<blockquote>


    They came expecting a mewling lamb, incapable and overstated. They came with hate and envy, and they sought to blunt our sword before it could be drawn—before it could be wielded. I wonder what they thought when he disabused them of their presumptions, and the lamb they thought to slaughter was revealed to be a sleeping dragon. I still remember the crunch of bone, the smell of blood, the screams of the crowd. I still remember him, standing there, unfazed and imperious—and surrounded by the building blocks of what would become his legend. Gods of Olympus, he was beautiful, and I knew I was lost.


    </blockquote>


    Arthur stepped outside of the Lion’s Pride while waiting for Circe and the Kidemónes, both of whom had remained behind to ensure her safety after ensuring he remained near the restaurant entrance, and nodded companionably to the line of people queuing near the entrance. The popular restaurant had been almost full when they had arrived, and its popularity had only grown through the night. With Hellas’ particular timescale, the ‘night’ lasted far longer than many worlds, and that meant that nocturnal visitation was far more common than elsewhere.


    During his discourse with Circe, he had learned that Pallikári enjoyed a very lively post-dusk economy, and much of its money circulation occurred during its night time periods. Something about the cool air, the views, and the alluring ambiance of the town at night drew in far more crowds than even the beatific views during the day—and even the beaches saw an uptick in activity.


    Arthur could imagine why. There were few things more romantic than a midnight meal by the waterfront.


    “Hey there! You happen to have a lighter on you?”


    Arthur turned at the sound of a voice and the appearance of a friendly-looking brunette man in a flowered shirt and casual pants, and shook his head.


    “Sorry, I’m not much for tobacco or otherwise,” he said with an apologetic smile. “Maybe you could try inside?”


    “Damn,” the man said with a sigh while reaching behind to scratch at his lower back. “Alright, thanks anyway!”


    Arthur nodded and turned away.


    His psions screamed before he had completed the rotation.


    Every inch of his gene-enhanced body tensed as he dropped into a combat crouch, and the barking discharge of a military-grade sidearm cracked into the night. Screams erupted from the crowd near the doors, and Arthur moved instinctively—not to get away, but to close distance.


    His mind, already aware he was disarmed, wasn’t simply going for the attacker.


    He was going for a shield.


    Arthur slammed into the man with speed and force that clearly took him completely off-guard, and unlike with Circe, he saw no need to hold back. His right knee rose in a viper-quick movement, and he slammed it into the left side of his assailant’s smaller body hard enough to break the ribs.


    The man gasped out a heave of air from the blow, and Arthur grabbed him by the shirt and spun him around—lifting him to drape over his body as two more cracks filled the air a moment later.


    The body of the man he was holding spasmed twice, and then Arthur felt him shaking in his grip and glanced out to where the shots had come from.


    More screams echoed from the waiting guests as he did, some of whom had barged into the restaurant and some of whom were sprinting for their lives, while others were pulling up recording software on their omni-comps.


    I hate the fucking ‘Net sometimes, Arthur groused in his mind.


    His psionic awareness identified a nebulous web of hostility and danger coming from the southern side of the street, and Arthur bent to collect the sidearm his assailant had been carrying before shoving his dying body forward and diving behind the car he and Circe had arrived in.


    More gunshots barked into the night against the reinforced vehicle, and Arthur quickly checked his new weapon, ejecting the magazine to look it over while familiarizing his hand with the shape, trigger, and weight. The safety he kept off, and the muzzle he kept pointed straight at the asphalt.


    High caliber, twelve round magazine, armor piercing rounds, and is that a fucking penetrator muzzle?


    He must have underestimated the durability of his now-dead first enemy if the shots hadn’t punched through the man.


    More gunshots barked out, but Arthur ignored them.


    Two more targets, potentially more. High population area. Eleven rounds.


    Arthur took a breath, and closed his eyes.


    Instead, he reached out with his senses.


    With his psion density, it was not hard to lock into the emotions around him—a trick that allowed him to create a kind of bubble of awareness that steadily expanded out from him in a radius. What it was difficult to do, without practice, was to isolate which peoples inside that awareness were threats and which were just caught up in what was happening. Had he been even a normal Knight-Errant, that kind of information overload would have killed his attempts there and then.


    But Arthur, for all his newly crafted humility, was not a normal Knight-Errant.


    Spatial awareness melded with long-honed empathic outreach, and Arthur quickly filtered out the panic, the excitement, and the rising tension of the non-aggressive civilians around him. Some off-duty law enforcement and military pinged his senses, but he ignored those as well. They were of no help to him against professional assassins.


    More gunshots hit the car, and Arthur frowned in annoyance at the distraction.


    He picked up on Circe easily enough, she was inside being sheltered by Perseus and Endymion, and all three were furious. The trio wanted to be outside with him, but without the Lion Guard to properly cover Circe, and with the two that had come with them having been sent to escort back the items they’d bought…


    Arthur took a breath and his awareness expanded further until it brushed over the minds he sought.


    One, two, three, four, five targets. Two on the street, two more trying to flank from the opposite side without him noticing, and one on a roof beside the restaurant. Arthur smiled grimly and glanced behind him, where his senses told him the other two were moving. They’d probably get a bead on him within seconds, and at that point, crouching behind the car was just asking to die. It also explained the inaction of the two firing from the street: they were suppressing him.


    Against anyone else, it would’ve been a relatively solid tactic.


    Move, Arthur.


    Training, experience, and a low snarl of bloodlust came to the fore and Arthur exploded into motion with every iota of his gene-enhancement in play.


    Not toward the three nearest him, but instead toward the two encroaching.


    His collected sidearm was held in his right hand and he blitzed across the street faster than any human in Graecia could think to move, launching himself over a parked car in a blur of motion. Crack-crack-cracks heralded pursuing gunshots, but Arthur was moving too chaotically for them to bead him—guided by his psions and their prescient gifts.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    The pair attempting to flank him barely had time to look up in surprise before he was on them.


    The first tried to raise his gun, gene-enhanced mind processing a threat was nearby, but it was too late. Arthur slammed the gun into his temple hard enough for bone to crack, and then followed his own motion with a pivot off his right foot to smash a spinning back-kick into the man’s torso with his left foot.


    He felt the leather of his shoe tear from the impact force, and the man died on impact—with his chest caved in by Arthur’s strike.


    The entire encounter took barely two seconds, and then Arthur was dropping low to avoid the crack-crack of two gunshots from the second flanker. To the credit of the assailant—a woman, he noticed distantly—she didn’t panic, but instead moved backward with military efficiency to try to build distance.


    Instead, Arthur launched himself forward faster than she could react, dodged to the left to dodge a third penetrator round, and then closed distance and snapped a lightning roundhouse into her side.


    The woman tried to block with her own gene-enhanced arm, and Arthur saw and felt the moment of terrified realization as her arm broke into pieces, her ribs shattered, and she was slammed into the side of the car he’d vaulted over hard enough to indent the plasteel.


    Arthur exhaled a breath, ducked so as to not expose his head, and approached the spasming and bleeding woman quickly.


    “You are going to die without medical attention,” he said to her calmly, and glanced down at the mangled remains of her arm. “I probably collapsed your lung, your heart will be compromised, and there’s fragments of bone all over your insides. You can still live, but you’ll probably never get full use of your arm back.”


    He reached out, collected her dropped sidearm, ejected the magazine, and ejected the loaded round before dismantling it smoothly.


    “Wh-what are you?” she gurgled through a jaw that didn’t seem to work quite right.


    “House Leos’ new Hetairoi,” he answered with a little shrug, and ejected his own magazine to load the liberated round into it, before slapping it back into place and tucking her magazine back into his belt. “Is saving your life worthwhile?”


    A moment passed, and then she smiled brokenly at him.


    “No,” she answered with sincerity.


    “Thanks,” Arthur said simply and reached out to snap her neck with a sickening crack. Her body slumped the moment he did, and he turned toward the first man that he had struck.


    A few moments later, with a second gun dismantled and another magazine in his belt, Arthur turned away from the man’s corpse and extended his senses again. The first two assailants seemed to be aware something had gone wrong, but they weren’t taking chances. One was trying to cross the street to get a view of him, and the other was sheltering inside the alley between the restaurant and the building beside it, under the cover of the potential sniper.


    Arthur clicked his tongue in annoyance, glanced at the autocannon hidden atop Circe’s family car, and dismissed the thought. The chances of collateral damage were too high, and besides, it would be overkill for two mid-Rim assassins. He’d faced far worse on Albion.


    Old instincts and buried training were flooding back to him every heartbeat, and Arthur quickly assessed the tactical situation: three targets, both in a position of advantage, and no immediate available reinforcements. The entire engagement had lasted barely more than a minute thus far, but he knew he couldn’t let them escape—he had to capture at least the first two alive.


    An exhale left his lips, and Arthur burst into motion.


    Another staccato pattern of gunfire lit up the night, and asphalt and pavement exploded as penetrator rounds slammed into them in an attempt to hit him. It was futile, thanks to his battle precognition, but they didn’t know that. Shouts echoed from the other side of the street, but Arthur paid them no mind and bore down on where his psionic awareness told him one of the assassins had separated to pursue him.


    A hoverbike was parked just ahead and Arthur grinned to himself, transferring his gun to his left hand and mentally locating the hiding assassin behind a vehicle parked ahead of the next car.


    Arthur lifted his gun, sighted, and fired two rounds through the car toward where the assassin was hiding.


    His right arm hooked the hoverbike, and Arthur flexed every iota of his gene-enhanced physical strength. The bike lifted from the ground, and he flung it toward the car the assassin was sheltering behind.


    The bike crashed down a second later, and Arthur felt the man—who had been expecting more gunshots and sheltering, ripple with shocked surprise at the impact of the vehicle. Arthur, meanwhile, used that opportunity to come around the now-bullet-holed car and slammed his split shoe into the man’s head hard enough to knock him out instantly.


    “Stay right there,” he quipped even while already moving.


    More gunfire tracked him as he sprinted serpentine and unpredictable across the street, and vaulted over a van to approach the alley.


    “Who the fuck is this guy?!” one of the assassins finally shouted, to no answer.


    Arthur dodged left when his psions roared at him, and dodged a double crack-crack of gunfire while ducking smoothly to avoid a third crack from the sniper above. Arthur laughed at the question and the hilarity of them only sending six to kill him.


    He was a Knight of the Round Table. He’d faced down Core Assassins naked.


    Arthur crossed the intervening distance between him and the second-last assassin in an eyeblink and didn’t waste time with fancy movements. His gun lifted, and he put a round straight through the man’s chest, and another into his skull when he spasmed backward.


    He didn’t even stop to watch the back of his skull explode outward as the front turned concave. He had another target to kill. His feet carried him toward the wall, and Arthur put on a burst of speed before running up the masonry. Gravity and physics wept in disbelief as he ascended, kicked off the wall to slam into the Lion’s Pride, and then kicked off again before he could drop to catch the lip of the sniper’s roof and haul himself over.


    Psionic prescience saw him roll to avoid another patterned crack-crack of gunfire, and Arthur heard someone shriek as glass shattered below him. That wasn’t his immediate concern though, and he couldn’t afford it to be. Power and fury roared through him, and an old bloodlust he hadn’t enjoyed in what seemed like a long time snarled to life in his heart.


    Arthur approached the final assassin with a grim smile, and dodged another two shots from him when he drew his sidearm. Bullets whined past his ears, and Arthur reached the man fast enough to kick the gun from his hand, and break his fingers in the process.


    The assassin gave a strangled cry, turned, and sprinted toward the edge of the roof.


    Arthur lifted his gun, and then lowered it and watched the man launch himself over the edge of the roof. The twang of a wire caught his attention, and he walked to the edge to see the last assailant rapid-sliding down a pre-placed descension wire.


    “Now that’s just annoying,” he said boredly, and glanced at the Lion’s Pride, and then back to the fleeing man, who had hit the pavement and started running.


    “Wrong way, buddy.”


    Arthur smiled and moved back three steps.


    His eyes tracked from the fleeing assailant, sprinting for the crowds and the cover the represented from Arthur’s theoretical bullets—a smart move, since he in fact would not fire at the Duchy’s own citizens—like a bat out of hell.


    It was a good plan, if not for the fact that he wasn’t facing a Graecian.


    Arthur sprinted forward and launched himself off the rooftop toward the Lion’s Pride, landing on its roof and darting right toward its lip, where he vaulted over without hesitation. His downward descent saw him catch one of the banners as he descended, and Arthur used it to truncate his descent just enough that his enhanced bones and muscles could absorb the impact of a drop without issue.


    “Look out below!” he bellowed.


    The banner was released and Arthur crashed down as the crowd scrambled out of the way.


    The assassin’s eyes widened in shock, but he was already too late to react. The last of the assailants started to try to slow himself down, but Arthur was already moving. The crowd staggered backward when Arthur intercepted the man by the chest with his right hand, dug his fingers into him and raised him high, to then promptly smash him into the ground hard enough to break the duracrete.


    Screams and gasps radiated through the onlookers, and Arthur stood up from the remnants of what had been an assassin—his limbs splayed at improper angles, and blood already pooling out from under his genetically engineered body.


    His eyes rose when the doors to the Lion’s Pride burst open, and Endymion, Perseus, and Circe piled out—the Kidemónes with blades in hand, and the heiress with a large pistol in her grip and a look of fury on her beautiful features.


    The crowd looked between the trio and Arthur at the same time as they spotted him, and Arthur blew out an amused breath.


    “Hey, guys,” he said wryly. “You missed all the fun.”


    “The enemy?” Endymion demanded.


    “Handled,” Arthur assured him confidently. “Three KIA, one unconscious across the street, and this one is—” he glanced down for a second “—messed up but alive. I didn’t crush his ribcage, unfortunately. I think the angle was off.”


    Silence greeted his words, and Arthur looked up just in time to catch a blur of motion.


    His psions screamed at him, but he registered the warning and ignored it in the same instant as Circe slammed home into his arms.


    “You idiot,” she hissed. “You should have come back inside.”


    “Sorry, Princess,” Arthur said while flashes of light marked the output of multiple pictures being taken simultaneously, and his heart thundered with excitement against his ribs. “I needed the exercise.”


    Circe laughed and buried her head against his chest.


    Nothing short of another attack could have made him let her go.