The fight had not started well. Jude was already severely injured and was using more mana than he had planned to stay in the air. His left leg was too damaged to stand on, and his left shoulder and side were bleeding a lot. Had he been the same from when he first came to the forest, he would’ve already collapsed from blood loss.

Jude stared at the giant Anhanga in front of him and blurted out between panting breaths, “That was careless of me.”

He had known that using the same tactics he had already would’ve been a long shot, but he had expected the leader to dodge him, not counter him. After the blow, Jude started revising his next moves in his head. He didn’t want to end up in even worse condition.

As the two stared at each other, however, the giant body of a bird crashed suddenly against the head of the Anhanga leader. It was Rost. The bird king dove straight for the Anhanga’s antlers and pushed down, trying to pin the being to the ground.

When Jude saw that, he didn’t hesitate. He dove toward one of the Anhanga’s back legs and punched as hard as he could against the bone. Despite how gruesome it would be, they had agreed that Jude would break the creature’s legs in order to immobilize it so that Iris could cleanse it. Because Jude had managed to kill another with one punch, they didn’t want to take the chance of it dying by accident, so he was limited to attacking its legs.

The crack and snap sounded loud even mid battle, and soon after, the Anhanga leader roared in pain. Jude had managed to break one leg, but the rage and adrenaline coursing through the creature increased its strength. Instead of fighting against Rost, it turned its head sideways, with its antlers toward the ground. The sudden change in the direction of the force being applied against Rost’s talons made the bird king lose its balance and get dragged down to the ground by the antlers.

Free of the pressure, the Anhanga’s antlers pierced one of Rost’s wings. The bird king tried to break free, but the creature kept ramming Rost continuously. Blood and feathers pooled around the Anhanga’s head.

The Anhanga was killing Rost, but Jude knew he wasn’t strong enough to stop the creature’s attacks, so he went for another leg. The crack rang loudly once again, and again the Anhanga roared in pain, but with two legs broken, it lost a lot of the leverage on the attacks against Rost. Jude had broken the front leg on the same side as the back, making it unable to use an entire side of its body.

The Anhanga tried to move, but every time it did, it collapsed in place. However, because it had been attacking Rost until a moment earlier, some of the weight of its body was crashing against the bird king’s body with each collapse, damaging it further. Rost wasn’t moving, and with all the blood and feathers, and the Anhanga blocking his vision, Jude couldn’t tell whether Rost was alive or not.

Jude broke the other two legs of the Anhanga leader and dragged the creature away from Rost’s body. The battle had been quick, and even now, the flock was holding the herd at bay. The leader thrashed against the ground, unable to move. Its antlers dug through the earth underneath it. Jude left it there and went to check on Rost.

Even in that bloody mess Jude knew the bird king wasn’t breathing anymore.

With the shock and realization that Rost was dead, and with the adrenaline leaving his body, Jude fell to his knees, and the world around him started getting dark. He had lost too much blood, even more so with every punch.

While he stared at the friend he had made, his mentor and training partner, and the world got ever darker, he felt the warm touch of a hand on his head, fingers caressing his hair.

“It’s OK. I’m here now,” he could hear Iris say.

Because the fight had started earlier than she and Queen Millicent had expected due to the Anhanga leader having managed to break free, they had been much farther away than they had expected to be. It had only taken them moments to join Jude and Rost, but then again, the damage had been done in just a few moments.

Iris had tried to move as fast as she could, continuously using Shadowstep to reach them, but even then, Rost died. Rage boiled within her when she looked at the Anhanga trashing on the ground, and her hands moved toward her daggers.

“It is not the Anhanga’s fault,” Queen Millicent said.

The blind rage that Iris felt gave way to confusion, and then, understanding. The creature wasn’t to blame. The rot and the beings that had caused it were. The Anhanga had no more control over itself than the bubbling rot on the splintered wood around them. The constant pain caused it to rage just like she had raged at their loss.

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“Keep an eye on him, please,” Iris said and pointed at Jude. Queen Millicent couldn’t understand her words, and neither could she understand the queen’s, but because they had trained together, they could share emotions. What had stopped her moment of imminent violence earlier had been a wave of sorrow coming from the queen and not what the queen had actually said.

Iris moved toward the Anhanga on the ground and started cleansing it. Only once she was sure it was free of rot would she heal its legs.

The process took time, and by then, the birds had retreated back to the forest. The herd, free of the flock’s molestation, rushed to save its leader. As the Anhangas approached, a dome of clear energy covered the five bodies they were rushing toward. Queen Millicent had created a dome of protection around them so that Iris could finish the job before being assailed by more beasts.

Jude still felt weak, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore, so he stood up and walked toward Iris. He posted himself against her back, fists raised, ready to protect her if any Anhanga managed to break through the shield, which they tried. However, the creatures were also tired and weakened because of the fight with the flock, so after a while, they stopped hammering the dome and simply stared at Jude, Iris and the queen. They knew that the dome would not last forever, and once it went out, they would rush in and tear them all limb from limb. At least, that’s what Jude was seeing from their eyes.

Iris was completely immersed in the cleansing, so she was unaware of what was happening around her. Cleansing the live Anhanga leader was proving more difficult than the dead one. There was no blood circulation in a dead Anhanga, which meant the rot would not keep constantly spreading as she tried to cleanse it, and the concentration of rot was many times stronger than the rot in birds, so she couldn’t simply overpower it with her magic.

She wanted to have the Anhanga leader drink panacea, but even now, it was raging against them, beating its head against the ground. Approaching it to feed it anything would simply cause injury.

Irritated by the entire situation and angry at their loss, Iris finally coated her daggers in panacea and stabbed them into the creature. The herd outside the dome raged at the sight, but she paid it no mind. From the entry wounds of her daggers, she sent her mana into the creature, trying to cover every blood vessel and organ, something she knew she was able to do to herself but had only attempted on another being now, feeling out of options. Once she felt she had bathed the Anhanga entirely in her mana, she cast Purify over and over and over again, until the Anhanga was finally clean.

Immediately, from underneath the body of the giant creature, grass and flowers sprouted. The cracked, dead earth became lush and moist, and the Anhanga stopped moving. The rage it felt subsided completely, giving way to reason and understanding. It had its mind back completely and not half overtaken by instinct. After that, Iris healed its legs and backed away. Jude, who knew she had exhausted herself in the process of cleansing the Anhanga, offered her his hand, which she took, and they walked back to the queen, who had remained by Rost’s body. While Iris had cleansed the Anhanga, Queen Millicent had cleaned Rost’s body with magic and wept. She had lost the only friend she had had when she had decided to put her people in stasis, the only other who understood the choices of a leader like her.

The dome remained in place for the rest of the herd was still infected with rot, but when the leader finally stood up, Queen Millicent went to meet him.

Queen Millicent and the Anhanga spoke in the same manner that she and Rost had spoken, and because of that, Jude could not understand the conversation. After a while, the Anhanga approached Rost’s body and bowed.

“Its name is Kash,” the queen told Jude. “It will help.”

After that, the Anhanga bellowed, and the rest of the herd stepped away. The other Anhanga were acting on instinct, and the strongest of their instincts was to obey the herd leader. Even if infected still, they would follow.

With the leader now completely healthy, the birds, who had been circling the skies just above the treeline, joined the group once more. When they saw Rost, however, they sang the most mournful song they knew in that open field of rot.

Jude and Iris had more work to do, so though they were tired, they had to continue.

“I’m going back with the birds. We should prepare Rost’s body,” Jude said.

“This is fucking stupid… I wanna go with you. I can barely stand the sight of them right now, and I know it’s unreasonable, but that’s just how I feel,” Iris replied.

“I know… but we have to keep going.”

“I hate this… I really hate all of this.”

Jude kissed her then, and when their lips parted, he said, “I’ll see you when you get back.”

“I hate you too,” she said while wiping tears away from her eyes. “You’re not fair.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

They parted then. Jude would return to the Fae tree with the flock and Rost’s body. Iris would follow Queen Millicent to the herd’s water supply, where she would turn the entire thing into panacea, and then Kash would have the herd drink from it. It was still light out, so they had enough time to do everything before Iris and the queen had to return.

Kash and its herd would remain in the fields of rot. Entering the forest could mean coming up against The Devourer, and they were still weak. Besides, with him and the rest of the herd healed, the fields of rot would turn green and lush in just a few hours. It would sustain them enough until Jude and Iris went to hunt The Devourer in a couple of days. If the hunt went well, the herd would return to the forest and heal it. If it did not, they would leave to build another forest elsewhere, and the Fae would join them in the exodus. That would also mean, however, that Jude and Iris would be dead.