The approach of the main force, practically the entire resident population of the Splinter, became evident in early mid-afternoon. The camp around the obelisk, already humming with nervous activity, came alive with final preparations. Mages raised mounds of soggy earth and ice, and their minions took positions behind makeshift walls fronted by stakes. Then, at some command and to the four commandos’ horror, the pens were opened, and dozens upon dozens upon dozens of ferals streamed out, the condition of their clothes indicating that they were recently turned. Ignoring everyone in the camp, the ferals rushed off into the swamp in the direction of the incoming army. The haze swallowed them, first their bodies, then their snarls. Soon there were only the sounds of anxious activity around the obelisk again.

  “They should have held them back,” Mabb muttered. “Concentrating their forces would have been more effective. Sending the ferals out as surprise reinforcements would have been demoralizing.”

  “They’re scared,” Nari said. “They hope our people will break, and they’ll not have to fight themselves.”

  Komaki was checking the fletchings on his arrows for what must have been the tenth time as he answered his friend. It seemed to be a nervous habit of his. “Gods beyond, I hope you’re right,” he said, running his finger down the side of one of the split feathers. “The quicker this is over, the better. Wouldn’t it be grand if these idiots just ran for it the moment they realized they were getting hit from the back as well as the front?”

  Mabb, perhaps inspired by Komaki, checked the edges on his axes, first the one, then the other. As he did, he said, “It would, but we cannot count on it. The Summoner who was taken captive surrendered quickly, but the Cultists with her fought to the death. I suspect some of those we face harbor a level of religious fanaticism that may inspire them to suicidal bravery.”

  “Inspiring as always, big guy,” Komaki sighed. “So, are we still happy with the plan?”

  “We target the well-dressed Water-mage, or the largest group of mages if she’s terribly inconvenient. Mabb leads the way, Nari and I follow to exploit the confusion, and you hang back to harass, closing in to melee if you deem it necessary.” Lara recited. “I think it’s as good as our plan will get.”

  “Agreed,” Nari said, followed closely by Mabb.

  “Right,” Komaki said, putting away the arrow he’d been fiddling with and closing his quiver. “In that case… anyone here particularly religious? I’m going to take a minute to pray, and I’d love some company.”

  It was half an hour before the ragtag army arrived. Lara, like everyone else, heard them long before anyone in the camp spotted them through the mist. The noise of them was incredible; more than half a thousand furious, frightened Herbalists and Tailors and Apprentices and all manner of other Classes, with a few hybrid or combat Classers scattered among them. How much damage the ferals had caused, it was impossible to say. One thing was clear: they hadn’t stopped the army. They’d only made them angrier.

  And with the army there, it was time for Lara and the others to move.

  The mage in the dazzling robe was moving about the camp along with a small cadre, directing and giving orders. Most of the time she stayed close to the white obelisk; with it being the center of a grand ritual, there was likely some significance to that. Lara may not have a mage Class, and she may have rejected a life of academia and politics, but her tutors had been thorough. She knew that such a focus rarely had only one function.

  They got into position on the opposite side of the hillock from the army. Knowing that their target liked to be close to the obelisk, they’d aim for that once the battle began, and Mabb would readjust if needed.

  There was one attempt to end things without further bloodshed, one that made Lara as indignant as it made her hopeful. Before things went any further, before the outclassed residents of the Splinter threw themselves at the outnumbered defenders, Captain Sarmon attempted to parley.

  “Residents of the camp around this obelisk, and former residents of the outpost. Hear me!” he called. He must have either had a System feature to boost his voice, or some Air-mage to help him, because he could be heard clearly across the hillock. “I am Captain Sarmon of the Arden Heart Guild, duly appointed administrator of this Splinter. We know what your plan is. We know by the recent insanity of the weather that the collapse of this Splinter is near. And we know that you do not plan to die here; that you have a way out. We do not intend to die here either. We will seize whatever exit you have. And believe me when I say that we will kill every one of you if we must to accomplish that. I offer you one chance, and one chance only, to save your lives: open the way, then disperse your forces. Abandon the camp and allow us to leave peacefully. If you do this, you have my word that you may follow us unmolested. In exchange, I offer complete amnesty to every one of you, invader and traitor alike. You have one minute to accept these terms.”

  “I’m afraid not,” came the near immediate reply, and Lara’s heart sank. Not only because that meant the battle was happening, but because the woman spoke Inter-guild with a refined Saphahr accent. “You know far too much, and allowing you to leave and spread that knowledge would imperil our lord’s plans. My counter-offer is this: return to your outpost, and make peace with whatever gods you worship. Accept what is necessary, and know that you die so that all those in the Primes may live.”

  “Damn,” Nari whispered brokenly, sniffing hard to clear her nose and spitting in the water by their feet. “Damn, damn, damn!”

  “So be it,” came Sarmon’s grim answer, and that was that. Moments later a great cry rose beyond the hillock, and battle was joined.

  “Hold,” Mabb rumbled as Lara and Nari both began to move. “Not yet.” He waited for what felt like an eternity, but which couldn’t actually have been more than half a minute. For half a minute they crouched in the shadowed water, listening to spells discharging and distant cries of rage and pain. Only after that half-minute did he say, “Behind me,” and surge forward.

  The reason quickly became clear. There were a few of the enemy watching their sides and back, but only a few. And when the first watcher spotted them coming, far too late to save himself, his alarm went unheard over the visceral noise of the battle on the other side of the hill. So did the cry of pain that it turned into when Komaki’s arrow took him in the hip as he turned to run, and his terrified scream when Mabb caught up to him and silenced him forever.

  Mabb didn’t even slow down, but that was the whole point of his Class. A Raging Storm built momentum with every blow dealt or received, growing stronger and stronger as a battle wore on. Lara had learned to appreciate just what that meant during the past six weeks, and she almost pitied their enemy. Almost.

  As Mabb crested the hillock, moving fast and low between the tents with Lara and Nari close behind him, Komaki peeled off. It didn’t take long before an arrow sailed through Lara’s peripheral vision, striking a mage who’d made the mistake of turning at the wrong time. But when that mage cried out those closest to her heard, and they turned as well and saw what was coming.

  It was too late. Mabb was big, but his Strength was monstrous, and the speed at which he could sprint when he no longer worried about being seen or heard was no less than terrifying.

  The mage with the fancy robes was visible in flashes between her underlings near the obelisk. With a roar like something between a cyclopean bull and a landslide, Mabb aimed himself at her and charged.

  Neither Lara nor Nari had a hope of keeping up with him, but they didn’t need to. His job was to sow chaos and confusion; theirs was to exploit it. A handful of mages had clustered around the mage Komaki had shot, who was clawing at an arrow in her chest. Between Lara’s Stalker Ability improving Nari’s Stealth and the paralyzing distraction of Mabb charging into battle, they didn’t notice Lara and Nari coming until it was too late. The two women were no more than twenty feet away when one of the mages must have spotted them out of the corner of his eye, and turned to unleash some Shaping he’d been preparing to launch Komaki’s way.

  Lara was faster. She’d been Shaping her old reliable kinetic blast the whole way, accumulating mana, and all she needed to do was to release it. When she did, now ten, perhaps twelve feet away, it was in a spread wide enough to hit all four mages, standing and kneeling, and knock them to the ground. One still managed to raise a short wall of jagged stone before Nari, but she reacted fluidly, leaping and using it as a platform to boost herself into their midst.

  It was over before it began. With two combat Classers in their twenties against four mages on the ground, it wasn’t even a fight; it was a slaughter, and Lara knew that the helpless fear in their eyes would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  But there was no time to worry about that. She wanted to live long enough to be haunted, and for that they needed to win. Even so it took a shout of, “Mabb needs help!” from Nari to get her going again, moving to support their big farl friend. And when she saw Mabb she ran as fast as she ever had, because he did indeed need help.

  Mabb was on fire. Or at least his clothes and hair were; Lara hoped it wasn’t worse than that. Not that it seemed to bother him much, or at all. The cultists were putting up a fight, and Lara couldn’t see Mabb winning, but he was beyond any doubt living up to the name of his Class. He was in constant motion, striking and kicking with terrible efficacy, and while he never moved to finish off anyone whom he struck, Lara couldn’t see most of them getting up. Not without a potion and some dedicated attention from a Healer, at any rate.

  Unfortunately, none of the downed cultists was the fancy mage. As quick and relentless as Mabb was, the Water-mage was equally evasive. With so much water in the air and the ground she was almost literally in her element, and she used it with a level of mastery that Lara had never seen before. Bolts of ice knocked Mabb off-balance just enough for her or one of her underlings to evade a blow; whips of water struck at his eyes to force him to turn his face away when she moved, and spears lanced at his throat, forcing him to dodge and parry. Ice grabbed at his feet or made them slip. She even used surges and waves to move herself with a quickness and in directions that she couldn’t have managed herself, even as she bent and twisted in ways that made Mabb’s blows miss her by inches.

  The fact that she could stand against Mabb in close combat and live was worrying. That she could do so while she aided her minions was frightening. The fact that she, when Inspected, came back as a [Human Living Wave (43)] meant that she needed to go down now. No Class with a name like that could possibly be below Heroic Tier.

  Mabb was on fire, and he was bleeding from innumerable cuts and punctures. The Living Wave’s robes weren’t even dirty. She was wearing him down, and she was making an effort to stay clean while doing so. And while she was the single biggest problem, the half-dozen mages and handful of Cultists at her side were doing their part to kill Mabb by spell and by blade. It didn’t matter how durable he was; death by a thousand cuts was inevitable. Or it would be, if he were alone.

  “Go for the mages!” Lara commanded Nari as they ran into the chaotic fight. She didn’t expect the other woman to win against six mages. She didn’t think she could stand against them for long, especially not with how wide-eyed she was as one of those mages launched a firebolt that splashed against Mabb’s back. But that didn’t matter. Lara hoped, she truly hoped, that Nari would survive, but all she needed to do was distract those mages for a short moment as Lara cleared out the Cultists, so that Mabb could deal with the Living Wave.

  Nari didn’t answer. She acted, and with an undulating battle cry the Swordswoman charged the nearest mage, who spun to face her. Lara didn’t look to see how that played out. She had other things to worry about.

  Lara had been Shaping and pouring mana into her working for the past several seconds, and now she released it. The Living Wave was no fool; she paid attention to her surroundings, and as Lara released her Shaping, she sensed the surge of mana and threw herself back and out of its way. But Lara hadn’t been aiming for her; her target was the pack of Cultists harrying Mabb. Nor was this her standard repulsion shaping. This one was more complex, impossible to use at a moment’s notice, and not at all as flexible when it came to regulating its effect, but it was inarguably effective.

  The Shaping detonated in the midst of the Cultists with an omnidirectional blast of pure kinetic force. Under normal circumstances, Lara used it against packs of rodents; it had no benefit over the repulsion against a single opponent such as a sapient revenant, but it could turn a pack of rodents into so many bags of ruptured organs and broken bones. Now it sent the closest man flying limply and the others stumbling or flopping to the ground, clutching their ears or stomachs. It wasn’t loud—it was practically silent, except for its secondary effects—but Lara knew from personal experience how it could rupture someone’s ears and make them feel like they’d taken a sledgehammer to the gut.

  Lara wasted no time to see how anyone would react. “Mabb!” she shouted, “it’s just you and her!”

  Only then did the Living Wave turn her attention to Lara, and two things happened practically simultaneously. A tremendous amount of Water-mana surged in from all around, and the water in the ground under Mabb rose, enveloping him entirely. It put out the flames and made him almost impossible to attack, but it also hindered his movements and began to drown him. At the same time a wave lifted the woman, carrying her quickly away from Mabb toward Lara, whom she turned to face mid-glide with a frankly terrifying curiosity in her eyes.

  “A Saphahran? In this cesspit?” she drawled, her aristocratic accent dredging up all kinds of old memories. “And a mage, but not a mage Class. How droll. That is much more interesting than this brute. Let’s converse, you and I!”

  With a twitch of her hand, the water enveloping Mabb lifted him off his feet and carried him away toward Nari and the mages, and Lara had a sudden realization, one that spelled either disaster or great fortune.

  The woman was mad. She cared nothing for her minions. The moment Mabb broke free of the water—which he no doubt would in a handful of seconds—he’d lay absolute waste to those mages. All so that the Living Wave could have a moment alone with Lara.

  Of course, talking was the last thing the woman was interested in. Lara may have left that world young and been away from it for years, but she recognized a politely veiled challenge when she heard it. She didn’t even need to think to remember the correct reply. And even though she was badly out-Tiered and out-Leveled, she gave it.

  “Just the two of us?” she said, straightening her back and letting all the elocution her parents had forced her to practice infest her voice once more. “I would love to. Shall we step away somewhere private?”

  “Alas, I think that will be difficult,” the Living Wave replied, looking around as though to make a genuine effort to find somewhere secluded on this open hillock, in the middle of a battle. As she did so she walked a few steps, placing herself in front of the obelisk. “Right here shall have to do.”

  “As you say,” Lara agreed, following her. “If we’re to converse, shall we introduce ourselves? I would prefer to know with whom I’m spending my time.” Not that she gave a damn. The woman didn’t look the least bit familiar, so she was unlikely to be some sort of cousin, but even if she were Lara would have killed her if she had to. But every second Lara could waste was another second that the other woman wasn’t involved in the battle; another second that her magical prowess couldn’t be turned on the guild’s line, another second that she wasn’t coordinating her own forces, and another second that she wasn’t helping her nearby minions.

  A glance showed Nari still fighting, using quick manoeuvres to put the mage she was currently engaging between herself and the mage’s allies. Mabb was at the edge of his mound of water, likely to break free soon. Lara didn’t need to delay much longer.

  “Why, where are my manners?” the Living Wave said, following Lara’s eyes with her own. She knew exactly what Lara was doing, Lara was sure of it, and yet she didn’t seem at all concerned. With a shallow bow where her eyes never left Lara, she said, “Fahin Sparr. And you, madam?”

  “Lara Silvervale.” Lara matched Fahin’s bow. She was inordinately proud that her voice didn’t so much as hitch on the family name she no longer had any claim to.

  “A pleasure,” Fahin said, smiling with wry amusement. “Silvervale, you say? How very interesting.” Then she became still for a moment before saying, “Ah, but I believe that we are out of time. My deepest apologies, but I did not expect this to happen so quickly. We shall have to converse at a later date, should you live to see me again.”

  For the first instant Lara had no idea what the Water-mage was referring to. What was happening? Had either side won, and she’d just missed it? Had Mabb broken free, and was now charging them from behind Lara, with her somehow unable to hear him? And then, with her attention momentarily on her surroundings instead of tunneling on Fahin, she felt what the mage meant.

  Death mana, massive amounts of it, swirled around them. Cold, inert, and seductive, it flowed past Lara in such volumes that she must have been mana-blind not to notice it before. But from where? And for what purpose?

  Then Lara understood.

  “You wanted this,” she said incredulously. Looking down the slope toward where the brunt of the fighting was taking place, her guildmates had broken past the cultists and their demons, and were charging toward the entrenched mages. Around and behind them, the ground was littered with broken bodies. “The battle. You’ve lost, and you don’t care! You expected this!”

  Fahin’s smile was brighter and more proud than Lara had ever seen from her own mother, no matter how hard she’d struggled. “Very good, Silvervale!” the mage said, clapping her hands together. “Oh, please do survive! Good-bye, now!”

  With that, the cyclone of mana around the obelisk turned inward, spiraling up the white pillar. The runes carved into the stone surrounding it flashed, blindingly bright, and a tear in space opened behind Fahin.

  Lara reacted the way she did to most threats. She threw herself forward, already shaping, and unleashed a blast of force.

  The Water-mage’s smile didn’t falter. The moment Lara moved she spread her arms as though in welcome, taking the blast full on. At the distance Lara had unleashed it, it couldn’t have had enough force to knock her off her feet. It didn’t need to. A small swell of water rose beneath Fahin’s feet, and together with Lara’s blast, it carried her backward through the rift.

  The rift closed behind her. And just like that, the Living Wave was gone. Any remaining resistance broke quickly after that.

  and read 8 chapters ahead of both Splinter Angel and Draka! You also get to read anything else I’m trying out — which is how Splinter Angel got started.

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