Chương 133: His Own Colors

The first strike went through the man's guard like it wasn't there. Ant felt the difference in his own arm before he saw it land, Soul Render's weight doing in one motion what the borrowed sword had needed three clumsy ones to fake, and the Marigolds fighter went down without getting up again.

His Kithren, a squat beetle with a shell like hammered iron, nearly as wide as its handler, tried to drag him clear and abandoned the attempt the moment Mahkir turned toward it, scuttling back into the press rather than risk the same fire that had just lit up the field. There was no satisfaction in it, and no time for any either. Mahkir hit the ground beside him a half-second later, claws trailing flame from the collar's charge, and the low, controlled fire of it lit up faces on both sides of the field at once.

Two more attackers who'd been closing on Ant a moment earlier peeled off instead, their own Kithren peeling off with them, uncertain now which of the fighters in front of them was actually the threat. He didn't slow down to let them decide. Mahkir tore through the gap they'd left, and for the first time since the charge began, every strike Ant threw landed exactly where he meant it to. Someone screamed his name. Not Ethan's.

"ANT!" He didn't have time to find who'd shouted it, but it didn't matter. It caught fast, spreading through Raven's remaining people faster than anything Grant's side could do to stop it. Another voice picked it up, then another, and within a handful of seconds every surviving member of Raven's patrol had found something to fight for that hadn't been there thirty seconds earlier. Grant's head turned toward the sound of it, and Ant watched the color drain clean out of his composure in real time.

"That's not possible," Grant said, quiet, mostly to himself. He'd already started backing half a step before he caught the movement and forced himself to stop. It's very possible, Mahkir said, and swept the legs out from under the nearest attacker without breaking stride. Priya stood frozen in the middle of a fight that had briefly, impossibly, gone quiet around her, blade hanging loose at her side, staring at Ant like she was trying to make the two faces line up and failing.

"You're the Clan Leader." She said it like a question and a statement both at once.

"Oath of Defiance's Clan Leader."

"Yes."

"You let Marcus think Corlan sent you because you fight decent for a level six." Her voice cracked, not from fear.

"Weeks. You let us believe that for weeks."

"I know." Marcus stayed silent through all of it, looking at his own hands, at the blade still in them, at the body of the man he'd put down not ten minutes ago wearing the wrong side's colors without knowing it. When he finally looked up, his eyes went past Ant entirely, toward the two Marigolds fighters closing on their position.

"You didn't have to save Marcus," he said, low, mostly to Priya.

"Whatever that healing was. You could've let him die and nobody would've known what you were."

"No," Ant said.

"I didn't." Marcus turned his blade around in his grip and put himself at Ant's shoulder instead of Grant's.

"Then I know which side I'm actually on." Priya glanced once toward Grant, toward the man who'd recruited her and fed her a story for weeks, and then toward the anteater already turning to put its back against Mahkir's.

"Well," she said, her voice finding something like its old self even now, "boring's officially over, then." Ant didn't think it through so much as reach for it on instinct, the same reflex that had him reaching for Soul Render a moment earlier. Group Buff. Three friendly Kithren engaged, easily, and he triggered it without breaking stride. System notification. The voice confirmed it half a second later, flat and businesslike. Group Buff activated.

Applying ten percent bonus to all relevant stats of every friendly Kithren currently engaged. Ant felt it land through the bond before the voice even finished, warmth spreading through muscle and breath that hadn't been there a heartbeat earlier. It didn't stop at Mahkir. Somewhere off across the field, someone let out a startled shout, and then another voice past that, handlers calling out to each other that their Kithren had just gone strange and strong all at once, no idea why, no time to ask.

Raven's own voice cut through it a second later, sharper than the rest.

"Shrike just told me she feels ten feet tall," Raven called out, not quite a question.

"Ant. Was that you?"

"It was me," Ant shouted back.

"Don't stop to think about it, just use it." He had no idea how the skill had decided Priya's Kithren and Marcus's hawk counted as friendly rather than enemy, or how it had reached every OoD fighter still standing rather than just the four of them, and there wasn't a spare second to ask. Later, Mahkir said. Ask it later. Fight now. Then the fight actually opened up in front of him, and Ant stopped thinking in sentences at all.

He'd trained for years to fight one opponent at a time, cleanly, with room to breathe between exchanges. There was none of that here. A man came at him from the left, a horned lizard the size of a large dog snapping at Ant's legs a half-step behind him, and Ant took the man low, a single cut across the thigh that dropped him screaming rather than killed him outright, because even now, even like this, some part of Ant still flinched from finishing every one of them.

Mahkir handled the lizard before it finished its own lunge, one clean strike that put it down without needing fire at all. XP +45. The number flickered past his vision without asking permission, and he had no time to feel anything about it before the next attacker filled the space the first one had left.

Mahkir moved like a single continuous motion rather than a series of separate strikes, flame trailing off his claws in short arcs that never quite caught on the wet grass, and where Grant's people had spent the whole morning fighting a stranger who pulled his hits, they were now fighting the actual Clan Leader of Oath of Defiance and his Kithren at full strength for the first time. It showed immediately.

A woman who'd held her ground against Priya for a full minute earlier folded in three seconds against Mahkir, her own Kithren, a rangy, spotted cat built for speed rather than a straight fight, dead a heartbeat later when it tried to circle behind him instead of running while it had the chance. Attribute Sharing wasn't even needed, just raw stat growth built over a year of vortex clears and a tournament championship doing what it had always been built to do.

Three more closed on him at once, humans and Kithren both, a wall of bodies that would have swallowed the Ant of six months ago whole. Mahkir planted his feet, drew breath, and let it go. Flame Breath tore through the cluster in a single wide arc, thirty mana gone in an instant and worth every point of it. Two of the attackers went down where they stood, and the broad-finned amphibian that had been snapping at Mahkir's flank a second earlier didn't get the chance to flee before the fire caught it fully.

The third attacker staggered back out of the arc's edge, half his sleeve smoking, and didn't come back in. XP +180. The number that flickered past this time was large enough that even mid-fight, some distant part of Ant registered it as different from the rest. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. XP +60. XP +55. The notifications kept coming, small and constant, the background noise of a fight finally being fought honestly.

You're better than this, the voice said, unhurried, threading in between one strike and the next like it had all the time in the world despite the chaos around it. Overload would drop that one in front of you before he finishes his swing. You're not casting anything worth protecting your Magic for right now — halve it, dump the difference into Strength. Ant didn't have breath to answer out loud.

He triggered it anyway, felt his own Magic fold down and Strength surge to take its place, and the next strike went through a raised shield like the metal had been made of paper. The man behind it didn't get back up, and the stag-like creature at his side bolted the moment its handler hit the ground, no interest left in a fight it hadn't chosen either. Better, the voice said, and there was real satisfaction in it this time.

A second attacker came in high, overcommitted, and Mahkir didn't bother dodging so much as simply arrive somewhere else first, Speed Enhance flooding his legs for its usual thirty mana, gone before the man's blade finished its downswing. He hit the ground a body-length past where he'd started, already turning, already biting down on a place the man's armor hadn't covered. XP +70.

Off to his right, Raven's people had found their own rhythm again, seven of them who'd started the fight sure they were about to die and were now, improbably, winning, and Raven was already cutting a line straight through the middle of it toward Ant rather than holding her own ground.

Daggers found gaps Ant couldn't have named if he'd had time to look, Shrike diving talons-first into a third attacker from above before either side had noticed the bird was in position, and every exchange brought her a few feet closer. Ray fought beside her the way he always did, loud even in combat, Striata's claws doing most of the real work while he shouted something about odds that nobody around him had breath to laugh at, matching her pace step for step toward the same point on the field.

"Down to nine," Ray called out, somewhere between a warning and a boast.

"Maybe eight! Hold that spot, we're coming to you!" He wasn't far wrong. What had been fifteen confident attackers half an hour ago had become a scattering of desperate ones, caught between an enemy that had turned out to be their own Clan Leader and allies who'd just switched sides in front of them. A few ran. Most didn't get the chance.

A third attacker tried to flank Ant while his sword was still committed to the one in front of him, and pure trained reflex carried him sideways before conscious thought caught up, boots finding ground he hadn't looked at without needing to. The blow that should have caught him clean across the back went through empty air instead. The flanking attacker's face went through confusion and then fear in the space of one heartbeat before Soul Render answered him. XP +65. XP +40.

The notifications stacked faster than Ant could properly register them, a running tally somewhere at the edge of his vision that he didn't have the attention to actually read. XP: 27, 650/32, 000. The running tally toward Mahkir's next level ticked past Ant's vision without asking permission, closer than he'd realized. Whatever regular fighters were left on this field weren't going to close a gap that size on their own. Something bigger would have to.

You crossed into Level 13 a few minutes ago, the voice said, before Ant had even thought to ask. You were mid-swing. I didn't think it needed an announcement at the time. Ant nearly missed his footing. You couldn't have mentioned that when it happened? You were busy not dying. It seemed like the wrong moment for congratulations. The voice didn't sound remotely sorry about it. You're already sitting on a fair amount toward the next one too, if the pace holds. Don't get used to checking mid-fight.

This is not going to become a habit I encourage. A Marigolds fighter Ant hadn't clocked in time caught him across the ribs with a glancing cut, not deep, just enough to sting and remind him the armor didn't make him untouchable, while the man's crow-black Kithren went for Ant's eyes from above and got a gauntlet across the skull for its trouble. Small hit. He didn't stop to check the number, just let the pain register and kept moving, driving the man back with a strike that ended the exchange for good.

Mahkir took worse. A shield rim caught him across the flank hard enough that he stumbled, and the flat, clinical part of Ant's mind that never quite stopped tracking these things caught the number without slowing down to sit with it. Mahkir HP: 71/95. Nothing dangerous yet, but nothing to shrug off either. I'm fine, Mahkir said, before Ant had even finished forming the question. Watch your own side.

Priya fought like she'd been doing it for years rather than weeks, blade work sharper than the easy chatter had ever let on. She caught one of Grant's people mid-lunge, turned his own momentum against him, and put him down with a strike that would have looked showy if there'd been anyone left with the breath to appreciate it.

Marcus fought quieter, the same careful economy he brought to everything, his hawk stooping again and again from height while he covered the ground beneath it, but there was nothing careful left in the angle of his strikes once he'd made his decision. Whatever debt he thought he owed, he was paying it back one opponent at a time.

Ben stood apart from all of it a moment longer, hawk circling low and tight above the field, and for one long stretch Ant thought he'd be the exception, the one who'd finish what Grant had started no matter what names got shouted. He'd hated this operation from the moment Grant laid it out in the storehouse yard, that much had been obvious even to someone who barely knew him, dressing as the enemy to gut a patrol that didn't know it was walking into anything. He'd said nothing then. Nobody had asked him to.

"Never liked this," Ben said, low, mostly to himself.

"Any of it. Dressing up to gut people who don't know they're already dead." He watched Ant cut down another attacker, watched the fight actually turning rather than just holding.

"Didn't have the nerve to do anything about it on my own." He lowered his blade.

"Guess I've got it now." By the time Ben's hawk finally dropped into the mess, there was barely anything left to drop into. Grant's fifteen had become four survivors clustered near the tree line, weapons still raised but with nowhere left to retreat that wasn't more of the same waiting for them, and Grant himself standing apart from all of it, not fighting. He wasn't watching with patience.

Whatever composure he'd walked into this field with had come apart the moment "Ethan" turned out to be the Clan Leader of Oath of Defiance, and it hadn't gotten any easier to look at since. Grant had built this ambush around a routine patrol that didn't know it was outnumbered. Nobody had warned him the quiet recruit he'd been handed to lead into battle was capable of any of this. He raised one arm toward the tree line, and it wasn't a signal given with any confidence at all.

It was a man throwing everything he had left at a fire he no longer believed he could put out any other way. The response came fast, ragged, nothing rehearsed about it. Whoever answered that signal hadn't been waiting for a cue on schedule; they'd been watching the same collapse Grant had, and they moved like people who understood exactly how badly this had already gone wrong. More than two broke from the tree line at a dead run.

The two at the front were unmistakable even at this distance, and Ant's stomach dropped at the size of them. One moved low and heavy, thick-hided and built for grinding rather than speed, easily the size of a loaded cart. The other moved like water finding the fastest path downhill, long and low and impossibly quick for its size, scales catching what little light the grey morning offered.

Behind those two came three more handlers at a dead sprint, Kithren at their heels that were smaller than the pair leading the charge but clearly a full step above anything that had died on this field so far, fast and confident in a way the regular fighters never had been. The serpent hadn't come alone this time, and it hadn't come thin either. Two Epics, Mahkir said, and for the first time all day, the calm in his voice cracked clean down the middle. Plus three Rares behind them. Maybe four.

Ant did the math without wanting to. Not just the four of them — Raven and Ray were still standing, and from what he could see, most of the rest of the patrol had made it this far too, thanks to how fast Grant's people had come apart once the numbers turned. Call it ten or eleven total, counting everyone still on their feet.

Ten or eleven against two Epics and three or four Rares, plus whatever was left of Grant's own fifteen, plus the wounded who couldn't fight and reinforcements that might not reach them in time to matter. The numbers were better than he'd first counted them. They still weren't good.

"Positions," Ant said, and didn't recognize how much like Grant's own voice it sounded until the word was already out.

"We hold until Rebekah gets word through. Nothing more complicated than that." Priya let out something that might have been a laugh under different circumstances.

"That's not much of a plan."

"It's the only one I've got." Any ideas, Mahkir asked, and there was nothing sarcastic left in his voice at all. Survive the first hit. Figure out the second one after. That's not a plan either. No, Ant agreed. We've survived worse. The heavier one reached the fighting first, and the ground itself seemed to flinch under the weight of it, mud spraying in a wide arc as it turned hard to bear down on the nearest knot of Raven's remaining people.

Behind it, the serpent hadn't slowed at all, cutting a straight line across the field like it had already decided exactly where it was going. The serpent's head came up as it crossed the last stretch of open ground, tasting the air, and it did not slow down.