Immediately, I spin to the next attacker and ram my dagger through their heart.
Clangs ring out and strength thrums around me as the Blacksmiths fight back, but within seconds, all eight of them lie dead around me.
My chest heaves, but I allow myself only a moment before I continue on.
I step into the mouth of the wide corridor that sits at the head of the courtyard.
Kalith and Ayla stand in the shadows, their metal glinting.
“You will suffer for what you’ve done this day,” Ayla says to me, her voice cold. “I will cut you apart, piece by piece, and I will enjoy your screams.”
Beside her, Kalith scoops multiple medallions from his left arm and presses them all against his chest, liquid copper rushing out from around his palm and covering his torso with armored plates.
Without another word, Ayla takes a step toward me, plucking a hairpiece from her hair, her hands moving as she spins a web of fine, silver threads.
Before today, I would not have been able to follow her quick movements, but now, I make out every detail.
There’s fresh blood under her fingernails and the scent of it tells me it isn’t her own.
I brace for her attack as she thrusts her arms forward, releasing the web of threads. They billow out from her hands toward me, a deadly lace made of razor-sharp strings.
There are so many of them that they will slice right through my hands and arms if I try to grab them or even strike at themwith my daggers. My only option is to dodge and dart as she continues to spin more wire and fling it at me.
Kalith turns my evasive maneuvers to his advantage, transforming another medallion into an axe and swinging it at my neck.
I manage to evade the blow while dodging the next thread Ayla shoots at me, but I don’t miss the triumph on Kalith’s face.
“I should have killed you in the mountains, Boy. A mistake I will rectify today.”
Only then do I realize that Ayla was not just throwing her metal at me randomly, she was setting up a deadly web around me.
The end of each thread has attached to one of the walls on either side of me, weaving a maze of razor-sharp threads that will cut me to pieces once retracted.
Kalith was the distraction to make me step right into the center of it.
All Ayla has to do is pull back her hands and the threads will constrict and slice me to pieces.
Ayla’s arm muscles tense, a cruel smile on her face, as if she will revel in the blood that is about to be spilled.
Her hands move.
But my strength has increased a hundred-fold.
With a burst of energy, I harness the power in my legs and leap upward to the wall on my right, my dagger outstretched.
My leap takes me parallel to her position.
I ram one blade into the wall, using it as an anchor to spin before I rip it out of the wall again and drop right behind her.
She tries to turn toward me, but she doesn’t let her metal go in time and it slows her down.
I ram my blades into both sides of her neck, the metal slashing through bone and clashing as it meets in the middle.
“Ayla!” Kalith’s roar of rage washes over me as I wrench my blades from Ayla’s neck.
She drops to the ground, her threads twisting and their tension tightening as she falls to her side.
Kalith has frozen for a moment, his heartbeats betraying his shock and the press of his lips revealing a hint of despair, which is soon replaced with pure anger.
