“I was born ready, old man!” Princess Kristie shot back. She opened with a blurringly-fast thrust that Sir Bellas had to parry desperately to avoid, and the duel was on.

  The outcome wasn’t in question, and that was without her wrongfooting him through the entire length of it. He recognized her sword style intimately, having been the primary instructor for Eleonora and her most frequent sparring partner. How could he not recognize it?

  Of course, Viamontian and Roulean fencing looked much deadlier when accented with Seven Dragons.

  He tried, of course. He supposedly had some reach, weight, and strength on her, and rapidly found out that all three were not true, due to speed, heavyfoot, and goddamn Rantha Hagdom, respectively. Due to him being unhelmed, she did not threaten his face, but Quaver was inhumanly fast, bit into his Armor like it was cheese, and she could take any hammering blows he tried crushing into her defense with only one hand.

  She never blinked once during the whole long duel, harrying him unmercifully, her footwork a familiar dance that was still executed with more speed and surety than he ever remembered seeing before. Mercy was active on Quaver, not an ability the inert and Hollow Fist had, but it did not mean he was not using his full strength, power, skill, and experience.

  She had him, and when she drove the adamantine edge of Quaver through the faux steel of his breastplate in a lightning finishing lunge that normally was aimed for the throat, he could only stare at the Blade buried in his chest with shock and awe.

  And he saw something in her eyes that made him shiver head to toe, just before he closed his eyes and fell down and off Quaver’s length in a loud clattering.

  “Get that ectoplasm off of him,” Kris sniffed, and I complied. Buckles parted, belts were opened, ties and straps parted, and the many parts of the full plate alternately fell off him or were tugged free of his limbs while he was unconscious under the many hands of Zeks’ Telekinesis.

  From out of Briggs’ Masspack rose a tightly-bundled set of gleaming blue-black Armor, agleam and ready to be donned. I was pretty sure that this suit had been ready for weeks, whenever the two of them made for these islands.

  It fit him pretty damn perfectly, too.

  ------

  It was his second time waking up under my hands, although I used Healing Reserve initially to save at least some mana. He blinked again, looking up at me, then clasping his hands to his breastplate, finding both no wound there and that he was dressed in a very different suit of Armor than he’d just had on.

  This time, it was the young woman who had defeated him so decisively who offered him a hand up. Staring at her, remembering what he had seen, he took the smaller hand, and found her absolutely as unyielding as her bigger man as she hauled him up as if she was made of metal, not flesh and bone.

  He saw his old armor scattered on the ground to the side. He recognized it, about to say something, then just held his tongue and stared at it.

  Piece by piece, it dissolved away and vanished, just like a passing dream, taking away the suit of armor that he had worn for… how long? Forged for him alone at the request of his Duke, his brother…

  “Ectoplasm, the stuff of dreams, wrought in the image of metal,” Briggs sniffed disparagingly. “Only stable as long as you wore it, and inferior in design, materials, and Enchantment.” He cracked his huge hand against Sir Bellas new blue-black, gleaming breastplate, and the knight was startled to find that he barely moved.

  I flicked up a Mirror so he could look at himself, and he almost did a double-take.

  Viamontian armor was brutal and practical, rather made to look intimidating. This Armor was made to look inspiring, with gold trim and Runemarks upon it, and the Silver Stag of Bellenesse prominent upon his chest.

  It did the job well. He looked towering and magnificent, a huge change in image from the dour and frankly cruel-looking armor he had worn before.

  “I… thank you, Lord Briggs, Your Highness,” he bowed slightly to them, knowing the value of this gift. Weapons and armor were hugely valued by any warrior, and he’d never seen any Armor that was the equal of this… save for the suit the great brute towering over him was wearing.

  “Best smiths in all of Dereth right there,” I said on their behalf. “Now, how committed are you to that Broken Right Hand technique you’re using? Because using the Fist is fine against armored knights who might be using Item Magic or wearing magic Armor, but it is useless against basically anyone else you will be fighting.

  “Also, now that you are free of the System, you will be finding that your skills at magic are hampered. You likely cannot cast above Gold right now.”

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  He gave her a startled glance. “I… do not remember ever being able to Cast above Gold…” he said carefully.

  I looked at him, then at Briggs.

  “Those were definitely Platinum spells he was throwing back there when I let him.” Briggs threw a thumb back down the very hot hallway there.

  “Platinum spells?…” the great knight asked in amazement.

  “Thirty years,” I reminded the big knight. “Magic here in Dereth goes further up the scale than back in Ispar.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Princess Kristie interrupted coolly, gesturing to the unconscious Fiuns on the Disks. “They are waiting outside for us.”

  “Why are you saving these beings?” Sir Bellas asked, frowning.

  “Varicci murdered them all for the glands in their heads, which he used to tame his Eater hounds. They are all dreams caught in the System now, but with Commander Briggs here, their people can be reborn,” Kris informed him as we moved to the side of the room.

  Sir Bellas almost jumped in place when the stone flowed away in front of me like it was water, forming a narrow but comfortable hallway ahead of us.

  “What, what kind of magic is this?” he asked, wide-eyed, as Briggs came in after me. Kris poked the knight, and he moved in ahead of her, after dutifully accepting the polished blue-black and gold helm she’d prodded him with. His eyes lingered on her and her pale amethyst stare, so similar to another stare he’d known, but he fit it on and hurried after the Imperial Princess who’d passed him, while the Healer followed and dragged the first Fiun Disk after herself, and the rest followed after it.

  “Matrix magic. Part of a completely different method and style of wielding magic than the Isparian style you grew up with. She took a simple spell to Shape Stone, expanded the duration to twenty-four hours, and then magnified the area that it affects and the range she can use it at immensely.

  “I trust you can infer some of the applications to siege warfare and fortifications.”

  He could indeed. What stone wall could endure someone who could simply will the stone out of the way like this? It was surreal! She could bring down walls and castles like they were nothing… or put them up with simply unbelievable speed!

  “Where are we going, Your Highness?”

  “We had to fight our way through some very impressive landscape spawns of Summons to reach your prison here. The company we are fighting with, including Knight-Captain Tyric du Pellonesse and his fellow knights of Silyun, is waiting for us outside.

  “Rather than retrace the ridiculous path down to here, she is bringing us out onto the side of the mountain near where they are waiting.”

  “I see.” Tyric, young, overeager Tyric, was the Knight-Captain of the warriors of the Bellenesse now? Truly he had been gone a very long time, if such a young and unproven warrior had risen to such a position… “What are they fighting?”

  “The enslaved remnants of Varicci’s forces who died in battle and came back as Summons, along with more crazed Fiuns, Eaters, and the Ruschk, all of whom are Summons slaved to the System. This is compounded by waves of very real Eaters who eat them all indiscriminately and continually, chewing through basically small armies of Summons constantly, chowing down on ectoplasm which allows them to grow, but does nothing to sate their hunger.

  “You’ll see it when we get outside.”

  -------

  They actually walked for quite some distance. Sir Bellas vaguely remembered the Portal he’d gone through had been on top of a mountain to the north of the Isle of Ruin, literally as far from the men of the House as Varicci’s scum had been able to take him. They did seem to be moving slightly uphill, it was hard to tell.

  The Lady Magos Ryin, he’d been informed was the mage’s proper title, a woman of very important standing, finally stopped, the tunnel widening around her into a larger and larger circular room.

  She looked up, and everyone distinctly heard some tinking of steel on stone that sounded like it was right above them. The Lady Magos turned, and one wall of stone folded down into a perfectly serviceable set of stairs, ending in what looked to be a sheet of ice.

  Motes of icy light swirled around the Lady Magos’ hand, and the ice also melted out of the way, admitting a rush of icy cold wind and gray sunlight that was still quite bright in the darkness they’d been traveling in. The creak of armor and men afoot was audible outside as the Lady Magos headed up, and they followed.

  Sir Bellas came out on a mountain ridge, hundreds of feet above the surrounding valleys to either side of the mountain he was on. He didn’t recognize anything he was looking at, it had been too long.

  What he did recognize was the fighting going on below.

  He stepped out of the way as he stared at the roiling knots of conflict below.

  Eaters. He’d see a few of them leashed by the Corcosi before he went inside. Never in numbers like this.

  A horde of the ball-things with massive jaws balanced precariously on their stubby legs was chewing its way into a battle line of Viamontian Knights, who were giving as good as they could, but they were outnumbered and outflanked by the hundreds of Eaters.

  He wanted to take his Fist and go down there and join them in battle, but a glance around saw that none of the men around him were making the slightest move to do so, and not from apathy.

  Indeed, they had revulsion and hatred in their eyes, not directed solely at the Eaters or knights there, but both of them…

  The Eaters ate the men. Completely. Chewed them into bits, and ate them, armor and all. There was basically nothing left behind of them, and the only blood and gore was the black filth that came from the Eaters themselves, which was eagerly scooped by the smallest of their numbers trailing behind the main horde, ripping up the dead Eaters with even more enthusiasm than the fallen knights, ruschk, penguins?!, Fiuns…

  There were… hundreds of the Summons just standing around down below, oblivious to the horde coming in on them, not taking up any defensive lines, pre-Casting spells, readying missile weapons, nothing.

  It was pure stupidity, insanity… and just what the Summons he remembered had done.

  He looked at the men on the other side of the ridge, also looking down, and slowly strode over to join them.

  The same thing was happening down below on the other side, although it was further back in the valley there, the Eaters almost through the remnants, and an oddly open area of the valley had no Summons down there at all...

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