Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

The Forsworn Retribution	By : Samson Category: +A through F > Elder Scrolls - Skyrim Views: 60892 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own the Elder Scrolls intellectual property, nor am I making any money off of this fanfic. Unauthorized duplication of this work is prohibited.

Chapter List
- 33
- 34
- 35
The Titan

The Forsworn Retribution
Part IX - "Crownless Kings"
By: Jesse Racine AKA Samson
Original Date Written: March 11, 2016

When Max and the rest regrouped a few minutes later, they were sure to keep themselves out of earshot from the camp, and remained on high alert for scouts. It was quite plain to see just how excited this early victory had made the Imperial, and his confidence quickly rubbed off on his lady friends. He congratulated each of them on the fine work they had made of the first skirmish, and even went so far as to kiss each of them by way of a reward. Things could’ve gone so much more worse, but they had all come out with little more than superficial wounds, really. Given ten minutes or so, Svetlana could have all the injuries mended, and they’d be ready for another go.

After that, however, he began examining the situation. Contrary to his expectations, the camp hadn’t sent out any patrols or scouts to track them down, and Straight Arrow had failed to reemerge with her posse. It seemed clear to him that the Forsworn in the camp knew that they were in store for nothing less than a full-on siege, and weren’t risking splitting themselves up by sending out hunting parties. They were content to sit in their encampment and wait for the interlopers to come to them, and thus, enter their carefully established killing zone.

With that in mind, Max warned the rest that an ambush could’ve been prepared for them. If at all possible, they should mobilize for a second assault before the trap could be properly set in stone and perfected. However, he wasn’t brash enough to simply order his lady friends back into the encampment. His confidence had failed to become arrogance, and he wasn’t foolish enough to assume that a heroic, glorious, and entirely moronic frontal assault smashing straight into their ambush would be anything less than disastrous. They had cleared some of the pawns, but the enemy still outnumbered them, and the strongest foes yet remained.

Max asked Bunny if she thought any of the veterans had been killed. He knew that, at her distance, she wouldn’t have been able to make out too clear a picture of those they had already killed, but he was hoping that, based on their combat performance, she might be able to offer some clues. Bunny had to disappoint him. She didn’t think any of the people they had fought were veterans. The veterans from the occupation of Markarth would be borderline elderly, and none of the people they had fought had seemed any older than anyone in their own team. People like Moira, her mother, would be old enough - anyone whose hair had turned silver was a safe bet, really.

That warlord Sabrina had tempted fate with, for example, was someone she knew for certain to be a veteran of the attack on Markarth. She even knew him by name, Stonearm, considering he had been good friends with Sun Eater for as long as Bunny could remember. Likely, they had been a pair of tightknit comrades even before she had been born. He had been like something of an uncle to Straight Arrow, but he had always seemed aloof and distant, as far as Bunny was concerned. If there was anyone Bunny would’ve assumed would become the next Briarheart, it would’ve been him, not her own father.

Sabrina seemed entertained by the idea. Surely, she thought, this “Stonearm” would want to take another attempt at slaying her, should he see her again. It had surely enraged him, the way she had simply slipped away. However, a mindless melee combatant, no matter how powerful, would be little more than fodder before her spells, unless he somehow caught her when she was drained, something she wasn’t careless enough to allow happen. He’d make a perfect candidate for Soul Trapping into Max’s trophy. Moira, Bunny warned, would also make for an opponent that none of them could afford to underestimate. If anyone would have access to poison, it would be her.

Before becoming the clan wisewoman and shaman, she had been one of the more accomplished archers of the clan. Most of those archers had died during the exodus from Markarth, had joined different clans, or had been killed in the subsequent skirmishes between themselves and all the various enemies the Forsworn had made, which had ultimately left Moira as one of the single most skilled ranged combatants in the entire clan. Maximus couldn’t help but point out that, shortly after meeting her, Bunny had mentioned how using a bow and becoming an archer had been cause for ridicule, in her own case. Why would Moira be given an honoured position, while Bunny had simply been belittled?

Bunny supposed that Moira might’ve been an accomplished melee combatant before moving to the bow, and so had already proven her mettle in combat before taking a less direct role. If that were the case, she realized, then her sister might’ve been attempting to emulate her mother by picking up the bow, so suddenly. Perhaps it hadn’t entirely been a gesture to one-up Bunny, after all. If that weren’t the case with Moira at all, well, it was always possible that the other people in the clan who had bullied her had simply been looking for any excuse to demean her, and the bow had merely been a convenient excuse.

Max nodded, at that. At one time, Bunny would’ve been convinced that the belittling had had merit, that she had deserved it, on some level. To hear her rejecting those old self-deprecating notions was pleasing to the ear. While Svetlana was still taking care of everyone’s injuries, Maximus ordered out Sabrina as a scout, considering Gabriella not only had wounds that required tending to and Sabrina largely did not, but Sabrina could all but guarantee her own safety with Muffle and Invisibility spells.

Sabrina couldn’t help but point out that she hadn’t gone through the fight unscathed, unless he had conveniently forgotten about the burns on her legs and back that had yet to heal. Her stockings had been ruined and discarded, although the open back of her dress had thankfully saved the garment, albeit purely because her flesh had been there to take the full brunt of Sun Eater’s flames. Maximus pointed out in turn that compared to what could have happened, she had gotten off easy, and reminded her of the numerous Forsworn she had killed before she had taken said mild injuries. Sabrina agreed that he had a point, and went out without further protest.

The news she returned with only seemed to confirm Maximus’ prior assessment. To Sabrina’s slight perplexment, she found that there didn’t seem to be any obvious trap laid in any one specific area. However, the Forsworn were all, predictably, on high alert, and those who weren’t busy smothering the flames among their tents were patrolling around the perimeter of the camp, weapons drawn and eyes keen. They knew they could’ve been in for a long battle, and weren’t going to risk being caught off-guard, again, on any one front. They weren’t about to take the risk of chasing after their harassers and entering their kill zones, in the process.

Any fighting was going to be done on their land, where the enemy would lack any familiarity with the layout of the battlefield. Smart move, Max had to admit. It had been the only real move they could’ve made, anything else would’ve weakened them. Sabrina then also mentioned that she hadn’t caught sight of either Briarheart, something Max looked to Bunny for an answer on. She uncertainly theorized that the two Briarhearts in the camp could’ve retreated to the Hagravens in their narrow wedge in the mountainside, consulting with them in their brooding grounds.

That made up Max’s mind. They needed to press the attack. The longer they waited, the more moonlight they’d be wasting, and trying to handle all the people capable of Magicka without Sabrina to counter them would be foolhardy in the extreme. Svetlana provided them all with fresh blessings, and this time, blessed herself with superior willpower. She wouldn’t allow herself to be disabled a second time, halfway into another fight. As a secondary precaution, Gabriella offered to cut down on the length of Svetlana’s robe, providing her with more freedom of movement. With the priestess habit split up the sides and cut off at the knees, Lana would surely find herself a more agile member of the team.

This time, the team approached from the north. Although it might’ve seemed predictable for the group to attack from the direct opposite side of their initial assault, there were really only three potential entryways, and the Forsworn were spreading their defences evenly around the perimeter of the encampment, anyway. Gabriella led the way by a wide margin, with Bunny as the second behind her. Maximus, Sabrina, and Svetlana made up the body of their stealth movement, while Anya kept far to the rear, moving much more slowly than the others so as to help minimize her potential noise level.

Gabriella drew first blood earlier than Maximus had anticipated. As they were moving into position near Sabre’s first murder, a scout, the third in a procession of Forsworn they had observed as they moved through the shadows, walked just a little too closely to Gabriella, and the Dunmer, who evidently thought she and everyone else were ready to start, began moving to intercept the archer, quietly creeping up towards him in a low crouch. Maximus watched, a halfhearted anger quickly stewing inside him. None of the others were in position yet, but he supposed that it ultimately wouldn’t have made too much of a difference, anyway. When this started, their positions wouldn’t really amount to much, it was more a way to get a lay of the land.

Gabriella came right up behind the man without him having the faintest clue she were there, and without missing a beat, she stood up, wrapped her arm around him, and slit his throat so viciously that he ended up backing into her, trapping himself between her chest and hand, making shorter, yet messier, work of himself. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the man was collapsing that the others realized another archer was already rounding the bend between two rows of tents to Gabriella’s rear, instantly becoming aware of the readily visible assassin.

Max’s blood ran cold. Already, this wasn’t going as planned. If Gabriella had waited even ten more seconds before moving in for the kill, the group would’ve had enough time to realize that the scouts were all close enough together to watch each other’s backs. Another unfortunately clever move from the Forsworn, Maximus had to admit, but his team were nothing if not adaptable. As soon as the second scout came into view, Bunny was drawing tight her readied arrow, taking aim, and letting it fly. Before the enemy archer could so much as shout, there was a dull, nearly noiseless thud as the arrow bit into the side of his neck, just below his jaw.

The man floundered, trying to keep his balance for a few paces before harshly collapsing into a half-burnt tent, raising up a small ruckus as the his weight caused the intact skin of the tent to draw tight against the supports, then snap them apart, a moment later. A few people in Max’s team held their breath. It didn’t take more than a few moments before they all heard a voice, not far in the distance and coming from the same direction the previous scouts had gone in. “Hey, what was that? Where’s Fletcher? North side, go!” Maximus grit his teeth. This was swiftly getting out of hand.

They’d be best off calling this a small victory and retreating, slipping away and finding a new spot to attack from, but if the two scouts decided to snoop around, the noise of Anya’s armour might give them away. If they stayed, however, the scouts would likely raise an alarm and alert the rest of the encampment. Gabriella, instead of retreating to rejoin the others, simply stayed put, keeping low to the ground as she found a dark spot between the rear sides of two tents. Bunny pulled another arrow from her quiver, sweat already dotting her brow. Sabrina cast a Chameleon spell, then left Max’s side, hurrying out to, presumably, help deal with the scouts before they could find Gabby or call for help.

Max’s eyes darted off to the side as two archers who had already passed by came back around the bend at the far end, emerging from behind the long row of half-burnt tents. They already had arrows readied on the drawstrings of their bows, but at first, they didn’t seem to notice the two bodies. Thanks to the dark of night, they took numerous additional, crucial steps closer, coming an extra bit nearer to Gabriella’s hiding spot before finally spotting the dark form of the first slain archer, lying face-down in the dirt. To their credit, their reaction was swift and appropriate. They both immediately stopped walking, with one of them quietly remarking “Dead body. They could still be around. Get the others.”

Bunny was about to loose her arrow for the man’s chest when his ginger hair visibly shifted, his facial expression turning shocked. He barely uttered a confused syllable before his head unexpectedly snapped back at an unhealthy angle, and immediately after, his legs simply gave out from under him. Max’s expression lightened. Did Sabrina have this situation contained? As the slain man collapsed into a limp, twitching heap, his fellow turned to the side, eyes and mouth opening wide. When he noticed Sabrina’s transparent silhouette at his side, his expression turned to terror. As he sucked in a gasp, Sabrina moved to cut the shout off. The others watched as the man’s throat visibly deformed under Sabrina’s crushing grip, his body abruptly rising a foot above the ground, feet twitching as his bow fell from his hands with a clatter.

He grabbed at Sabrina’s arm, trying to pull himself off of the invisible stranglehold she had placed him in. He savagely kicked at her chest, then raised his leg higher and stomped at her face, raising up a tiny clatter as her spectacles fell to the dirt. If the man were capable of seeing the wrath on Sabrina’s face, right then, he’d surely soil himself. She didn’t need her spectacles to see where his head was. The others watched as a red glow appeared over the man’s face, his expression twisting up in agony as she vampirically drained him, quietly devouring his very essence and flooding herself with his energy. In mere moments, his struggling died to pathetic, animal-like twitching, his eyes rolling back into his skull as his face became gaunt and pale.

Bunny’s eyes darted to the side as a new figure emerged from the lefthand side, the latest in the procession of scouts circling the encampment’s perimeter. She was already aiming at him as she spotted Max look at her, through her peripheral vision. He whipped a hand through the air, silently pointing two fingers at the man, ordering her to handle the situation. Bunny let the arrow go before the man had even rounded the bend and had the chance to see his slain comrades, watching with some satisfaction as he failed to notice the arrow coming. The arrow bit into his chest with a soft, meaty whump, the unexpected force punching into his torso forcing him to stumble backwards, a step, before collapsing.

Bunny had been aiming for his heart, but she must’ve missed, because the man still had the strength to shout in pain. In that instant, the tense stillness in the air was shattered. All Oblivion broke loose. Voices deeper in the camp shouted an alarm, calling out that they had heard something at the north side of the encampment. Gabriella and Sabrina both knew they were in a poor position, and so rushed back to the main group, Sabrina only after tossing aside her drained carcass and retrieving her spectacles. Maximus could already hear the steadily escalating footsteps, the distant calls and alerts. “What do we do?” Svetlana hissed, quickly looking over at him. Max hastily muttered out “Not much chance of a better situation, this is the best they’re gonna give us. Get ready, and cover each other’s backs!”

At hearing that he planned on standing his ground, Anya gave up on stealth and rushed to his side, clanging armour be damned. When Sabrina reached the group, she wordlessly began casting a green spell from both hands, little orbs of light radiating in the palms of her hands as she briefly gesticulated around at her sides. A quick aura of emerald collected around Sabrina’s transparent silhouette before she abruptly thrust her arms downwards at the ground between her feet, causing her aura to violently disperse outwards in a small nova about her, a small eruption of noise accompanying the very conspicuous lightshow. Max stared at her form, although a hint of confusion crossed his face as the Magicka washed through him, instantly filling his limbs with new strength.

The transformation went deeper than his skin. Inside, he felt more resolute, more determined that he can and could face the entire encampment, all on his own. Judging by how everyone else was briefly overcome by a green light, they, too, were experiencing the same call to action that Sabrina had given. Quietly, the sorceress claimed “I can help shield you all, but it’s going to take most of my Magicka to do it! You’ll need to hold your own until I can regenerate my energy!” Bunny, a firm, fearless look on her face, drew, notched, and aimed an arrow in but a second or two, firing it off into the archer she had wounded, finishing him off as he attempted to rise.

“I’m ready! We can do this!” She asserted, already notching another arrow on her drawstring. A moment later, Gabriella abruptly gave off a yellow-white glow, the light swiftly cascading down from her head to her feet, finalizing into a cyan aura about her form. Sabrina did the same to each of them in turn, imbuing them with the strength of Ebonyflesh, coating their bodies in long-lasting protective Magicka. With one last movement, she called upon the very last of her energy and threw out a Wall of Lightning, blocking off the nearest passage between the tents. Max considered it a futile effort to stem the tide, considering it was a small cork in the face of an enormous breach, but he took it for the help it was intended to be.

Sabrina, still transparent thanks to her Chameleon spell, distanced herself from the rest, not wanting to get in their way while she was still all but invisible. The rest formed a crooked wall with their bodies, with Max in the center. Gabriella and Svetlana to his left and right, respectively. Bunny was by Gabriella, a couple paces more to the rear to buy herself a few extra seconds when dealing with charging opponents, while Anya at Svetlana’s side took the opposite approach. Instead, she stood a few paces ahead of the priestess, ready to face challengers head-on and prevent them from reaching the rest of the team. The louder the running footsteps became, the more the ground vibrated beneath his feet, the harder Max’s expression became. He was already baring his teeth in rage before the first of them even showed themselves.

As expected, they utterly ignored and bypassed Sabrina’s Lightning Wall, instead opting to burst through and around their half-destroyed tents. The initial skirmishers, a more or less equal mix of berserkers and archers, came rushing out into the open, racing through the ruined homes before laying eyes on the wall of occupiers, lined up before them. Bunny immediately let an arrow fly, correctly trusting that it would hit her mark. The arrow had barely bitten into another archer’s chest before she was drawing a second shaft from her quiver, deftly pulling it onto her drawstring, and lining up another ranged combatant before the stone arrowhead.

“Scatter! Don’t let the archers get a lock on you!” Maximus ordered in spite of their Ebonyflesh, instantly breaking up the line as the berserkers recklessly came in swinging. As a pillager came racing towards her, throwing out a wild overhand diagonal swing, Gabriella swept past him, silently punching one of her daggers into his belly before pulling it free. As she rushed to the side, an overanxious archer loosed his arrow, accidentally firing into his own wounded comrade’s back, sending the man tilting over into the dirt. Max went the opposite direction, an arrow shattering against his chest, negated by the Ebonyflesh Sabrina had imbued him with. He intercepted a berserker on her way to Bunny, whipping his sword across her chest before coming back around, clipping the side of her head with a second strike before she had finally left his range.

Bunny finished the woman off. Half blind thanks to a slash to her eye, the woman was almost stumbling, and never expected the vicious punch Bunny threw straight into her face. As the woman recoiled, Bunny, teeth bared in rage, drew her arrow taut once more, then fired it straight into the woman’s throat as hard as she could, leaving half of the shaft jutting from the back of her neck. Svetlana rushed over and grabbed one of the dead woman’s homemade axes, then widened her stance, faced the rest of the growing mob, and let out a bloodcurdling roar, daring the Forsworn to come for her. The sight of the Nord in her tattered robe, beautiful yet shouting with such genuine animal ferocity, repelled more than a few of the weaker-willed Forsworn, who promptly turned tail and distanced themselves, awaiting reinforcements before trying their luck against such an able and willing opponent.

Anya immediately took on three opponents at once, staring them down as she read their movements. Even in the dark of night, her eyes were sharp enough, the stars charitable enough, for her to spot their attacks. One of the berserkers swung his axe for her shoulder, while another swung her sword for Anya’s hip. Anya deflected the sword with a quick flick of her wrist, smacking the side of her axe into it before pulling it up, causing the woman’s swing to go errant and miss as she tried to fight back. In the same fluid motion, Anya pulled her axe up and braced it with her free hand, catching and blocking the axe swing from the man. Pulling her arms, and their two weapons, to the side, she knocked aside his weapon. Again, in the same movement, she raised a leg and stomped out into the woman’s stomach, sending her recoiling backwards a few steps, the wind thoroughly knocked from her lungs.

The third berserker came rushing in, yelling as he thrust his iron sword straight against Anya’s chest. The attack didn’t get him anywhere. The recoiling force of his sword stopping dead in it’s tracks was so great, the man’s fist merely slammed against the cross guard of his blade, nearly knocking it straight out of his grip. Anya’s cold eyes moved to the man as she knocked aside the other to her right, then reached out and grabbed the stunned Breton’s shoulder, getting him in a vise-like grip in spite of his attempt to pull away. Eyes widening, Anya reared back, then swung her head over in the blink of an eye, mercilessly crashing the upper-center of her forehead straight into his nose.

The dirty move instantly broke the man’s nose, causing a brief spout of blood to burst from his nostrils. Completely blinded by tears, the man turned and fled before Anya could finish him off. Instead, she clashed blades with the two remaining berserkers, and eventually, with the reinforcements still steadily trickling into the area from behind them. Maximus, meanwhile, quickly lost himself to a rage. The encounter was exactly as bad as he thought it would be. It seemed like less than a minute before he was completely swamped, surrounded on all sides by Forsworn who lashed out at him, their faces a blur as he twisted and turned to face them. Everything quickly became a whirling kaleidoscope of blood.

A severed limb here, a lopped head there, a sword piercing through an abdomen, spilled innards getting underfoot; with the Ebonyflesh making him seemingly invulnerable to their crude weaponry, he became a whirling hurricane of steel, deflecting blows as he struck all those around him. When the Ebonyflesh finally fell, Max knew it by the burning sting that abruptly stretched across the back of his thigh, some craven catching him beside his reinforced loincloth. Another slash quickly grew over his left arm, above his bracer. Someone tried to swing their axe into his side, but his scalemail vest stood up against the stone edge, although it did little to absorb the kinetic energy of the blow.

When Max heard the roaring, he knew precisely who it was. Before anyone could try and finish Max off, the tall, muscular warlord, “Stonearm,” according to Bunny, came barging in so fast that he sent his own comrades sprawling into the dirt, practically throwing them off of their feet in his rush to get to the Imperial. Max tried running Stonearm through the stomach, but his sword had barely pierced a few inches before Stonearm’s entire body stopped and twisted. Faster than Maximus could react to, the athletic Breton launched a massive stomp into Maximus’ stomach, throwing him back into the Forsworn behind him.

The blow was so strong, Max was knocked straight off of his feet, along with the people behind him that he had rammed into. The lot of them, four in total, went crashing into the dirt in a hard jumble, but Maximus could anticipate what Stonearm’s next move would be. Ignoring how hollow his stomach now felt, he pulled his legs up and back, forcing himself to roll backwards over his shoulder, dropping to his knees past the woman and two men he had toppled over. He had been right to assume Stonearm would be reckless. Hardly a split-second later, the tall Breton was pouncing over, thrusting his steel swords into the dirt, missing his fellows by mere inches. The bloodthirsty fool could’ve killed his own allies, so eager was he to slay his enemy.

Most of the mob moved to flank Stonearm, but some moved on to other targets, including those whom Stonearm had endangered to get to Maximus. Maximus raised his sword, teeth bared, untouched by all the blood he had spilled earlier, thanks to the magical armour that had been coating his body. Stonearm pulled his swords up from the dirt, skilfully sending a small handful of dirt up towards Max, yet missed the Imperial’s eyes, the intended targets. Eyes wide under the protruding bone of his antlered fur helmet, teeth bared in a snarl, he swung both swords to the side, slamming them into Max’s sword so hard that his arm was knocked clear to the side.

Maximus backed up a few steps as Stonearm advanced, forced into a constant defensive stance in the wake of the man’s speedy, powerful strikes. Between deflecting and dodging the two swords as they came from all angles, Maximus simply didn’t have the time to go on the offensive. The mob at Stonearm’s sides quickly began to spread out, grinning like hyenas as they started surrounding Maximus, hoping to cut him off from further retreat. Sabrina, still under the effects of her Chameleon spell, was still disengaged from the fighting, and so was the first to spot Max’s situation. As she began hurrying over, however, one of the men chasing after Gabriella heard her footsteps over the chaos and, keen enough to realize that nobody had been in that clear section but a moment before, glanced over.

Eyes following the sound, he eventually looked down at the ground. His eyes widened as unseen feet left brief imprints in the grass, and immediately, he broke away and gave chase. He hadn’t forgotten the invisible sorceress Stonearm had mentioned, and knew that this skulking figure could’ve been none other. Sabrina was too focused on getting to Maximus to hear the Forsworn looter chase after her from behind. The man, eyes glued on the ground to watch Sabrina’s footfalls, blindly threw out a swing once he was close enough, catching Sabrina across the middle of her back with the length of his sword. Sabrina was immediately sent stumbling, her Chameleon spell dissipating but a moment later.

Her first response was wide-eyed tearfulness, her lips pressing tight together. Then, her lips were parting in a grimace, an agonized scream catching in her throat until it was subdued into a fretful shout. That had been no ordinary sword. The pain made that all too clear. She reached behind herself, planting a hand against her back as she stumbled around, turning to face her attacker. The way the flesh around her wound seemed to simply undo itself, opening wider all on it’s own before withering apart, was a terrifying reaction she had hoped to never experience again. She didn’t need to see the neatly fashioned, otherwise rather beautiful blade in the man’s hand to know what he was armed with.

Many in Cyrodiil are familiar with the concept that the spectral creatures inhabiting the tombs and ruins of the countryside are only susceptible to Magicka or, more commonly, weapons wrought from pure silver. In Skyrim, where hostile apparitions seemed to be a rarity, it was little wonder why silver weapons had never caught on - the metal was more valuable as currency and jewellery than tools to face the cursed and undead. But for the Forsworn in the Reach, where gold and silver were virtually as plentiful as iron, it was little wonder that they had tried to fashion weapons from the substance, especially in a clan gearing up for war.

Sabrina’s reaction was uncontrollable, almost subconscious. She gave the man a wide-eyed, open-mouthed hiss, attempting to warn him off with a blatant show of her fangs. When the man realized his opponent was a vampire, it gave him momentary pause, but then he swung for her again, more confidently this time now that he could actually see her. Sabrina gave a large hop backwards, avoiding the swipe by a wide margin, giving the blade an unnecessarily wide berth. The looter, grinning now, pressed his advantage, advancing upon her as he swung and thrust his sword for her abdomen, hoping a quick impalement or cleave would quickly finish the fight and earn him glory. Loudly, he exclaimed “You’re fucking dead, freak!”

Sabrina’s heart was already pounding. Her eyes followed the man’s sword, not his feet for his steps or his elbow for his swings, but the shimmering length of the blade, flashing through the air like pure Magicka. She avoided it as best she could, but the young man could sense her fear, and while he might not have understood why she was afraid, it was enough for him to feel drunk on power. It wasn’t long before he made a fatal error. As he thrust for her stomach, he overextended himself in an attempt to reach her, given how she had been keeping herself at more of a distance than was necessary. In that instant, she struck. He hand darted out like a viper, grabbing his wrist so tight she instantly fractured bone.

She pulled him closer and snapped his hand around, making his face twist up in pain as the sword was knocked from his limp fingers, clattering to the ground between their feet. She stared at his face, transfixed by every spasm of pain she inflicted upon him as she let go of his wrist and raised her hands higher, clamping them both down on either side of his head. When Sabrina heard the people running up towards them, no doubt intent on saving their disarmed comrade, she briefly waved an arm around from behind herself towards her front, blocking off the reinforcements with a tall Wall of Lightning. Nothing would save this man, now.

When she grabbed his head again, his eyes widened, his teeth baring as he tried to pull himself free. Sabrina held him steady, even as he punched her in the breasts and stomach, desperately trying to push her and her arms away as she aimed her thumbs over his eyes. The movement was quick, but the jerk that juttered through the man’s body was long. Her long, carefully manicured thumbnails pierced deep into the windows to his soul, causing him to let out a long, shrill howl. Sabrina kept digging her fingers in, even as he fell to his knees, blood and other assorted fluids trailing down his cheeks. Sabrina didn’t stop until she went deep enough and his struggling began to die down, then finally twisted his head to the side in one hard movement, creating a satisfying crunch.

His arms flopped down to his sides. When she pulled her thumbs out of his sockets, he simply collapsed backwards, his skull largely still turned to an unfortunate degree. She leaned over and grabbed his accursed sword, then reared back and threw it off into the darkness as hard as she possibly could, teeth on edge out of frustration as she watched it cascade through the air, vanishing into the darkness on a one-way trip away from the encampment. By that point, the three who had tried to come to the slain man’s rescue were just then coming around the sides of her Lightning Wall, with two to her back and one between herself and Maximus. With time against her, Sabrina focused on assisting a teammate who was clearly being swarmed, and didn’t waste time with the chumps come to bother her.

She threw a Frenzy spell behind herself as she rushed forwards, the bloody red Illusion magic firing out in a small, star-like sphere, erupting in a burst big enough to hit the two men behind her. The man in front of her immediately noticed his two fellows, instantly overcome with such a maniacal rage that they were practically frothing at the mouths like rabies-afflicted badgers, abruptly turning on each other like sworn enemies. Instead of trying to stop Sabrina, he ran out to break up the fight and simply earned their combined ire, getting himself cut down in but a moment’s time. Sabrina called Max’s name as she ran closer, letting him know that support was nearby, more Illusion Magicka already swirling around her fingers as she eyed Stonearm.

When things had started to get hectic, Bunny had backed up as she separated herself, trying to keep as much distance between herself and her overflowing number of targets as possible. She wasn’t used to the idea of close-range archery, and with so much of her old family surrounding her, ready to hack her head off, she felt like a fish out of water. The cold rage she felt, however, spurred her on, and for every body she punctured through the night air, she felt a little bit more cleansed of the treatment she had endured at their hands. The beatings, the belittling, the disrespect, she was paying it all back, a thousandfold.

A man came running towards her, dual axes ready to cleave her head from her shoulders. She put an arrow in his belly, then another through his heart. A woman came running towards her, dressed in an iron breastplate, a matching iron sword gripped in both hands. Bunny answered by putting an arrow in her thigh, slowing her down long enough to land another arrow in her throat. Such brothers, sisters, and cousins came and fell, people who were supposed to be her comrades, and who once upon a time still had her loyalty, all dying at her hands. She didn’t even pay attention to how many of them she killed. The number of arrows in her quiver was more important, to her.

With the chaotic battle royale of melee combatants filling the clearing between the tents and the sparring area, many of whom were allies, the Forsworn archers weren’t much of a problem, as they almost never had a target to aim clearly upon. Because of that, combined with the seemingly endless flow of berserkers racing towards her, Bunny wasn’t very concerned about dispersing each of her arrows into the twisted corpses littering the ground. When she realized her Ebonyflesh protection had faded, she was all the more determined to keep her distance, but her fighting was no less savage.

She never heard the whistle of the arrow. When it clipped her face, the shock overtook her. Her head twisted to the side, she doubled over, and she stumbled a few steps to the side, too overcome to make a noise. The pain, the pain, she didn’t think she had ever felt anything that had hurt like this. When she realized where the arrow had hit her, the terror was all-consuming. This couldn’t be, not yet, not when there was still so much to do. The others were counting on her, Max was counting on her. If she couldn’t even make out her targets, anymore...

She raised her head and tried to look into the distance. She couldn’t see through her left eye, anymore. Half of the world had gone dark. Her face was wet with blood. She touched the shaft of the arrow, buried into her eye socket at an angle. If her head had been but an inch or two to the side, it would’ve missed her, entirely. In the opposite direction, it would’ve bitten into the depths of her skull and ended her. As it was, however, the arrowhead had broken through just behind her temple, and the shaft remained jutting from her face, sticky with blood that had trickled along it.

The sounds of combat began to dim in her ears. She stood back up, wobbling to the point where she nearly collapsed in the process. She turned around in time for a second arrow to puncture her stomach, near her hip. She recoiled, teeth gritting as she stumbled a step back before regaining her balance. Bunny stared out into the battlefield as best she could with half her sight gone, and although it took a few moments, she eventually noticed the lone figure standing still as everyone else ran around, either fighting, chasing, or waiting to engage one of her teammates.

There she was, a woman whose once-red mohawk had mostly turned silver with age, an Orcish bow gripped in her hands, a traditional Forsworn arrow notched on the drawstring: Elsa Oaken Heart, the only other archer in the clan whose skill was on par with her mother’s. Dressed in the traditional fur bra, bracers, boots and loincloth, the long, narrow, green tattoo stretching across her nose twisted as she sneered, her nose crinkling upwards until the flourish at either cheekbone deformed. She pulled her drawstring taut, but had to pause as one of her comrades passed by through her line of sight, followed by another.

Bunny grabbed the arrow protruding from her stomach and, with an open-mouth grimace of pain, yanked it back out. Her teeth going on edge as she wheezed, she turned the arrow around and brought it to her drawstring, pulling it back as far as she could on her Glass bow. As soon as she could see more than a flash of Elsa between other Forsworn bodies, she let the arrow loose. She spotted Elsa’s eyes widen the moment she realized that Bunny could still return fire. The arrow bit into Elsa’s shoulder so hard that it punctured through the meat of her body, biting in just under her collar bone and impacting with her shoulder blade.

Elsa nearly dropped her arrow at the near-debilitating wound, her face twisting up in a silent scream. Bunny started grinning, watching the archer stumble to the side, disappearing behind more shifting bodies in the mob. With a moment’s peace, Bunny reached up to her eye, gingerly touching the arrow protruding from her face. The tears flowing from her uninjured eye escalated at the merest touch of the shaft, yet with a long, loud groan, Bunny snapped the shaft in two, breaking most of it off before it could present more of an obstacle in the remaining half of her vision. Besides, one solid smack on the end of the arrow could’ve jostled the arrowhead and driven it deeper into her socket, and it would’ve all been over, then.

Keeping an eye open for Elsa, Bunny pulled free a few salvageable arrows from the bodies she had felled, sticking them into her quiver before moving in the same direction Elsa had. Nobody moved to fight her, or even intercept her. It was strange, but now that she was no longer firing on the other Forsworn, the rest of the mob didn’t seem to realize that she was a part of Maximus’ team. She supposed that that was a benefit of never discarding her old clothing from the clan. After being nothing but a hindrance up to this point, it was about time that the decision paid dividends. Bunny scanned further and further up along the backs of the burned tents until, without warning, an arrow whipped out of the darkness, missing the back of her neck by mere inches.

As the arrow shot through her hair, Bunny dropped to a squat, pulled an arrow on her drawstring, and took aim, trying to spot Elsa in the shadows. For a couple tense seconds, she couldn’t spot the archer’s hiding place, but when a smouldering hunk of wood inside a nearby tent collapsed in on itself with miraculous timing and sent embers scattering up into the air, some disappeared, while other shifted around, as if to trace out a hidden shape. There. Bunny’s eye widened as she let the arrow loose. This time, she heard Elsa grunt. On instinct, Bunny rolled to the side, unintentionally spilling and scattering the arrows in her quiver.

It was a smart move. The shock of being hit with another arrow, especially when she thought herself safe, made Elsa prematurely let her own arrow fly, sending it tearing through the space Bunny’s torso had occupied but a moment earlier. Bunny grabbed one of her discarded arrows and notched it, but when she looked up, she thought she saw the tents on either side of Elsa’s hiding place shift. It could’ve just been a trick of her distorted field of view, but she couldn’t chance it. Elsa had to be on the move, again. Bunny blindly fired her arrow into the tent on the left, where the smouldering wood had given Elsa away. There was no reaction.

An arrow came flying out of the tent to the right, biting right into Bunny’s left thigh. The Breton’s eyes widened in pain, her jaw locking up as she fell to a knee, stretching out the wounded leg to keep the pressure off of the wound. She grabbed and notched another arrow, then fired it into the second tent, hearing Elsa laugh as she avoided the arrow. Bunny’s brow furrowed deep. Baring her teeth, she snapped off the arrow protruding from her leg, then grabbed another discarded one from the ground. As fast as she could, she notched it and fired it off at almost the exact same elevation and trajectory that Elsa’s own arrow had come from, and this time, she didn’t hear a grunt. Now, she heard a weak gasp.

Bunny stared at the ruined and half-burned tent. To her surprise, a figure came stumbling out of the darkness, a long, furred flap of the charred tent dragging along her body as she emerged. Elsa’s eyes were dim, and blood was trickling from her mouth. An arrow was lodged directly in the very center of her chest, while another was notched on her drawstring. Bunny couldn’t react in time to avoid the arrow, not with her wounded leg. Elsa fired the arrow directly into Bunny’s stomach, punching into her just above her navel. Bunny’s eye widened at the agony, her breaths turning into short gasps.

She nearly collapsed to her side, but Elsa, still stumbling towards her, was already feebly pulling another arrow from her quiver. Bunny was quicker. She grabbed one last spilled arrow and returned fire before Elsa could continue, punching a second shaft into the woman’s chest, right alongside the first. Elsa’s torso recoiled, causing her head to jerk forward. She tried to keep walking, but after a couple steps she tripped over her own feet, stumbled, and collapsed to a knee. Bunny watched as Elsa Oaken Heart, veteran archer of the clan, succumbed to her wounds, falling over into the dirt with one final exhale.

Although she was a priestess, the thrill of battle roused Svetlana’s spirit like little else could. A true-blooded Nord, she revelled in the glory of standing victorious, and never felt a shred of intimidation, even as the Bretons went after her with a particular savagery that none of the others in the team truly had to face. However, once Sabrina’s fortifications fell, Svetlana’s confidence wavered, just for a brief period, as the reality of her situation properly sank in. No longer blinded by a sense of invincibility, she took, and felt, injuries, but once the shock had subsided, the pain only served to spur her on.

The Forsworn plainly showed their hatred for her and her people in the way they attacked her. They didn’t hesitate to gang up on her, surrounding her and hacking at her as often as possible, even though their clustered numbers and crowded positioning meant their movements were clumsy by necessity. It seemed like every other moment, she was jolting herself with Restoration Magicka, firing Close Wounds into herself on a near-constant basis to negate the slashes and bashes the crowd would give her. Svetlana tried to keep the crowd moving, whirling around and beating back whichever side was hitting her the most, trying to dominate from the eye of the hurricane. Ultimately, however, this was a losing strategy.

Eventually, someone swung their axe into her leg, knocking her straight down into the dirt. Someone kicked the bloody axe out of her hand just before she flipped over on to her back, looking up at them with fury on her face. Even to the end, she’d fight them, tooth and nail. Some of them tried to kick at her, but they only got a few hits in before the axes and swords were raised high, the bloodthirsty berserkers ready to cleave her to bits in an orgy of violence. Instead, Svetlana denied them by raising both hands just above her chest, focusing a Greater Ward with both hands. When the axes came down to hack her apart, they bounced off of her barrier, emitting impotent clangs.

Svetlana kept this up until, for some reason, the Forsworn at her head suddenly grew distracted, turning their attention to something taking place behind them. Just as the other men and women at her sides also stopped paying attention to her, a body abruptly collapsed over her head, landing down on her barrier for almost the full length of her body. Svetlana took advantage of the opening. Dropping her Ward, she let the body fall down against her, allowing it to act as a shield, all on it’s own. Darting her arms out by her sides, she grabbed around until she found a pair of ankles, and as soon as she had her fingers wrapped around them, dull red glows surrounded her hands.

The two people she had grabbed briefly convulsed, shouting in raw suffering as Svetlana’s dire Consume Health spells devoured their energy through her touch, feeding it back into her and healing her wounds. It was an unorthodox spell Svetlana had never really wanted to use, before - regular Restoration spells that simply healed her should’ve always been good enough - but in an overwhelming combat situation such as this, she was willing to rely on spells she hadn’t learned in the temples. What had once been simple academic curiosity could’ve now served a real purpose.

Their physical energy served to heal her wounded leg, but now, her Magicka pools were running low. She stuck an arm back under the body over her and, while a few people at her feet still mindlessly hacked at the corpse’s shoulders in a bid to get to her, she pushed the body aside, then pulled her legs up and back, rolling backwards over her shoulder as quickly as she could. It wasn’t an exceptionally graceful movement for her to make, but she managed to avoid anything more than a couple glancing blows, although she had to wonder if her shortened robe falling down and exposing more than she would’ve intended had anything to do with that small victory. Probably not, but you never know.

It wasn’t until she was standing up, hand barely finding the end of her axe in the process, that she realized what had come to her aid. Turning around, intent on putting a good bit of distance between herself and the overwhelming mob, she almost bumped straight into Anya, the scavenged iron sword in her hand thickly coated in a dark red layer, matching the messy splatter against her face and armour. “Are you alright?” Anya asked, loudly enough to be heard over the shouts of their enemies. Svetlana nodded without a word, glanced over her shoulder, and rushed past Anya’s side, distancing herself from the rabble. Anya did the same, although didn’t turn her back on the enemy, making a tactical retreat with her new sword raised and at the ready.

Eventually, Svetlana stopped running over bodies, panting as she took her axe in both hands. Eyes wide, mouth ajar, she raised the axe over her head, then slammed it down into the dirt, biting the stone edge into the ground hard enough to leave the weapon standing. Anya hadn’t been expecting Svetlana to stop, and backed up until the two came back-to-back. The soldier glanced over her shoulder to ensure who was there, then looked back at the crowd hot on their heels. “Ignore their numbers! Most of them aren’t even wearing armour! We can stand our ground!” Anya barked, over her shoulder.

Svetlana didn’t answer, right away. Instead, golden, chiming Magicka began to fill both of her empty hands, overflowing them and cascading down her forearms. Brow furrowed in concentration, she slowly moved her arms out by her sides, motioning them up over her head before pulling her elbows back down to her sides. All the while, a golden glow began to radiate off of her skin, turning her into an extremely noticeable, unbelievably vibrant beacon in the dark of night, pointing her out to every Forsworn within a hundred meters. Finally, as the first of the mob tried to crash against Anya, Svetlana thrust her arms down by her legs, pulsing the Master Restoration spell into the ground at her feet.

In an instant, a thin, band-like circle of golden light abruptly shimmered into life around the two of them, flowing a constant blanket of life-restorative Magicka inside itself. As the energy flowed into their legs and trailed up their bodies, Svetlana confidently replied “Now we can!” A half-smile grew on Anya’s face as she felt the pain in her few wounds fade, but a moment later, the mob that had tried to overwhelm Svetlana was upon them in it’s entirety, crashing around them as it swamped the two of them together. Anya cut down any fool who came too close, but she had to keep alert for blows to her unprotected head, which the berserkers were lucid enough to go for almost exclusively.

Others, however, could see how dented her armour had become, and knew that, even if they couldn’t cut through the Moonstone of her platemail, she’d nonetheless feel the crushing force of their blows. If they couldn’t cut her to ribbons, they’d shatter her bones and rupture her organs until she failed from the inside out. Svetlana, meanwhile, was as unarmoured as they were, but with her Guardian Circle feeding a constant stream of Restoration Magicka into her body, anything less than a grievous wound healed itself within moments of infliction. Now that they couldn’t strike at her unprotected backside, now that half of their numbers were dedicated to a different target entirely, Svetlana didn’t pose the same sort of easy pickings that she used to.

The fighting was gruelling. The give and take of wounds, the constant concern that someone could land a mortal injury at any time, the mind games the Forsworn tried to play by feigning attacks in an attempt to force her into leaving herself vulnerable to somebody else - the toll it all took on her body and mind began to mount. She was no trained warrior, but with her life so plainly on the line, she found within herself a determination and strength to go on that she had never before needed to grasp. Slowly, bit by bit, the wounds she inflicted upon her opponents stacked up, and while some fought to the very death and left their own bodies to get trampled underfoot, others eventually retreated, seeking either healing or easier targets, entirely.

Just as Svetlana thought the coast was clear, a dark shape flashed into her peripheral vision. Something struck her axe arm and, at first, she couldn’t comprehend the pain, but it was enough to make her scream. The bloodied, half-broken axe fell from her fingers as she stumbled out of her Guardian Circle, eyes screwed shut as she feebly held her arm to her stomach. The limb wasn’t in the right shape, anymore, and the unsettling sensation of something sharp poking her other arm had her filled with a dreadful, animal-like sense of confusion. Was it broken? Svetlana opened her eyes as best she could, her vision blurred with tears as she shifted her arm, a little. The horror of what she saw had her too shocked to even so much as gasp.

As a priestess of Mara, she had had to deal with a good number of injuries, but nothing as bad as this. Her forearm had been broken so horribly that a sheared section of her bone had torn through her own flesh, leaving her forearm bent at a mild, yet entirely impossible, angle. When Anya heard Svetlana scream and stumble away from her, she hastily twisted her shoulders around to the side, looking back at her comrade. The Forsworn who had blindsided the priestess gave a cold chuckle, lackadaisically approaching her for a killing blow, giving a little twirl with his axe in the process.

Anya pulled away from her current opponent before the woman could take advantage of the distraction and aim for Anya’s head. Expression cold, she charged towards the man, breaking into a mad sprint at the drop of a hat. Holding up her sword at chest-height, she braced the flat of the blade against her free hand, readying it like a battering ram. The distance between the two was so short that the man never expected such a wild approach, and he barely had time to turn around and face Anya before she was slamming straight into him, crashing the flat side of her sword straight into his chest. She struck him like a juggernaut, throwing him right off of his feet until he rammed into the ground over his back, instantly taking the wind out of his sails.

Anya, panting, partially turned around as her old opponent came running, parrying a sword strike from the woman before swiping for her stomach, momentarily keeping her at bay. The man she had struck down tried to roll backwards to get to his feet while putting some extra distance between himself and the Altmer soldier, but Anya punished the move. As the female Breton gave an overhead swing for Anya, the Altmer lightly tossed her sword to her other hand, then raised her arm up, blocking the overhead blow with her gauntlet. With her other arm, she gave a light, quick, horizontal whip, catching the man on one of his feet deep enough to hit bone, slicing him across the sole of his foot.

Svetlana’s brow furrowed deep, her jaw locking up until she thought her teeth might shatter. She wasn’t about to let this stop her. She had a task to perform, and no matter how agonizing, no matter the mental barriers that attempted to scare and discourage her, she had to keep going. With her free hand, she lightly grabbed her broken limb, trying not to reflect on how she could neither move nor feel herself, anymore. She started pulling on the limb, spittle collecting between her lips from the ragged force of her hyperventilating. She eased her wrist and hand back up, properly lining up her forearm until she could coax the exposed bone back into her torn flesh, returning the limb to it’s proper shape.

Finally, holding her arm in place, she turned back around and stumbled back into her Guardian Circle, which she knew by then wouldn’t last much longer. Anya was still keeping the two nearest Forsworn busy, which bought Svetlana enough to time to feel some change in her arm. The Restoration Magicka flowed into her and healed her arm enough for her to regain sensation and close the exterior wound, but she could tell by the lingering pain that her bones had not been mended. After a few applications of Close Wounds, however, the pain had all but subsided. More importantly than that, however, was that she could move her arm without difficulty, and the first thing she did was get a tight grip on her dropped axe.

Anya was diverting her attention between the two Forsworn as best she could, fending them off fairly well until Svetlana got involved and alleviated the situation, entirely. Coming up behind the female Breton, she swung her axe into the woman’s waist as hard as she could before pulling, forcing the woman to twist to the side as she doubled over. Without mercy, Svetlana raised the axe above her head and threw it down against the back of the woman’s neck. While the blunted and chipped stone blade couldn’t cleave the woman’s head straight off, the kinetic force of the blow nonetheless snapped her spine, knocking her down into the dirt to die like a mongrel.

With only one hobbled opponent to face, Anya swiftly disarmed the man in a very brutal, literal fashion. She clashed blades with him until they were in a contest of strength, each trying to shove the other to throw their opponent off-balance, leaving them open for a blow. With his badly injured foot, however, the man couldn’t maintain his balance, well enough. As Anya forced him back, she whipped her sword down into his wrist and cleaved his fist straight off, sending it, and the axe still tightly gripped inside, straight down to the ground. The man, overcome with shock, grabbed the leaking stump left behind, eyes wide as he stumbled backwards away from her. Once he tripped and fell, Anya walked over and finished him off, simply running him through the chest before leaving him to bleed out.

Breathing hard, Anya turned around and quickly took stock of Svetlana’s condition. Svetlana, meanwhile, looked behind herself, loudly remarking “I guess that’s everyone who went after us, but what about the others?” Anya was about to answer when she noticed a distinct, soft blue glow emerging, on the distance. Eyes narrowing, she stuck out an arm, briefly pointing in the light’s direction. “Frost Maidens, incoming!” Svetlana raised an eyebrow, her eyes darting around until she spotted the glow. Brow furrowing, she raised an arm, a rippling blue wall of light emerging before her.

Anya hurried behind Svetlana, taking cover behind her Greater Ward as the first of the enemy Magicka-users entered the fray, attempting to supplement the melee and ranged combatants who, evidently, had not yet been able to quell the interlopers. Anya thrust her arm out past Svetlana’s side, ordering “Move in! We can take them once we’re in melee range!” Svetlana nodded and, using her Ward like a greatshield, began to advance, providing cover for herself and her ally. If the Frost Maidens were to have an opponent, it would be the two of them.

Gabriella was nothing if not a slippery combatant, in this second assault. No longer directed by Maximus to keep her distance, she stayed right in the thick of the battle royale, and managed to antagonize likely the greatest number of Forsworn. Even with Sabrina’s Ebonyflesh fortification, she never stayed put and fought, she never tried to stand any ground. Instead, she forced the Bretons to engage in a hunt, chasing after her all over the area in a wild bid to slay her. With the melee combatants unable to keep up with her, many of the archers also focused on her, as she was a fairly simple target to follow and most of their comrades never got in the way of their arrows.

While Gabriella’s Ebonyflesh was still in effect, any lucky arrows they managed to lead enough to hit her simply shattered against her body. Out of annoyance, Gabriella decided they’d need to go, and took a sharp turn in her sprint that none of the Forsworn hot on her trail could make quite as quickly. Most of the archers stood their ground or, at most, strafed to the side to try and avoid her while still drawing or readying arrows, but the few who showed fear at her swift charge made her grin. Those were her first targets: the weak and fearful. She raced right up to one so quickly that she nearly slid on her heels when she came to a stop, the execution happening with blinding speed.

Her arms danced and flowed like water. She slashed him across the insides of his wrists, disabling his hands. She raced both daggers across his stomach a split-second later, nearly spilling his innards in one cross cut. She swept her arms back in the opposite direction, lacerating him across his chest before plunging both daggers into the sides of his throat, pulling them out in tiny fountains of red. The stunning barrage was too much for the man, and he simply collapsed, completely overwhelmed. When the footsteps behind her were precisely close enough, Gabriella leapt straight up into the air, tilting herself forward as she pulled her knees close to her chest.

Just before gravity took her, she launched her legs out, landing a brutal double kick against an unlucky Forsworn woman’s chest. The momentum of the move allowed her to propel herself forwards just enough to land in a roll, which allowed her to jump to her feet and continue the chase. She ran towards another of the archers, slowly baring her teeth with determination, quietly huffing and puffing as her feet pounded into the earth. Most of the archers, even the previously courageous ones, attempted to back away after seeing her so quickly slay that first unfortunate bastard. A few stood their ground, instead, and made themselves targets.

A Forsworn man tried tackling into her from an angle, running out of nowhere. Gabriella reacted in the blink of an eye, hopping up until her side rammed into his. While his momentum sent him toppling into the dirt, Gabriella’s positioning simply sent her rolling sideways across his back, allowing her to deftly land on her feet while he was simply smashing his chest against the ground. She seamlessly continued running, ignoring an arrow that shattered against her chest. She leapt into the air again, this time tackling straight into the next closest archer, practically growling as she plunged her daggers into his chest. Pulling her daggers free, she planted them again, this time putting one in his throat with the other inside a nostril, disfiguring the man before sending him to Aetherius.

It was around that moment that her Ebonyflesh subsided, just in time for her to take an arrow to the shoulder. Gabriella barely grunted at the pain, whipping a dagger up and snapping the shaft in two to shorten the object’s length. She got up and dashed away from the slain archer before the berserkers and pillagers behind her could catch up to her, racing for another ranged combatant even as a second arrow hit her in the back. Despite the stress of the situation, the archer managed to land an arrow in Gabriella’s stomach before the Dunmer could reach her, but it did nothing to save her life. She tried to shove Gabby away when she came too close for comfort, but the merciless dispatching Gabriella gave her was even swifter than the first man’s.

Gabriella twisted around the woman, practically pivoting on the heels of her feet. In the process, she wrapped an arm around the woman’s head, putting her in an unorthodox headlock with her hand at the woman’s neck. With a quick, savage twist, she jerked the woman’s head and shoulders around, dragging her dagger across the woman’s throat in the process. She had let go of the woman and allowed her to collapse to the dirt by the time her rotation around her had finished, and after all of a moment or two, she was moving on to another archer. Out of desperation, the remaining three standing before her fired a flurry of arrows at her, regardless of the fact that their own comrades were directly behind her.

One arrow barely missed her face, tearing through the air beside her head. The second passed between her arm and torso, missing her entirely. The third bit into her hip, but it, too, went ignored by the determined combatant. When Gabriella reached the next closest archer, she ducked her head down and rammed her shoulder into his stomach, reaching her arms around his sides in the process. Before her shoulder-bash knocked him away, she jabbed her daggers into his kidneys, ensuring a painful death before breaking off the engagement. To the annoyance and exasperation of the berserkers chasing after her, Gabriella abruptly tore off to the side, again changing her direction for a chase.

As she moved, she broke the new arrows protruding from her body, making them less prone to aggravation by movement or tampering. Maximus. Was he okay? It had been an unexpected thought in the hectic combat, but it occurred to her to check up on her consort and see how he fared. In the process of leading the Forsworn around, she had been able to spot just about everyone else, but she wasn’t sure what had become of the Imperial. After some manoeuvring around the battlefield, she finally spotted him, still facing Stonearm and all but surrounded by the hanger-ons clinging to their champion like ticks.

Gabriella took off like the wind in Max’s direction, and it was at this same moment that Sabrina similarly attempted to intervene. Running up to the mob, an intense red light filled both hands, and as she waved her arms about in an invisible incantation, the glow surrounded her body, as well. When she unleashed the Hysteria spell, she expected to send everyone scattering, including Stonearm, which would give Maximus room to breathe and recover. Instead, while she succeeded in overpowering the minds of all of Stonearm’s peons, Stonearm, himself, was evidently too strong of will to be manipulated by the illusion. The red glow of the spell washed over his body, but it faded hardly a moment later, and his duel with Maximus continued unabated.

Maximus was sweating so badly that it threatened to get into his eyes, as well as loosen his grip on his sword. Stonearm, too, was perspiring like a war beast, evidently unused to enemies whom he could not quickly overwhelm and slay. That did not mean that Maximus had gone untouched thus far, however. Stonearm had already managed to catch him on the shoulder, and while his pauldron had absorbed the cutting edge of his sword, the way Stonearm had pulled it away had made it slide to the side and run along Max’s collarbone as well as the base of his neck. A low blow had cost Maximus a slash across his thighs, while an attempted thrust to one side of his chest may have fractured a rib.

Comparatively, Stonearm was in pristine condition. The veteran warlord had kept Maximus on the defensive the entire time, and the few attacks Maximus had tried to throw out had been hasty by necessity, and lacked accuracy. The attacks that had been accurate had lacked bite, and so, Stonearm hadn’t suffered anything more than superficial wounds. However, just like with anything, Maximus had a plan, although this one may have been cutting it close. As he clashed blades with Stonearm, Maximus continually aimed the edge of his blade into a certain spot on Stonearm’s lefthand steel sword, around the midway point. Stonearm never seemed to realize what Maximus was trying to do, not until the young swordsman actually succeeded.

On a particularly vicious diagonal chop, Maximus forcibly jabbed the edge of his blade against that of Stonearm’s own, and finally, an ear-splitting clang filled the air. Stonearm was genuinely stunned as the ringing of vibrating metal filled his left ear. Looking down, he found himself gripping little else besides the handle of a sword. The majority of the blade, itself, had snapped right off. Sabrina took advantage of the opening. Extending an arm, she caught the twirling blade piece as it leapt through the air, snatching it from afar with Telekinesis. After all but a second of aiming, she fired the sword shard back outwards, propelling it with a light grunt of exertion.

Stonearm’s torso briefly jerked to the side as his own sword pierced into his ribs from his left side, spearing into him until it had nearly pierced through his entire torso. Maximus momentarily stopped fighting, failing to take advantage of the opening. Grinning, he thought the man was finished. He thought wrong. Stonearm’s eyes filled with bloodlust. With a roar, he threw aside the useless handle of his broken sword, gripped his remaining sword with both hands, and took a mighty, cleaving swing for Maximus’ midriff. Maximus, caught off-guard, didn’t have time to avoid the blow, and so attempted to stop it with the flat side of his blade acting as a barrier.

He succeeded, but his blood nonetheless ran cold. The blow had been so strong that it had sent hairline cracks across the metal of his blade. He couldn’t absorb another blow like that, just one, alone, had more or less ruined the integrity of his weapon. Stonearm’s breathing had audible gurgles as he continued swinging, but with just the one sword, he and Maximus were on even terms, and he couldn’t overwhelm Max or force him to stay on the defensive, any longer. Maximus parried a blow, then struck, had his own blow deflected, and returned the favour on his opponent’s next attack. Even he didn’t notice Gabriella out of his peripheral vision until she struck.

Gabriella leapt onto Stonearm’s back with a furious cry, nearly knocking him straight down to the dirt with the unexpected tackle. Stonearm shouted in uncontrollable rage, sticking the tip of his sword into the dirt. She managed to plunge one dagger into his back for an anchor, but before she could stab the other dagger into his skull, he reached around and grabbed her. In spite of her best efforts, he tore her off of himself almost instantly. Grabbing her by the collar with one hand and the crotch with the other, he lifted her over his head like a doll and threw her, sending her flipping through the air until she smashed into the dirt on her side, rolling over a couple times before coming to a panting stop, pushing herself up until she could glare at her still-standing target.

Stonearm pulled his sword up in time to deflect a thrust from Max, then tried to use the momentum to chop out for the Imperial’s head. Max ducked in time to dodge the blow, and as he stood back up, darted his sword out and slashed across the inside of the Breton’s arm. Stonearm grunted and gave a wheeze, sending blood bubbling between his own lips. He tossed his sword to his uninjured arm and continued the fight, but it wasn’t long before he heard footsteps running for his side, once more. Even with the fog of mortality in his eyes, they widened with fury. He turned to the side and thrust his sword, running through the nuisance.

To his surprise, it wasn’t the elf who had tried to throw herself at him. It was the sorceress who had evaded him with invisibility. His sword pierced straight through her belly until it protruded from her back, but in an instant, he realized the sort of trade she had been willing to make. She had coated herself in a Frost Cloak before charging him, creating a miniature, localized blizzard around herself, whipping around her with all the power of a vicious snowstorm, only contained within a couple feet of space about herself. She didn’t seem particularly fazed at having been run through, and bared her teeth at him as she thrust both arms up towards his face.

From one hand, a purple-black glow popped, firing tiny, ethereal tendrils into Stonearm’s body, causing a faint purple glow to emanate from his skin. From the other, a near-colourless, subtly white glow burst from her palm and washed over his face, quickly spreading to the rest of his body as the Alteration spell took hold. Stonearm’s knees buckled as his posture hunched over, the Weight of the World spell making him feel like hundreds of pounds of weight were crushing down on him. The icy wind of Sabrina’s Frost Cloak began to turn his fingers discoloured with frostbite, and while Stonearm was persuaded by pain into letting go of his sword, he ultimately reached back out with his injured arm and pulled it free, then shoved Sabrina away.

Maximus knew it was time to strike. Stonearm had one foot in the grave, and with Sabrina’s Burden spell, he couldn’t even walk, anymore. It was time to end this. He charged in, closing the distance. Stonearm tried to thrust his sword out, hoping Max would run himself through like Sabrina had, but Max saw the attack coming. Pivoting on a heel, he twisted around and avoided the thrust, using his momentum to slash down diagonally across Stonearm’s chest. While the man’s arm was still extended, he closed in until the two were practically nose-to-nose, then wrapped his free arm around Stonearm’s elbow, trapping the arm, and the sword, behind himself.

Baring his teeth, shouting in his throat, Max brought his right arm back by his left side, winding up a massive attack over his shoulder. When Max threw out his swing, the blade sheared through the antlers of Stonearm’s fur helmet. The crown of Stonearm’s helmet fell to the ground, blood filling it. Stonearm stared into his eyes during the entire moment. The muscular Breton’s legs finally gave out from under him, and with Max still gripping his arm, he fell to a knee, then the other. Max stared down at his handiwork. His sword had cleaved open Stonearm’s brainpan, giving the Imperial a prime target. He dropped his sword, then pulled free Gabriella’s dagger, still embedded in Stonearm’s shoulder.

Gripping it tight, the blade protruding from the bottom of his fist, he raised it up high over his shoulder, then dropped it down like a lightning bolt. It only took one blow for Stonearm to go nerveless. The purple glow coming from Stonearm’s body flashed white, and in an audible eruption of Magicka, white tendrils of light blew out of his body, launching over towards Sabrina in a wild, swirling channel. The two women both gave light sighs. That fight was over. Maximus wasn’t finished, however. He promptly released the man’s arm, then dropped to his knees by Stonearm’s body, getting to work with Gabriella’s dagger.

The two women watched with morbid fascination. A minute later, Maximus stood back up, raising Stonearm’s severed, leaking head high above his own. Maximus let loose such a long, bloodthirsty yell that he intimidated even his nearby lady friends. Shaking the slain, gray-haired Breton’s head back and forth, gesturing at their bloody eyed, slack-jawed champion with the dagger, he roared “See this man! See him dead! This is but the beginning! Your beast has fallen! Nothing can save you!”

Bunny perked up as Max’s voice rang out. Just a few moments later, an equally familiar voice answered him, shouting above the din of combat. “Forsworn! Fall back to the redoubt! Defend the matrons!” The response from the horde was surprisingly quick, and almost immediately, many began to disengage and retreat back into the encampment proper. Bunny’s teeth went on edge. Her father had failed to make an appearance, but her mother was now calling for the retreat. If her old clan managed to get into the hag’s brooding grounds, they’d be able to defend against anything short of a falling star.

(Author's Note - Hey guys! Sorry if there was a bit of a wait, but here’s the next part of Max’s assault on Bunny’s clan. Next chapter should bring the dramatic conclusion, and then there should also be one more additional chapter after that for an epilogue:). After that, well, there might be a couple bonus chapters with self-contained sex scenes that I never got to do, and if you guys feel like making suggestions or putting in votes on more, I’m always listening. It’s been a long, fun ride, but here we are at the end, and I can honestly say that I’m very much thankful for all the great interest, support, and feedback you’ve all showed. All of it was always very encouraging to me and made me want to keep going and give you guys more, and never give less than my best:).

So, this second assault didn’t go as well as the first. After the Forsworn create a situation in which another large-scale stealth attack would be rather difficult to pull off, Gabriella unintentionally sets off a chain of events that blows everyone’s cover. Max tries to contain the situation, but the scouts circling the encampment are too many in number for them to hope to hide the bodies, or even retreat in time. Sabrina bolsters everyone with Ebonyflesh for their bodies and a Call to Arms for their minds, and then, everyone gets bogged down in a battle royale, in which no member of Maximus’ team goes unscathed.

Bunny singlehandedly slays one of the few veterans from the days of the occupation of Markarth, and Maximus, with help from Sabrina and Gabriella, manages to slay Stonearm, another veteran. Now, it’s the Forsworn’s turn to retreat, it seems. Moira, Bunny’s mother, has called for everyone to fall back to the small, narrow canyon in the mountainside that the clan’s Hagravens nest in, a highly defensible position which would force the two sides into a head-on conflict. More than a couple veterans, and a healthy chunk of the clan, still remain capable of fighting. What’s going to happen next? I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! I’ll see you in the next one, whenever it comes out:).)
- 33
- 34
- 35
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Forsworn Retribution