While the chaos we’d sown spread, I charged. With the Sundered Heart in one hand and the Depthless Dream in the other, I sliced and stabbed at the priests. The first had just enough time to swing his hammer up into the air, leaving his chest exposed, and I impaled him with my sword. As another swung a club, I parried it with the trident, knocked it aside, and brought the sword around to slice off his hand. For a moment, he stared in shock at the stump. I kicked him in the gut and sent him flying off the balcony to land with a wet thud on the ground below.
Vesma spun her spear then swung it in a low arc that knocked the legs out from under several of the priests. She ran across their prone bodies, stamping on them as she went, and charged a priest holding a crossbow at the back of the room. He just had time to pull the trigger, but Vesma raised a Flame Shield, and the bolt glanced off it to stick into the ceiling, trailing smoke. Then, she was across the room and eviscerated the bowman with her spear. Entrails spilled from his stomach as the crossbow fell from his hands, and he slumped to the floor.
More priests were coming at me with weapons raised. Like the rest of the warriors in the Gonki Valley, many of them used heavy, two-handed weapons that allowed them to deliver powerful blows, but they were relying on strength over skill, while I had both. Rather than stand and fight, I moved quickly between them, dodging and deflecting attacks, not forcing myself to bear the weight of their strikes. As I dodged and darted, I stabbed at them with both sword and trident. Ice and fire flickered across the weapons, adding magical strength to my hits.
One of the largest priests stood in front of me, a curved sword in his hands. He swung with all the grace and poise of an executioner, aiming to lop off my head. I ducked and turned the movement into a low kick that swept his legs from under him. He crashed to the floor, still clutching his sword, but I kicked him in the hand, and he lost his grip. The blade clattered onto the floorboards. As he scrambled to get hold of it, I finished him off with a thrust to the heart.
An ax hit the ground, missing my leg by half an inch. I whirled around and saw a priest facing me, a look of pure hatred in his eyes. He lifted the ax again and swung it at chest-height.
There was a clang of colliding metal as I blocked the blow with the Sundered Heart. The priest brought the ax back, but I was on the attack now. He blocked a blow from the Sundered Heart, and while that kept him busy, I thrust hard with the Depthless Dream. The prongs of the trident went right through his chest, water magic and cold steel slicing through muscle and bone. The force of my blow slammed him back against the wall and pinned him there.
Despite the trident through his chest, he was still moving. His lips bared in a snarl.
“The Straight Path will triumph,” he hissed as he brought the ax up.
I brought the Sundered Heart around and sliced clean through his neck.
“Fuck your Straight Path,” I said as I turned from the headless corpse spouting blood.
Vesma darted through the other priests, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake. Men and women fell with flaming robes and charred faces or blood spurting from spear wounds. She used the spear like a vaulter’s pole to propel herself into the air and kicked one of the larger priests in the face. Her momentum took her with him as he staggered back. She landed on her feet, brought the spear around, and cleaved him in half with one swift stoke.
“You’re going to crush us, are you?” she asked with a grin.
The priests were running low on numbers, but their dedication to their cause and to our destruction was clearly fanatical. Despite the burned and bleeding bodies of their friends littering the ground, three more ran at me.
“For the Straight Path!” they screeched in uncanny unison.
Their attacks came thick and fast. I didn’t have time to counter-attack as I fended off three weapons with two of my own.
While they acted in unison, the priests weren’t tactically coordinated. I pulled around to my left, back onto the balcony, and two of them ended up blocking the attacks of the third.
With the odds tilted, I was able to go back on the offensive. As one of the priests swung his mace, I countered the blow, then hacked at his arms with the Sundered Heart. It wasn’t a clean blow, and instead of severing the arms, I left a bloody mess of shattered bone and gouged flesh, but it was enough to leave him unarmed and defenseless. I thrust the Depthless Dream through his neck, and he sank to his knees, gurgling out his last breath.
The priest beside him made a low swipe with an ax, trying to take my legs out from under me. I jumped over the attack and back onto the balcony rail, then leaped from there into the air. I spun head over heels as I went, turning myself into a wheel of death, with sword and trident spinning with me. The blade sliced through the priest’s shoulder, the spear caught him in the back, and he
