We stood and stared each other down. His body stat was SS, a hair higher than mine. He was a professional fighter who had spent years of his life building muscle memory and reflexes intended to let him win in melee combat. That was a disadvantage, in a way. Killing a man in the octagon was frowned upon, to put it mildly. He was trained to win, but I was trained to kill and get away with it.

Mune, shit! Rage boiled through me as the stain that had until recently been my friend caught my eye. Mune's golem didn't appreciate this bullshit Western-style standoff. There was a horrific screeching noise as it tore its way out of a building, throwing bricks and dust ahead of it as it charged its master's killer.

Gallagher pivoted with inhuman grace to keep me in sight while presenting a defence to the enraged bot. No one ever accused me of fighting fair, so I activated Enhancement and blurred to his left, forcing him to split his attention further, and then rushed forward to attack at the same time as the mad robot.

Bronze fists flicked out as the machine engaged him. He twisted and dodged, moving too fast for the bot, and launched an open-palmed slap to wipe away Mune's golem like he'd wiped away my friend. I caught his hand, the bot struck him in the face, and he whirled, taking me off my feet and using me to swat away Mune's former companion.

He didn't let go of my arm after he used me as a bot-swatter; he swung me to the ground with a thud that knocked the wind out of my lungs, and there was a blur that made my head ring. My helm was faintly dented over my nose, and the eye slits had deformed slightly. My sword swept round and he leapt back, deftly avoiding the awkward cut.

I clanked back to my feet and faced him again. He was loose and relaxed, oozing confidence that I intended to disabuse him of. He looked at me blankly and drew his blades.

"Very well. A worthy foe. It's been a while." His swords blurred through a complex swirling pattern for a moment, and while he was showboating for a crowd that wasn't present, I kicked a cloud of dust into his face and rushed him. I grew to nearly twice my normal size, using double the mana to shift my armour at the same time. My sword went from a bastard sword to an oversized dagger in my right mitt. It didn't matter; I was leading with my left foot anyway.

He snapped his swords into a crossed guard as my giant foot slammed towards his chest, but the blow still sent him skittering away from me, bouncing across the dirt. I chased, looking to stab him while he was still lying on his arse but he recovered his feet in a fluid, serpentine motion and rushed back towards me with a grin on his face. We duelled. His blades couldn't pierce my armour, but he knew his stuff. I was constantly forced to block and dodge as a point reached out for my armpit or groin.

He sped up again, and a blade nicked through and caught me under the left armpit. Despite his sudden speed and weight, he must have taken the Space affinity as well, I managed to parry his left-hand blade slicing towards my danglies, and then I burst into fire.

Wildfire spread out around me, catching his legs, and he threw himself away to roll across the ground as he tried to put the flames out. My Wildfire didn't give up easily, though. He dropped his swords and began patting at his smoking legs as the flesh began to bubble and burst; his fat and muscles were cooking. His entire body glowed green for a moment, and his legs were healed. Fucking healers. He was still on fire, but before he could cast another heal, I swept my blade at his knees. I'd like to see him grow his fucking legs back quickly enough to stop me from ending him.

He grabbed one of his swords off the ground, and it grew to three times its former size as he sank the tip into the ground to anchor it. My own blade bounced off with a loud clang, and while he had saved his legs this time, I wasn't fighting fair. My free hand flicked my impossibly sharp dagger towards his heart as my back foot swung through to scramble his eggs. His other shortsword flicked across and knocked my rising foot to the side. It clanged against the blade he had planted in the ground.

As a result, my dagger didn't slice through his ribs and pierce his heart as I'd intended; it sank up to the hilt in his left bicep, the point stabbing through to cut into his ribs. He lurched backwards, but I was already spinning the other way, pirouetting like a deadly, butch ballerina. My sword blurred as I used a charge from the Haste bead Kril had made for me all those months ago.

Gallagher loomed over me. He went from six feet tall to nearly fifteen in an instant. And instead of removing his left arm as I'd planned, my blade just left a deep gash across his thigh. As soon as the cut landed, the injury glowed green and knit itself shut.

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Fucking. Healers.

Then a massive foot swept forward, and I went bowling away across the flagstones. I rolled back to my feet, blade held out to my right hand side and grinned behind my visor. Bob had arrived, and taking down the big bastards was very much in his wheelhouse. He scrambled up Gallagher's back, whirring tentacles and angle-grinder hands ripping divots out of my enemy while pointed spider legs dug into his flesh with every step. The warrior from Earth screamed and spun, trying to swat Bob away, but a bronze tentacle snaked around his face and stabbed into his left eye. When he did manage to cast my golem off his back, there was a wet sucking sound as his left eye was pulled free. Bob flew through the air clutching his prize in a metal fist.

Mune's bot reappeared, battered and barely functional, seeking to use Bob as a distraction. It lurched like a bad stop-motion animation as it jerked its way to embrace the giant's knee. The thing went from a dull, battered and blood-splattered bronze to a red glow. In less than a second, the light shining from it ran all the way up the rainbow until it was pulsing with an intense, faintly purple light.

The bot was melting its way into Gallagher's leg. Burning metal closed tight, fat liquified and trickled towards his ankle, blue flames licking up as lipids turned to a gas, and the blood sizzled as it hit the red-hot golem. Bob slammed into me and bowled me away from Gallagher just as the world went white.

Fire no longer damaged me at all, and my armour's magical absorption combined with the resistance I'd gained from the Life affinity made almost all magical damage negligible. It still hurt, though. As I blinked my eyes and began to get a clear view of the dirt pressed against my visor, I fought down a curse and rolled back to my feet.

A plaintive wail rang out. A gigantic human foot, still clad in the charred remains of a leather sandal, stood forlorn and alone. Behind it, Gallagher rolled back and forth, screaming like a hungry baby.

I took a step forward but had to yank my foot from the ground. The armour was hot enough to melt its way into the stone flags. I plodded slowly closer, pausing to pick up my sword that had fallen to the side as I was thrown backwards by Mune's golem's suicidal revenge. Bits of glowing bronze were scattered around me.

Gallagher shrank back to his normal size, but his leg didn't grow back. The bot had crippled him, and I limped forward to finish the job. Mune's death lurked in the back of my mind, like the furnaces that used to be the beating heart of the old dreadnoughts.

My friend. His wife… any sympathy I had for Gallagher vanished, and I flicked a trio of Fireballs at him. He bounced and rolled across the grounds from the concussive blasts, but the damage was nothing compared to the achievement of the golem.

My magic had scooped semi-circular sections of the ground out of existence, but had done little more than inconvenience Gallagher. He was glowing green almost constantly, spending mana like water to try and- what the fuck?

His goddamn leg was regrowing as I limped closer. Skin and muscle boiled as the limb began to reform. He looked at me, and I became heavy enough to sag to one knee. I used Enhancement, rose carefully to my feet as the stone flags cracked beneath me, and took a step towards him. My sword swung back, ready to flash over and cut him in half.

"Don't!" he cried out. I'd broken him. "Let me go! You'll never see me again!" He dragged himself away from my vengeance as his leg slowly regrew. It had been severed at the knee, but he already had most of his shin back. Another 30 seconds and he'd be back on his feet, plural. How high was his level? I didn't have anything that would let me regrow limbs like a gecko that lost its tail.

"Why are you fighting for that shit?" I snarled as I limped closer in my red-hot armour.

"He forced me! I didn't have a fucking choice, you fucking psycho!"

"Fun fact. I'm not psychotic. Maybe sociopathic, but nowadays I'm not so sure. I think I've grown as a person, you know? I'm not the cold-hearted bastard that green-eyed bitch stabbed back in England. But he's still in here, you know? Still staring out from behind my eyes."

I released Kos and the woman we'd kidnapped earlier from my storage space. I shoved the lady and her once more crying child towards Kos.

"I've got this, brother. Get her out of here. I'll avenge Mune."

"Make it slow!" my brother-in-law snapped as he dragged the woman away.

"JAMES!" she screamed, and Gallagher lurched to his knees and bounded towards us like a three-legged dog, his face a venomous mask.

Kos lifted her off the ground with one hand, and she cried out in pain. He was careful to make sure the baby was supported, using his free hand to press it gently against her chest.

"Nakelin!" Gallagher grunted. Kos sagged, letting the woman drop to the ground. She ran over to throw herself on top of Gallagher, then spun, holding her child in front of her like a shield. Perhaps I was being unfair, but I couldn't help but notice that the crying baby stayed between me and my fellow exile from Earth. Kos grunted as he sank to his knees, his bones audibly creaking. I threw a Heal Other at him and rushed towards Gallagher. I'd lost my sword somewhere in the fight, but my dagger, the partner to my wedding gift to Fay, was protruding from a flagstone. I snatched the blade out of the rock as I passed.

"Fuck off, you savage!" snarled Nakelin, using her free hand to pick up and wave one of Gallagher's blades at me.

"I won't hurt you, woman. But you need to get out of my way," I growled.

"Go fuck a horse, you fucking-" she began, but Gallagher pulled her round and put his hand on her arm. Whatever she was to him, he shoved her round behind his body and raised his free hand in my direction.

"Leave them, Cobbler. They've done you no harm, man. Call it the last request of a worthy enemy."

"You killed my friend." I moved forward slowly as the woman's screams rang out across the entrance to Mortimer's palace.

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