Orst descended like a rock thrown by a siege engine.
The Anticourt line tried to block. Men tightened up. Shields came up. A neat wall of iron and panic formed across the lane.
It didn't matter.
Orst hit the first shield with his shoulder and drove through it. The man behind it went down. The man beside him went down. The wall buckled, boots tangling as bodies piled, and suddenly there was a gap where there wasn't supposed to be one.
He kept walking.
An axe swung at his neck, aimed for the seam where helm and gorget would meet—clean strike, good instinct, the kind that killed nobles.
It connected.
Orst stared at the distance.
What did I have for breakfast again?
The blade bounced.
Orst's skin had a Earth amor on it—raised, dense, a ridge seated exactly where the edge landed. The axe skittered off with a screech that made nearby men flinch.
Orst didn't look at the man who'd swung.
The guard, from his plate—swung again, trying to fix the angle. Trying to make it bite.
Orst caught the blade.
His fist shelled over mid-grip.
[Stone Gauntlet].
He squeezed.
The axe head crumpled. Metal folded like it was soft. The haft split down its grain with a dry crack. The knight stared at the ruin in his hands for half a breath, as if his brain couldn't accept what his eyes were reporting.
Then the world remembered to punish him.
Oh right. Soup and bread. At least the food here is good.
Another man roared and charged from Orst's right.
Orst still didn't look.
His arm moved too fast for his size. As soon as his palm hit the helmet steel collapsed with a wet crunch. The skull inside followed.
Orst grabbed the body by the collar and threw it aside the way a man tossed trash off a cart.
Quick. Uncaring.
He took another step.
He didn't wear a helm. Why would he? His magic was his armor. No one here could crack it in one clean blow.
But Orst's coverage wasn't full. Full [Earthen Armor] took attention to keep dense and even. He preferred pieces. [Stone Gauntlet]. [Stone Helm] when it mattered. Hard parts that held without fuss.
His face stayed blank. Not rage. Not joy. Not even effort. The expression was the same one a farmer wore when he slaughtered chickens and didn't bother counting.
He didn't look at them like prey.
He looked at them like insects.
Why do they even bother? Didn't they just see me crumple that other man's head like paper? He's waving a weapon like he knows how to use the damn thing.
More men rushed in. Whatever formation they'd tried to keep dissolved into individuals—each one brave for himself, each one would die alone.
They tried to crowd his legs.
They tried to jab under his arms.
They tried to flank him.
It didn't matter.
They would die.
That had been decided the moment Duke Enranth Terros gave the order.
He'd been at the earlier meeting—present not because the Duke needed guarding, but because when highborns met to smile and lie at each other, someone had to be ready to clean up if it went wrong.
Terros didn't need protection.
Terros needed someone to wipe his arse.
Orst hadn't been allowed to the meeting.
He'd wanted to protest. But protesting meant thinking and thinking was not his job.
So he walked away.
If he'd been there, he would've seen the spy.
If he'd been there, maybe he wouldn't be doing cleanup now.
Something did happen.
And now Orst had work.
He was a bastard.
The right kind.
Born from adultery. No right to inherit land or title. No right to sit in some office and pretend ink was power.
What he inherited was strength, and a Terramancer's control that made steel feel like a joke.
They trained him early. Slaps. Beatings. Corrections.
They hit obedience into him until it wasn't a choice anymore.
If he reached for anything like independence, they broke it. They broke his will, broke his sense of individuality, they whipped him, bashed him, burned him, and sliced him.
They even cut his balls off.
Figuratively and literally.
No heirs.
No ties.
No attachments.
Just the Duke's leash.
Terros had other children. Plenty. Bastards were common enough across the Empire, bred like dogs and used the same way. For Terros, they weren't sons.
They were tools.
Orst didn't know what game his father played. He only knew where he stood in it.
His job wasn't to think.
It was to be aimed.
And to kill.
He didn't hate his father. Not really. That had been trained out of him too. They broke hate down and rebuilt it into pride.
After all, he wasn't nullborn. He was pure—not some dirtblood scum with a title. Highborn blood, even if "tainted" by circumstance.
Knights were beneath him.
Baseborn were beneath him.
Anyone without a crest was beneath him.
He could cut them open, eat their insides, chew them out—
Why would he do that?
They weren't even worth the bread they ate.
He was raised as the perfect tool.
A shield, a sword, but mostly a dagger.
He'd done cleanup all his life.
Assassinations.
"Bandit clearings."
Villages turned into lessons and written off as accidents.
At first he'd enjoyed it.
At first it felt like power. Nobles couldn't do it overtly. They couldn't raze villages if they wanted to—not without damaging what people saw when they looked at a crest.
He relished in it. He felt free. He could do something other nobles could not.
The problem was: if you did something long enough, it would take the thrill out of it.
And right now it was a chore.
Just like polishing armor.
Just like whetting a blade.
Great Omnipotence above, why do I have to do this?
Orst stared.
Blankly.
Another guard, fresh from training, holding a weapon and waving it around like it would even matter.
Orst tried hard not to roll his eyes.
He tried to continue walking.
A spear came at him. The man holding it wore a brave face, anger mostly painted on it.
Orst barely turned his head.
He flicked his fingers.
An earthen spike punched up out of the street at the exact point of the man's stride—timing perfect. It didn't just trip him. It tore him open low.
The man fell screaming, hands going to his groin, blood already soaking his thighs.
Orst didn't laugh.
Not out loud.
His body wanted to—some old habit reaching for entertainment.
He didn't, because the feeling never arrived. He wanted it to be funny.
Instead he felt nothing.
He would have yawned, but he wasn't sleepy.
So he just went forward.
He tried to tell himself boredom was poison too. Make it sport. Make it a game.
The next wave came.
Three together—two with spears, one dirtblood knight with a spell forming.
Orst didn't dodge.
He didn't even look at them.
He was looking past them, toward the administrative buildings and the line of gemlamps holding the dark back.
The spears hit him.
CRASH!
They snapped.
The knight launched a [Stone Bullet] at his face.
Orst headbutted it.
The stone shattered and dusted his brow.
He didn't even bother putting [Stone Helm] on his head. Just raw reinforcement.
A knot of Anticourt men started shouting again, trying to put discipline back into the line. Trying to make the wall a wall again.
Orst took one step.
Three [Stone Bullet] formed from his earthen coverage and shot out.
Three heads came off in wet arcs.
Bodies hit the cobbles.
He kept walking, lazily.
A gemlamp ahead burned bright—one of the big ones, the kind that kept Shadow Walkers wary.
Orst extended his arm.
His [Stone Gauntlet] launched off his hand like a quarrel.
It crossed the lane and smashed the lamp.
Glass exploded. The core popped loose and clattered away. The light flickered and died.
Great Omnipotence above, I've been doing nothing but destroy bells, gemlamps, dirtborns, and nullborns the whole night.
In truth half an hour had been spent.
Darkness pooled deeper at the edges.
Terros had divided men into teams for this—bells, lamps, anyone who tried to warn the Nobles at the Fort. Anticourt's habit of ringing alarms had turned into a weakness.
Orst had smashed the bells and the men reaching for the ropes.
Shadow Walkers handled the periphery.
Orst's gaze flicked to movement on the edge of the line.
Not baseborn.
Real Knights.
Orst's eyes narrowed.
Finally, something interesting.
***
Voices echoed from behind shields.
"He's with Arcanists," someone hissed.
Another voice, shaking. "That's no brigand thats a viscount, trading velvet for rags."
"Dammit!" Rycharde barked. "Our left flank is collapsing."
Evered answered, clipped and formal even under strain. "Plans?"
Oswyn's voice came steady. "If he keeps charging, the line breaks."
"Rally the Knights. We lay into him. Baseborn can't handle that—might as well spit on a house fire." replied Dynham.
Deimos and Phobos stepped forward together, whips in hand.
"Oi," Deimos called. "We'll hold the brute. Captain—keep the flanks tight. Stay in the light."
Orst watched them approach.
He didn't smile, but his expression shifted.
They came in fast, whips flicking for gaps—joints, throat seams, places a man might be soft.
The whips struck, but it didn't damage him in any meaningful way.
However, the impact made the mana on his skin ripple—small distortions, like pressure on a tight surface, it didn't damage him.
Orst's head tilted a fraction.
He stepped forward and punched.
An [Earth Wall] surged up between them—fast, reflexive.
Orst's fist drove straight through it and left a hole big enough to walk through. Stone fragments sprayed across the lane.
Tension snapped through the Anticourt guards.
Two Anticourt Knights charged with polearms low, trying to pin him and stop his momentum.
Orst seated mana into his legs.
The street dented.
Cracked.
Then he launched.
Twenty yards into the air, smoke curling around him, firelight catching his bald scarred head.
His arms extended.
Two [Stone Gauntlets] tore off his hands and flew.
They were faster than arrows. They would've crushed torsos if they landed clean.
Rycharde intercepted them with his hammer and knocked them aside with a violent twist.
Orst's eyes flickered.
"Elites," he muttered.
Oswyn answered with his own throw—[Stone Gauntlet] snapped up at Orst's head.
It hit.
Not enough to kill. Enough to shift his fall.
Rycharde was already reading the landing. He cast [Fire Ball] at the point Orst would hit before Orst hit it.
The fireball slammed into Orst's chest where his earthen plating was thinner. Flames burst outward.
Orst hit hard, slipped, rolled half a body length. Dust billowed and mixed with smoke and the stink of burned hay.
Rycharde didn't waste the moment.
[Flame Blaze].
A sustained stream, meant to cook him through his own armor.
"Stop, Rycharde," Dynham snapped. "He ain't there. He's gone under, dived clean."
Rycharde cut the channeled spell immediately, not wasting mana.
The street trembled.
Orst was moving underground.
He flowed through stone, the ground swelling and sinking as he passed beneath.
Anticourt's men had never fought a Terramancer like this. Their tactics were built for the off bandit who was a dirtborn.
Not for someone who could become the street. Nobles fought nobles, that was the norm.
The lamps still burned across the square—fewer now, because Orst had been breaking them.
Nothing happened for a breath.
Then a [Stone Bullet] flew from somewhere unseen and smashed another gemlamp.
Glass shattered. The core popped loose. The light died.
Darkness deepened.
"He's not aiming for us," Evered realized, hoarse. "He's aiming for the cores!"
Rycharde's stomach dropped. If the lamps went, the Shadow Walkers would flood in. The line would break.
Light was the only clean advantage they had left.
"Defend the lamps!" Rycharde roared.
Men split. Some held the front. Others peeled off to guard the gemlamps, and the line stopped being a line.
Which meant Orst could pick them apart.
Rycharde swallowed and forced his breathing down. This was going to be a long night.