“Only those higher up on the totem pole of command, who had the big picture and other things to consider, think of battles in terms of victory or loss. For those who were amongst the men and women fighting under their commands, the only thing that mattered was whether one survived a battle or not.” - Harriet Storm, retired veteran mercenary.

“Friede, you all right there?” asked Nina as she rushed over to Elfriede’s side after she disengaged with one of the crazed guards - which she left for the others to handle - and helped support her old friend who was on shaky legs. To Elfriede’s other side, Cassie did the same wordlessly, the three having gone a long way from their shared childhood as orphans in Zephirous.

“Not very, hurts like a motherfucker, but I’ll live,” said Elfriede in reply as she allowed her old friends to help support her. Over by the armored man’s side, Ylisera had drawn a spare saber and distracted him while Olyvee carefully tried to land a good hit. Therese had also moved over to help them with tears in her eyes as she screamed and anger and hacked at the man with a poleaxe.

Her state of anger was one Elfriede could understand, since Therese and Bernd had originated from the same small village in Knallzog, and had joined the Company together. They had been friends turned lovers turned spouses, so her rage and grief at his death was something that was only to be expected. Even so, her wrathful blows had done little than to help distract the armored man so far.

“Can you help them out? That fucker’s tough, and he drank something far more potent than what his mooks had,” asked Elfriede to her two old friends after she regained some stability into her stance. Her left calf and thigh hurt, so she likely sprained some muscles on that landing earlier, but she stopped any pain from showing on her face.

Both women nodded to her words, and hefted their respective weapons as they gave a hand to the three already engaged with the armored man. The man’s superhuman strength, speed, and reflexes made it hard for the five of them to gain an edge, though they managed to keep him under tentative control for the time being. Elfriede approached the battle, but had not joined it, as with her left leg barely functioning, she would be more a burden than an asset in such a rapidly moving fight.

“Think you can do that trick with the mud again?” asked Elfriede to Ayrie, who came over and helped her shuffle closer to the battle with her good arm. The much younger girl - barely out of childhood at fourteen, really - looked at the ongoing battle with some nervousness. The old scar over her left eye seemed to twitch as she blinked, before she nodded to Elfriede with some uncertainty on her features. “Good, wait for my signal then. Until then, just see if you can fling a knife of two to make the bastard flinch.”

“I’ll try,” said Ayrie with a nod as she suppressed an urge to wince at how the wound on her left arm stung each time she moved. The young girl gritted her teeth and pulled a couple of knives from the bandolier slung across her chest, and hurled them at the face of the armored man. The man avoided them by a mere shift of his head, but Nina took that moment of inattention to attempt a strike from the man’s left side.

Instead of her weapon finding any purchase, however, the man leaned away and shifted so that the spiked cap at the end of her long cudgel merely struck his armor and bounced off, even while the saber on his other hand simultaneously deflected strikes from Therese and Ylisera, while he deftly avoided blows from Cassie and Olyvee. Then he backhanded Nina aside, his fist striking her cheek, hard enough to send the woman stumbling away from the force of the blow.

Elfriede saw how in their concerted efforts to deal with the man - and mostly failing - Therese left herself open to retaliation, a chance which the armored man had not missed as his saber slashed viciously. Therese only had the time to attempt a block with the shaft of her weapon, but the saber simply sliced through the wooden haft as if it was paper, along with several fingers from the woman’s left hand.

Then the blade mercilessly cleaved through the woman’s abdomen, where it opened a deep cut, disemboweling her quite thoroughly. The blade had not lost its momentum either as it chopped further towards Cassie, who was to Therese’s left, and neither could she evade fast enough to avoid it. Cassie reacted fast enough that she managed to strike the blade with her pair of warhammers even as the saber carved into the right side of her abdomen, and for once, the keen blade was stopped as it bit into the metal head of the hammers.

“Now!” yelled Elfriede to Ayrie, who reacted almost instinctively and hurled another glob of conjured mud straight at the armored man’s helm. Since his right hand was still holding the blade that was still stuck in Cassie, and his left arm was busy fending off Ylisera and Olyvee, the man failed to block the mud, and it splattered directly against the eyeslit of his helmet, entirely cutting off his vision.

Nina happened to strike again at that moment, even as an ugly bruise was visible on the left side of her face, and she jabbed the spiked end of her weapon against the back of the man’s left knee, which was uncovered by his plate armor. The chain mail he wore beneath had not covered that area either, and the spike sank deep into the joint.

At the same time, Olyee bodily grabbed on to the man’s left arm and held it away, which gave Ylisera a chance as she dove in and stabbed both her spare saber and her dagger into the man’s open armpit. Her saber snapped as she pushed it against the chainmain, but the sturdier dagger broke open some links and pierced through, if not deeply.

Then Elfriede had somehow launched herself as well towards the man, despite her injuries. She flipped the weapon in her right hand around, not trusting herself at the moment with piercing through a small target using the longer point of her blade, while she hacked at the man’s right elbow joint with the blade in her left hand.

The pommel of her weapon ended in a long, wicked dagger point meant for piercing through lighter armor, and Elfriede drove that point through the eyeslit of the man’s helmet even as she bodily fell onto him. They both fell down, with the man below her, and she couldn’t help but wince and swallow a scream of pain that threatened to come out when the fall further aggravated her wound.

“Fuck… Shit… Ow… You got him at least…” said Cassie even as she grasped tightly against the large cut on her side.

“Someone help me up,” said Elfriede as she noticed that her legs couldn’t support her well enough to stand at the moment. “It’s bloody time we get the fuck out of here. Hang in there, Loren and the medics are with Rein, so we’ll live if we get there on time.”

“And one of you help me remove this fucker’s head,” said Elfriede as Nina - with the left side of her face pretty badly smashed up from the man’s fist - helped her up. “Our client only asked for his head, and he definitely got quite a bit of good shit on him.”