Dear Diary,

  I know I joked about the name of my sex tape being 'white shit all over the pce', but honestly? I'm pretty sure a more accurate title might be 'unintended consequences'.

  I mean, seriously, look at the number of downright wacky hijinks that have come about from completely innocent... yeah, I can't even say that with a straight face. Y'know, 'completely innocent' and any goddamned thing I've done, ever. But still, let's tally up the list, shall we? Working backwards, I try to be a decent human being to Larry, maybe trying to unfuck his family a little, and he swears undying fealty to me. I lose my shit all over Newark, which is the new name for my... no, I'm not even going there. Anyway, yadda yadda Newark, then Cure most of Phileo because nobody else was doing that shit, and I wind up Commander of an Expedition to Lancaster House. I decide to model for The Smith, and he winds up begging me to adopt him. I finally decide to tell Saffron the truth, and suddenly I'm Married with Children. I save my Godchild from some bitch trying to sacrifice her, and now she's a Primordial Terror. Okay, that one applies to lots of kids, so maybe that's not on me. I decide I want Mondays off, which is how said kid winds up being sacrificed. Hell, not to put too fine a point on it, I decide to cut school and wind up Isekai'd to a world where the gods have fucked around, and apparently it's my job to make them find out.

  I mean, that st one I've mostly come to terms with. I am, after all, a kid from the fuck-around-and-find-outiest suburb of the fuck-around-and-find-out town.

  And now I'm pretty sure the sword I gave Larry isn't destroying souls. I think it might be eating them and feeding them to him. I mean, it does kinda look 'made of Mimic-stuff', after all, and Mimic be the eater of Gods and all that good shit. Which would expin how I gave my man Stormbringer's dark saber cousin.

  Yes, I've read Moorcock. Biggest disappointment of my life, even, no, especially after I realized it was 'Moor' and not 'more'.

  So right before sunset I'd managed to guide and goad Ares' High Priest Garnd into accepting a Trial By Combat, to the death, to decide whether the remains of Calverton would accept that the shit that got dropped on them came from Apollo and Ares, or if they'd buy Ares' bullshit that somehow Phileo orchestrated it.

  General Hargreaves called out, "are you both ready?"

  Garnd opened his mouth to speak, only to have his words distorted by the weird crackling silence as Syer extended from its hilt. Sliding into a high guard stance, Larry called out, "ready" in a tone that indicated he'd been ready since the start of time, and would be ready any time Garnd got his cowardly ass in gear. After a couple moments, Garnd called out, "I am ready, General!"

  Hargreaves started the duel by simply saying, "begin."

  Garnd circled to his right, pulling his big round shield up in front of him, holding his spear low, ready to strike upward. Larry tracked him, rotating slowly, otherwise barely moving. If this was the way the shit would go down, Garnd was gonna exhaust himself before Larry even took a swing. Where Larry had a jacket sort of like the Academy jackets, only in Lancaster House colors, his Dragonhide greaves, and his Dragon scale shield on his back? Garnd had an archaic looking suit of full pte armor with one of those T-visored Spartan helms, plus a big assed metal shield, a spear, and a backup sword on his belt.

  Of course, it didn't seem to be slowing him down much, so maybe he had the Endurance to go the distance in it? Just about when I thought that, he lunged forward, moving like a striking snake.

  I didn't even see Larry move, and I'd been waiting and watching for it. Instead I got a blurred image of him stepping to the side, sshing down at Garnd's shield, which apparently had the same kind of Mana Ward whammy on it that the other Calverton Heroes had, although Larry's sword left a line of melted, bckened metal where he'd sshed it. Larry's backhand stroke took the head off Garnd's spear.

  Not a Mana Ward. That's Cold Iron, love.

  Useful info from my Kitten there. So, cuttable with Mana Bdes, but very much not in the same category of 'like butter' that every other goddamned thing I'd sliced with a Mana Bde was.

  The moment Larry returned to his guard stance, Garnd threw the remains of his spear at him. Not like a spear, though; he flung it around knee height, spinning end over end, the mother of all tripping hazards. My man Larry straight up tanked that shit; it bounced off his greaves, doing as much apparent damage as our crossbow bolts did to the Dragon we'd made them from. For those of you keeping score, that's not too fucking much at all. Garnd reached for his sword, and Larry blurred into action.

  I couldn't track his movement anything like well, but every strike of Syer against Garnd's armor threw up sparks. Larry danced around Ares' High Priest with a speed and grace Garnd couldn't match, and sparks flew first from Garnds upper shield arm, then the elbow below that, then the side of his neck, then his left thigh, right calf, left calf, then right thigh. Right about then Garnd finally got his sword out, and somehow he managed to get it in the way of Larry's strike to his sword arm. Sparks flew, and Garnd's sword looked a little worse for wear, but in no way wrecked, and he moved at Larry, stabbing with the point of his sword while hiding most of himself behind his shield.

  "Give it up, Lancaster. Kneel and beg for Ares' forgiveness, and I'll make it quick."

  Apparently Larry had decided to leave the verbal sparring for me and stick to the actual, y'know, fighting, because he ignored Garnd and went back to rotating around him, sword up in a high guard, ready to swing at a moment's notice. I knew I couldn't do what my instincts screamed at me to do and jump in to double team the asshole, but I figured shouting from the sidelines wasn't foul py. "Sorry, Garnd, Larry's taken a vow not to speak to walking piles of shit."

  Everybody watching looked at me like they'd caught me wearing my fox paws, but I just shrugged and kept watching. Garnd, not amused by my banter, looked at Larry and said, "so be it." He advanced, doing a kind of lunge with his sword, then bash with his shield while he pulled his sword back for another lunge. Larry just sidestepped the lunges, meeting the shield bashes with a horizontal slice from Syer. After the third lunge, a horizontal line on the front of the shield glowed a dull red where Syer had hit it. After the sixth, with the two of them now circling around the ring, Syer had heated that line up to cherry red, and smoke leaked from behind it. By the ninth pass, the line glowed white hot, and the smoke poured out. Garnd took a half step back and waved his shield around as if trying to extinguish the fmes licking along his arm. When he did that, the upper half of the shield folded down, then the entire thing tore free of Garnd's arm with a crackling, ripping sound. Once it hit the ground, the leather straps that had held it to his arm burst fully into fmes.

  Meanwhile, Larry had gone ham on Garnd's left arm, hammering it with swing after swing. Unfortunately, it seemed Garnd had caught on to what had happened to his shield, and he shifted his arm after each stroke, taking it on another part of his vambrace. After the fifth hit, soot coated the whole thing, but nothing glowed. Garnd lunged, and somehow managed to clip Larry's side, tearing a huge rent in his jacket, flinging rings of the chainmail embedded in it out onto the dirt. Larry leapt away, but even at a distance the red stain dripping from his side looked bad. At that point I realized his hair, which had been its normal blonde self at the start of the fight, y pstered against his head by sweat. As Garnd pursued him, jabbing away with his sword, Larry fell back, knocking the sword away with his Bde, conserving his energy.

  At that point I remembered my own interaction with Cold Iron, down at the bottom of the Kraken enclosure. Much like Larry had done with Garnd's shield, I'd managed to cut through it, but in order to do that I'd had to pour Mana into it like crazy, and while Larry wasn't a slouch in the Mana department, he didn't have a Primordial Deity feeding him extra juice. Hell, even if I could do so, I knew personally how much channeling and shaping that Mana to do what you wanted tired you out. Larry still had an edge in speed, and Garnd hadn't managed to nd another shot yet, but I'd really underestimated how hard the bastard could hit. I'd seen plenty of shit tear through to the chainmail in our jackets, but I'd never seen it punctured, let alone ripped apart like Sonic on a bad day. Larry's sweat and blood flowed freely, and with every step he left a dark footprint in the soil beneath his left foot.

  They'd circled back to their starting points, and Garnd took a few steps back, spreading his arms as he did so. Larry just stood there panting as Garnd said, "give it up, boy. Your weapon can't get through my armor, and mine goes through yours without pause. I acknowledge your skill and valor, but there's no need for this to end in a brutal death for you. Kneel before me, and I will end you quickly. Continue, and you will only find pain." The smarmy grin that showed through his T slit visor made his face more punchable than Larry's ever had been.

  Larry took one deep breath, let it out with a little cough, then ran his arm across his mouth. His blue jacket came away dark with blood. I tensed up, ready to fucking end the entire Calverton Army if I had to in order to keep Larry alive. While I fought with myself, he took another deep breath and called out, "are you done? My wife has accounting books she needs me to look over."

  While Garnd hadn't reacted to my bullshit, what with me being in the peanut gallery and all, apparently getting dunked on like that by the guy standing in front of him bleeding internally flipped some kind of berserker switch. He ran at Larry, left hand out almost like a football pyer, his right pulled back to his waist, ready to plunge his dagger forward into Larry's guts. Back on the streets in Camden I'd seen that as both a literal and figuratively shitty way to die, but at this point I told myself that I had to trust Larry knew what he was doing. Even if what he was doing was standing there in nearly the same guard he'd started in, only with his arms sagging a little. The seven o'clock Garnd Express drove forward, lunging with his short sword. It struck home into Larry's belly, and he did nothing but set his feet so he stayed upright as the sword's hilt rammed into his belly, sliding him backward.

  Then he stepped to the side, and the hilt slipped out of Garnd's limp fingers.

  What the fuck?

  Saffron hadn't been watching Garnd. She'd been watching Larry, and she hit me with her view of the st few seconds. When Garnd lunged, Larry shifted his feet and his Bde. He didn't bother putting any power into his... I couldn't even call it a lunge. He just pushed Syer's tip forward.

  Right into the left eye slit of Garnd's helm. As a noiseless shriek echoed through the part of me that used Mana, Larry twisted his hips and stepped sideways, pivoting Syer through Garnd's skull. Then he reversed his grip, spun around, and leaned his weight onto Syer's hilt, shoving until Garnd's nose guard tore away with the screaming of metal, at which point Syer straight up separated the top of Garnd's skull from the eyes up from the rest of his body.

  Larry pulled his Bde back out of Garnd's helmet and, ever a creature of habit, flicked his wrist like anything in the world would stick to Syer's bde. Then he retracted the bde, hung it from his hip, and half turned, half staggered to face me.

  "I don't mean to be a bother, Commander, but I seem to be too short of Mana to Shape a Heal Injury?"

  I stepped to his side, Shaping as I did. "Didn't want to steal your thunder, big guy." I dropped the Heal on him, and after one st cough he straightened up.

  "Thank you, Commander." Then he nodded toward General Hargreaves.

  I turned to the General and asked, "so, convinced that we really didn't pull that shit and just want to help you recover yet?"

  He replied with a drawled, "he hasn't fallen yet..."

  Out of the corner of my eye I watched Larry roll his eyes, shake his head, then step forward and shove Garnd's corpse. It took more of a shove than I'd thought it would, but apparently his armor had managed to lock itself together to keep him standing, and between the armor and Garnd's fat ass, Larry had to brace his feet and shove to get him to topple. When he did, he hit with a resounding thump and cng, at which point I looked back up at the General. "Satisfied?"

  The general let out a deep, relieved sigh and said, "Yes." He turned to his fellow Heroes. "Stand down. Get the troops back to their encampments. Send out runners to bring back our patrols." He turned back to us. "If you don't mind, Heir Lancaster, I think we'll be needing to have some long discussions, and my old bones would much rather do that indoors?"

  Larry looked to me. I just shrugged, because I could work with whatever he decided, and after all, it's his fucking house. "I can only accommodate nine of your heroes in rooms fitting of their status, but certainly."

  Hey Kitten?

  Yes, Goof?

  Think that's your cue, Imperator.

  With that, she stepped forward and, as the group of us walked back toward Lancaster House, started a discussion between herself, Larry, and the General, discussing the nature of the Alliance and how Calverton might fit into the new paradigm. It all went over my head pretty much immediately, and part of me was tempted to fall back with the Calverton Heroes like Lachn had done. Seriously, he just fell in with them and started shooting the shit, like they were just bros walking home after a day shooting hoops or something. Maybe it was the obvious 'all guys' thing, maybe I wasn't in the mood for testosterone den banter, maybe I was tired from throwing around a fuckton of Mana earlier.

  Or maybe I just wanted to stick at Saffron's side. Quietly supporting her politicking the only way I really knew how.

  Woof.