Bronwyn rolled away from the rippling ground as Thun performed another one of his stomp attacks. When she came to her feet, she felt a shivering sense of danger to her left, and she dove again to her right, narrowly dodging a spray of razor-sharp ice shards. Thun laughed as he stamped his foot, sending another ripple her way. Bronwyn, already in a dive, was caught by the violent wave of grassy soil and sent tumbling further into the meadow, where she smashed into one of the smoldering braziers. The hot coals rolled off her thick leather armor, though one of them sizzled as it plopped into the crook of her left elbow. “Ahh, dammit!” Bronwyn brushed it away as she bounced to her feet, dodging away, hoping to avoid whatever follow-up attack Thun launched.

It seemed her instincts were good because she’d only taken one jumping step when the ground exploded in a geyser where she’d been standing. Moist soil and rocks showered down into the clearing, and Bronwyn jumped, dove, and rolled her way to the far side, trying to distance herself from Thun.

“Running already, Summer cub?” Thun taunted.

Bronwyn didn’t answer, just pushed harder in her sprint, randomly dodging from side to side. Another spray of sharp icicles tore through the air, though much more widely spread than before, and one of them pierced her armor, burying itself an inch into her left shoulder. Bronwyn spun to face Thun, hoping she could more easily avoid his attacks with her eyes on him and with some distance between them.

Thun stared at her from across the clearing, perhaps gauging whether it would be easier to kill her from a distance or to give chase. Bronwyn could feel the power in his attacks, and she wasn’t feeling very confident about her chances when it came to killing him. She’d only been dodging him for a minute or so and was feeling the strain; could she keep it up long enough?

The eastern sky was definitely lighter than the rest of the sky, but true dawn had to be thirty minutes or so away. That was a long time to be fighting for your life. “Maybe another tactic,” she muttered to her imaginary audience. “Hey, asshole. I don’t even know who you are; why are you attacking me? Just because I’m working for the Summer Court?”

“Hah,” Thun choked out the laugh, then spread his arms and stomped a hoof back into the soil as though he was bracing himself for something. His face twisted into a grimace, and he pointed both palms at Bronwyn and shouted, “Don’t try to toy with me, welp!”

Bronwyn knew better than to stand still while he readied some mega-attack, so she took two running leaps to her left and dove into a somersaulting roll. She felt and heard the rumbling crack of the earth behind her, and when she landed and rolled, the ground heaved her into another diving roll. She landed among the trees, which swayed and lurched, branches and needles showering down onto the snowy ground. Bronwyn took the opportunity to sprint deeper into the tree cover, dodging behind tree trunks and leaping over the undergrowth.

Thun laughed and gave chase, stopping to stomp on the ground, rippling the earth, and sending trees falling left and right. He didn’t seem to know exactly where she was because he often sent tremors in directions perpendicular to the path she’d taken to flee. Bronwyn smiled and continued to put distance between them.

Once he howled in frustration and launched another of his massive ground-ripping quakes, but he destroyed a copse of trees several hundred feet behind Bronwyn, and she almost laughed as she watched the trees fall away from the cleaved soil. Briefly, she worried he’d give up the chase and retreat somewhere before the dawn, but he seemed single-minded in his desire to catch and kill her.

As she gained ground on him, he screamed several more times and performed that massive attack, splitting the ground and upending trees. Only as he did it for the fourth time did Bronwyn realize what was happening; she’d been luring him around in a loose circle, trying to bide time until the dawn, but he’d been using that spell to box her in. Each time he cast it, he created a fissure in the ground lined with fallen trees. “Ugh, penning me in,” she grunted, turning to run toward a still-open area in the wooded vale. Bronwyn glanced to the east and saw the distinctive gray sky tinged with orange that told her the right moment was coming up.

Bronwyn sprinted flat-out, giving it everything she had, racing for the rocky hills that led up out of the western side of the valley into the gray stony peaks. She could hear Thun roaring and tearing apart the landscape for a few seconds, but then it stopped, and the tingles on the back of her neck told her he’d decided to try to close the distance between them.

She’d just broken from the trees and was starting to pound up the loose dirt and rocks of the hillside when she heard the staccato crunch of Thun’s hooves tearing into the earth behind her. She jumped to the side, expecting a charge. Still, Thun wasn’t so easily avoided, and she felt, to her horror, his horns as they smashed into her lower back, rending her armor, gouging her flesh, and sending her flying with an explosive exhalation.

Bronwyn rolled and tumbled along the slope of the hill, sharp stone chips tearing at her exposed flesh. She tried to catch her breath, gasping and pressing a hand to her lower back where it felt like something had ruptured. “A merry chase, human. To no avail, I’m afraid. I’ll have my pound of flesh and send the scraps back to your Lady.” He sneered and drew out the word “lady” mockingly.

“Please, I can’t fight you. Why do you hate the Summer Lady so much?” Bronwyn struggled to her hands and knees, still pressing against her back where she’d been hit.

“So soft, truly?” He stepped forward and kicked at her with one of his hooves, and Bronwyn weakly put out a hand, catching the brunt of the blow on her forearm and sliding backward with its force. She groaned and cringed, frantically scooting further back on her butt, scrabbling through the loose dirt and gravel.

“Stop, please! I don’t know what’s happening here; why are you so angry?” Bronwyn kept scooting back, pushing herself up the hill, facing out over the valley, and at the far horizon. Thun stalked forward, the ground seeming to wince with each hoof step.

“You stupid child. Fell right into her games without a thought as to what was happening? What did she offer you? Power? Wealth? Praise? Just a dumb pawn, but now you’ll have to pay for the sins of your master.” He stood over Bronwyn, his towering bulk throwing her into shadow, though she could see between his leather-clad legs, and, as a sliver of light erupted from between two of the eastern peaks, she grinned and lowered her cringing arms.

“Am I stupid? I have to confess: I’m feeling sort of clever.” Her smile broadened as her flesh erupted in the brilliant white-yellow light of her Solar Shell, then she surged upward, channeling Energy into her Solar Arms spell. As she exploded off the ground, she brought her left fist up in a massive haymaker, but Thun wasn’t slow; he lifted his arm to knock hers away, and that’s when the expression on his face changed.

His eyes widened, and his leathery lips parted in an almost comical “O” as Bronwyn’s pulsing, vibrating fist blasted through his guard and connected just under his broad barrel of a chest. Thun wore a thick leather vest with a dozen buttoned pockets on the breasts, and Bronwyn felt it absorb some of her attack’s force, though she still saw the power of her strike ripple through his body. He uttered a loud, air-filled, “Oof!” then stumbled several steps down the slope, and then Bronwen, for the first time, cast Wrath of Summer.

A perfect circle of light, ten feet in diameter, appeared on the ground around Thun, and then it erupted upward into a blazing column. Bronwyn could see Thun’s shadowy form at the center of the column of light, and she observed little fragments of shadow detach from the figure and stream upward, dissipating into tiny particles. She had to shield her eyes after a moment, and then, a few heartbeats later, the light winked out. She looked up to see a perfectly delineated black circle on the side of the hill with Thun kneeling at its center.

The Cadwalli wasn’t the imposing specimen he’d once been. Steam and smoke rose from his withered form, and he twitched as Bronwyn stood, hands out and ready. Thun’s armor and fur were mostly gone, and his left arm had been dissolved down to a stump. His horns were shortened and round, and his ears and nose were just oozing holes in his skull.

Thun’s breath rasped out of the ruin of his mouth, and to Bronwyn’s horror, he began to chuckle, a sick, gurgling sound filled with fluid. “Oh, fool I am.” He ground out the words, spitting bloody phlegm onto the blackened hillside. He looked up, twisting his head left to right, and Bronwyn realized he was blind.

Bronwyn almost let her Solar Arms spell drop and tried to talk to the Cadwalli, but then a large red bottle appeared in his hand, and he tilted it to his charred lips. Bronwyn said, “Shit!” and launched forward, stepping past him, aiming a devastating straight-handed chop at the Cadwalli’s throat. She felt her hand crunch through his esophagus, shattering the tiny bones and tendons in his voicebox, and sending his weakened, blasted body tumbling down the slope.

The bottle fell, clattering onto the scree, its thick purple contents dissolving into steam as it poured out. Bronwyn didn’t risk him pulling another hail-Mary out of some dimensional container; she stomped down the slope, picked up a jagged gray rock the size of a basketball, and smashed it onto Thun’s skull as he struggled to find purchase. His body jerked, but he kept scrabbling at the ground, gasping for air, and she had to pick it up and smash it down again.

Finally, the goat-like man stopped his struggles and fell to his face, but Bronwyn smashed him again, and then one final time before golden motes with flecks of purple began to coalesce around his form and stream into her. When the surge of Energy hit her, it was unlike anything she’d experienced. She lost control of her body and stood transfixed as it poured into her, lifting her several inches off the ground.

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 18 Summer Banneret. You have gained 56 attribute points to distribute.***

“Well, Thun, I have to say I appreciate you being an absolute asshole and making this job more palatable.” Bronwyn pushed Thun’s still-smoldering corpse over with her boot, looking for any sign of the dimensional container from which he’d pulled the potion. Most of his clothes and armor were destroyed, but a gold-colored chain gleamed on his neck, and she reached down to pull it up from the remnants of his charred vest. It was a thick, twisted braid of metal with a jade disc affixed to it. She spun it to find the catch and, opening it, pulled it free from Thun’s corpse.

The necklace was heavy, and she wondered if it was gold. “I suppose if it’s magical enough, it might resist getting melted,” she muttered while channeling a little Energy into it. She instantly became aware of another dimensional space, much larger than even the ring she’d gotten from Queen Aestasia. At first glance, she saw that it held a disturbing number of animal and humanoid corpses, as well as camping supplies, packaged food, bottles of liquor, and a score of small sacks filled with Energy beads—there had to be thousands of them.

Looking past the corpses, she saw a black hammer and summoned it forth. It was about the size of a small, one-handed sledgehammer, but the handle and hammerhead were all crafted from one piece of black metal. As she held it up in the dawn light, black smoke drifted from the hammer’s two heads, and palpable warmth drifted out from it.

Bronwyn shrugged and sent a trickle of Energy into the weapon:

***Singe: Artificed Weapon. This weapon is crafted from dragon-ore and is nearly impervious to damage. Enchantments: 1. Smoldering - This weapon has been enchanted with primal fire, allowing it to destroy materials and damage flesh more easily. 2. Felicitous wielding - This weapon moves with the wielder in a symbiotic relationship, smoothly adding momentum to any motions. 3. Returning - Given the wielder has a strong enough will, this weapon will return to the wielder’s hand after being thrown.

“Not bad!” Bronwyn gave the hammer a toss, flipping it into the air and catching the handle. It seemed to slap into her hand effortlessly. She turned to look down the slope, eyeing a half-fallen tree trunk. She hurled the hammer through the air at the trunk, and it flew with a whistling screech and a trail of embers and ash.

The hammer smacked into the tree with a loud crack, and Bronwyn saw embers fly as her target began to smoke. She held out her hand, concentrating on the hammer, and felt it out there, buzzing and rattling in the broken tree. She narrowed her eyes and willed it to come back, and it struggled for a moment, then burst out of the cracked, smoldering tree and tumbled back toward her to slap into her palm with a satisfying thwap. “Awesome!”

Bronwyn put the hammer back into the necklace and then examined its contents once more, looking for anything she missed. Behind the pile of corpses, she found a stack of large potion flasks, but none of them had a label when she pulled them out. She put them away, figuring she could ask Queen Aestasia about them when she returned.

“Speaking of returning…” Bronwyn trailed off, looking back toward the mouth of the valley where she’d come in. She didn’t like the vibes she felt in this valley, even after killing Thun, so she decided to get moving back the way she’d come. She fastened her new necklace around her neck and started jogging away from Thun’s corpse.