After saying goodbye to the three clergymen, Derek and his Grandfather began the walk home. The streets became less busy as they passed through the residential area between the inner city and the merchant’s district. The avenue they were walking on was quite calming with a manicured median between the two sides of the road

Shortly after entering the avenue Derek felt that something was off. He turned to warn the old man, “Grandfath…”

Before he could finish, the old man pushed the boy hard into the cover of some bushes before a blast of flames struck him. Derek looked up in horror with the scent of burned flesh in his nose. His grandfather’s clothes were still smoldering and his entire upper left torso was a charred mess, but the old man was standing strong. His tier seven body’s immense durability would require much more than a low level spell to take down.

The old man pulled a warhammer from his storage pouch, “Some fool is tired of living to attack me with such a weak strike.”

Derek heard the whisper of projectiles on the wind and saw another fireball come flying at his grandfather. The old man ignored the bolts and arrows and smashed his hammer into the fireball, once more relying on his body to shrug off the effects of the weapons while brutally crushing the spell with his hammer.

As the hammer struck the spell, the mana of the spell was forcibly dragged into the hammer and back out into a shield of fire that appeared around the old smith. The fire shield burned away the last few arrows before they could strike and even nullified the next spell that struck it before it collapsed.

His grandfather’s fighting style was the classic warrior archetype. Sacrificing spellcasting in exchange for great physical power and making up for that weakness with equipment that would insulate him from the negative effects of his enemies. His greatest weakness at the moment though, was his lack of range capacity. While he could convert the enemy’s spells absorbed by his hammer into ranged counter attacks he wasn’t confident in his aim and he was unwilling to burn the town down to defend himself when the enemies were no more than gnats to begin with.

Derek saw his grandfather’s plight and searched for where the enemies were attacking from. He spotted three mages on the rooftops, as well as a half dozen crossbowmen and archers. His Demon Sense told him that there were more men crowding towards them from the nearby alleys.

A brief scan told him that the most dangerous enemy was a man coming from the right alley who was tier five. There were four tier fours coming from the various alleys as well. The three mages were only tier two while the six rangers and almost twenty others coming from the alleys were tier zero.

His grandfather seemed to sense the threat from the right and turned to meet them, swinging his hammer with great force. A powerful concussive force gathered at the head of the hammer and swept towards the opening of the alley. The tier five and tier four opponents managed to evade his attack, moving into the street, but the first two of the tier zeroes behind them were not so lucky. Their bodies were catapulted back into the alley, crashing into the men behind them who stared in horror at the crushed bones of the men that had been leading the way.

Soon the avenue was filled with their attackers as other groups of assailants came from the other alleyways. The tier four fighters moved quickly to support their leader who was being suppressed by the old Rune Smith. The tier zero armsmen then formed a formation around them using polearms to try to cause damage and harass Ander. It seemed as if their goal was to whittle him down with the ranged attacks and the polearms while the fighters held him in check.

Seeing that the mages were preparing to blast his grandfather with another set of spells Derek acted quickly. He knew that the mages currently presented the greatest risk for his grandfather so he drew his war blade as he burst out of hiding. He angled away from the melee and slashed forward three times. Three blades of energy shot towards the three mages from the tip of his blade as he used his newly learned weapon channeling technique. He didn’t go with anything fancy, instead focusing on speed and accuracy with the Wind Blade spell.

Two of the mages didn’t even notice and were bisected by the level four attack spells he had cast. At level four the spells were enough to cut through a half meter of granite much less a human being. As those two fell in equal parts to either side of the buildings they were on, the third mage’s fire shield sprang to life, intercepting the blade in time to prevent him from being cut but unfortunately not fully absorbing the force of the attack which knocked the mage backwards and off the roof he was on.

Derek could sense that the mage was not dead, but couldn’t focus on him as he had drawn the attention of some of the armsmen and the rest of the rangers. As they took aim, he cast a Righteous Blessing at level seven, his most powerful capacity. He didn’t have the time to aim it so that it would only affect him and his grandfather so he had to settle for only protecting himself. The spell improved his basic attributes by more than half and his light and order attributes by enough to allow him to cast his holy spells at ninth level. More importantly, a spherical film of light gathered around him to shield him.

The rangers looked on in impotence as their shots all bounced from his shield with little effect on it. It would take much more than a half dozen shots to overpower a seventh level shield spell. Derek responded with more channeled Wind Blades. In moments he had sprinted halfway down the avenue firing off over a dozen spells. The rangers in their exposed positions were all either caught by the spells or forced to drop off the back side of the houses to avoid being targeted by Derek.

Seeing that they were no longer in a position to threaten him and sensing that the mage had made no effort to rejoin the fight yet, Derek turned to the assailants that had chased him from where his grandfather was fighting. He saw that he had gotten the attention of a half a dozen of the armsmen and one of the fighters who were approaching him cautiously.

Seeing the armsmen clumped together in the middle of the avenue, Derek repeated what he had done with the archers during the bandit attack a few months prior. He cast his Firestorm spell and a cyclone of wind and flame engulfed them, the power of it’s pull even denying them the ability to scream as it sucked the air around them into its funnel.

After watching his men die like that, the fighter drank a potion and discarded the bottle before lunging forward to engage Derek. The man’s attacks were wild and powerful. While Derek could match him, whittling him down in a methodical fight and taking advantage of his greater sword skill, he was concerned about his grandfather who had been fighting the others this whole time and had received no healing since the fight started.

As the man delivered a vicious chop towards Derek’s waist, the young man stepped into it, bringing his own attack down on his opponent's shoulder. He flared more power into the aegis around him while simultaneously casting a simple earth based weapon channeling spell as the two weapons struck. The aegis flared in power as it attempted to soak the damage from the man’s attack, while the man’s own armor tried to resist Derek’s attack. In the end both men were smashed to the ground by the other’s offensive.

As the assailant was blacking out, he at first felt some comfort that he had managed to bring down one of their targets in spite of everything. The boy had managed to kill many of the men they had brought here and the boy’s final attack had managed to cleave halfway through his chest, crushing many organs and bones. The man knew he was done for, but at least he had killed the boy before he could kill any more of his brothers. It was then that the man saw the shadow over him.

“But how?” he asked.

Derek looked down at him, clutching his side and pouring a powerful Healing Light spell into himself. His hip was mending itself at a visible pace. The boy smiled through bloody teeth. “It’s real hard to bring down a holy magic user. Guess whoever sent you after us didn’t know much about me. Well, I guess that’s good for me. No hard feelings now.”

As he finished, he slashed downwards at the man’s neck to end his suffering before focusing on the fight where his grandfather was. The old man was caked in blood and still surrounded, but by much fewer enemies. Many of the armsmen were down, only two were left in fighting form. A few were crawling away to avoid being hurt further by the wild clash behind them. The leader was still doing well and the blood on him was not his own. The two remaining fighters had both been injured but were both still in the fight.

Derek started running, he slashed forward with several new weapon channeling spells. Two Wind Blades were aimed consecutively at the leader, but both missed as the man expertly dodged backwards to avoid them. The next three Wind Blades were aimed at the two armsmen and one of the fighters around his grandfather. The first two connected, killing both men, while the third struck its target but was absorbed by the armor. The fighter was still knocked off balance though and forced to disengage temporarily to regain his stance.

The final two spells arced in and struck his grandfather directly in the back. The holy energies within had consumed most of what was left of Derek’s mana and had challenged his level of control quite greatly. These were both at level nine, the maximum level he could cast while enhanced by Righteous Blessing. The first was a Holy Light spell that quickly healed most of his grandfather’s injuries while the second was a Righteous Blessing for the old man, providing him with a more powerful boost to his stats and accompanying shield than what even Derek had received with his level seven version.

As the old man felt the effect of the spells upon him and saw the change in the battlefield, he seized the moment, brutally attacking the fighter that was still in combat with him. The fighter managed to avoid the first two of his wild swings, but could not keep up with the old man’s new speed and when the hammer impacted on his armor it caved in, crushing and puncturing the man’s heart and lungs. The man drowned in his own blood moments later.

The tier five leader was infuriated by this turn of events. He had been misinformed about the power of this duo. The elder Disciple had been as he expected, powerful but not particularly skilled in his weapons or spells. It was the boy that had ruined his plans. He had single handedly routed his rangers and mages then killed a significant portion of the rest of his force. Without their assistance, suppressing and killing the older Disciple would have been much harder, but that last minute heal and enhancement and the other casualties the boy had inflicted had been too much. As he watched his last subordinate’s head get crushed by the enraged smith’s hammer, he turned to the boy that had ruined his plans.

The boy was clearly fatigued, panting from having used most of his mana. The assassin’s face twisted into a vicious smile. Perhaps he couldn’t kill the old man, but the real target had been the boy all along. He cast his own weapon channel, sending a flaming blade shooting towards the boy whose eyes could only bug out as death came hurtling towards him. The assassin only barely recognized the hammer crashing down on his own head as he saw the Flame Blade intersect with the boy’s shield. As the shield cracked and the flame struck the boy in the chest the assassin’s world went dark.

Derek Thorne-

Previous Classes-

Magic Warrior, Rune Smith

Permanent Enhancements-

Rune Smith, Tier One: +2 Strength, +2 Body, +2 Agility, +2 Mind

Demon Warrior, Tier Two: +2 Strength, +2 Body, +2 Agility, +2 Mind, +2 Dark, +2 Chaos, +2 Light, +2 Order, Demon

Sense

Disciple of the God of the Forge: +2 Strength, +2 Body, +5 Fire, +5 Earth

Blessed Child of the Hearth Goddess: +2 Body, +2 Mind, +5 Order, +5 Light

Greater Demon Heart: +3 Strength, +2 Body, +2 Agility, +3 Mind, +5 Dark, +5 Chaos, Expanded Essentia Pool,

Masking

Blessing of the Sun Goddess: +2 Agility, +5 Order, +5 Light, +5 Fire

Equipment-

Forge God’s Warsword: basic offensive mid t3, maximum offensive spell level 7

Talisman of the Sun, Forge and Hearth: eight mature sprites +8 to all elemental attributes, other assorted benefits

Bonuses-

Righteous Blessing, Level 7: +14 to Basic Attributes, +14 to Order and Light Attribute, Level 7 regenerating shield.