I dashed towards the lead mercenary, unleashing three quick strikes towards him with my knife before jumping back to a safe distance. Two of the three strikes were deflected by the sword, but the third found its target and split the man's windpipe in half with a crunch, spilling blood down the front of his body. I glanced at the female mercenary who was still reloading in the background, then looked back just in time to avoid a strike from the unwounded man and deliver a counter-strike to his armpit as I re-positioned myself.

Unlike the other two group fights I had found myself in on the island, this one was proceeding in a much more normal way. These two are more skilled than their four comrades I fought in Suwlahtk, I thought as I slowly circled to keep the mercenaries between myself and the crossbow, or maybe I just took those four by surprise. The lead mercenary, whose throat was now healed, dashed in and began a series of very conservative sword chops. Now that I had fought with a few swordsmen I could see the similarities between his movements and the melee combat I was familiar with. This style is made for fighting someone who can't be killed quickly, I observed as I stopped one of the chops with my knife, most of those blows wouldn't kill someone who can heal like us.

“DOWN!” the woman yelled from behind the mercenaries, and the two men both dropped into a squat instantly. I inhaled and dashed sideways, not wanting to risk ducking myself if she was aiming at chest level. A bolt slammed into my right upper chest, knocking me off balance for a moment as it penetrated my armor. What use is a weapon like that on people like us? I thought with a growl as I ripped the bolt out to let the wound heal. The two men stood back up, grimacing as they saw my reaction, or lack thereof.

The second man, whose armpit was no longer bleeding, stepped in and swung a large horizontal strike at heart level. In a split second I decided to try something reckless to break the stalemate and, instead of simply avoiding the attack, used my knife to deflect the blade upwards while stepping in to close the distance between us. The man's eyes opened wide as I gripped his forward sword hand and crossed my knife hand under my left, then snapped shut in pain as I pulled backwards and sliced the blade through the soft tissues of his wrist. He roared in pain, releasing his remaining grip on his sword and clutching the stump where his right hand used to be as he dashed backwards.

A yell came from my right and I jumped backwards just in time to avoid an overhead strike that would have split my skull in half if it had connected. The lead mercenary took no pause as he followed up his failed strike with an upwards diagonal that scraped along my breastplate, letting out faint sparks and a terrible screech. For some reason this surprised the mercenary, and I saw an opening. My right hand thrust my knife towards his face, and only a last-second tilt of his skull saved him from having a piece of metal introduced to his frontal lobes. Instead, the knife entered his right cheekbone and sunk in up to the hilt, then was wrenched out of my grip as the man recoiled and screamed while blood spewed from his nose and mouth.

“DOWN!” the woman yelled again, shooting the crossbow at me and scoring another hit on my left upper arm. The bolt penetrated all the way through, poking out of my underarm and nicking my torso. I gritted my teeth, feeling immediately that it had severed a nerve that would take longer to heal than a simple flesh wound. I pulled the bolt out and swung it forcefully, jamming it into the lead mercenary's knee. A new series of pained yells came from the man, who had already been busy clutching at the handle of my knife and trying to figure out how to remove it without killing himself.

Don't lose your temper, I reminded myself as I drew my sword with my right hand and waited for my left to regain sensation. I could still move it, partially, but without the pressure feedback I knew my grip would be inconsistent. To my surprise, the woman had dropped the crossbow and drew a sword of her own. Clearly seeing that my arm was injured she ran up and began a kata of sword moves in my direction. The procession wasn't particularly complex, and each movement was easy to read, but blocking the ones I couldn't avoid using only one hand was challenging with such a long blade.

A rush of pins and needles into my left hand told me that the nerves were connected again, and I swapped to a two-handed grip and retaliated, varying the direction of my strikes as randomly as I could while keeping my footwork and arm movements detached. This always throws humans off for some reason, I thought as I grinned at the woman for psychological effect. It was true that striking without proper footwork lead to much less striking power, but I was already stronger than these people. I finally threw my weight behind an overhead strike which the woman recoiled under the force of, then I kicked her left knee with my right foot and reversed its direction. The satisfying crunch of snapping bone and cartilage was followed by a hiss of pain, then a thump as I threw her to the ground.

To her credit the woman did not give up easily and, seeing that her sword would be useless, dropped it and began trying to grapple my own weapon away from me. In response, I forced my weight down on her. Her right arm crumpled and snapped as multiple joints gave out at once, making her scream out loud enough that I didn't notice where her left arm was going. In a flash, her left pulled back, a metal tool in her hand glinted in the light, then it came forward towards my face. I twisted to avoid the weapon, and my own axe sunk into my neck with a wet splatting noise, spraying the both of us with blood. The woman drew my axe back in preparation for another chop, but I caught it by the blade with my right hand before she could start her swing and held it in place.

“GET HIM!” she cried through gritted teeth, tears forming in her eyes, and a sharp pain erupted in my left side between the ribs. I looked to my left, gritting my own teeth from effort, and saw that the one-handed man had stabbed me. He smiled at me, looking just as deranged as I did, and shoved the blade through until it came out my right side just below the ribcage. The urge to cough built up, and I knew my lungs were filling with blood again. The instant loss of so much blood made my body feel like it had been dunked into cold water. I have a minute at most to get this out of me, I thought, he probably hit something important with that, something besides the lungs.

I ripped the axe from the woman's grasp and shoved the handle into her right eye, then hammered the top of the weapon until the wood dug deep into her brain and she stopped moving. One down, I counted mentally as I turned to the one-handed man who could do nothing but stare at me. With great effort I pulled my spear off of my back, feeling the sword that had impaled me shifting and cutting more tissue as I did so, then ran him through the groin with it. Using my momentum I scooped him off of the ground before slamming the spear, man still attached, point first into the dirt. I need this sword out, I thought as the one-handed man screamed out in pain again and thrashed around. Steeling myself, I gripped the handle with my left hand and began to pull.

More screams filled the air and my exterior senses cut out intermittently, leaving me in a black and red void of pain as I removed the blade. I had no idea how long it took, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. As my right hand gripped the slick blade and removed the last ten centimeters of length, blood spewed from my nose and mouth and I broke into a coughing fit. The blood-covered blade clattered to the ground beside me and I sucked in deep breaths, re-oxygenating myself rapidly. Where's the last one? I thought as I teetered on the edge of snapping into another fit of rage.

The setting sun combined with my own sensory disruption from blood loss made viewing the scene difficult, but my eyes caught a limping shape retreating northward along the road thirty meters or so in front of me. I lazily grabbed for my spear on my back, then the pained breathing from the man on the ground beside me reminded me of where it was. I lacked the stamina to run after him, and certainly to pull the spear out of the ground, but I couldn't let him escape. My eyes rolled around before catching a device laying on the ground near the dead woman. Right, I thought, there was a crossbow.

The crossbow was a simple design, lacking even basic sighting apparatus, made of wood and iron. Along the left side of the stock were leather loops that stored bolts, of which all but one were empty. I hefted the device up, looking down at the drawing mechanism on the ground, then gripped the string with my bare hand and pulled backwards while pulling the crossbow body forwards. Decent draw weight, I thought, feels like one hundred and fifty kilos or so. I guess my armor is softer than I thought, to have been penetrated by this. The string dug into my fingers, drawing yet more blood, but I got it back into position. I slipped the last bolt out of its holder, popped it into place, aimed the weapon at the fleeing man, then pulled the primitive trigger.

The snap of the string was followed by a second crack which was loud enough that I could have mistaken it for a low-power firearm. In a split second I watched the bolt cross the distance between myself and my target, then strike him high and between the shoulders. The man crumpled down to the ground instantly on impact. A good sign, I thought as I put the crossbow down to go examine him. I stepped close, cautious in case he was faking, but saw as soon as I bent down that the bolt had hit him near dead-center in the neck. He was still breathing but not conscious, so I shoved the bolt in deeper and twisted it around in the wound until he died.

“You kiyvseytay npoyt!” the lone living mercenary groaned in pain as I walked back to him, “You're dead! I'll kill you myself!” Wasn't that just what you were trying and failing to do? I asked silently. Contrary to his outbursts, the man seemed quite immobilized by the spear. I walked up to the woman's corpse, pulled the axe out of her eye socket, and wiped off the gore on her clothing.

“You could have avoided this if you had just let me go,” I said calmly. A quick check of my heads-up display showed that I was mostly low on blood, but my blue energy reserves and nutrition were still in semi-decent shape. I could feel my stamina recovering, which was reflected in the purple bar.

“You bandit teylm!” the merc spat back. Axe in hand, I approached him and looked him over for weapons, taking away a small survival knife at his waist and tossing it well out of visual range for either of us. I should get this spear out of him before he bleeds to death, I thought, he’s a potentially valuable source of information.

“I'm going to need you to answer a few questions,” I said, trying to ignore a strange, light sensation arising in my head.

“I’m not saying shit, so you’re going to have to kill me, ngaazmayjh,” the man hissed, trying to spit upwards at me but missing because he couldn't create enough pressure. “The spirits curse you for your lack of honor, may you rot and die.”

“That wasn't a request,” I said, gesturing with my left hand over my axe. The metal heated up rapidly and began glowing a dull orange which attracted the man's eyes to it. For an instant, I saw fear on his face, which was the reaction I was hoping for. Stepping around to his left, I pulled up his left arm and held it tight, then pressed the blade into his left wrist. Smoke billowed out of his hissing flesh, filling the air with an awful but familiar smell as the man's face twisted and he tried not to scream in pain.

“I won't tell you anything,” he grimaced. I looked at my blue energy reserves and saw that they had barely budged, which brought a smile to my face.

“This will take a while then,” I replied, “Luckily I have enough energy to go all night.”