The keen tactical mind of Lord Death Despoil shows him that the problem of the Furnace Knight is less impossible than it seems. Perversely, that makes it even more dangerous than it looks.

If he was simply a creature of Big Numbers that would be a far more manageable problem. The Aotrs has dealt with warriors with more power than common sense before and it's simply a matter of locating an even larger hammer. But, despite the initial shock of the Furnace Knight's charge, that's not how he's actually fighting. Instead he is fighting in a [i]profoundly[/i] intelligent and deliberate way - just in a way that uses an utterly different toolkit than the Aotrs have access to. 

Consider the opening sequence when Foul Skream and Shatterscatter attack him in a perfect flanking maneuver. If it were anyone with thoughts slower than Death Despoil watching the Furnace Knight's counterattack would have seemed just a ludicrous disregard of basic combat reality, but it's not that. He placed himself there to get flanked [i]deliberately[/i] - and as the perfectly co-ordinated assault comes in from two directions, the Furnace Knight grows [i]stronger[/i]. In fact, the more people are directly engaged with him the more powerful he gets, a fact which he exploits ruthlessly to overwhelm the core of the high command in moments without taking more than superficial damage. When Bowblast begins casting spells at him from a distance the Furnace Knight's gravitational singularities explode in power, extending his reach to allow him to maintain full assaults on three enemies simultaneously with no loss of efficacy. 

That is just enough to save Lord Death Despoil from making a critical mistake - waving off Foul Skream and Blowblast right at the moment they had prepared their perfect rear-shot Coldbeam attack following his teleport step. The Lichemaster had seen his own extinction flash before his eyeglows in that moment: the Furnace Knight had been relying on riding the power surge he'd get from being engaged by two additional foes to put his blade right into the Lichemaster's skull from across the entire room. As it was he missed by millimeters.

That had been a [i]Smite[/i] too. It might have been the closest Lord Death Despoil had come to extinction in a long time.

There is another moment of stillness, the Furnace Knight shifting between serpentine stances, blade seemingly in every direction at once. When the Furnace Knight smiles, this time he does not look like a boy at all. He looks ancient. The bearer of terrible experience, a cold-blooded warrior who knows every trick in his arsenal and how to drive them to maximum effect. One who committed to the frontal assault as a deliberate tactical choice. One whose ruthlessness runs just as deep as Lord Death Despoil's. Slitted eyes stare unblinking.

He's waiting for something. And Lord Death Despoil is wise enough to guess what it is: He is waiting for the retreat.

If this warrior gains power when outnumbered, then it follows that he may obtain a similar surge when his enemies attempt to flee from him. The Aotrs might make a virtue of their disregard for honour but the Furnace Knight's enforcement of it is [i]weaponized[/i]. It's a trap as ugly as anything the Aotrs might have planned: stay and fight against a wave of invincible warriors until you are ground down, or flee and face the Furnace Knight at his most powerful on the way out.

Bowblast's assessment was correct, but for one thing: The Furnace Knight was not deceiving himself in the least. 

*

"Oh, this is actually really bad," Boldness said dreamily, body synthesizing opiates to dull the pain she must be in. "I wondered why he came here. It turns out it was to draw [i]him[/i] out. He's found a worthy enemy and he'll be able to use that to command public support..."

She'll live, it looks like, though barely. The shock of that impact would have killed a lot of creatures, and the fall would have finished her off if Lord Death Despoil didn't catch her. As she staggers alongside you a collection of broken, burned out protective charms fall from hidden pockets like blood-drops. She leans heavily on Unlucky as the two of them get through to the portal.

Unlucky doesn't realize it, but he'd just walked straight through the Furnace Knight's death zone and got away clean. Turns out the heroic rescue of a stranger got you a pass from whatever power bound the Furnace Knight.

*

Stab immediately came under fire from a volley of the acid projectiles of the wolf warriors. The acid was expected. What was not expected was the disorientation. Arguably the disorientation was the primary effect.

The grenades fired by the wolf warriors were absolutely, ludicrously vicious extension of the flash-bang concept. They detonate multiple times and on multiple spectrums, physical and magical, overwhelming all sensory input. At the same time they created burning acidic clouds. The ideal of this weapon was clear: to break formations and deny cover, forcing targets to flee into the open.

Once in the open they were targeted by the unit's officer, in the middle of a defensive shieldwall formation. He had a long bolt-action rifle that fired high powered specialized ammunition - a combination of lightning bolt and disintegration effects. In military parlance, the acid shock bursts were a maneuver element that cleared the way for a powerful squad level fire asset.