Stand. Better to go down fighting.

You whirl, drawing your sword as you do, sliding almost a dozen feet on the ice as you stand your ground. This might not be a fight you could win but you weren't going to die running away. Maybe you'd never be a knight but you could still die like one.

The ringing of steel clashes in your minds eye and you feel the world shift. The fathers of The Order would speak of their perspective changing, enhancing in a battle haze that transcended mortal senses. You feel Gladion's presence, cold like the night but steadfast as iron and unstoppable as an avalanche, "By the will that is Gladion, I am divine." The prayer steels your flesh, driving out the soft, warm fear and leaving only hard, immutable will. You were **** chained. A great boulder ready to crush. Woe betide what got in your way.

You see your foe approaching clear as day. You've never seen one before but you recognize it, or rather the information is supplied to you. It is a Wikita, a homophagic undead spirit whose body is made from the bones of its prey. It had a deer skull for a head, great fangs from some other body lining its 'mouth'. Its arms, legs, and tail were amalgamations of what looked like human and small animal bones. You felt as though you should be terrified but the power inside you left no room for such weakness. Your enhanced senses saw past the physical to the darkness that stuck the bone pile together, a noxious antilife that fills your focused mind with rage. It makes no noise as it lopes along the ice, even to your enhanced ears.

It stops abruptly some two dozen paces from you. It is with great satisfaction that you feel its hesitation at the cold power radiating off you, whatever passed for fear within its twisted soul. And you take a step towards it. It lets loose another eerie scream but doesn't move. You don't stop, moving another stride closer. It skitters from side to side, faster than a normal human would be able to track. You don't slow down, walking slowly closer. It screams at you one last time before leaping the remaining distance, some twenty feet, with its clawed arms outstretched.

You slap its body with the flat of your blade, a dozen rodent bones and bone chips flying free from the unplanned course correction, and it lands askew beside you. It's up just as fast, spinning to strike at you. You don't even try to get out of the way, the razor sharp bone shattering against your armor. You take the opportunity to grab it by the antler in your offhand, hauling the undead thing in by its corporeal husk. Normally you'd say something clever at this point in the fight, when it was clear you were winning and could afford to joke around. But you weren't normal right now. You were divine.

You obliterate the Wikita's body with a sweep of your sword, the spirit within clacking the deers fanged jaw at you once before bursting into a thousand fragmented shadows and fleeing into the night. You feel annoyance that you were unable to destroy it in its entirety. Now you'd have to follow all the pieces until you'd either ground them into spiritual dust or find a better way to deal with them.

With the threat destroyed your focus waivers and your divinity begins to fade. Good thing to. You'd been about to walk after the shadow shards into the night, literally following them until they were obliterated or... well, there was no 'or'. You sag, body shaking from cold and exhaustion, "Holy crap... so that's what... that feels like..." You gasp, still recovering from your sprint. You turn back to the village and begin to hobble out of the trees.

"... help..." You stop, wincing. "... help!" You turn back towards the cries, feeling too tired and too cold to deal with this bullshit but also having just defeated a wikita in martial combat so... why not?

"help!" It sounded like a child... or a very young woman. You peer through the trees to see a girl, no older than 18, looking up at you mournfully. She was dressed... oddly. Like a noble at court. What was she doing here? "What are you doing here?" Her lip quivers and she puts her face in her hands, quaking slightly. "Hey, it's gonna be ok, we just need to get to the village and out of the woods." She looks away from you but allows you to help her to her feet. She hugs herself tightly to you, despite how cold your armor must be, "Hey you're ok... everything's gonna be fine." When she speaks her voice is high and girly, no wonder you'd thought she was a child, "No it's not, you hurt my pet!"

The gears turn slowly in your head as she looks up at you, yellow eyes burning with a fell light, "Oh, f-"