As Sirach turns to face the hunter and deliver as many killing blows as it takes, Tomoe draws her pair of matched daggers from the scabbards tooled into her forearm gauntlets. Seeing the flash of steel clearing leather causes Sirach to quickly back up several steps rather than advance.

Only feet away, Namrok swings his machete wildly at Evie. She ducks each feral strike, steeling her nerves, waiting for an opening to present itself. In his frustration the blood coin hunter puts too much power behind his next swing. When the slash misses its mark, Namrok is overextended and thrown off-balance. Evie quickly slips behind him and drives the broken end of her blade into his back, piercing his right kidney.

That side of Namrok’s body shrinks in upon itself, and he drops to one knee. His sword arm is held aloft and momentarily forgotten. Evie reaches out and takes that arm by the wrist, delivering a blow into Namrok’s elbow that breaks it cleanly. The new source of pain causes him to growl like an animal caught in a trap, and the machete falls from his suddenly limp fingers.

Evie half kneels and snatches up the bone handle of the weapon almost before it hits the dirt. Namrok has just enough time to twist his neck and bring his one remaining eye angrily to bear on her before Evie swings the wide, heavy blade in both hands and separates his neck from his shoulders completely with one slash. The force of that swing carries the blade through and strikes the nearest boulder, the crooked serrations in the blade’s edge catching in several cracks zigzagging the rock face.

As Evie wrestles with Namrok’s machete, Tomoe and Sirach duel their matched daggers. The towering blood coin hunter swings her long arms heavily and mechanically, relying on size and strength to intimidate and overwhelm her opponent. Sirach is the exact opposite, using speed and finesse and the curved blades of her daggers to deflect and parry and slash. She manages to slip through the falling-tree blows of Tomoe’s arms and lacerate her armor several times, finally drawing blood from her side. It only serves to further enrage the giantess, who answers the slash by growling ferociously and launching a straight kick into Sirach’s chest.

It’s like a hammer hitting an anvil made of mud. Sirach flies backward several feet until her back collides with the rocks, her entire torso seizing under waves of intense pain. As she stumbles away from the boulders, Tomoe sweeps Sirach’s feet out from under her with another powerful swipe of the hunter’s leg. Tomoe quickly reverses her grip on both daggers, but before she can raise them to stab down at Sirach, her arms seize, along with the rest of her body.