It probably says nothing good about my budding career as a Warden that I was so thoroughly engrossed in watching the Rebels and the Crusaders beat ten shades out of each other that I completely missed the Imperial army rolling through our defences. In fact, I was so mesmerised by the scrap on my right—the fire, the screaming, the endless clash of steel and doctrine—that I only noticed the Empire's sudden, inexorable advance when it felt like every single one of my Abilities flared up at once.

It started as a ripple along my spine. A flickering warning light in the corner of my vision. Then, all at once, my System lit up like a funeral pyre at a rave.

[Aggro Magnetism: Ready] [Unwelcome Mat: Charged] [Crash Tackle: Primed] [Tactical Provocation: Active] [Zone of Authority: Active] [Controlled Catastrophe: Primed] [Anvil Break: Standby] [Strategic Instinct: Activated] [Sidestep – Passive Enhancements Engaged]

Even my Traits got involved, pinging warnings and recalibrations like a roomful of caffeinated actuaries. [Stubborn Constitution], [Shadow Marked], and [Lineholder's Instinct] were all suddenly on high alert. It was a full-body alarm bell, every strand of my System screaming in elegant blue: Danger close. Get your backside in gear, Eli!

I thought I'd felt like my spidey senses were tweaking when I got myself the hell out of London. It was nothing like this, and I didn't need telling twice. Everyone else's attention was on the Rebels and the Crusaders. If we weren't careful, we'd lose the gatehouse in seconds...

I vaulted onto the ground, boots skidding in churned mud, and landed in the middle of the path leading to Anchorfall's temporarily undefended palisade. I knew this was an entirely stupid action, but what other choices did I have? We were being blindsided, and someone needed to stand in the breach. Which was kind of my job description, wasn't it? I braced my feet and tried to slow down my suddenly panicked breathing

I planted a Zone of Authority around me and felt the ground beneath my feet darken, mirroring some of the sketches Aunt M had etched onto her table. Fingers crossed, that meant that anything which chose to step into my five-metre circle would be slower, sloppier, and substantially more smakable in the face with my morningstar. Considering how outnumbered I was about to be, the nice free +10% mitigation and +5% accuracy was a bonus I felt I was about to need.

Then Aggro Magnetism gave the biggest ping I think I'd ever experienced. The pulse started in my chest and spread with all the warmth and joy of a three-day hangover, and it forced the attention of all the attackers away from a wider assault on Anchorfall and all my way. I watched as Rage Debuffs slapped onto Imperial units like magnetic parking tickets and faces twisted into rage and frothing scorn. Wave upon wave of stamina drain, attack slop, and reaction blur also rolled over them, which I really hoped would even out the odds somewhat. I feared it probably would not.

Especially as it would be fair to say that anyone who hadn't noticed me before was now finding me utterly captivating and very, very murderable.

There was a beat as everyone readjusted themselves to this new reality. And I, briefly, enjoyed the moment of pause. Sometimes, being the silence in the middle of an oncoming storm is quite intoxicating. Time itself seemed to wind down, stop, and then spool up again.

It was on.

Hundreds of Imperial soldiers clad in steel, their helmets sculpted into terrifying wolf visages, all charged my way. Behind them, haloed in red and positively leaking arrogance, came Katya. Because, of course, it was Katya. There's nothing quite like the girl whose already murdered you once appearing at your literal gates of death to really spice up your day.

She didn't say anything right away; rather, she just stared at me across the closing gap between us like I was an unflushed toilet she had hoped never to see again. Which I thought was pretty unfair considering it was her driving forward an unprovoked attack on my village, after all. The knights before her ran forward in perfect synchronicity, lifting their weapons with a precision that suggested a tragic absence of hobbies.

Still, I didn't move, letting the various triggering bonuses pile up and over me like a whole host of old coats scavenged from the cupboard under the stairs. I could feel Unwelcome Mat pulsing in the back of my mind, eager to be thrown over someone nearby - like a bodyguard preparing to dive on a grenade - but I still appeared to have absolutely no allies within reach. No backup. Just me and the surging certainty that things were about to get delightfully stupid.

Then Strategic Instinct kicked in, and suddenly I had all sorts of overlays in the middle of my vision: trajectories, morale vectors, weak points, flank indicators. It was like playing Risk while someone poured coffee into my lap and smacked me in the face with the rules of Total War. Everything sharpened, and I found my stance shifting slightly to better prepare myself for what was coming. This wasn't going to be easy, but as Sidestep began pulsing away, I was about as ready for this as I was going to get.

My heart settled, and my mind clicked into a place I genuinely don't think it had been in for quite some time. It was game time.

I watched as Katya raised one hand. Her lips parted to deliver the final order to attack. The imperial forces all around her raised their weapons in textbook symmetry. Which is when I smacked a Tactical Provocation right into the middle of her self-satisfied face. A red ring locked around the woman, and for a half-second, I felt the System hold its breath.

[Effect Rebuffed: Target immune or resisting – No Aggro drawn]

Well, that was disappointing. Still, you can't keep bowling strikes, can you? I really needed to level these things up if I wanted to mix it with the really big, bad guys. Instead, I threw up a Controlled Catastrophe, which let out a silent burst of unfriendly consequences into the men running my way. I watched a whole group of them went tumbling, legs buckling like reality had forgotten how gravity worked. Some blinked as if blind, others gagged, and more than a handful just dropped their swords and froze, swaying gently as drunks on a funfair ride.

A minor victory. I now had a small barricade of fallen and confused soldiers in a semicircle in front of me. It was hardly the Maginot Line, but I could work with it.

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Katya, clearly, wasn't wild about that turn of events and signalled for her archers to let fly at me. In moments, a curtain of arrows hissed through the air. Maybe hundreds loosed in elegant Imperial synchrony straight at me. They lanced over my suddenly ducking form like a barbed wind and tore into the field just beyond, where Crusaders and Rebels were still enthusiastically introducing their respective ideologies to one another's spleens.

The screaming from over there was immediate, but I didn't have time to wonder exactly how those two armies were going to respond to a sizeable section of the third force in play suddenly shooting them in the backs. Because I was being professionally rushed.

One knight was slightly ahead of the others, and I met him halfway with Crash Tackle. The hit seemed to massively buff my weight because, although he was far bigger than me, and in much better armoured for sure, Momentum Break flared drove him straight back and off his feet, wiping out six or seven others behind him. Tower shields and weapons went crashing down in a pretty chaotic way, adding to the little protective cocoon I was beginning to build around me.

The problem was that I was pretty much surrounded now, hemmed in on all sides like the centrepiece of some Imperial butcher's diagram. On the one hand, their numbers actually helped me out some. Only a certain number of them could try to hit me at once, even though they all wanted to, and for the most part, they were getting in their own way. On the other... well, I was being battered.

Blows rained down from every angle, and although, thanks to Sidestep and every single mitigation boost I had, there was nothing lethal coming, at least not yet, each one was chipping away at me. Glancing hits off my chest plate, a blade that screeched along my thigh, a hammer that caught my ribs just off-guard enough to make breathing a painful activity. Against that one, Opportunistic Counter triggered, and I attacked without thinking, ducking a follow-up clumsy swing to drive my boot into the side of a knight's knee. The joint gave with a sick pop, dropping him into perfect range. My morningstar followed, gravity and desperation combining in one persuasively violent movement that ended with a wet clang against his visor. Bone or metal? Reader, I didn't care.

The pressure around me was biblical. I was literally drowning in steel, their bodies squeezing me like a tide of armoured judgment. I knew that every second I held that gateway against the attack, someone, anyone, might realise how close Anchorfall was to complete and total collapse. There was still a chance Scar or Lia would spot what was happening and form up, to rally, to turn the chaos into something that didn't look like doom in slow motion.

And that was it, really. That was the current full extent of my plan. Keep all eyes on me, take the hits, hope for the best. It absolutely wasn't a hero's stand. I was stalling. Holding things back just long enough for someone cleverer to do something that mattered.

Unfortunately, I didn't think the Imperials cared for the whys or the wherefores of my little performance. They continued to rage and fume and batter against me with the rhythm of certainty, each one furious at my existence, eagerly stepping into the space the last had filled, swords flashing and chopping.

Don't get me wrong, their tactics weren't complex. They couldn't be under my Rage Debuff. They were just completely focused on overwhelming me, and there wasn't anything I could do other than feel the dull ache of fatigue setting into my arms, and the sluggish crawl of Stubborn Constitution working to hold me upright as each second dragged on and the pounding continued.

My stamina bar was down to the dregs. My health was not much better and continued to tick down in little increments, blow after blow. My vision had narrowed. My breath came in short, iron-tinged gasps. And somewhere beneath all that, Anvil Break had started to vibrate in my bones like a buried bell. It hadn't triggered yet, but it was blooming close. Too close. One more heavy hit, one more flurry of steel, and I'd go down in a blaze of knockback and desperate hope. Any second now. Any. Second. Now...

Which is when I got about as lucky as I've ever been in my life.

Because it appeared that the Crusaders and the Rebels had reacted very poorly to being on the receiving end of an Imperial volley of arrows at the outset of my shellacking. So, when the Crusade arrived on the flank of Katya's forces, bellowing something about "purifying heretics," followed by the Rebels screaming about betrayal, we suddenly had ourselves a full-blown three-army free-for-all.

I took the momentary pause in being smashed to pieces to look up at Anchorfall's battlements and caught sight of Scar on the wall, barking orders like he'd just been elected Mayor of the Apocalypse. He jabbed a finger at the Imperials, then wheeled to point at the Crusaders, then the Rebels, then back again like he was conducting the world's least harmonious orchestra.

One of the Unmerry Men threw a spear to crack open a Rebel's helmet. Another picked up a chunk of shattered bannerpole and went full drummer boy on a Crusader's shoulder blades. I took the chance to free myself from being buried under the Imperial assault and pushed forward, swinging my morningstar in a wide circle, catching a soldier just as he brought his sword down on one of ours. He reeled back, helmet askew, and I felt [Opportunistic Counter] twitch. The moment his guard slipped, I rammed my shoulder forward to knock him to the floor. He didn't get up.

But his mate did when I turned to face him next. Steel glanced off my ribs. Another blow hammered into my vambrace. I felt [Stubborn Constitution] suppress the growing ache again, pain reduced to noise and noise filtered into focus. Every breath came with heat. Every heartbeat was another second I shouldn't have had.

Someone shouted to my left, and I jerked aside as an axe whooshed past my face, close enough to sting the air. I responded with a Crash Tackle, slamming my shoulder into the attacker's gut with a full-body rush that sent both of us stumbling to the floor. The impact rattled my teeth, but when I rose, [Crash Tackle] had already reset my dodge. I weaved through another opponent's swing and jabbed him in the throat with the haft of my weapon. His cough turned into a gurgle.

And still they came.

One Rebel tried to flank me from the rear. I slammed my fist into his face, then used him as a barricade against two more. [Lineholder's Instinct] burned hot inside my chest, and suddenly every enemy within range slowed, disoriented, and their attacks became sluggish and off-mark. I wasn't just tanking now. I was warping the tempo. But I could feel it: my control was starting to give. Not in terms of effect, it still held, but I could feel its limits.

I might be the centre of a spinning wheel, and the rim was cracking.

And then a fresh wave of Crusaders began to attack, pouring towards the gate behind me like an organised flood. There were too many, and they were too fast. We weren't going to hold here, were we? We didn't have enough of us. I wasn't going to be enough.

I mean, when all is said and done, it was basically fifteen of us against at least a couple of thousand. And even if most of them were more temporarily interested in kicking lumps out of each other than they were in taking Anchorfall, that wasn't going to last forever. I'm as big a fan of 'Zulu' as the next guy, but I didn't think we were going to get out of this by singing Men of Harlech.

And I imagine things would have been looking pretty damn spicy for us in very short order.

Had not, that is, when the dust cleared, a single figure stood bathed in a glinting spotlight in front of Anchorfall.

Lia was all geared up and ready to throw down.

"Ha," I yelled down to no one in particular. "Now you guys are for it."

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