Worthy Core

Scale Warden Captain Yelene grits her teeth as she pushes through another hallway. She's not an army commander. She's never been an army commander. She proved her skills as a frontline warrior, was recruited into the ranks of the Scale Wardens, and then worked her way to the top of that elite unit. She manages honor guard shifts. She trains her wardens in small-unit tactics, primarily designed around protecting a VIP until the threat was removed or lost. She even has a bit of field experience with that, having been assigned to help protect various high-ranking Domain officials who had been targeted by one plot or another.

She does not have experience leading dozens of standard soldiers through hundreds of meters of winding deathtraps. The soldiers may be good, as far as common soldiers go. But they're not elite warriors, and Yelene finds herself repeatedly frustrated as troops or even entire squads fall prey to traps and ambushes. She'd taken the risk of spreading her Wardens thinner, trying to provide more protection...and it had only resulted in taking losses among those she considers irreplaceable. Wardens are expendable in defense of the Dragonlord themselves perhaps, but in defense of common soldiers?

It's not her fault she's lost so many of them, and a large part of her wishes she'd stopped trying to save the rest. By time her wing of the expedition reaches the end of their path, Yelene's combat-capable force stands at five Wardens, counting herself, and nine army troops.

It should be enough to defeat the single swordsman she finds standing in the center of an arena, she thinks. Perhaps she can finish this quickly and loop back to link up again with her sovereign before the mission is over.

"Is this all that remains of Xenia Worthy's mighty defenders? One man? Your losses this past month have been grave indeed. I suppose I should offer you the chance to surrender - our lord may find you to be of interest alive."

The raven-haired man grins at the yellow-scaled draconic, as the tip of his sword rests against the sandy floor. Even as the Scale Wardens and soldiers begin to spread out and take up positions around him, he seems to find nothing threatening about them. "They say one man or woman in the right spot at the right time can change the fate of the world. I don't know if I would claim that for myself - not in this small battle, at least. But I do not believe myself to be anything less than your equal at the least."

Raising his sword, he salutes the draconic. "You stand before Prince Thaddeus Worthy, descendant of Xenon Worthy, and defender of the honor of the Worthy line."

Yelene wants to scoff, although the man is clearly not a Rainlander he reminds her much of those pompous nobles. Yet, something tells her that she ought to do this properly. It would be a nice change of pace from all of the traps, tricks, and ambushes at least. "Scale Warden Captain Yelene, leader of the Dragonlord's personal honor guards. I shall shed your so-called 'Worthy' blood in the name of our lord."

"If you can, perhaps. Have at you, then!"

Yelene has time to raise her spear in defense as the man charges, but she has to admit - this human is good. Oh, it's not all skill, certainly. There's clearly magic boosting the man's speed, enchanted armor perhaps, but you do need a particular level of skill to even be able to use such speed without harming yourself more than your opponent. He's hardly overwhelming, however. Her own skills and enchantments, not to mention superior strength and reach, prove to be more than up to the task of parrying his assaults. The man strikes three times without landing a hit, and that's enough time for her fellow Wardens to begin preparing their own attacks. The soldiers hang back but that's for the best, in such a fight like this they would only get in the way.

A Warden mage blasts fireballs at the man's feet, forcing him to leap away. He recovers and dashes forward once again, but a swing from a mace-wielding draconic forces him to nearly fall to the floor to avoid a hit that would have removed his skull. Thrusts from Yelene keep him from fully recovering to his feet, and when he rolls away he finds himself engaged with a Warden swordsman who manages to occupy nearly his full attention.

He is occupying the attention of five Scale Wardens at once though, so again Yelene finds herself impressed. He's losing, that's obvious, yet none of her Wardens can seem to land a hit that would actually wound the man. After a few moments of analysis, the commander shouts out an order. "Push him back! Pin him against the walls, don't let him slip away any further!"

The mage gets to work casting area-denial spells, firing shards of ice that block the prince's path. The others continue to move in, and soon the human finds himself fighting off two Wardens at once - and then three. As fast as he is he can only deflect so many blows, and soon he's forced to take glancing hits off of his armor. Finally, a swing from the maceman knocks the prince off balance, and a quick thrust from Yelene penetrates the man's breastplate. There's still enough life in the human to look up at Yelene, and she takes a moment to savor her victory.

"You fought well - yet you failed to wound even a single one of us, princeling. Your life was spent in exchange for nothing. If you have the strength left to speak, would you care to offer any last words?"

The man nods and gasps before getting out one final question. "...My wife does good work, does she not?"

And then the prince shatters like glass.

The ending of that illusion spell apparently triggers another, and Yelene realizes that this chamber is an arena in the full sense of the word - ringing the sandy grounds are a row of raised seats, and those seats are filled with enemies. Briefly, anyhow - the moment the spell ends they move to attack. The captain scans them quickly, and growls to see the true prince among them, a purple-skinned goblin woman by his side.

The more immediate concern however is the elementals. A team of them, led by a drider and a short-statured minotaur, are the first to leap into the arena and their first target are the common soldiers. In a rather literal sense - the massive earth and magma elementals target their jumps to land directly on top of the kobolds and demons supporting the Wardens, and four of them are gruesomely crushed to death under stony feet. The Warden mage attempts to open fire upon these new foes, only for her eyes to widen as her spells are intercepted, causing them to fade out to nothing. Glancing upwards, Yelene tracks the magic to another drider, this one a woman who seems to be dressed more like a clerk than an adventurer.

"Counterspeller in the stands! You two, see to the soldiers, you two take care of that mage, I shall finish off this princeling a second time!"

She doesn't have time to watch and see if her orders are followed, there's simply too many enemies active for her to sit back and do nothing. She can see the prince making his way towards the ring of the arena but Yelene doesn't give him the chance to enter it truly - instead leaping upwards and allowing her wings to carry her into the stands. His sword clashes with her spear, but she can see that there's other defenders here joining the man in his fight. Aside from the odd goblin, an orc woman in heavy armor and a human man with a rapier-like blade stand poised to aid him.

Yelene does not feel intimidated.

"Petty tricks, is it? It takes far more than that to slay a Scale Warden!"

Her spear sweeps wide, pushing her enemies back, but the prince grins in return. "Is that so? From the sounds of things, our petty tricks claimed the lives of several of your colleagues, did they not?"

The draconic remains silent, focusing on her attacks, and trying her best not to think of her slain companions. Warriors she had been training for over a decade...

Fortunately, it seems that the others guarding the prince are not up to the same standards. The rapier-wielder is easily disarmed, with a thrust to his shoulder taking him out of the fight. It takes a little longer but Yelene eventually baits the orc vanguard into over-extending, and manages to use her spear as a lever to fling the woman into the arena grounds below. When she turns back to the prince, however, she finds three of them waiting for her.

"Thought thought thought to to to thin thin thin our our our numbers numbers numbers?"

The three identical men speak the same words with the same voice, but slightly out of sync with each other, grating on the woman's eardrums. The captain isn't a fool, obviously some of them are illusions, but which ones? Fortunately, it's easy enough to prod her spear at each of them and see which one can actually parry her.

Unfortunately, that tactic fails when her spear passes through an intangible sword one moment, and then suddenly that sword is cutting her thigh the next. The fight quickly turns far more frustrating from then on, as every time she thinks she can potentially ignore one of her foes they're wounding her a moment later. One thing is plain to see, though - such a master swordsman is unlikely to also be the illusionist himself. Checking the area quickly, Yelene doesn't take long to find her true target - the goblin woman, hiding behind a seat a dozen feet away.

That's hardly enough cover to save her from a Scale Warden. With a roar, Yelene swings her spear one more time to gain some space, and then leaps into the air once again. When she lands it's with her spear thrusting downward, penetrating the small woman from her shoulder to her lower back. A clear killing blow, and any moment now the illusionist's spells should fade out -

The mage smirks. "Did you really think I wouldn't bother casting an illusion on myself?"

Again, the woman shatters like glass. Then the arena turns an odd sort of silent as the only thing Yelene can hear is her own ragged breathing, and she looks down to see blood spilling from her chest across an invisible blade. No one's standing nearby, yet she can hear the prince whispering in her ear as if he was right behind her.

"As my double said...my wife does excellent work."

It takes a few moments for the woman to finally die, but as Thaddeus turns to examine the rest of the arena, he sees that he need not have hurried. The common Domain soldiers were quickly overwhelmed by the ambush, and the Scale Wardens were split into numbers far too few to regain control of the battle. Although the average elemental might be rated as being no more than an Advanced or Expert-tier threat, the heavily-enhanced Challengers of the Rough Gems were clearly far tougher than the honor guard were expecting.

Alizz and her Association inspection team had a slightly rougher time of things, it seemed. Kelsey seems to be nursing a few broken bones, having done his best to defend the squishier members of the team. Sely at least already seems to be healing the man, so no worries there. From the looks of it, the Warden captain had actually done them a favor by tossing Nalain into the arena, and when the orc had switched targets to attack the Warden mage from behind that particular skirmish had shifted quickly. Injuries among his allies aren't an uncommon sight, but it seems as if everyone assigned to defend this particular path of the labyrinth had actually survived.

Tizzy takes a deep breath as her personal invisibility wears off. "So...we won, right?"

Thaddeus gives her a smile, but he has to sigh. "This battle, yes. The war...well, we shall have to put our faith into Xenia and her plans..."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!