Lightning crackling around her body, she zips across the battlefield. Chopping off a mans arm, she throws his spear at an enemy archer. The shaft buries itself in the archer’s throat before he can loose his arrow. Briana doesn’t pause—her boots skid through mud as she pivots, her sword carving through another attacker’s ribs. The battlefield noise is deafening—steel on steel, screams, the wet crunch of bone—but her focus narrows to a single thought: *Find him.*

For the average man, tracking her is impossible.

But for the soldiers of hawkthorne, when their enemy was suddenly on the ground half dead, they had an idea. Soon chants began.

"THE HEIR OF HAWKTHORNE IS HERE."

The chant rippled through the ranks of her father’s soldiers like wildfire—first a murmur, then a roar. Briana didn’t acknowledge it. Her sword arm burned with exertion, her gauntlets slick with blood both fresh and drying. She fought with the precision of a hawk diving for prey, her movements sharp, relentless. But beneath the adrenaline, her chest tightened. No sign of her father yet.

Sensing something rapidly approaching, She quickly jumped backwards. The moment she did, a spiky pillar of rock emerged fro the very spot she was.

The dust hadn’t settled from the earthen spike’s eruption when Briana heard laughter—dark, rhythmic chuckling that cut through battlefield clamor like a saw through flesh. She turned just as the ground between her feet fissured again. This time, she rolled sideways, her armored shoulder hitting the mud hard as another jagged pillar burst upward.

"You dance well for a hawk," came the voice again, thick with amusement.

Briana scrambled to her feet, mud streaking her white cape as she leveled her sword toward the source of the voice. The battlefield seemed to blur around her, the din of clashing steel fading into white noise. A man stood atop a crumbling outcropping, his silhouette framed by the blood-red dawn. Wolf pelts draped his shoulders, their muzzles sewn shut with rusted wire. His fingers twitched, and the earth shuddered in response.

"As this dance will be your last, I want you to show me everything. Ill do the same." Briana crouched low, her blade humming with electricity. The wolf-pelted man smirked, flexing his fingers—then the earth beneath her erupted in a dozen jagged spikes. She twisted midair, her sword carving through three of them before her boots touched down, only for the ground to liquefy instantly.

The moment her feet sunk, The man as already casting another spell, he motioned for the ground to come up and a piece of rock detached itself from the ground. And then he pointed at Briana.

The rock hurtled toward her, sharp edges gleaming. Briana twisted her wrist, lightning arcing from her blade to intercept it midair—the stone exploded into dust, showering the battlefield like coarse rain. She didn’t wait. Her boots tore free of the muck with a wet *schlorp*, and she lunged, sword trailing blue-white sparks. The earth mage’s eyes widened—he hadn’t expected her to close the gap so fast.

The earth mage staggered back, his boots kicking up loose dirt as Briana’s blade carved a searing arc toward his throat. At the last second, he crossed his forearms—not to block, but to *redirect*. The ground beneath Briana’s feet lurched violently, throwing her strike wide as the earth itself seemed to buckle under her like a living thing. She hissed as her swordtip grazed empty air, then pivoted on her heel—only for a fist of compacted soil to slam into her ribs, sending her skidding backward.

"Such talent for such a young age. Im quite envious you know."

Briana spat blood onto the churned earth, her ribs screaming with every breath. The taste of iron coated her tongue, but she grinned anyway. "Envious?" She flicked her wrist, sending a whip-crack of lightning into the dirt between them. "You should be terrified."

The earth mage’s smirk faltered as the ground beneath his feet began to glow—not from his own magic, but from the network of scorching veins Briana had just seared into the soil. He barely had time to curse before she clenched her fist. The earth detonated upward in a pillar of superheated rock, hurling him skyward like a ragdoll.

The earth mage crashed into the mud twenty paces away, his wolf pelts smoking, his limbs splayed like a broken puppet’s. Briana didn’t wait for him to rise. She sprinted forward, her sword humming with pent-up lightning—only to skid to a halt when the man *laughed*, a wet, gurgling sound that made her skin crawl.

His face went from laughing to murderous is an instant Many needles of dirt rose from the ground.

The needles shot forward like a hail of iron nails—each one sharpened to a killing point. Briana spun her sword in a tight arc, the blade singing as lightning sheared through the projectiles, reducing them to harmless clumps of dirt that pattered against her armor like rain. But the earth mage wasn’t done. Even as he coughed blood onto the battlefield, his fingers dug into the mud, and the ground beneath Briana’s feet *rippled*, undulating like a living thing. She leaped just as the earth split open beneath her, a yawning maw of jagged rock teeth snapping shut where she’d stood seconds before.

Before he could make another, Briana struck him. Her blade punched through his ribs with a wet crunch, lightning crackling through his torso until his eyes rolled back, smoke curling from his mouth.

Yet the battle wasn’t done. A man tried to attack her blind spot. Briana pivoted on instinct, her blade slicing upward—only for an arrow to sprout from his throat before she could strike. She turned to see one of her father’s archers lowering his bow, nodding sharply before vanishing back into the fray.

The battlefield had shifted. With the earth mage dead and Briana’s lightning carving through enemy ranks, the tide was turning. Wolfskin warriors faltered, their formations crumbling as Hawkthorne’s soldiers pressed forward with renewed fury. Briana didn’t celebrate. She wove through the chaos, her gaze scanning the carnage for a familiar face.

on another part of the battlefield, Three powerful people struggle to take on an aging man.

The trio circled him—a broad-shouldered man, holding a ball and chain, a lithe dark elf woman with twin daggers dripping venom, and a Beautiful woman, with purple hair flowing past her shoulders and a sword. whose fists crackled with unstable magic. Between them stood Theodore Hawkthorne, his silver-trimmed armor dented but unbroken, his spear hands steady despite the blood streaking his graying beard.

Theodore pivoted just as the dark elf lunged, her daggers carving twin arcs of poison-green through the air. He twisted his spear shaft horizontally—*clang-clang*—the daggers bounced off the steel like pebbles off a boulder. Before she could recover, his boot caught her square in the ribs, sending her skidding through mud.

"Getting slow, Vexa," Theodore growled.

The purple-haired woman didn’t wait for her fallen comrade to rise. Her sword flickered like a living thing, weaving intricate patterns in the air as she advanced—each movement precise, rehearsed, deadly. Theodore barely parried the first strike, the impact sending tremors up his arms. Behind him, the ball-and-chain warrior’s weapon whirred through the air with terrifying momentum.

Theodore ducked—the spiked iron ball grazed his pauldron with a screech of metal—and countered with a vicious upward thrust of his spear. The purple-haired woman twisted aside, but not fast enough; the spearpoint ripped through her sleeve, drawing a thin line of crimson. She hissed, her eyes flashing with something beyond anger.

Theodore’s breath came in ragged gulps as the purple-haired woman’s sword flickered again—this time aiming low, for the gap in his greaves. He jerked his leg back just in time, but the movement threw him off balance. Behind him, the ball-and-chain warrior chuckled, winding up for another crushing swing. Theodore planted his spear in the mud and vaulted over it, narrowly avoiding the iron ball that cratered the earth where he’d stood.

"Running out of tricks, old man?" the warrior taunted, hefting his weapon.

Theodore merely Chuckled. "I know that i might not live, but one of you will be going along with me to the afterlife." A pulse of electricity surged through his spear.

Amanda was angry but, her old mentor was right.

Should they get sloppy, he may even kill them all.