Sir Galahad, Sir Tristan, Sir Percival, Sir Lancelot, and Sir Kay landed on the battlefield.
Their feet touched the blood-soaked sand in near-perfect synchronization five knights descending from the cut in the sky like avenging angels. Behind them, the rift closed with a soft shiiing, leaving only the grey light of Valhalla and the bodies of the fallen.
General Titus did not waste time.
His body surged with thrill like a rushing water fountain, like a dam breaking after centuries of pressure. The boredom that had weighed on him moments ago was gone. Replaced by something else. Something hungry.
He ran.
Toward Tristan.
His blade stabbed forward inclined at sixty-five degrees, a precise, calculated angle designed to slip between ribs and find the heart.
Tristan's eyes narrowed.
He blocked.
His sword met Titus's blade with a clang that echoed across the battlefield. But he didn't stop there. He flowed using the general's body like a ladder, his hand placing itself around Titus's head, his fingers searching for the pressure points at the base of his neck.
"This isn't something too dangerous," Tristan said, his voice calm despite the chaos. "Don't worry. All it does is slow down the human perception by ten percent."
His thumb pressed.
A spot between the clavicle. The first point.
He moved to land the second the one that would complete the technique.
The Star Liner.
Titus's body moved.
His scapula retracted a sudden, violent contraction that pulled his shoulder back and changed his center of gravity. His fist shot upward, not clenched like a normal punch, but shaped fingers pressed together, edge forward, like a blade.
A uni-fist.
Aimed straight at Tristan's jaw.
It was a well-calculated strike. A killing move. Designed to be low impact on the deliverer, but damage heavy on the receiver.
Tristan saw it coming.
He twisted. His head snapped to the side. The fist grazed his jaw instead of crushing it but it hit his neck.
THWACK!
The force knocked him off Titus. He tumbled through the air, hit the ground, and rolled.
He tried to breathe.
Nothing.
His throat was blocked not by a physical object, but by trauma. The strike had collapsed something inside him, gummed together his windpipe like a fistful of wet clay. No space for air to pass. No breath.
Cough. Cough.
He made sounds wet, choking, wrong.
Kkkrr... kkkrr...
His vision became dizzy. The world swam around him, grey and red and fading.
What's this? The thought was distant, muffled. I can't breathe.
He saw General Titus through the haze the Roman turning toward him, already dismissing him as a threat.
No.
Tristan's hand clenched into a fist.
He began to punch.
His own throat. His own windpipe. Multiple blows, sharp and focused, each one aimed at the same spot where Titus had struck him.
WHAP. WHAP. WHAP. WHAP.
The impacts shocked his throat. Muscles spasmed. The blockage loosened.
He gasped.
Air flooded into his lungs sweet, precious, life-giving.
He lay there for a moment, chest heaving, vision slowly clearing.
Titus had turned away from Tristan but not to gloat. To defend.
Sir Kay and Sir Percival were coming at him.
Percival moved first. He was using a new weapon a spear of Roman design, taken from one of the fallen black cloaks. Its balance was different from his old weapon, but he had adapted. He thrusted forward, the tip aimed at Titus's chest.
Titus's reaction speed was slow not from injury, but from the pressure point Tristan had landed. Ten percent slower. Just enough to matter.
He dodged.
The spear passed close enough to stir his tunic, but not close enough to cut.
Then Kay attacked.
He was not holding just his own weapon. In his other hand, he carried a bow and a handful of arrows taken from a fallen Roman. He fired.
Four arrows.
They flew through the air, aimed not at Titus's body, but at the space he occupied. A box. A cage. Four points that would contain him.
Titus raised his blade.
He cut.
The sword sliced through the arrows in mid-flight, splitting them between their cross-sections, sending the pieces clattering to the ground.
He was fast. Even slowed, he was fast.
But Percival had already activated his ability.
His eyes burned. The muscles around them contracted. Blood trickled from the corners not as much as before, but enough. His vision sharpened beyond human limits, beyond mortal limits.
He saw everything.
And he shouted.
"GAHALAD!"
The name tore from his throat.
"LEFT! RIGHT! AND A BOW BEFORE A VERTICAL STRIKE!"
Sir Galahad rushed forward.
His hand snapped to the Sword of David. He unsheathed it in a single, fluid motion and threw the sheath.
It spun through the air, a distraction, a bait.
Because the positions Percival had called out left, right, bow before vertical were not the positions Galahad was supposed to hit.
They were lies.
A deception.
A trap.
Titus raised his blade to block the attacks he expected the ones Percival had named. His guard shifted left. Then right. His sword angled to catch the "bow" and the "vertical strike" that were supposed to follow.
But Galahad was already somewhere else.
His sword moved.
Not to the left. Not to the right. Through.
The Sword of David cut through Titus's blade like it was paper SHIIING! splitting the Roman steel from hilt to tip. The two halves fell apart, clattering to the sand.
The blade kept moving.
It cut through Titus's armor through the bronze, through the leather, through the flesh beneath. A vertical line opened on the general's body, from his left eye to his right thigh.
Blood exploded from the wound.
Titus's eye his left eye was gone. The blade had carved through it, through the socket, through the bone behind it. His face was split. His chest was split. His leg was split.
He stood there, bleeding from a wound that should have killed him, and smiled.
Across the battlefield, Tristan vomited.
Water great gouts of it poured from his mouth, his body expelling whatever had blocked his throat, whatever had stopped him from breathing. He gasped, choked, heaved and finally drew a full, clean breath.
He looked up.
At General Titus.
At the wound that ran from his eye to his thigh.
At the smile on his face.
And something in Tristan's chest tightened.
He felt it a premonition, a certainty. Something ominous was about to happen. Something terrible.
General Titus touched the wound on his face.
His fingers came away red. He looked at the blood at his own life dripping from his fingertips and his smile widened.
"Yes."
His voice was quiet, almost reverent.
"Yes."
He looked at the knights before him at Galahad with his holy sword, at Percival with his bleeding eyes, at Tristan recovering his breath, at Kay with his bow, at Lancelot watching in silence.
"It's supposed to be like this."
Titus was damaged.
Titus was bleeding.
Titus was smiling.