“Can you show me what is going on?” I mentally asked Lenore who I felt nearby. Her response was lacking in words, merely a feeling of affirmation but she made it up with a condensed version of her memory allowing me to see what she had observed during the time I had been unconscious in mere seconds. The rapid absorption of information meant that I wouldn’t be able to fully remember the details but for now, I knew enough.

When I had fallen unconscious, Sigmir had reacted just in time to keep me from face-planting in the mud, picking me up and carrying me away while Lenore had taken to the air, after sitting on my shoulder during the confrontation with the Centaur. Adra and Rai had followed after Sigmir within a minute or two while she had kept an eye on the town, knowing that she would always be able to find me, as long as we were linked. And her prudence had been justified, just fifteen minutes after we had left the town, the humiliated centaur alongside a few others had left the town, obviously following the tracks the others had left behind.

What followed was quite simple, Lenore had flown back to my body, warned the others and they had used the forest in an attempt to shake the pursuit. Sadly, with the rain during the previous night, the ground was muddy and it was difficult to avoid leaving tracks, even for those who excelled at stealth like Adra and Rai, never mind Sigmir. To make sure that the centaurs didn’t catch up to them, Adra had used her abilities to delay the centaurs, launching sneak-attacks to hassle them but at the end of the day, they were persistent predators and would simply try to run us down. I wasn’t sure who would ultimately win such a contest, Sigmir had crossed the first divide and had incredible stamina but she had been weighted down by my body, small as it might be, and Centaurs most likely had some racial bonuses to their stamina.

Not that any of that mattered, now that I was back and the time I had spent unconscious had been enough to normalise my Astral Power, even if my body was still sore and feeling as if I had a sunburn all over.

A quick glance at the current situation told me that there were only eight centaurs right behind us, with some more having broken off at some point, maybe in an attempt to cut the others off. And eight centaurs, none of them looking special in any way or with an aura of having crossed the first Divide, at least none that Lenore could detect, against the four of us? Those were odds I was willing to take any day of the week.

“Thank you for saving me, love” I told Sigmir, while considering plans. “Now, if you let me down we can show those silly ponies the error of their ways, right?” I continued, causing her to chuckle.

“Yes, I don’t like being the prey. I much prefer the role of predator.” she answered and for a moment, I noticed the yellow flare of Ylva peek out of her eyes.

“You don’t like being stalked by me?” I asked, managing to pack those simple words with a lot of innuendo, causing her to blush bright red and sputter a little. “Don’t worry, I’ll play the meek little prey for you big, bad wolf to devour.” For a second, I was afraid she was going to cause a forest-fire, just from the heat radiating from her cheeks before she caught herself and promised to hold me to that. Now, it was my turn to blush while she looked for a good spot to make our stand.

The centaurs were still a minute or two behind them, a little more cautious since Adra had nailed one of them with an arrow earlier so when we stumbled upon a small clearing, we had our spot. It only took us a few seconds to hammer out a plan, giving us enough time to prepare our welcome.

With me on the ground, Rai quickly clambered up into a tree, using his shadow magic to hide himself while Adra, Sigmir and I continued on, leaving obvious footprints on the clearing itself. While there were differences between Rai’s footprints and mine and I knew that Adra would be able to spot the difference between tracks made by Sigmir while carrying me and while she was not, I gambled on the fact that the centaurs would be a little complacent after an hour of mostly boring pursuit.

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We spread out in the woods on the other side of the clearing, with Adra and me flanking Sigmir who made up the center once again. Unfortunately, she had to hide by crouching behind a thicket, the trees simply not wide enough to hide her frame but Adra and I had a nice tree to hide and take cover behind.

Our plan was to wait for all of the centaurs to enter the clearing before Adra and I started the festivities with a powerful strike, each of targeting one side of their group, just so we didn’t accidentally waste resources by targeting the same centaur.

As soon as our attacks hit, Sigmir would step out of cover, capturing their attention and allowing Rai to get his attacks in from behind, without getting instantly slaughtered by their combined attention.

It didn’t take long for the centaurs to come out of the woods, moving at the comfortable trot I had observed a few times before, a gait that allowed them to move at a decent pace for quite some time. Letting out a slow breath and regretting that Lenore wasn’t in her Hallow, lending me her strength, I stepped out of cover and instantly projected the runes I had drawn in my mind. Doing it that way cost a lot more Astral Power than drawing them one by one but in this case, the simply fact that I wanted the attack to occur instantaneous justified the expense.

The ice-runes flashed in front of me, as my favourite combat-spell took form, a shard of ice, about as long as my forearm shooting out, guided by my mind into a gap of the centaur on the right flank of their group. Once the icicle was stuck, I focused on my connection to it and caused it to shatter into shards, shredding the centaurs flesh and breaking bones.

At almost the same time, Adra had stepped out and shot one of her glowing arrows into the centaur on the left flank, punching through the armour and piercing the organ that linked their two circulatory systems, causing the centaur to fall after a stuttering step.

There was quite a bit of shouting in surprise on the centaurs side when Sigmir broke cover, literally, by charging through the hedge she had waited behind, her body having taken some distinctly canine traits thanks to her Avatar-State with Ylva while glowing with her red aura. The leading centaur reared up, showing that there was some part of equine instinct in them, however they had come into being, and tried to turn around. Just in time to see a shadow fall from one of the trees, landing on the back of one of his people and causing streams of blood to erupt from their neck. Rai had taken his first victim.

Realising that I didn’t want anyone here to get away, even if we might be able to hunt them down, I let my Astral Power Overflow, instantly projecting three more runic formations, burning through a quarter of my Astral Power in an instant. The projectiles needed a little help from me but all managed to pierce into a centaur, even if not into a particularly vulnerable spot. Not that it mattered too much, thanks to my continued connection with them, it was easy to cause them to explode. And few beings were able to flee far with a hole the size of my head somewhere in their body.

In the time I had taken to rip holes into my three targets, the others had successfully overwhelmed the other centaurs, now turning to make sure the three walking wounded wouldn’t suffer for long.

The whole combat had only taken a few seconds, the centaurs carelessness being their downfall. It reminded me, once again, that Road to Purgatory was in some ways brutally realistic, there often was no fairness in encounters while there were health-bars, they were relatively unimportant in combat. My ice-lances and explosions had ‘only’ taken three-quarters of the centaurs health but also added a strong bleed-debuff, yet, the pain and sudden shock had effectively stunned them, turning them into easy prey for the others.

“Idiots…” I muttered, mostly to myself, as the combat-log told me how little EXP we had gained. But it was no surprise, none of the centaurs had been above level forty, making me wonder just what in the world they had thought to achieve by chasing us.

“Let’s go. No need to deal with their bodies, I just want to get away from their territory.” I called to the others who had checked if there was anything of value on the bodies.

And with that, we were off, leaving the centaurs carcasses to add to the mud of the clearing.