Christine hit the ground, and they separated, shocked by what had happened. Their mouths lay open for a scant few moments before the mercenaries drew their swords. August still stared at the body on the ground, his mind blank.
August whispered, "What?"
He was shocked. He didn't mean to kill her, but he had. The other mercenary without a helmet had tears in his eyes. What would he tell Sel? Would he say, 'Sorry I couldn't protect the one you loved; you'll just have to live without her.'?
He couldn't do that. He feared what Sel might do when he received the news. They had to kill this person, at least. They had to give Sel some form of solace, of closure.
August was standing only a meager 1.5 meters from the mercenaries when they charged. Their swords were pointed at August and eager to find purchase in his flesh. Only when they entered August's field of vision did he look up from the corpse and realize the trouble he was in.
"Wait! Wait, no! No, I didn't mean to! You should've just let me go!" he screamed in English while backing up.
They continued heedless of what seemed to be the insane gibberish of either a madman or a foreigner. They didn't care who he was; they wouldn't have mercy no matter who he was. In a way, they were doing him a favor by letting him die here and not letting him get caught by Sel.
The closest mercenary to him lunged forward with his sword and aimed for August's underarm, which he assumed held a weak point, but found no luck. That odd chainmail resisted and held firm.
August fell backward before turning around and running at full tilt away from the camp. But the armor's miraculous defense wasn't without drawbacks. Its weight slowed him down, and he was succinctly caught.
They stabbed at him again, nearly obstructing one another's paths, only for their swords to slide off the armor, leaving only small chinks and scratches. August backed up again and drew Damon for the first time in a fight.
He didn't want to fight; he would rather leave them alone than draw Damon, but they had forced his hand. He didn't think he could win this, but he was scared, caught up in the moment, and desperate.
He had some experience in fights, but that was only ever when he was joking around with his two brothers or his sister. He didn't know how to actually hurt somebody or use a weapon, let alone kill them.
Luckily for him, he wouldn't have to. He had awoken Damon, who wasn't bound by August's hesitation, nervousness, or what few shards of incomplete scruples he may have had against killing.
Damon, taken out of his trance of invention when August unsheathed him, condescendingly said, "You can't even manage first contact with the local people without help. I'm nearly ashamed to have been a part of you."
The mercenary without a helmet was the first to reach August again and slashed at his neck, where he hoped a weak point lay, but August clumsily managed to shove aside his longsword with Damon's superior weight.
August shot back, "Shut up! Do something; do anything! There's four of them and one of me, so do something!"
August continued to try and ineptly fend off the ensuing attacks as Damon replied, "Ok, try to hold us still. Get us in a deadlock where they can't disengage."
"How?!"
"I don't know. Grab the swords; give them a bear hug; get all of your swords tangled together somehow. You just have to keep them still. I have a spell prepared for this."
Grimacing, August decided to trust Damon and go along with it. He threw Damon to the side and got in close before putting his arms around the shoulders of two of them and leveraging his weight to throw them onto the ground with him on top and Damon underneath.
They were both strong, but they were ultimately smaller than him. They struggled to get him off, but with his experience fighting his siblings and his superior stature, he managed to corral them.
While August was fighting for superiority with these two and getting attacked from the back, all of which attacks were useless, Damon was working on a spell.
They couldn't feel it, but the hand of death was wrapping around the bottoms of their brain stems, preparing to snap it and end their lives. The spell Damon was weaving was effectively a vice that wrapped around a circular object and severed it. But he only had an active version, and it was a complicated spell, so he needed them to stay still so that he could get it right.
After less than five seconds of intense struggle, the two underneath August lay still and dead. August rose when he felt them stop flailing against him. The two behind August that had vainly been trying to breach his defenses stopped for a moment when they felt the atmosphere shift.
They saw that their comrades were still now too and presumed them dead. They both hurled obscenities at him before one tapped the other with his sword and turned back to the camp, going to fetch reinforcements. They couldn't handle this alone.
The lone mercenary hovered nearby for a moment before he made up his mind. He turned back toward the camp and pretended that he was also going back for reinforcements. He lied to himself, but the truth was that he didn't want to be alone with a black and red invincible giant of a man.
He wasn't a coward; he had trained to overcome that long before, but a common fear among all humans was a fear of the unknown, and he knew nothing here. He didn't know who he was fighting, why he was here, or how he had killed the two underneath him.
He thought, 'Magic?' briefly before dispelling the thought. Magic wasn't impossible, but it was so rare that anybody who wielded it was of extremely high status, and they wouldn't need to charge through a guarded mining camp unannounced and possibly illegally.
In the Cohair Kingdom, magic was a touchy subject. Over a century ago, there had been a magically fueled uprising. In this uprising, the lords had gathered particularly powerful magic users and artifacts made by them for a military coup.
The coup had been thwarted by the only noble that remained from that time, noble Arthur. Arthur was an enigma to most. He had outlived everybody and seemed immortal. The current king was between 70 and 80 years old, but Arthur had become a noble when his grandfather was still king.
After the coup had been thwarted, the current king's grandfather put out a set of laws that strictly regulated magic. Everybody who could use it was to be recorded on the royal register. Any users who refused were promptly executed.
Magic could never be taught. It wasn't forbidden to use it, but anybody who did use it had to be an autodidact and recorded in the register. A major issue in the kingdom was crime from irresponsible users, so by limiting those who could use it, crime dropped dramatically.
But this also made magic incredibly rare, and almost everybody who used it was loyal to the king or one of the nobles. Those who weren't were monitored with extreme caution.
This made almost every magic user in this kingdom somebody of immense status. Somebody like that wouldn't be here, and if they were here, then they would do everything through proper channels, unlike what August had done.