse, Ying Xiao looked below and saw Rafiqa and the Imperial army pushing into the fortress, even against the stiff resistance their opponents offered. She knew that she wouldn't have as much impact down there, but she had a different idea instead.

Her idea was to decapitate the snake directly.

Carefully, she found two ropes that were close to one another, around a shoulder's width apart. She grabbed her halberd near its head with her right hand, then took off running and leapt off the building.

As she fell, she shoved the shaft of her halberd above her head, from the side, with the two ropes right underneath it, and grabbed the other end with her left hand. She slid down the rope towards the central castle that way, and struck one of the structure's many wooden shutters feet-first.

Carried the momentum of her slide, Ying Xiao broke through the small shutter that she managed to pass through even wearing armor and dropped into a roll to kill off the excess momentum. When she stood up, she found herself face to face with around ten surprised enemy soldiers.

They went from surprised to dead within moments as her weapons reaped their lives.

From where she entered, Ying Xiao fought her way to the top, where she was met with guards wearing ornate armor. She had guessed that the High Magistrate would be at the top, and it appeared that she had guessed right.

Those guards were better trained, and had well-made, enchanted weapons. Quite a few of them managed to land blows on her, some even scored blows that would have been fatal, had she not been a blood mage.

Instead, all they managed was to make her work more, as she took them down one by one, and massacred her way through to the topmost floor. On her way up the stairs she pulled out the broken spearheads and blades that were still embedded in her body, as they started to be bothersome to her movements.

She met with more resistance at the top of the stairs, including several mages. A fire mage left some burns on her face, while a lightning mage singed her quite a bit before she put her halberd through his mouth and ended him.

Finally, with all the obstacles dead, she kicked open a sliding door, and found her quarry. High Magistrate Wang Dong-Lu was on the top floor as she had thought, as well as several people that looked like generals and officers, and a young man she recognized from the tournament two years ago.

The generals drew their weapons and tried to stop her. She butchered them all. Their bodies were either torn apart, or thrown out from the balcony, to smash down to the ground far below them.

Even the young man tried, as he twirled his three-sectioned staff through a complex move. Ying Xiao swatted him aside with her halberd like she did in the tournament. This time however, she was using a real weapon, not a practice weapon made out of wood, and she had not held back either.

The young man's upper torso was separated from his lower body by her strike and landed in a heap at the side of the room, with a long string of entrails between his two halves.

All that left was the High Magistrate, an obese, old man who were now down on his knees, pleading for his life. Ying Xiao found his lack of courage distasteful. One that dared to talk big, but chickened out when the consequences of his actions caught up to him.

She showed him no mercy.

With one hand, she grabbed the old man by his throat, and lifted him up until his toes no longer touched the floor. Then she brought him to the balcony as he choked in her grip.

Once she was there, Ying Xiao took a deep breath, then yelled at the top of her voice. Her yell, and her appearance at the balcony of the castle with the High Magistrate in her hand, attracted the attention of the fighting armies below.

The High Magistrate's men could only watch, surprised and stunned, as Ying Xiao rattled off a litany of the High Magistrate's crimes, and pronounced that he had been sentenced to death by Imperial authority.

Then she cast the old man down, and his fat body burst open disgustingly as he struck the ground.