Yasha "Onepath" Acothley waited at the rear of the group beneath the gate to Riverstop. His eyes bore into the door at the inn to his left, awaiting the signal from the advance pair of scouts that the bodyguard noblewoman had sent. The blasphemers around him waited with a heightened tension, their sweaty hands leaving stains on the pommels of their swords as they gripped them with white knuckles.
Onep, however, was accustomed to battle with men. In fact, his entire life he had been raised with a single goal in mind: to become a powerful killer. From the day he could stand, Onep had been pressed into his family's militant training program, where he excelled. At the age of six he attained the title of quarterstaff master; at eight, that of grappling master; at nine, he had killed for the first time - an unsuspecting foreigner who had cornered him in an alley, trying to rob a child of his daily allowance. His precocious progress made his family proud, especially at a time when Iv was expanding its influence across the continent under the Red King's conquests. The Acothley family were the historical bodyguards of the leaders of the Iv island theocracy, the Kannushi, so when Iv thrived, the Acothley family thrived.
The Acothley lineage, aside from their high position in Iv society, was renowned for two things: their unsurpassed battle prowess, and their extreme religious zeal. Every member of the family was bestowed the given name "Yasha'' at birth, in honor of their patron goddess and savior. At sixteen, when they became an adult, the children chose their own moniker, representing a distillation of their beliefs, goals, and faith. Onep had chosen "Onepath," the purest image of his singular ambition: to kill the Red King.
The door of the inn exploded outward with great force, tearing itself from its rusted hinges and landing squarely in the dirt, kicking up a large beige cloud. Beyond the dust, Onep could see a small figure jumping up and down, waving her arms. The plan was for the other one - "Ioren," he thought his name was - to discreetly open the door. Something had gone awry. The silver-haired bodyguard must have noticed as well, because she put an arm out to stop the tanned nobleman from rushing ahead.
"What are we waiting for?" The short-haired blonde noble girl asked. Onep had not bothered with names for the most part. These naive and faithless blasphemers would be dead soon anyways, so it would be a wasted effort.
As if to answer her question, the embodiment of blasphemy, the one who joined the Red King in betraying Yasha and seeking power in idolatry, Thorne, rushed out from behind the group toward the urchin child.
"Thorne, stop! You can't!" Shouted the Northerner as she gave chase.
"Hell," the silver-haired bodyguard cursed. "We advance! Follow Violet, but watch our flanks!"
Onep snickered under his breath. The group was poorly disciplined and poorly commanded. Ioren and the urchin girl had failed their part of the plan and were lost; any proficient strategist would have recognized this immediately and abandoned them. Instead these fools charge blindly into the unknown, making themselves easy targets, oblivious to their own mortality. It was a pitiful sight that made Onep yearn for the isles of Iv and its structure. The people there at least made sense in their actions.
A black arrow streaked past the advancing Northerner and stopped her in her tracks. Onep traced its trajectory to a second story window in another building across the street to their right. The archer was well-prepared; a cloth hung from the top of the window, obscuring vision into the room.
"Stop! Assume defensive positions!" The silver-haired woman yelled, as if her untrained group could comprehend forming a strategic position. They at least formed a clump together, in the open street, their weapons drawn toward the building the arrow had been loosed from. Onep stayed behind, waiting for another arrow to be fired from the window. He dropped a hidden knife from his sleeve into his hand and shifted its delicately balanced weight between his fingers as he watched the windows. Three men, all in plate armor, exited the first floor of the same building the archer had fired from. Still, Onep stayed behind.
"Hold!" The same voice echoed from the street.
A small glint of sunlight on metal flickered from the rightmost window as the hidden archer nocked another arrow. Onep watched him brace his hand against the bow, and visualized the archer's body behind the curtain as he pulled back on the string. Onep stepped forward and threw his knife with all his strength, watching as it sailed straight through the air over the street, puncturing a hole in the hanging curtain over the window. The arrow was loosed as the archer fell, embedding itself in the window jamb. He wasn't sure if it had killed him or just startled him, but he made sure to allocate some of his attention to the window, just in case the archer made another appearance.
Onep returned his attention to the skirmish below. The silver-haired woman had engaged the lead armored man, but was being pushed backwards slowly. Her precise fighting style was ideal for unarmored targets, but against such a reinforced opponent she clearly struggled. The Northerner and the tanned nobleman had engaged the second man, armed with a mace. The three noblelings formed a semi-circle around the last remaining armored opponent, though his greatsword kept them at bay easily. Onep smirked and decided on his first target.
Walking forward briskly as if he were on a beach stroll back in the isles, Onep approached the group of noblelings. It was not out of sympathy toward the inept fighters that he chose this man first, but rather the ease at which he could take down a man with such a large weapon. Their faith in their sword's weight was often their undoing, and Onep loved watching their helpless eyes as they realized they had miscalculated.
Onep pulled the fat child backward with a firm grip and assumed a reactive position with his hands forward. Any other man would be considered unarmed, but an Acothley grappling master was always armed, and dangerously so. The two noble girls gaped at him approaching the man without a weapon in hand, but backed off all the same. He had expected no less than absolute selfishness from the noblelings, which they happily confirmed as they moved to save themselves. Yasha save their doomed souls.
"I am sorry, children, but I have been ordered to show no mercy," the armored man warned as he brought his claymore sword backwards, preparing a sweeping strike. "You made a mistake by trusting that Venit lad, and now you will die." Onep sensed sympathy in the man's voice. Sympathy for your enemy was a fool revealing his overconfidence.
As the man swung his sword in a horizontal sweep, Onep dove forward over it with a dancer's grace, planting his feet on the stone ground just in front of the shining metal man. His opponent tried to remove a hand from his sword to grab him, but Onep took advantage of the weakness in his sword hand and kicked the claymore's pommel, sending it flying away from them. The armored man stumbled backwards, surprised at having been disarmed so quickly. Onep flourished the second hidden blade from his other sleeve with a flick and advanced on his unsure opponent.
The man stepped back unsteadily before swinging a wide, desperate punch at Onep with his gauntleted arm. Onep tossed his blade straight up in the air and grabbed the man's arm with both hands, swinging his legs up to wrap themselves around the man's neck, sending him tumbling forward into the dirt. Onep flexed his muscles backwards with all his strength, snapping the man's arm at the elbow while pinning his other shoulder with his heels. The man cried out in pain as Onep released him and scrambled quickly to his feet. As the man turned to assess his crumpled arm, he had barely enough time to recognize the knife Onep caught from the air and drove into the slit of his face visor.
Onep removed the knife and wiped it against the man's tunic before returning it to his sleeve. The noblelings were muttering something from behind, but he ignored their drivel. The rush of battle blocked everything but the most necessary elements.
The other two fights still continued behind him. The silver-haired duellist bled from a cut above her eye, likely from a punch delivered by a gauntleted hand. It would swell and hinder her sight, but it was a minor injury all the same. Her opponent's mail hung in ribbons beneath both arms as a dark, viscous liquid dripped from the left side. Onep raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise; it seemed her accuracy and battle intuition was better than he thought.
On the other side, the battle fared worse.
Scraps of padded fabric littered the ground, spilled from a wide tear in the tanned nobleman's gambeson. None were stained red, so it seemed he had escaped death by inches. The man was now sweating profusely, too. Likely out of fear more than exertion, but the crazed look in his eyes could not belie the unraveling occurring just beneath the surface. Onep had never seen anyone who feared death more than this nobleman. Beside him, the Northerner swung wildly with her curved sword, hoping to keep the armored man at bay. Luckily for them he did not recognize that the curved sword was nearly useless against his plate armor, as her desperate strategy was working - for now.
The sound of footsteps on stone tore Onep's attention away from the other duels. Another squad of four armored men were now advancing down the town's main thoroughfare toward them. The time for play was over.
Onep removed his telescopic quarterstaff from its holster at his waist and extended it to its full six-foot length with a flick. He considered for a moment telling the noblelings his plan before deciding against it. If they walked in the light of Yasha they would receive her guidance.
With a kick off the dusty street, Onep barreled forward toward the two fights taking place in front of him. Before the first man could even turn, Onep had slammed his quarterstaff into the chink in his armor behind his knee with a loud pop that, combined with his instant crumpling, confirmed a good effect of his attack. To her credit, the silver-haired duelist immediately recognized the opening and rushed forward, sticking the tip of her gauntlet blade beneath the man's helmet into his exposed neck. Onep rushed ahead before she pulled it out, but he heard the spurt of liquid hit the stone floor.
"Come now - to the inn!" Shouted the duelist to the noblelings who had already begun to run after Onep. Perhaps they had some instincts in them after all.
The second man now turned to face the approaching Onep. He held a mace and a small buckler in hand, and raised them both defensively. Onep prodded his defenses with cursory thrusts of his quarterstaff, all the while watching both the second story window to his right and monitoring for sounds of footsteps from the thoroughfare behind him. He had been trained his entire life to fight enemies like the man in front of him; unlike the unpredictable and desperate novices of the previous village, these men moved with logical consistency. They defended their weak points, capitalized on openings, controlled the space around them, and never overextended in any direction. Unfortunately for them, when they did everything expected of them, they became predictable.
Onep reared back with his quarterstaff for a powerful overhead strike, to which the soldier raised his shield to block, while simultaneously obscuring his vision of the opponent before him. It was all that was necessary. As he brought down the quarterstaff from above, Onep dropped it from his hands at the last moment and leapt toward the shield that blocked the attack, vaulting off of the man's buckler and grabbing beneath his helmet with his hand. Onep planted his feet into the man's back as he pulled upwards on the bottom of the helmet, and with the hidden knife in his sleeve, slit the man's throat with a single fluid slash before dropping from his back.
The man writhed on the ground in futile agony as crimson seeped through his fingers, but it was far too late to help him.
Without a second look at the pitiful tanned nobleman and the Northerner, Onep picked up his quarterstaff and started toward the inn, stepping over two more deceased armored men on the way. The urchin girl sat huddled over the blasphemer's corpse, but Onep couldn't bring himself to feel anything toward him. He had made his choices in life, and now Yasha lay her judgment upon him. He entered the inn first, followed quickly by the tanned nobleman who had scrambled wildly through the dirt to reach him. From behind he heard the short-haired nobleling girl attempting to sooth the urchin girl in the street as the duelist yelled for them to hurry.
It was all so nauseating. These people were unpinned from reality, floating from whim to whim without tenets to guide them or faith to back them. Onep had come searching for the secret to defeating the Red King in Danet, but he was increasingly believing he had simply won because the rest of the world was incomparably weak.