A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

Erik looked out over the fierce fighting happening just outside his dome and sighed. He actually felt a little reluctant to leave these people to their fate. Elora would certainly call him a bleeding heart again, but he couldn't help feeling a connection to his first subjects, even after just two months.

But then, his face hardened. 'It doesn't matter,' he growled in his mind. 'I won't risk the lives of myself and my loved ones, period.'

Yet, just before sounding the retreat, a message resounded in his mind, and hope appeared.  Erik sighed in relief. Instantly, he looked up at the smug, approaching Lilith and smiled.

Lilith immediately narrowed her eyes, losing some of her smug attitude. "What are you smiling about?!" she growled wildly.

Slowly, Erik got back on two feet and pulled his hammer back out of storage. He felt his bruises sting and ache but easily ignored it. He'd felt far worse very recently.

"Why wouldn't I be smiling?" he smirked, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders. "You may be powerful, but you're not undefeatable… The only problem is that you're outnumbering us."

Lilith snorted and one her dagger-whips around dismissively, her smug grin making a return. "I definitely contest your first point, but even assuming you're right, how are you going to solve the second one?"

"Bring in more people, of course!" Erik exclaimed as if it was the most obvious thing. Fortunately, between getting thrown around and all this talking, he'd managed to charge up his lightning flash again.

Suddenly, lightning struck, and Erik flashed forward as he swung his hammer, aiming straight for Lilith's head. The extreme speeds at which he moved were hard to avoid, but Lilith managed it by a hair's breadth.

A well-timed step and a small burst of shadowflame got her to safety, but Erik's goal was never to succeed in that attack, he just wanted to get on her other side.

Once there, he pushed the power of his thundersnow armour to its limits, increasing his speed as much as possible, and ran closer to the other two battles as fast as he could because Lilith had tossed him all the way to the other end of the battlefield.

Snarling, Lilith immediately jumped into pursuit. "Come back here! Do you really think you can save your companions before I stop you?!"

Unfortunately, she was right. Small puffs of shadowflame shot out of the soles of her feet and propelled her forward at a speed slightly superior to Erik. "She's using a technique rather than a spell…" Elora ruefully explained in his mind. "How did she get a useful technique like that when I don't even have one?"

Erik had no answer for her and was far too busy anyway. Lilith was snapping her whips at his hock-jointed legs in an attempt to slow him down, but he just barely managed to stay ahead of her thanks to his lightning flash lead.

At least for a few more seconds.

In the end, he couldn't stay ahead for long, but he'd gotten much closer to the other two fights, and that was all he really wanted to achieve. Suddenly whipping around to reveal a charging thundersnow blast at the tip of his hammer, he smashed it against the ground in front of him.

Instantly, the surroundings exploded in a confusing rain of ice and hot sand. "Gah!" Lilith exclaimed as she'd been running relatively close to him and got a full blast of sand and ice in her face. It didn't hurt her, but her whips were destroyed, and her vision was obstructed.

Still, her omnisense managed to find Erik, barely at the edge of her omnisense range. Screaming in rage, she charged him straight through the sand and ice, shadowflame dancing on her knives.
Read new chapters at My Virtual Library Empire

With the clang of metal hitting metal, her knives were blocked by Erik's hammer haft. With a confident smile, Erik engaged her in close combat. His bruises were still bothering him, but he had a slight advantage due to his helmet protecting him from the sand and ice.

While they could use their omnisense to see each other's locations, they couldn't do much more because they were also protecting themselves against the other's senses. Thus, simple vision was still very important in a third-ranked battle, but Lilith's eyes were naked and unprotected in this icy sandstorm, unlike Erik's.

With every second, Lilith grew more frustrated until she finally had enough. "Enough!" she snarled and spread her arms wide. A surge of shadowflame exploded outward, instantly wiping out all the remaining sand and ice, revealing the battlefield once again.

After it was all gone, Lilith was left panting with rage in a small crater of her own making. All the sand and ice were gone from the air, and Erik was clearly visible again, standing half a dozen steps in front of her. He'd covered his face with his arms to be safe, but Eira made sure the Runeguard made it through Lilith's rage in one piece.

"Enough playing around!" she cried out at him, eyes flaring. "Never mind your damn secrets, never mind playing around, I'm going to flay you alive!"

Slowly, Erik lowered his arms to reveal a slight grin. Shrugging, he swung his hammer over his right shoulder in a casual manner. "Whatever you say, Edda. I got all the time in the world."

Lilith frowned, confused about where this sudden confidence was coming from. But then she noticed. Their little battleground had suddenly gotten a little busier.

Two people were moving rapidly away from her and Erik, each heading for one of the secondary battlefields. "Astrid?!" Lilith growled hatefully when she recognized the tall, beautiful, strawberry-blond vampire.

Dressed in her fierce, Viking-style armour, Astrid sprinted at Enkai's battlefield with two medium-length swords in her hands. These were newly crafted weapons using their dimension's forge.

Her previous swords did their job decently well, but in the end, they'd been made in a mortal forge with scrounged-together ghoul claws. They were never Erik's best work.

Astrid glanced back at Lilith with a hate-filled glare when she heard her name called. Still, she only scoffed and looked forward again, knowing she shouldn't let herself get distracted. Her skin glowed with orange runes, boosting her speed, and she shot off to aid Enkai.

Across from Astrid, however, was a far more interesting sight that gave Erik pause for a moment.

"Heh, yeah, she lucked out with her third rank spell," Elora chuckled in his mind, watching the scene from inside his dimension. "It probably wouldn't be more than a serious distraction when fighting a Runebound, but against Arcanists, a spell like that can be devastating."

"That's not really what I'm concerned about…" Erik muttered, his eyebrows twitching slightly.

Over on that side of the battlefield, Emily wore a blissful smile, nestled in the arms of a towering, heavily armed werewolf spectre, hammer and all, sprinting headlong toward Ankhur's battlefield.

It didn't wear a helmet, and its face was like looking into a shadowy mirror…