I lay sprawled. The weather beat around me, rain drenching and wind tearing. The howl of it filled my senses, overloading me as I stared in shock at the mangled remnants of Tacita's corpse.

She'd… she'd been alive just moments ago, fighting at my side. Now she lay obliterated. The golem's power must have been truly immense.

I was frozen a moment too long. Images of Chowwick came screaming into my face, his pale bloodless face lying motionless in the snow. The incredible vivid redness of his life's blood as it soaked in the snow, melting it, then being frozen by it.

My hesitation was too long. The golem leapt toward me, finding a burst of exertion that defied everything it had done to this point. One instant it was half a street away, the next its feet were crushing into the roadway before me, crippling the surface, stones and grit showering me in a detonation of debris.

I started to move, but I was too late. The huge clubbed arm swung at me, crackling with the light of hell, condemning my story to a bitter abrupt end. It had disintegrated Tacita, I could offer no resistance. I tried to move out of the way, but it was an impossibility.

Light exploded. The kinetic pulse rippled through every cell of my body, I felt the muscles wanting to peel from the bones, I felt the bones vibrating and wanting to shatter apart. The wave of concussive energy drove me to one knee, my ears were nothing but ringing static.

It drove me to one knee?

I should have been dead.

I turned my head in disbelief.

Between me and the golem stood the stout figure of a Shield suit. The warrior's arms were held high, the shield crackling with electric fire and kinetic madness, the golem's arm crushing against it.

I coughed more than cried, "Olaf!"

He had taken the blow. Even his shield was barely enough to survive the blow, I could see his knees tremble, could see the flickers of his POWER nearly dying.

I roared, "Olaf! Disengage, to me!"

I moved back, scrambling to my feet, praying I wasn't consigning him to doom, praying he could break free and join me. A moment later I heard the heavy footfalls of his bulk following me. I turned after twenty yards to face the expected attack. Olaf charged up to turn by me. Not by me, he turned before me, placing himself between the golem and my form.

The golem hadn't moved. It stood, emotionless and deathly, like a statue, regarding us.

Olaf stammered, "What's it thinking about…"

There was no time to waste, my words came in a stream. I surprised myself by the coherence of the plan even as it formed. "Olaf, we haven't a moment. The thing is impervious. Nothing can hurt it while its field is up. And its attack is devastating. You can withstand it with your shield, maybe, but a direct hit is death. It destroyed Tacita."

He cut in, "What is it?"

The fear in his voice was clear and unmistakable. My admiration for him only grew as I heard that fear. Despite it, he had put himself between me and the thing. He was the Shield.

I kept hammering words, watching as the beast suddenly began to shift, its stance changing. "The field drops for a beat, a fraction of a second when it strikes. It's a useless opening, even if you dodge the attack the blast sends you flying. But you can withstand it. If you can bear another attack I can shelter behind you. I can strike in the window."

Olaf stared down the street. "It's going to leap again."

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I roared, "Olaf! Listen to me! Can you take another hit?"

He shook his head, casting the fear aside like a cloak unwanted. "I can."

I said no more. The ground beneath the golem depressed, dirt exploding into the driving rain, the downward force of its legs sending cracks screaming through the surface. Then it was in the air, flying towards us in a nearly flat trajectory.

Olaf's arm flew back, pushing me closer behind him as the other raised his glowing shield. I pressed myself to his huge back, bracing myself, one hand squeezing my sword tight, the other latching onto the groove of his shoulder pad. I focused on the connection between our suits, BOOSTING him to lend him any strength I could.

The next moments were a chain reaction of impossible actions. It happened in less than a second, one event crashing into the horizon of the next. The golem landed, my feet nearly slipping from the vibration of its impact. The arm came down, blinding death. The explosion again of blinding light, the storm of chaos trying to send me flying. My arm and back contracting, pulling against Olaf's solid form, propelling me over his back, my sword now the glowing agent of destruction.

CUT blazed as my sword swept into the form of the giant. It found purchase, smoke and sparks and strange fluids leaping free only to be whipped away by the violence of the storm. But I hurt it. I buried my sword to the hilt and whipped the blade, my CUT moving through it like a glowing rod through tallow.

Then the field was up and my grip barely held on to my weapon as it was repelled.

I leapt back to stand by Olaf, our weapons raised. The golem staggered back, jerking. It moved like a beast wounded and confused. It kept its feet and paused again, as it had before, as though contemplating.

It was a stalemate. We were powerless to attack it as long as the field remained intact.

A long moment passed, two Griidlords, gods in their own right but diminutive specks against the hulking grand horror of the golem. We stared, sword and shield held before us. It seemed to stare back, frozen in some unknowable decision-making process.

It swung again, with the other arm. Again Olaf's shield was the bastion that absorbed the terrible blow, again my CUT licked it. Again it struck, both arms deformed. Again. Again. We repeated the loop, a strange and deadly dance of the greatest consequence.

Olaf's body sagged. His energy was depleting. He was what now? I couldn't remember. Level 16? 18? He wasn't able for this task, not for much longer. I could see the pain that racked his very bones.

The golem reared back, both arms, deflated and ruined though they were, crackling with hellish light above us.

I roared through the storm, "Once more, Olaf! Can you bear it?"

He did not answer with words. Silent, he raised his shield to take it.

The arms fell.

The shield held.

The sword flashed.

A huge arc of CUT I employed, a bolt of severing destruction, passing through the open wounds of one arm and arcing on, unstopping until it had passed through the other.

The arms fell free, crashing to the ground like the corpses of cattle dropping from height. The golem sagged and staggered.

It took me a moment longer than it should have to notice that the field was not returning. Chemical blood spewed from the stumps, crackling will-o'-the-wisp electricity bled from it, and the figure slumped drunkenly above us.

I seized the chance, my legs surging, driving me airborne. A foot found the deep shelf of Olaf's back and I drove down, propelling myself toward the unguarded creature. Again, CUT descended, the executioner's axe in ethereal glowing form. There was a recoil of impact and then my blade slid through, the neck exploding in energetic light and more of the dark unnatural fluid.

An instant later I was back on the ground, on one knee. Olaf wavered to one side of me. The head of the golem lay on the dirt on the other side of me. Like a falling tree, the rest of the form slowly fell away from us, smacking the earth with a tremendous and deafening boom.

Level 34 flashed before my eyes only flicker away and instantly be replaced with Level 35. I could feel the incremental changes surging through me. Each step was less noticeable than the last, but the growth continued. 5 more levels until a new skill, a new milestone.

Then it was just Olaf, the storm, and I.

We gathered our strength for a time. There was nothing left in us that could be turned into words. All that remained was exhaustion, relief, and the first bursting buds of the elation of victory.

Olaf was the first to speak. "What was that thing?"

I stared at the pieces of the monstrous corpse. "I have no idea."

He said, "Why did it come here? Where the hell did something like that come from?"

I shook my head in answer.

Olaf's helm melted away and the broad face appeared, instantly drenched by the driving rain. I let my helm fold back so that I could return his gaze.

He looked at me, his face a mask of pain and depletion. His hair stuck to his face, darkened by the rain, a plastered mess of sweat and water.

Then the broad face cracked into a huge and impossibly human smile.

He said, "You fought well, Sword."

I could do nothing but return the smile. I threw a hand out to grasp his, our hands holding each other's wrists.

I said, "And you fought well, Shield."

My Shield.

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