Runeblade

Kaius did up the last buckle of his cuirass, the cold alloy wrapping him in a comforting protective weight. They'd stopped by the gate to the city, the shattered and twisted steel blown inwards to reveal a familiar arterial road lined with austere and blocky buildings. Rows of barracks and smithies, the military industrial backbone of the fortress.

The walls of the fortress city loomed over him, draping both he and Porkchop in a deep cloak of shadow as its bulk hid them from the crystal sun suspended over the centre of the city.

Hidden behind a shard of stride-thick steel as large as a barn door, his skill sharpened eyes slid over the dozens of bodies of dwarven heavy shock troops, wrapped in enough metal to arm a whole warband. Instead, it was the teeming masses of goblins that caroused in the street, and lounged in the shadowy alleys, that held his attention.

The biome had reset in their absence.

Thankfully, or perhaps unfortunately, the Champions had not. They would have come across the mounted goblin Outrider in their blitz through the fungal fields if they had.

He held up his left hand, seeing the High Lothian lines of his runic hymns peaking through the gaps in his armour. With his latest increase to Intelligence he had been able to inscribe a full eighteen charges of his spell. A weighty payload, considering each one promised death to all but a Champion.

Tightening his grip until his knuckles went white, he felt his newly enhanced strength, the way his hardened flesh resisted the pressure. Even the sensation of pressure was heightened.

Beast-blooded. Kaius still didn't understand the full depths of his transformation. He would soon.

Dropping his arm back to his side he drew A Father's Gift.

"You ready?" Kaius asked, keeping his eyes locked on the goblins just inside the gate.

Porkchop let out a soft, rumbling growl, anticipation and primal aggression flooding through their link.

Kaius smiled at that, feeling his heart start to thrum with the drums of war. He drank deep from the river of their bond, falling into its embrace. Porkchop did the same, a well of insight and understanding flooding between them.

On some level it was similar to the raw dissolution of self that he experienced when they had forged the skill. Yet if that was a raging forest fire that threatened to consume him from within, this was the warmth of shared brotherhood found around the campfire that held back the dark.

The lines between them blurred. He could feel the dirt beneath Porkchop's pads, the way the tepid wind of the cavern ruffled his fur, how his thick barding weighed comfortably across his back and shoulders. When Porkchop took a step forwards, he knew the motion as if he had done it himself. The weight and speed of it, the direction and motion. The intention.

Yet still, he remained himself. There was no gestalt, no dissolution of self. Simple awareness and understanding, heightened to a level that only those who shared a centre might understand.

They charged forwards, a cry of delight and a promise of violence on his lips. To his side, his brother roared a challenge, daring the goblins to meet them on the field of their doom.

The goblins paused, staring at them almost incredulously. Frozen in shock, even if just for a moment.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Racing through the gate, they made no move to head for the alley. This was a battle of might and fury, not of tactics and insight. Kaius's left arm snapped up, flicking towards the goblin archers that lined the roof of the tallest building to their left. The barracks they had first explored.

One after another, azure darts snapped into existence, lancing through the air to punch through the flimsy leathers of the archers and settling deep in their chests. Before he had taken three more steps, a staccato of wet booms echoed through the city. Ribs distended before rupturing totally, goblin flesh and organ meat fountaining from gaping holes that had been blown in the archers torsos.

One by one, they fell from the roof. Hitting the ground dead.

**Ding! level 13 Goblin Archer slain**

…

**Ding! level 12 Goblin Archer slain**

As they impacted the stone with a sickening splash, the spell that enthralled the mob of goblins on the street was broken. They howled, racing towards them in a tide of green bearing all manner of crude clubs, machetes, hatchets and more. Tributaries streamed from the alleys, merging with the greater wave to bolster their assault.

True Sight sharpened, and he drank in their ranks. He could see it. The lacking coordination. The way they jostled, shoved, and clawed their way forwards. The weak points in the lines. The cracks in the bulwark.

This was no regiment. It was a rabble.

**Ding! Explorer's Toolkit has reached level 20!**

Porkchop saw through his eyes, and understood.

Kaius lept forwards even as Porkchop activated his amulet, slamming into the horde like an avalanche of fury. Bones shattered, and diminutive bodies were tossed to the side in the destructive mayhem of the collision. Then Kaius was there, his blade flashing between mid-guard, to high, to inside, caving in skulls and taking heads in a fluid dance of destruction.

Porkchop laid into the mob with raking swipes of glowing blue mana blades, splitting skin and tattered armour with equal ease.

Despite their fury, strength, and speed, the goblins were almost innumerable. They pushed on, the tide of green surrounding them from all sides as they fought their way into the centre of the group.

Kaius felt doom flare from behind him, seeing through his brother's eyes as half a dozen knives and clubs raced for his back. He moved, twisting with unnatural speed and stability, lurching away from the crushing strikes.

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 2!**

Bending backwards at the hips, a heavy hobnailed club sailed over his chest. Kaius flowed with his movement, whirling his blade in a horizontal blur of silver that rent the life from three of the goblins who pressed him. They were a drop in the ocean, more depths-born stepping forward from the thrum of bodies to assault him once more.

Danger pressed from every angle, his mind aching as enhanced sight drank in the depths of his enemies, every muscular twitch and shift of their eyes belying their intentions. Adamant Body worked with Uncanny Dodge to keep him whole, sliding through a blitz of steel with an unnatural quickness and dexterity.

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 3!**

…

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 7!**

Yet even skill enhanced agility was not enough to avoid the torrent of blades and bludgeons. When his dodging failed, it was his armour that saw him through the day, micromovements and smooth adjustments sending the goblins inferior weaponry skittering off his enchanted scalemail.

**Ding! Adamant Body has reached level 20!**

With intimate efficiency he flowed around Porkchop, protecting their flank from being overwhelmed. When the depths-born rallied, amassing into a heaving mob to overwhelm him, his brother was already there, his superior weight and size the rock upon which the wave broke.

The air grew dense with the iron tang of blood and the pungent stench of split innards. Both of them were drenched in brackish green, and their ears rang with the dissonance of clashing screams of agony paired with roars of goblin fury.

Still they pressed on.

….

Bogged down as they were in the comparatively tight streets of the residential district, Kaius found himself separated from Porkchop by a six stride thick thrum of goblin bodies. Uncanny Dodge flared a warning, but he was too deep in the thicket to move. An axe slammed into his back, poised just right to lance his kidney. It slipped off his armour in a shower of spikes, yet still the force of the blow was enough to bruise him deeply.

The wound was washed away in moments, no match for the torrential power of his Health.

**Ding! Lesser Regeneration has reached level 20!**

Growling in frustration, Kaius booted the goblin bruiser that was in his face, sending the depths-born crashing back into the greater mass of the crowd. Their numbers collapsed into a messy flail of limbs. Porkchop pounced on the money, roaring in fury as he crushed the downed goblins with heavy stomps.

Kaius whirled, tapping into his bracer that had long since been saturated. Pirouetting into a wide horizontal slash, his blade was infused with a volatile and forcefull energy. Honed and enchanted steel bit into a goblin skirmisher's waist, the one who had attempted to stab him, and bisected it cleanly.

The force of his empowered blow was nowhere near expended. Green blood and long-stride upon long-stride of intestines spilled upon the smoothly paved street in a tide of gore.

As he spun, his eyes sharpened, heightening the dull throbbing in his head as True Sight clutched at all visual detail with covetous claws. Nothing blurred in his sight, and he took in the richly adorned terraces, their opulent interiors layered in dust, and the scores of goblins that surrounded them.

**Ding! True Sight has reached level 20!**

Two archers.

His hand shot out, golden embers falling from the back of his hand as explosive darts shot over the heads of the horde that pressed him. Ice blue shards sank into wiry flesh. One of the archers gargled and loosed the missile it held at full draw. A warning screamed in his mind, and he drifted to the side with alacrity as a returned arrow whistled past his face.

A fraction of a moment later, two booms coated the goblins' backline in the remains of their ranged support.

His heart kept his rhythm, pumping a song of slaughter through his veins. The world closed in, his sharpened eyes focused only on the chaotic flow of a river of corpses-yet-to-be. Turning once again, he drove his pommel into the back of the head of a bruiser that had been slightly too focused on Porkchop. Bone crunched, and he was by his brother's side once more.

They sped up, Porkchop the anvil to his hammer. They corralled the goblins into dense masses of hate, and then crushed them. Leaving discarded limbs and cooling bodies in their wake.

Kaius grinned, feeling the spray of blood on his exposed teeth.

At first their bond had been almost distracting, his new sense of Porkchop's location and actions too foreign to work into his fighting style effectively. Yet now, as they tore their way through the infested city, that had changed. They moved seamlessly, supporting each other's weaknesses and capitalising on created openings with an efficiency usually reserved for companions who had fought together for decades.

It was a glorious thing, and their combined slaughter made his blood run hot with savage glee.

A skirmisher charged him. Porkchop lunged, shoulder barging it and sending the goblin reeling as it lost its footing. Kiaus was ready, slamming the pommel of his sword into the top of its skull, caving in the bone.

Explorer's Toolkit twinged, alerting him to yet another archer that rushed to the edge of an alley, arrow already nocked. His hand snapped out in a second, gold and blue scintillating over the thrum of goblin bodies as his Explosive Arcane Bolt snapped over their heads.

The archer's eyes widened, and it threw itself to the side in a desperate attempt to dodge. Kaius latched on to his spell with his Mana Manipulation, gritting his teeth as he shredded through the remnants of his free mana to curve the projectile. It sank deep into the archer's chest with a spray of green blood. A moment later it detonated, covering the alley in entrails and gore.

Doom screamed as he focused on his spell, his attention getting ripped back to the melee as a bruiser tried to smash in his knee. He slid around the attack with unnatural flexibility, planting his blade in the offending goblin's head.

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 17!**

He went back to killing.

…

They were in the final stretch now, tall buildings of statecraft and opulent noble estates loomed over them as they pushed their way through the penultimate layer of the city. With how open the pavilions were, it was a hard push.

Goblins swarmed them from all sides. They might have been lesser in number than the districts below, but without streets and alleys to funnel their numbers, it was far harder to stop themselves from being overwhelmed. It took everything he had to dance through the mass, dealing death with every movement.

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 20!**

The frenetic battle pushed Kaius to the limit. Every second he warred with the goblins, the more his heart sang, and the more he grew used to fighting as a unit, the more he got used to using his skills as a cohesive gestalt of death.

Their journey was coming to an end however, they'd arrived at the wide stairs that were cut into the final wall of the city. Spiralling their way around the richly carved buttress, they ascended to the site of their destiny. The Guardian. The fight where they would escape, or die.

Not yet though, first they had to clear the area surrounding a palatial estate that rested at the food of the embellished stairs. And quite the estate it was. Kaius had never seen so much stained glass. Nor, for that matter, windows quite so large. Crenulations and spires dotted the roof of the estate, the crystal sun far above throwing teeth like shadows on the surroundings.

Kaius booted a goblin, the last of the current group, sending it to the ground as its head cracked loudly on the pavement. He stepped forwards, smiling as he planted a stride of steel through its eye.

**Ding! level 13 Goblin Bruiser slain**

He'd capped his skills; finished his legacy. With that, their ascension through the city was over. They could rest, prepare, and wait for Porkchop to get his final Honour.

He sighed, feeling the raging tempest that was the Bloodsong melt from his body, leaving fatigue in its wake.

"Well then," he said, turning to Porkchop who was already licking one paw clean. "Shall we see what they have to eat?"

Porkchop's ears perked up. "More of that ham stuff from last time?"

Kaius laughed. "We can only hope."