Bram's maddened eyes darted from one enemy to the next as the mass of empowered peasants rushed to meet him. He twirled his makeshift halberd in a threatening display. Torbin responded with a derisive scoff from his position beside the wearied Ars.

"Girl must've gone and got sloppy," he concluded. "Hard to lose with holy mojo on our side."

But the young Master eagerly crushed the would-be Lord’s assumption by deftly beheading the first of their number to come within rage of his sharp stone blade. Torbin's face fell at the sight. "Bloody hell," he muttered. The display that followed tested his nerves all the more.

Bram turned his weapon vertically to block a sword aimed at his chest, then swiftly pushed the top of the halberd forward to force the sharp end down into his assailant's skull. Two others managed to strike his back unimpeded, but a golden flash of light repelled them on impact. He spun around and brought his makeshift blade down into the gut of one of the fallen.

Lifting the weapon again, he then performed a wide series of swings that split open several stomachs and one particularly unfortunate throat. The swiftly sewn carnage gave pause to those who yet remained unharmed, but their distance offered them no protection from Bram's bloody dance. As soon as none were left within his range, he leaped to close distance with another set.

His new targets raised their weapons in a desperate bid to defend themselves against his effortless might, but when he reared back to launch a savage swing, he found himself frozen in place.

Sensing the signature of Wonderworking, his eyes darted to the spot where Hethys stood. Hers was the only countenance on the field that held madness to match his own, and she met his gaze with ravenous eyes and a grin of dissonant glee.

"An Heir's Mark-bearer slaughters thee!" she chanted. "Let him try to slaughter me!"

His muscles twitched as he struggled against her Wonder of Mind, but while he was frozen, one of the Hovaleans seized the opportunity and implanted the spikes of a gardening hoe into his back. Another raised a great hammer and struck at the makeshift halberd with all his might. He succeeded in breaking the weapon in half, but Bram reacted to both setbacks with a cold and caustic laugh.

“Come, then!” he shouted at them. “I’ll put you in the dirt where you belong!” He clenched every one of his frozen muscles, and golden light filled his eyes and pulsed through the veins in his face. He freed himself from the hag’s control just in time to deflect a sword strike with the blunt stone pole he still held. He kicked his attacker away before whirling around and flinging the pole at Hethys. The aged witch caught the projectile with surprising ease.

“Mind the Mind! Wield the Light! Can Life he conquer with his Might?”

Hethys put her own riddled query to the test by tapping her cane with the pole she’d caught. She sent her will through its wood and its wood through the earth, and a great mass of wriggling roots rose up from the ground around the mad young Master.

They began to rot as soon as they appeared, but nonetheless chased him with ravenous fervor. He ducked, leaped, and twirled to evade them as they rose overhead and crashed into the ground in an effort to hold him fast. At last, one branch managed to coil around his arm, and his gleaming silver armor began to rust on contact with it. He reacted with more curiosity than fear, then summoned light into his free hand and slashed the branch from its roots.

“Rapturous!” Bram shrieked. He clapped his hands together, then separated them to reveal a small plume of fire. The flame expanded with speed as he spread his arms out wide, scalding any who came too close to the ring of fire he formed and reducing the roots to ash. He kept the fire wall raised as a defense against further assault as he darted toward Hethys. “A true Wonderworker!” he gleefully exclaimed. “Can’t have that!”

He gathered the flames into the shape of a sword and raised it with intent to slice the old woman from head to heel. But he was thrown far from his course when a shining fist he’d evaded earlier smashed fiercely against his face.

There stood Mara, snarling like a beast at the mad and petulant lad. The wounds in her breast and her stomach remained, but she’d decided she’d sealed them up well enough; the Ikoras had no intention of letting the young Master steal her subjects.

“Support me!” she ordered, and by her will, her Mark-bearers moved to form a wide circle around her and her foe. Bram was slow to regain his footing. He spat a mass of blood and teeth from his mouth, but did not let the new gaps stop him grinning through the pain.

“Cunning of you,” he mused, “catching me from my blind side like that.”

His effort to goad her fell on deaf ears; Mara was finished talking. She let out a furious scream as she rushed him with a fierce right cross. The punch knocked loose yet more of his teeth, but he managed to duck the high roundhouse kick she aimed at him thereafter. His attempt to counter with an uppercut failed, however, for the enraged Mara’s momentum carried her around in time to slap away his fist. Her opposite palm crashed into his chest, granting her several meters’ distance from her foe.

One of the Hovaleans seized the gap. She rushed forward with her longsword and slashed open the back of Bram’s armor, then rejoined the circle.

At last, the young Master’s mirth faltered. A hint of discontent entered his eyes as they chased his new assailant, but Mara was upon him before his body could follow suit. Her shining hand slashed open the front of his silver defense, and she thereafter gripped the armor through the opening and tore it off of him, exposing the silken shirt beneath. He summoned fire to his hand to strike at her, but missed his mark as she retreated with her prize.

Another Hovalean rushed in to impale him with a pair of shears, but he turned the flame he held upon the new assailant and burned the man to a crisp.

Thus distracted, he was caught off guard by the third Hovalean to charge, who managed what the second could not and impaled him through the chest with a rusty sword. She left it behind to evade the wild counterstrike that followed and rushed to rejoin the circle.

“Stop!” Bram cried. “This is supposed to be fun!” He stomped the earth, and a great many pillars and stakes erupted around him to target the Hovalean mass. But all were stopped short by a rush of rotting roots called forth by Hethys’ hand.

“Fun it is, fun it is!” chanted the Hag. “He balks at mirth that is not his.”

“This is all I have!” Bram countered. Marianne desperately jerked toward him, but the hook-scarred Hovalean held her fast. The red-headed woman proved more lenient, ceasing to hold the lady at scythe-point so she could better focus on enjoying Bram’s bloody fall.

“How we weep for you,” came Mara’s sardonic reply as she trudged toward the young Master. “Every advantage freely given. Every boon gained by another’s pain. And yet you look to me and deride me as thieving scum.”

Bram gripped the hilt of the sword in his chest. He pulled the weapon free just in time to implant it between the breasts of the next Mark-bearer to attack him. As she crumpled to the ground, one of her fellows rushed in and landed a punch to the highborn lad’s face. The man failed to escape before Bram countered by sweeping his legs, but he was spared from further retaliation when his assailant’s arms were restrained by tendrils of light.

Bram’s bloodshot eyes turned on the source of this latest inconvenience and met with a wink from Torbin. “Gotta get mine, bruv,” spoke the would-be Lord.

The young Master screamed his fury, but his outburst became a cry of agony as another Hovalean assailant took a mace to his leg. Torbin’s tendrils of light receded, leaving Bram to fall upon his good knee before a final kick from Mara knocked him flat on his back.

He coughed as the Ikoras slammed her foot down on his chest to hold him in place. “You are beaten,” she said. “Your soldiers have fled. Your ill-gotten gains have been reclaimed. Accept your fate.”

Defiantly, Bram grasped Mara’s ankle, but his waning strength was not enough to move her. “I did not endure these trying years to be brought to heel by a filthy street urchin!” he cried. With naught but a thought, Mara summoned an earthen stake through his gut to punctuate her triumph. He coughed up copious streams of blood, and what he could not spit out, he was forced to choke back down.

“Wealth does not breed savvy, it seems,” Mara mused. “I’d meant to end you swiftly. Had you held your tongue, you would already be at the late Lord’s side. But now, I think I will have you speak. You’ve many a tale to tell, young Master.” She raised her foot and stomped his chest for the sheer pleasure of seeing him expel yet more blood. “I will hear of Auberalea. I will hear everything you know. But first, I will have your hand.”

“NO!”

Breaking her silence at last, Marianne once more struggled hopelessly to free herself from the grip of the half-blind Hovalean. “He is promised to me!” she cried. “He is still my beloved!”

Her desperate outcry earned her a moment’s attention from Mara, whose shock at the highborn lady’s passion for the young Master showed on her face. That shock soon turned to scorn, however, and she snapped her fingers to summon one of her subjects to her side.

“Fear not, precious thing,” Mara said to Marianne as her summoned subject delivered an axe into her hand. “I’ll leave the other for you.”

“No!” Bram whimpered. “No.” he whined.

“Hold still now,” spoke Mara as she hoisted the axe overhead. “I wouldn’t want to miss.”

He had no holiness to save him as his victorious victim brought the axe down upon his unblackened arm. Before the eyes of all her surviving supplicants, she severed from him the Mark that let him borrow power from the Crown and the entire limb that carried it.