Reeling from the defense against Dieter, the swordmage was forced to retreat backward. The men began to form a half-circle around her once more as she did. Alden moved in first, favoring a much heavier set of strikes that was slower than Dieter's but more purposeful and would have sent vibrations up her arm if it weren't for the remaining magic in her weapon insulating her slightly from impacts. Vass followed him with a one-handed strike with his sword, revealing a dagger in the other when she parried the first strike. She managed to shift her weight to reduce the impact, but the dagger's blade cut a line along her side regardless. Despite the blade's biting sharpness, it was a superficial wound thanks to her quick movement.

"Ha!" Vass exalted childishly before being suddenly silenced by the swordmage's pommel strike to his face. He grunted and stumbled backward, but the ranks closed around him to prevent any advance she might try to take. A wall of blades came at her now, and it was all she could do to keep them held at bay, much less thinking of a spell and speaking the incantation to make it so.

As blades whizzed inches from her, bounced off her sword, and swished through the air, Elaina felt hope beginning to fade. She had really estimated her odds at being better than this, but the Orbonne company was moderately skilled at keeping their people in line when they had to. As potent as her magic was in single combat, she'd not yet devised anything that would have given her the kind of yield that something like one of Anisha's potions would have had. If only she was able to-

The epiphany was like a bolt of lightning for Elaina. She glanced back over one shoulder to find where they had set the alchemist down and saw her quickly enough that her eyes weren't away from her enemies for a moment. A moment was all Dieter and Alden needed to move as one, striking at her from two sides. Elaina turned, so the strikes were aimed for her front and back instead of her right and left, and brought her sword back over her shoulder, catching Dieter's strike on the backswing and then Alden's slower strike as she swung her blade forward, knocking Alden backward in the process.

The swordmage swept her blade forward toward Dieter but misjudged his speed and flexibility. He leaned back away from her stroke and snapped out with one of his own, holding the sword in one hand. The tip cut a line of crimson from the back of her jawbone across her face, nearly taking her nose. She winced but didn't let out a cry of pain, afraid that they would see it as their chance to push and overwhelm her. Elaina gave up more ground, but now with the specific intention of edging closer to Anisha. Vass came to the front of the crowd, snarling and looking for payback for the blow to the face. He struck lazily, presenting her with a false opening that he and Dieter wished for her to take so they could get her in another co-ordinated pincer strike, but she didn't take it. Instead, the swordmage fell back, using precious seconds to close the gap between her and the sleeping half-elf.

Elaina skidded to a stop, plunging her hand into the pouch at Anisha's side as the Alchemist remained motionless, sound asleep. She pulled out a handful of vials and let every one of them gently slide through her fingers save the one that she was looking for, the one that Anisha had shown her over breakfast the morning after their first night together. She looked up, blowing a lock of ginger hair from her face as the mercs rushed toward her with Vass in the lead, still eager for his payback.

The swordmage dropped her sword and, with two hands, gave the vial a gentle twist. Dieter stopped cold, his keen eyes picking out precisely what she was doing. He got a hand up to hold Alden back, but the rest rushed on.

"No!" he hollered, but it was too late.

Elaina gave a quick backhanded toss of the vial toward the group and then huddled down over Anisha to cover her. The vial did exactly as Anisha said it would as the reagents inside reacted with one another. The explosion caught several of the men off guard, bathing them in heat and slivers of glass. Vass managed to get his eyes closed in time, but the side of his face was still peppered in glass and bathed in fire. The screams that went up from the group far outstripped that of the fiery explosion, and they continued as the moment of impact passed, and they fell to the ground covered in varying levels of persisting flames. Though most of the men rolled about desperately to extinguish the fire, their flesh was still severely burned. Three of the men stopped moving altogether. Vass let out a tormented shriek as he tried to fish slivers of glass out of the side of his face with the fingers of a red and black hand quivering with agony.

Elaina took her sword and got to her feet, shaking bits of glass out of her singed hair, gritting her teeth as she moved toward them.

"Five!"

The swordmage had now slain half their number. The weight of that fact seemed to be settling in quickly for Dieter, who spared a moment to take stock of their situation. Two of the auxiliary mercs he'd hired were still alive but in no shape to fight any longer. Vass also looked as though he wouldn't be of much use to him. A fact which only enraged him further.

With one hand under Vass's good arm, Dieter jerked the man to his feet, "You idiot," he snarled before shoving the man forward into the fray despite the burns he suffered down one half of his body. Vass still held the dagger in his off-hand and tried to bring it down in a desperate overhand stab. Elaina caught the blow by the wrist with one hand and drove her sword to the hilt through Vass's belly and out his back. The light armor he wore did little to even slow the magical sharpness of the blade.

Elaina held him there in a clinch, the blade sizzling out the back of him as she looked him in the eye as the realization he was seconds from death began to set in. Then Vass, the piece of shit, grinned and spat a wad of blood and saliva into her face.

"Agh!" she cried as she reeled back, frantically trying to clear her vision of the man's last act in this world. She managed to make out the shape of Alden rushing her and got her sword up just in time to defend his strike, but didn't see the fist directed at her face that he followed it immediately with. Her head whipped back from the impact, and before she could reorient herself, she felt a kick slam into her chest, bowling her over backward with the wind half knocked out of her. She coughed and choked, pushing against the ground with her legs to put more distance between her and the remaining Orbonne soldiers.

Dieter lifted Vass's discarded sword gracefully from the ground with the tip of his own and took it in his free hand, wielding two of the weapons now as he and Alden advanced on her in a series of blinding alternating strikes. What Elaina could not parry or deflect, she did her best to take in some way that was not immediately a killing blow, but the two were picking her apart with precision now.

In an attempt to form a distraction, Elaina cut Azade's tent free from where it was staked and, with her free hand, hurled a chunk of the canvas at Dieter, knowing the slightly slower Alden would be easier for her to handle one on one. Dieter struck the canvas from the air, slicing it cleanly into pieces but affording Elaina the precious second or so that she needed to speak the incantation for the light spell. Instead of making the blade red, she made it white, turning her gaze aside as the light flared to life within the metal of the blade. Alden, who had been looking directly at her sword when the magic blazed to life, winced in pain as the light temporarily blinded him.

Elaina pressed the attack, but Dieter moved to cover Alden as he recovered, intercepting her strike and offering a riposte with the second. But even for him, the light of her sword was immensely disorienting, and the strike went wide, missing the swordmage entirely. She leaned forward, stepping on one of his feet as she slammed a shoulder into him and threw him back on his ass. Her intent was to bring the blade down on him. However, Alden followed the sound, lashed out with his weapon, and forced her to retreat from Dieter.

The swordmage spun her sword a few times in a flashy display before passing it behind her back from one hand to the other, creating a strobing effect for any man looking at her. Alden moved his head from side to side, trying to keep from being dazzled by the lights, holding his sword in a guard position in front of him. Her sword hummed as she seized upon a large portion of magic from within her and forced it down through the blade, overcharging the spell as she had done with the river drake.

The weapon crackled and hummed as she brought it around in a two-handed swing. And just as she had done to the first man she had killed, she cleaved clean through the blade Alden held before him with a deafening crack like thunder. Despite the extra reach of the shining blade, she caught his weapon only at the end of her own, the tip of it carving an angry glowing red line through his armor but leaving his flesh intact.

Marveling at his luck, Alden was caught off guard when Dieter tackled him to the ground to avoid her next strike. Neither man was relatively fast enough or quite lucky enough to avoid it entirely, but Alden only lost an arm instead of losing his life. Elaina caught it just above the elbow, slicing through it as cleanly as she had the man whose head she had taken. He let out a wail of pain as he hit the ground, the stump of his upper arm moving weakly as he gawked at it in horror.

The swordmage's breathing was growing ragged now with the expenditure of stamina and magical will, but she pressed the attack on Dieter now that Alden was effectively out of the fight. Dieter rolled to his feet, still holding both weapons but not foolish enough to try and cross either of them with Elaina's. Instead, he avoided her, ducking and weaving away from her as she struck time and again. He skirted the tree line, placing a few of the smaller ones at the edge of the camp between the two of them only to find out her blade wasn't slowed in the least by the trees, cleaving through them cleanly, the magic of the edge igniting the stumps of either section as gravity took the upper portion of each tree to the ground. The crashes of the trees falling around him only added more chaos for the two combatants, but Dieter was more accustomed to distracting noises in combat than she was and took advantage of her wavering focus.

Dieter came around from behind one of the felled trees with a strike of his left-handed sword, which she parried with ease despite her flagging strength, severing the blade in two about halfway up. But his second sword came in, hooked under the hilt of her sword, and ripped the weapon clean from her grip. Both of them were plunged into darkness as the bright blade clattered off into the woods.

Stunned, Elaina caught the blow from the broken sword's pommel right in the side of the skull. She was nearly sent to the ground as her vision exploded in color, and the world swerved and spun under her feet. Her breath hitched as the undamaged sword found a place in her shoulder and sunk about halfway before she slammed her fist into Dieter's nose, much to his surprise. Even with the world spinning beneath her, she didn't struggle to find his face at the end of the blade. She felt a crunch when her knuckles made contact, and she was confident that as he reeled back, ripping the sword from her shoulder, that she'd broken it in more than one place.

"Bitch!" he spat, his voice sounded wet in the dark. Elaina could only barely make out the silhouette of him, but he could see her more clearly with her back to the camp and the faded flickering flames of the campfire giving him just enough light to see by. Out of the dark, something impacted her face, right between the eyes, and this time she went down.

It took her a moment to realize that Dieter had hurled the broken sword at her. The pommel or guard had struck her instead of the broken blade. The spinning earth now seemed to hold her to it, as if gravity had gotten stronger or her body had gotten heavier. Elaina fumbled around in the leaves, her hands desperately searching for the errant piece of the sword that had struck her. All she needed was part of it, it would be enough to hold a little magic, though not for long.

"That's gonna be your last word?" Elaina asked, her words slurring a bit from the punishment she had taken," 'Bitch’?"

Dieter shambled toward her, dragging his sword alongside him, "You just can't help it, can you? The shit talk and bravado... even now."

Elaina's hand came across something smooth and steel, but it wasn't the part of the sword that had struck her. Instead, it was the top half of his sword that had fallen to the ground when she had initially destroyed it. Her hand closed down around it. Despite the pain of the cutting edge, she adjusted her grip until the blade was concealed along the underside her arm. Dieter brought a swift kick up into her ribs. It hit with such force as to turn her clean onto her back; air knocked from her once again.

As she laid on her back, Elaina found it challenging to bring her vision into focus. The exhaustion both in her body and her mind was now compounded by her added difficulty to breathe. Dieter stood over her now, sword poised to strike, "You can't even stand."

Elaina muttered an incomprehensible incantation, barely managing to complete it with how her speech slurred. Mistaking it for some reply, Dieter turned his head in a mock display, trying to listen to her even as he took his sword in both hands, "Hm? What's that? I didn't quite get it all."

The swordmage coughed, tasting a bit of blood in her mouth when she did. She felt the thrum of the blade fragment concealed under her arm as it finally took the magical charge, "I said," she groaned a little more clearly, adjusting her grip on the blade to hold it like a shiv, "Neither can you!"

With a sweep of her arm, she brought the blade fragment across both of his shins. It cut through the single layer of thin armor that protected both. The strike severed the bone of the first leg but only cleaved about halfway on the second. However, the result was the same as Dieter's legs were literally cut out from under him. He hit the ground hard beside her, his eyes wide and panicked as she rolled on to him with a savage snarl. The soldier tried to bring his sword up to mount a defense, but the swordmage took hold of his hand with two fists and began to force the blade against his throat.

Dieter got his other hand up under the weapon to arrest its descent, and the two locked gazes, the rage in their eyes threatening to burn out the inside of the other's skull. Dieter began to gain traction, pushing the blade up slowly away from his throat. Even with the pain he was in, he focused his strength enough to fight for his life. Elaina adjusted her grip, wrapping her hand around the sword's hilt with his and driving it back down with all of her weight behind it. The blade bit into his flesh, drawing only a little blood at first as he continued to fight. But as she leaned more heavily into the push, the blade sunk deeper until the strength began to go out of his arms, and the slow acceptance of the inevitable filled his eyes. It wasn't quick, and it wasn't clean. Elaina forced the blade down an inch or so as Dieter gurgled and croaked wetly around the steel.

Slowly the fight went out of him entirely, as did the light in his eyes. Elaina lingered there for a moment longer, overseeing him as if he would pop back up and drive the blade through her heart if she wasn't careful. But after a couple minutes of watching the man gaze lifelessly up at the sky, Elaina finally allowed herself to roll off of him heavily before curling up into a ball of pain and crying. If she had been asked why she was crying, she wouldn't have been able to say for sure. She was overwhelmed with a multitude of things at that moment, not least of which was having nearly died at the hands of such a lowlife, but also having to watch the life drain out of him slowly just to be sure he didn't kill her. Or Azade. Or Anisha. It was probably the single most agonizing kill she'd had in all her life, and it didn't feel at all like self-defense, though anyone would have said that it had been.

She didn't know how long she laid there in the dark sobbing among the trees, but eventually, the heat of her exertion left her, and the lingering magic of the sleep orb began to claw its way in through the growing weakness of her body. She was cold and tired. Somewhere nearer to the camp, she heard movement and imagined that the men she hadn't killed were gathering what strength they could to get to their feet either to flee or to finish her off in retaliation for their fallen comrades.

Elaina took a few deep breaths, trying to steady herself, choking back her sobs as best she could. She rolled over onto all fours and slowly forced herself up to her feet. Her shoulder screamed in protest, as did the older wound in her back. Other injuries she hadn't yet adequately cataloged joined in the rally for good measure. She brought one foot forward, barely supporting her weight on it, and then repeated with the other. Step by terrible step, she shambled back to the edge of the camp, where she saw two of the other mercs barely standing and Alden One-arm taking up one of the shoddier swords that had been dropped. All three looked at her as she dragged herself into the camp, her eyes glaring through a curtain of bloodied ginger hair.

"Seven," she growled.

All three men dropped what they were doing without a word. They left as quickly as humanly possible considering each of their injuries. Elaina's eyes tracked them until they reached the other end of the camp, at which point she lost sight of them in the dark. She listened carefully for another few minutes as she heard them crashing and stumbling through the woods. Her gaze shifted to look over the ruined camp. A shudder from the chill ran through her body.

The swordmage took another few shambling steps over to the fire pit, leaned down, and picked up a log to toss into the fire. When it began to catch slowly, she sank down next to the fire and closed her eyes. She just needed a few minutes.