***** Amandine’s POV 3:50 PM *****

“Are y’all ready to go?” asked the spear kobold several minutes later.

“Yes, we are,” I replied, having just finished healing the last minor injury that was worthy of my attention.

“All righty then, let’s go!”

“Wait for me!” called the first kobold as she came running in through the door. “I need to reload and rearm real quick.”

“There you are sister dearest! I take it the heavies didn’t put up much of a fight?”

“Nope. I shot the two I came across as soon as I saw them, since they were already in the hallway and couldn’t dodge, which enraged the rest of them. They all tried to charge me at once and jammed themselves into the hallway like fish packed in a barrel. At that point, it wasn’t a fight anymore.” As she was talking she opened a panel in the wall that I hadn’t noticed, her hands flying over the surface inside.

“Wait, how did you get past the swarm in the hallway?” I asked.

“I guess I must have taken a different route because I didn’t see a swarm anywhere,” she said as she gave a final tap, causing the inside of the panel pulled back into the wall to be replaced by a series of mechanical arms. She then presented her back to the arms and raised her own to shoulder height. The mechanical arms then flew around her taking her weapon and her backpack, attaching a bunch of what I assumed to be armored panels all over her outfit, then returned the backpack and the weapon. “I did run into a couple pairs of scouts, but they didn’t even slow me down. Alright, let’s go.”

“Quietly now, we’re going to spy on them from above before we go in and clear them out. They won’t know we’re there as long as we stay quiet and don’t touch any of the webs,” said the spear kobold.

Normally, I would have asked them what their names are by now, but they’re dungeon monsters so they probably don’t have any. If they did, then they would have told me by now. Probably.

“You heard the man. Let’s move out but step lightly. No unnecessary chatter in the ranks!” I ordered.

When we got to the overlook, we were staring down into a room that was the same size as the one with the flying machines, except this room was about a third full of some metal crates. The rest of the room was taken up by a swarm of the spider things, except these were moving in a much more organized manner than any of the other swarms we had seen.

“So here is the general plan,” said the spear kobold. “You guys find a way to keep all of the little ones busy and my sister and I will take care of the general. Sound good?”

I opened my mouth to say, “That sounds good to me,” but the words died on my lips when I saw the general clearly for the first time.

The swarm opened up around him allowing him to stretch himself, revealing him to be about a third larger than the rest of the spider things, but otherwise mostly the same. The only differences were in the way he moved and his armaments. Even from this brief glimpse, I could tell he was significantly faster and stronger than the rest, he had to be to move the way he did. Unlike all of the other spiders around him, he was armed with a sword and shield. For whatever reason, he decided to draw his sword and equip his shield, taking a few practice swings at the open space in front of him with both of them glowing a sullen orange and humming an eerie tune.

When he drew his sword and shield, the power within me surged in response, rejoicing that, finally, for the first time in my life, I had found a matching set such as this. It’s a pity that his armor would never fit me, his torso was far too large and his limbs too oddly proportioned, but hey, I’d take what I could get. The only challenge would be defeating him without damaging either of them.

“Alright, new plan. Somebody donate me a sword and a shield and I’ll take the general. The rest of y’all deal with the little guys.”

Instantly, all of my troops offered me their swords and shields without a word. They knew me, they had seen what I could do, they had no doubts what the outcome would be.

The kobolds, on the other hand, looked at me like I was crazy, at a complete loss for words until I had selected Billodon’s sword, a decently balanced longsword he wasn’t using now that he had a shock baton, and a kite shield from Bonheir since he rarely needed it.

“What do you think you’re doing!?” hissed both of the kobolds in unison.

“His sword is far sharper than it has any right to be, and his shield can block his sword without taking damage!” continued the spear kobold.

“He has all of the advantages of the heavy units, but he is much smaller and faster!” added the first kobold.

“I can see that. Regardless, this is the path that I must take. I’ll see you on the other side.” The power within me was getting impatient, so as soon as I finished speaking I called it into action, bathing my borrowed sword and shield in slightly blue-tinged white light. With the power active, two strokes later I had cut a me-sized hole through the transparent material separating me from the cargo bay. With that out of the way, I jumped onto the general, the ambush allowing me to slice at his shield arm near the shoulder before the fight had even started.

To my surprise, his armor was good enough to turn my blade, forcing it to slide down his upper arm. The good news is that in doing so I discovered that I could cut the flexible material at the joints almost as if it wasn’t there. The resulting cut was shallow enough that I don’t think he noticed. If I hadn’t been watching for it, I doubt that I would have noticed either.

“Arrrrgh!” he screamed as he swung his sword in my general direction, forcing me to back off a bit. In the meantime, all of his minions scrambled away from me.

“Nobody touches her!” he growled. “This one’s mine!”

“The ironic thing is you won’t get to touch me either, web for brains,” I taunted, dropping into a standard guard stance with my shield held in front of me and my sword held out to my right.

“Oh, I think you’ll make an excellent slave dearie. In fact, I think I’ll keep you as one of my personal assistants.” He responded as he lunged at my sword hand, which I deflected to my left with my sword. He committed to this lunge far more than he should have, assuming that he was faster than me.

To be fair, he would have been if I didn’t have the power active, if only by a small margin, and the lunge might have worked. At the very least he would have had time to recover before I hit him too hard. As it stood, however, I was significantly faster and his lunge was one of the worst things that he could have done.

All of this together allowed me to transfer his sword to my shield, pushing it even further to the left and leaving his side wide open to attack. Taking advantage of this, my sword continued the circular motion I’d started with the deflection, turning it into a backhand that took one of his legs off at the third joint from the floor, which is the top of its arch.

By this point he had started backpedaling, trying to get away from me, but with that leg missing his mobility was significantly compromised. When I continued down his side and cut off his next leg one joint closer to the floor, his mobility vanished completely leaving him at my mercy.

I finished my sword's figure-eight by removing his head and putting him out of his misery. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the orange glow on his sword and shield get snuffed out like a candle.

Not a moment too soon either as the light on both donated items flickered and died half an instant later. I grabbed the edge of the shield with three fingers on my sword hand, ripping the shield off of my arm and sending it and the sword flying into slightly different clumps of enemies on the far side of the general’s corpse. Dropping to the ground, I took what cover I could behind the general’s corpse, closing my eyes and coving my ears.

Both items simultaneously exploded, taking out at least a dozen spider things each. With the last little bit of my fading speed boost, I picked up the general’s sword from where it had fallen and snatched his shield off of his arm. The straps for the shield were slightly too large, but that would be easy enough to fix later and the spacing was tolerable, so I was satisfied with it. The sword was a bit heavier than I had expected, but I’d get used to it before too long.

With my new weapons sorted I looked at the general’s minions, expecting them to be trying to kill me or something. Instead, they were just standing there like statues, not even twitching.

Shrugging, I called the power back into action to get a feel for exactly how long my new toys would last with the power flowing through them, intending to send it back to sleep again a moment later.

Up to this point, every weapon that I have used to destruction had been able to channel the power because of their effectiveness at being a sword or a shield respectively.

These were unlike any weapons that I had used in the past because they required significant amounts of power to even function as a sword and shield, and even more to be effective. I had intended to find the limits of my new toys but instead found my own limits to channel the power, washing the world in white before darkness hit me like a wall and I knew no more.