She slashed the tip of her weapon across several throats, lowered it, turned it slightly, and then thrust the tip into the sockets where some of the Zealots had eyes, but she pushed it in far enough to tear through skull and brain.

The remaining soldiers moved in, and she dragged her weapon closer, lengthened her stance, and anchored the end of the staff against the inseam of her foot. Turning it, she thrust up with the ax head and into the groin of one soldier, sending his bowels pouring onto the ground. She yanked the weapon out and used the ax head to cut legs off at the knees.

She felt a breeze, a change of energy around her, and quickly lifted the staff while lowering the head. She blocked the oncoming blade attack and twisted her weapon to disarm her attacker before slamming the staff end against his head and knocking him out.

She then swung the weapon up and over, letting the momentum turn her around to face those behind her.

She moved in time to avoid a blade aimed for her head and thrust her weapon at her attacker’s inner thigh, piercing flesh and tearing open an artery. With a twist of her hands, she brought the weapon over her left forearm, jabbed it forward, and impaled the man next to her before he could strike. Did the same in the opposite direction and impaled a soldier on her right.

She blocked another attack from the front and brought the man down to the ground, holding him there with her foot against his throat while she used her halberd to dispatch the last two of those who’d attacked. Once they were dead, she impaled the man under her foot and finished off the one who’d just started to come around from his bash on the head.

Letting out a breath, Branwen the Awful, Captain of the First and Fifteenth Companies of the Dragon Queen’s Armies and Colonel of the Ninety-Eighth Regiment of the Southland Armies, slammed the end of her halberd against the blood-soaked ground and took a moment to look over the carnage she’d caused on this mountainside.

Her troops were in the valley below fighting the ones they now just called the Zealots—those who were loyal unto death to the eyeless god, Chramnesind.

As she stood there, staring, she instinctively knew someone was coming up behind her. Turning only at the waist, Brannie brought the weapon up and through the head of the blood-soaked priest who stood behind her. As her weapon tore through the top of the priest’s head, she had to jerk her body slightly to the left to avoid the spear that came through the back of the priest’s head, almost skewering her in the process.

“Sorry!” Aidan the Divine called out. The gold dragon winced a bit when he realized how close his spear had come to impaling her. “Just trying to help.”

That’s what he always said. “Just trying to help!” He should have that branded on his bloody forehead.