The icy wind of the Broken Peaks whistled between the rocks, carrying with it dust and the smell of old iron. Darian tightened his grip on his black sword hilts. The blue line of the blades barely vibrated, as if the weapons were also holding their breath.
Thirty men. Thirty swords, axes, and crossbows aimed at them. The mercenary leader, a pockmarked man with a crooked smile, stepped forward. He struck his sword against his shield. A mocking rhythm.
"The Empire pays well for freak heads. Nothing personal."
Varkas didn't respond. He drew his sword in silence, planting his feet in the gravel. The metal of his armor creaked as his muscles tensed. He was a mountain about to unleash itself.
Aria, beside him, moved her hand to her quiver. Her jaw was a line of steel. She didn't look at Darian. But he felt her presence. He felt it the way you feel the edge of a dagger in the dark: lethal and necessary.
"Come collect," Varkas growled.
And hell broke loose.
The first five mercenaries charged in a block.
"Go, go, go!" one of them shouted, spurring his companions. "They're only three! Three against thirty! Crush them already!"
Varkas didn't retreat. He raised his shield and advanced. The impact of bodies against the dragon plate sounded like a dry thunderclap. The giant pushed, sweeping two men aside with his weight and driving a wedge into the enemy formation.
Aria fired. Not to kill. Her wind arrows whistled low and precise. One struck the handle of an axe, ripping it from its owner's hands. Another embedded itself in a crossbowman's knee, who fell screaming. The third grazed the temple of a swordsman lunging at Varkas, blinding him with his own blood.
Darian covered the flanks. His two black swords moved in short, lethal arcs. Flow Perception. The world slowed. He saw the trajectory of a slash aiming for his neck and twisted his wrist. The resonant crystal deflected the enemy steel as if brushing aside a branch. A lateral step. A horizontal slash. The mercenary fell clutching his thigh.
They were a team. Despite the uncomfortable silence of the past days, despite the hurtful words in the cave, their bodies moved with the memory of shared steel.
But there were too many.
A group of six mercenaries with heavy armor and rectangular shields broke away from the main group. They advanced in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder, like an iron tortoise. Slow, but unstoppable. They ignored Varkas and Aria. They were going straight for Darian. They wanted to isolate him.
Darian clenched his teeth. He felt the weight of gravity in his chest, the invisible slab that had accompanied him since the canyon. He also felt the warmth of Vaelor's egg against his back, pulsing faster, as if the hatchling inside sensed the danger. It wasn't just his life at stake.
He drove his right sword into the gravel ground. He visualized the moisture beneath the stone, the water hidden in the dry earth. The black blade glowed with a greenish-brown color. And beneath the armored mercenaries' feet, the gravel softened.
"What the hell...?" one of them shouted.
The ground became thick, sticky mud. A dark swamp that reached their knees. The shields weighed them down, their boots sank. The perfect formation shattered in seconds. They were trapped, cursing and struggling.
Darian didn't give them time to react. He raised his other sword. This time, the blade glowed blue-white, the color of the purest fire contained by the calm of water. He aimed at the center of the swamp. He didn't throw a fireball. He launched a ray of extreme, concentrated heat.
The water in the mud evaporated instantly. An explosion of superheated steam enveloped the mercenaries. The cries of fury became screams of pain. The white cloud blinded them, burning their exposed skin. The iron tortoise had become a boiling trap.
Darian panted. The effort burned his lungs. But there was no time for relief. A scream to his left froze him.
Aria.
He turned. Three men in light clothes with daggers had flanked her. She had no more arrows. She gripped her knife, but the assassins were fast, slippery. One of them leaped toward her back with a green-bladed dagger. Poison.
Darian was too far away. He wouldn't make it even if he ran. Time stopped. He saw the dagger closing in on his companion's back. He saw Aria's expression, sensing the blow but unable to turn in time.
And then, he felt the gravity in his chest. The Void Dominion. The chained beast that had lived in him since Telesto Canyon. He didn't think. He didn't reason. He simply... let it go.
The world distorted in a three-meter area around the group of assassins. The air became dense, heavy as lead. A dull, unnatural thud resonated through the ravine.
The three assassins slammed into the ground. The gravel beneath their bodies sank several centimeters, as if an invisible hammer had driven them into the rock. Their own daggers flew from their hands, burying themselves in the compacted earth as if they weighed tons. Their cries of surprise became moans crushed by the pressure. They were pinned against the world, unable to lift a finger.
Aria fell to her knees, feeling the weight, but at the center of the area the effect was lesser. She could move. She looked up and her green eyes met Darian's. There was no fear in them. There was astonishment. And something more. Understanding.
Darian felt an icy whiplash in his mana nodes. A metallic taste filled his mouth. Blood. His nose was bleeding. The world was starting to darken at the edges. He couldn't hold it.
"Aria, now!" he shouted, his voice broken.
She didn't hesitate. She rose in a fluid motion and, with three sharp strikes of her knife, silenced the fallen assassins' moans forever.
Darian cut the flow. Gravity returned to normal. He dropped to one knee, dizzy, spitting red-tinged saliva. The warmth of Vaelor's egg on his back was now a pulsing fire, as if the hatchling was proud or frightened.
A horn resonated in the distance. Then another. And another. From the southern pass, a new wave of silhouettes emerged from the dust cloud. Reinforcements. Another twenty or thirty men, with torches and gleaming weapons.
Varkas, who had finished with his opponents, was visibly limping. A deep cut on his thigh stained his greave dark red. He looked at the reinforcements, then east. His voice resonated like a tired thunderclap.
"We can't handle another wave! East! Push east! NOW!"
Aria picked up a quiver that had fallen from a dead mercenary. Only three arrows remained. Darian forced himself to stand, ignoring the vertigo. Varkas was already charging against the last five or six men blocking the narrow rocky ravine.
Aria fired her last three arrows. This time, imbued with all the wind she could gather. The projectiles didn't embed themselves. They exploded against the shields and bodies of the two mercenaries on the flanks, launching them through the air.
Darian, despite the exhaustion, raised his sword. He summoned a blast of wind and fire, a blinding gust that didn't seek to kill, but to stun. The flames licked the center of the enemy formation, forcing them to cover their eyes.
And then Varkas, the wounded giant, charged like a battering ram against the two men still standing. The impact of his shield threw them aside like ragdolls. The gap was open.
"NOW!" he roared.
They ran. Darian, Aria, and Varkas threw themselves through the ravine, leaving behind the mercenaries' shouts and the sound of reinforcements arriving too late. The low mountain mist enveloped them. The terrain changed. The air became colder, drier. They were in no man's land, limping, bleeding, but alive.
In the Broken Peaks pass, the mercenary leader kicked the ground in fury. The reinforcements arrived, but it was already too late. He pointed at the ravine, but his men stopped. Nobody wanted to venture into dwarven territory without permission.
The mercenary leader threw his helmet to the ground with a scream of rage.
"Three?! Three miserable kids and you couldn't handle them?!" he roared at the men still writhing in pain. "Get up, useless! Look what they did! A boy with two swords made fools of us! Thirty men couldn't stop three!"
One of the soldiers from the second wave, panting from the run, looked toward the dark ravine and shook his head in disbelief.
"Boss... that boy... made the ground swallow our men. That wasn't normal magic. I don't know what the hell that was, but I'm not setting foot in dwarven territory. Not a chance."
The mercenary leader clenched his fists, watching the mist with a mixture of fury and, for the first time, a hint of fear. They had underestimated those "freaks." And it had cost them dearly.
In the heights, hidden among the elongated shadows of dusk, three hooded figures watched in silence. Their dark cloaks billowed in the mountain wind. One of them stepped slightly forward, and a gust of air pushed back their hood. A pale, angular face of sharp, distant beauty. And a long, pointed ear.
Their eyes, the color of old ice, followed the trail of the three fugitives until the mist swallowed them.
The elf covered up again and whispered in an ancient, melodic tongue. Their companions nodded. And as silently as they had appeared, the three figures vanished among the rocks, following the trail of their prey toward the dwarven mountains.