I stood on the deck of the faintly rocking barge, staring up at the partially molten stone figure of a man falling from the sky. My face was blank, but every childhood dream of being a knight bubbled up from the depths of my mind, demanding attention. Through my years of service, I had seen knights practice and fight plenty of times, but this was different.

This was a childhood hero come to life, fighting forces that only existed in the oldest myths long discarded as tall tails. Yet, those myths could apparently be brought to life by the beastkin.

The Molten Man fell from the sky, chunks of liquid rock trailing behind him like the stars burning behind the roiling clouds above. A blue dome flickered to life around the tower barge next to the southern bank of the Rush, but it was a pale imitation of the last shield as it was hardly tinting the area within blue. It was like a sheet of paper compared to the book they had before.

When the smoldering rock struck the barrier, a flair of blue mana rose up in opposition, but it was barely enough to ruffle a strand of my hair, let alone push back the multi-ton stone armor shell. Before the burning ten yards tall armor around Brackus could sink more than the length of its forearm into the blue shield, it shattered. But this time, there was no explosion of energy that threw everything away.

The superheated fist ripped apart the barrier, leading the way for the rest of the smoldering figure to enter the protected area. While the shield was failing, though it still held for a few seconds before breaking into slivers of shimmering power that dissipated into blue sparks, the Molten Man crashed into the middle of the deck.

The barge was forced several feet into the water before bobbing back up, sending out a wave that pushed back the broken ice, which was attempting to migrate down the river. In a matter of seconds, everything settled back to normal, the tower barge remaining undamaged as if the impact of a multi-ton burning rock meant nothing. The most I could say happened was the blue glow that bled from the wood pulse brighter for an instant before falling to a slightly lower output than before.

Brackus stayed where he crouched for a second, his right knee touching the wood while the other pressed into the golem's chest and his right fist planted next to his left foot. As the burning stone man rose, five chest-sized water tentacles rose from the boat's sides and lashed out at it.

Now that the barge's deck was no longer covered by a nearly opaque blue shield, I saw it no longer had a wild melee raging across its surface. All the knights had gathered by the tower on the far side of the boat, with a line of warrior beastkins fighting them. A circle of five azure-glowing beastkins, with a shining ring around their feet, were the only ones standing between Brackus and the tower. The poor bastards.

Head snapping left at some movement, I was surprised to find the northern tower barge and all its occupants were a couple hundred feet closer as our ship moved into the center of the river. I hadn't even noticed my perspective of the fighting on the tower barge was changing with how focused I was on it.

Making a concerted effort to follow my training and look around, I saw the others had taken up positions around the ship's sides, as three knights, two of which were heavily wounded with broken and bloody armor, were now in the center of our boat. On the northern side of the river, I saw the line of barges was even more broken up than ours. Two knights were racing along the sinking boats and drifting barges, heading towards the melee on the northern tower barge.

If the sun was out, I grimly thought, the river would be running red. It was not a guess on my part. Leaning over the railing, I looked down, spotting the splashes of beastkins attempting to stay on the water's surface or still clinging to a chunk of ice even in death.

"Booong!" Echoed a deep reverberation off the walls of the Triad. Whipping around, I turned in time to see the Molten Man pull back his arm after trying to strike the five brightly glowing beastkins. Around their bodies, this time far darker and smaller than the last two times, was another blue dome shield.

My vision of the dome was obstructed as the water whips lashed forward and twisted around the smoldering knight. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that one of the water tendrils looked like a spear as it surged into the figure's chest, while I saw the others were latching onto his arms and legs.

It was only for a moment, but I saw a water spear impacting the stone chest of the armor as the restraining tendrils coated the limbs. Then, the river was filled with a sizzling hiss as tons of water burst into steam that quickly flowed over the ship's deck and onto the wider river.

From the sides of the boat, I saw the base of the water tentacles sucking up the river's water as their ends were continuously evaporated. Seconds passed one after another, with the hissing water never stopping. Suddenly, the crack of breaking stone sounded, followed by another boom, but this time, it wasn't nearly as strong as before.

All at once, the steam shrouding the ship surged outwards. Ducking and covering my face with my arms, I felt a momentary cold breeze before I was wrapped in an intense, clammy heat. After it began to cool, I moved my arms away and looked at the tower barge.

Standing on the deck was no longer a bipedal molten figure vaguely resembling a man ten yards tall. In its place were chunks of stone. Gone was the heat radiating off its surface as the orange glow of near-liquid stone was nowhere to be seen. For the most part, the figure was still whole. Laying on the deck at the feet of the stone golem, I could see pieces that were once part of the arms and chest, along with other lumps of stone, but the torso and legs were whole.

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Forcing my eyes off the broken figure, I looked at the beastkins huddling at its stone feet. They were still covered in a dome, but it no longer appeared as strong as before. From the movements of the beastkins, they looked wounded or, at the very least, exhausted. The waving around of their arms no longer seemed as sharp or precise as before.

My heart leaped as a splash filled the air when the tentacles collapsed into the deck and rushed back to the river. However, before the spark of hope in my chest that they had run out of mana could ignite, the liquid fist rising out of the river that was nearly identical to the ones that started this portion of the battle extinguished it.

It wasn't quite as large as the last water tendrils, but it didn't need to be. All the water fist needed to smash was a lone stone statue instead of the gatehouse to a millennia-old fortress. After it towered twenty feet above the deck, the liquid fist stopped growing and started its descent.

At that moment, the stone statue exploded outwards. It wasn't all of the statue, as the feet and one arm were still standing, but most of the chest and right arm shot to the side with a shower of stone. The watery fist smashed what was left behind into rubble, but I could not stop a smile from curling my lips. The attack had landed too late.

Instead of a thirteen-yard hulking figure, Brackus was now hardly larger than he was wearing his normal steel armor. As his name and abilities would suggest, his extra mass still came from stone, but this time was different. The ratio had shifted.

Before, it was lines of cherry red vining their way around patches of gray stone. Now, it was lines of gray stone surrounded by cherry-red pools. Clutched in his right fist, or what he just made his right arm into, was a lance of churning stone.

The lance wasn't the weak heat that merely warped the air around the rest of his body. No, the farther toward the tip of the spear you looked, the lighter and brighter the color became. Until, at the very tip, I could swear I saw a blindingly white point, but I could not fully look at the spot to find out as it stung my eyes.

Brackus's new form road the wave of water that broke free from the fist as it impacted the statue. He slid ten or more feet before stopping, the water lapping at his ankles sizzling upon contact into a steam that curled around his glowing figure. He stood still for a moment, his body radiating potential and power. In the next second, he shot forward, leading the way with his brilliant lava spear.

The unclenched water hand tried to interpose itself between Brackus and the beastkin, but it could not close the distance fast enough. The water tendril was unable to move directly at the Molten Man as the knight had angled his eruption and slide from the stone figure's wreckage to place the beastkins between him and it, and that half-second was all the time the old knight needed.

With a blur of motion, the next thing I saw was a flash of azure light signaling the contact between his spear and the beastkins' shield, covering my vision in white spots. By the time they cleared from my sight, the Molten Man's spear had seared its way through one beastkin's chest and into another.

In the next instant, he didn't even bother to pull back his lance to use it again. Instead, he swung it to the side, the flesh of the beastkins' bodies sloughing away in puffs of smoke as he targeted his next victim. Now that he was within arms reach of his prey, they were as helpless as infants before an adult.

Grazing the side of his spear against the chest of the next beastkin, it sank into its flesh like a hot knife through butter. As he whipped the spear away, half of the poor creature's chest was gone as if it had never existed, and the other was a charred and smoldering mess.

As the lance was performing its deadly work, his arm snapped out, and a blob of molten stone shot out of his fist, impacting the chest of a fourth beastkin. The wolfkin fell to the ground, screaming in agony as he clawed at what was left of his collapsing torso.

In an instant, four of the mage beastkins were dead, and the fist of water collapsed, no longer able to remain cohesive as it moved, spilling over the deck. Clouds of steam rose around the burning figure as he strode toward his last target.

To the wolf's credit, he formed a water sword and charged to meet the knight. Not that the decision mattered. As I opened my eyes from a blink, I saw the figure with a spear through his chest. In the next second, the body slowly fell to the ground as its own dead weight pulled itself down through the spear, and the light blue glow covering the deck of the southern tower barge vanished.

The nearly evaporated water around Brackus's feet held back the heat for an instant, but that was all. From what looked like one moment to the next, fire clawed at his feet, like a forest fire taking root in the dry grasses of late summer.

Then the Molten Man moved, leaving burning steps of fire to mark his passage, appearing at the back of the beastkins who were still pressing the other knights on the ship. Swinging his lance like it was a large axe, he burned through the backs of half a dozen people, severing any cohesion in the battle line.

The fight was over, and he ensured the fire would firmly take hold of the tower barge by releasing a blob of liquid stone. With his job on the southern barge done, the Molten Man turned and leaped into the air, streaking towards the northern tower barge as the knights mopped up the beastkins and gathered at the railing.

With a lurch, I felt the boat under my feet move as we quickly traveled the distance to the tower barges, stopping in the open river between the two. When we arrived, the knights on the burning tower barge quickly leaped across the distance between us.

The lines of boats were broken; one of the tower barges was quickly becoming a burning wreck, and the other was beginning to smolder with the Molten Man's presence. A relieved smile came onto my face.

The beastkin might be pressing the walls hard, but after this clusterfuck of an operation, they had to pull back and regroup, at least for tonight. We held back the first assault. I thought in relief after long minutes had passed of me watching the knights finish up their fights and the fires on the barges consume everything.

"Crack-boom! Cracacaca-boom~!" It was like a god had spoken, and his voice echoed across the world. The light of heaven fell from the sky, and all I could hear was the screams of the air being torn apart before everything went silent.

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