“The options you’re offering are for the people who live in the city to leave or die?” Serenity moved his hand to his side, where his Crystal Hilt hung by his side. It’d taken a good bit of effort to get his armor to form a holster where he could quickly pull the hilt, but if this went the way he thought it was going to, he’d need it.

The centaur made a complicated whole-body gesture; Serenity assumed it was equivalent to a shrug, but he couldn’t be certain. “Cleansing the Blighted Peaks will take time, even with your help. We can wait until the annual migration to cleanse the city.”

Serenity shook his head at the centaur. “We’re not nomads. There is no annual migration. So unless there’s a way to do this cleansing that doesn’t destroy everything and kill everyone, it’s not going to happen.”

Serenity realized the centaur was attacking well after its movement started, when it raised its arm holding a palm-sized flattened contraption that seemed to be made mostly of wood, grass, and hair. There was no good reason for that, but it also wasn’t obvious what it was doing, other than gathering magic for something.

Serenity dodged, but a lightning bolt caught him on the arm. He hadn’t really realized that he could feel as armor, but he definitely felt that attack. It scorched the “leather” covering his arm, but didn’t penetrate.

He pulled his Crystal Hilt with one hand and his ax with the other. While he was trained in using two weapons, this wasn’t the pair he preferred. Instead, it was the pair he had. They were both very powerful in their own way, and he shouldn’t regret that they weren’t anything else. Serenity pushed both mana and essence into the hilt and felt his blade extend; he didn’t need it very long yet; he could change its length as needed.

While he was preparing, his allies were attacking.

The centaur’s hand was smashed backwards by a crossbow bolt fired by Rissa. It didn’t seem to do any damage, but it did spoil the aim of the centaur’s next lightning bolt, which dissipated harmlessly into the sky.

Katya chanted the words to a spell. Serenity didn’t have the time to analyze the spellform, but it was probably the “Soften Ground” spell she’d suggested before they met the centaur.

Ita was circling around the fight; she seemed to be trying to get beside the centaur, well away from him. Serenity glanced over at Raz and saw that he was circling in the other direction; good. They were setting up one of Ita’s big attacks. It wouldn’t work until Serenity took the shield down, but they’d be ready when he did.

That meant it was Serenity’s turn; his job was to keep the centaur’s attention and take down the shield. It was a simple plan, but often the simple plans worked the best.

Serenity hopped to the side, avoiding another lightning bolt, then rushed towards the centaur. It was a mage-type; most mage-types didn’t like having attackers charge, and the centaur was no different. It stumbled a step backwards in surprise and Serenity attacked with the manablade in his right hand. He had two goals: first, he wanted to fix its attention on the weapon that was less likely to be able to penetrate its shield. Second, he wanted to see what actually happened when his low-Tier manablade met a higher-Tier shield.

Serenity wished he could shut out the vision and feelings of his other Forms. It was distracting, and this wasn’t a time to be distracted. Four forms was too many, and it was a good thing the manablade didn’t actually need to hit with a sharp edge, because Serenity didn’t think he could have managed it with the rapidly-moving perspective from the Hilt warring with Rissa’s unmoving armor and two perspectives that were both focused on Serenity.

Serenity’s chimera form and the armor covering it were the only ones that didn’t seem to conflict visually; he could handle one more perspective, but two was definitely pushing it.

Serenity was surprised when the manablade hit the centaur’s shield and slowed rather than stopping. He could feel himself pushing through it, eating away at the very magic that formed the shield, parting it to get through. It was very strange; was this what the people who talked about “edge Affinity” or “sword Affinity” meant?

The shaman slapped Serenity with the totem he’d been using to call lightning. This time, instead of a lightning bolt, it felt like lightning itself ran through Serenity. For a moment, there was no difference between him and the armor; they were one, and they were joined by the pain of the attack.

It was doing damage, but Serenity knew it was very little; he had good Shock resistance and he wasn’t actually certain how susceptible he was to lightning anymore anyway. What it was doing was locking him down; Serenity’s muscles froze in place. It lasted long enough for the centaur’s other hand to swat the crystal hilt out of Serenity’s hand; the manablade left a shallow cut on the centaur’s arm as it fell, but Serenity was half-disarmed.

A crossbow bolt shattered on the shield directly in front of the centaur’s face. It did no damage, but it startled the centaur and the flow of lightning-Affinity mana through Serenity stopped. Serenity allowed himself to collapse to his knees, taking advantage of the chance to recover his sword. There was no way a normal human would recover from that quickly, so he hoped the centaur would decide he wasn’t a threat.

He sank a little farther into the ground than he should have. Serenity grinned; Katya’s spell was starting to take effect. The centaur probably hadn’t noticed yet, because it wasn’t moving. The spell was simply to make it hard for the centaur to run; they wanted to finish it here, not chase something that could run faster than they could.

His hope was sort of fulfilled when the centaur raised the totem again and tossed lightning at Rissa. Even though she would probably not be there when it arrived and he would protect her from it as armor, Serenity couldn’t feel happy that he’d correctly predicted the enemy’s actions.

What he could do was take advantage of his position and the monster’s distraction to gently press his axblade against the centaur’s shield. As an ax, it would probably do a little more than his manablade; after all, it would penetrate the shield reliably. Unfortunately, even though it was a Tier Five weapon, he was only Tier Three. He wouldn’t be able to take the centaur down in a single attack.

Neither could Ita, but with the centaur’s shield down she could do more than he could. He waited until the blade rested against the centaur, meaning the shield was disrupted; in his low position, he was definitely out of the line of effect. :Now, Ita!:

Ita shouted something nonsensical, a trigger phrase of some sort, and a line seemed to snap into place between her hand and Raz’s hand. It was actually between a pair of pieces of solid copper wire; they were the largest gauge Serenity had been able to find, and they’d been clipped off the roll of wire before being cut in half.

A half-inch-wide line of “copper” now ran through the centaur. It was technically a physical attack, even though it was done with magic; the centaur’s shield would have stopped it cold, but without the shield he was depending on his Phys to deal with it. That meant it was unlikely to be fatal even if it went through something important; a Tier Five was extremely durable and could heal from a half-inch hole almost anywhere once the copper was removed.

Since the centaur was lightning-Affinity, the copper itself might not even bother him that much. It depended on how his Affinity worked. Serenity could have handled it in several different ways, and he was only Tier Three. He was unusually flexible, but he didn’t want to assume his enemy wasn’t.

Ita had explained that unlike a bullet, it didn’t smash its way through the body; instead, it convinced the world that the two separated pieces of copper were actually one piece, so there must be more copper wire between them. She had limited control over where it went as it was forming, but after that it was a real physical item for as long as it lasted.

The centaur bellowed in pain once more, then dropped the lightning totem it had been using. Serenity wanted to think that was a good sign, but realistically the lightning totem simply hadn’t been that hard to deal with; Serenity’s shock resistance was simply too good.

It needed to re-establish its shield, but doing that with a foreign object like the copper wire in the way wasn’t easy; Serenity knew how, but he wasn’t certain he’d be able to handle it at Tier Five. It was likely the centaur didn’t even know how. The ax wouldn’t help, either.

Serenity kept his ax pressed against the centaur’s belly as he brought his blade up, then slammed it into the centaur’s belly. He didn’t want to see what the centaur would do next if he could avoid it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a fatal wound either.

The centaur did something Serenity couldn’t see. What he did see was the result: the copper line between Raz and Ita was missing. It was probably a dispel, which meant the centaur had guessed that it was a spell. Smart, but it wasn’t going to save the shaman. It was already too late.

Serenity moved his sword, dragging it through the centaur’s body. He made a hole quite a bit larger than a half-inch; on top of that, his blade didn’t prevent the centaur from bleeding freely. It was awkward and messy to cut up the centaur while sitting on the mushy ground, holding the ax against the centaur in case it had the capability to automatically reestablish its shield, but it wasn’t difficult.

Especially since the centaur was already starting to slow down.

The fight didn’t end with a spectacular move; instead, it ended with the centaur collapsing from blood loss. The fight seemed easier than Serenity had expected, but that was probably because they’d had a plan and caught the centaur while it was low on mana; it also seemed likely that its shield was drained by wading through the lava. Serenity was also low on mana, but that was why he’d acted as a physical attacker; he didn’t need mana for that role.

As they picked themselves up and headed towards the camp, Serenity pulled up the local news. It was already showing long-distance videos of the fight. There was definitely footage of “aliens”; hopefully, that would be enough to finally convince the President to let his father do what was needed.

Serenity wasn’t counting on it, but right now he felt too gross to worry about it. He wanted a shower and a nap, not politics. The shower was rather urgent. He’d learned to tolerate ending up covered in blood, but he’d never learned to like it.