Flesh and Steel
Elizabeth had long since stopped counting how many she had killed.
Counting was for ordinary battles.
For strategists hidden away in ivory towers.
For historians who would never know the weight of a sword made slick with blood.
This had ceased to be a battle long before the sun had set.
It had become something else.
Something more primal.
More savage.
More real.
It was survival.
The Moonblade carved silver arcs beneath the crimson sky.
Arcs that met flesh, bone, and steel in such an unbroken rhythm that the entire slaughter seemed like a single endless motion.
Every strike was a sentence.
Every thrust, an absolution.
The sacred gemstones set into her armor pulsed beneath the silver plates, flooding her exhausted muscles with warmth each time a blow should have driven her to the ground.
Ancient magic kept her standing.
Mending what flesh could no longer endure.
Because flesh...
Flesh had surpassed its limits long ago.
Her left shoulder burned where a spear had pierced the metal plating.
Not deeply enough to break through.
But enough to tear it open and allow the frozen air to bite into the wound beneath.
Every movement ripped the gash open again with merciless precision.
Blood flowed down her right thigh inside the armor, pooling into a hot, sticky mass between flesh and steel before spilling in thick streams over her knee, down her shin, soaking her boot.
Her hands hurt so fiercely that her fingers could scarcely distinguish the sword's hilt anymore.
There was only pain.
Only pressure.
Only the distant awareness that they still held something because they had never been trained to let go.
Even so...
She advanced.
The sacred griffin tore through the enemy line several yards ahead.
Its massive wings hurled rogues against the trees like flies striking stone.
Its beak...
Sharp as an obsidian dagger...
Shattered throats with wet cracks Elizabeth could hear even above the roar of battle.
Its talons ripped open corridors through dozens of bodies.
Tearing away limbs.
Spilling entrails.
Carving a path through broken flesh.
Elizabeth followed directly behind it.
It was the only path that could still be called relatively safe.
Relatively.
Because safety had vanished long ago.
Probably the moment they had entered that cursed forest.
— Left!
Leonia's voice cut through the chaos.
Not a scream.
The precise command of a knight who knew death was already upon them and that there was no time left for explanations.
Elizabeth turned instantly.
Her sword intercepted an axe before it reached her neck.
The impact raced through both arms, from her fingertips to her shoulders, rattling her teeth.
She answered with a full turn, using her enemy's momentum against him.
The blade pierced three bodies in succession.
The first through the chest.
The second through the throat.
The third through the stomach.
A fourth lost an arm.
The severed limb spun through the air in a crimson arc before landing in the snow with a dull thud.
The fifth never even realized he had died.
His eyes remained open.
His mouth still shaping words that would never be spoken.
More enemies.
Always more.
Elizabeth searched for Leonia over the shoulders of the rogues.
Her breath escaped in clouds of white vapor, mingling with the scent of blood and iron.
For only an instant she caught the golden gleam of the knight's armor.
Small.
Swift.
Fighting exactly as she always had.
Never retreating.
Never hesitating.
Never begging for mercy.
Then the griffin roared.
A guttural sound that seemed to rise from the depths of the earth itself.
Elizabeth was forced to run.
An explosion of forbidden magic shattered the ground to her right.
Black roots erupted from the earth like living serpents, their sharpened tips thrusting forward like spears.
She leaped.
Twisted through the air.
Drove her sword into one of them to propel herself forward.
Then crashed into the bloodstained snow in a rolling tumble.
She was back on her feet before her knees had fully touched the ground.
Training spoke louder than exhaustion.
Louder than pain.
Louder than despair.
Another strike.
More blood.
Another.
Another.
When she finally managed to lift her gaze...
her heart clenched as though an icy hand had closed around it.