We jumped out of the carriage as quickly as possible. Sis and I quickly ran to the front as Lucian and Amber followed us quickly after. When I reached the front Sis and I stopped dead in our tracks.

Amber bumped into my sister's back as she didn't anticipate her suddenly stopping.

"Hey! What gives? Why did you..."

She interrupted herself as she looked up and saw the same frightening scene in front of us.

"No way," Amber said with a shaky voice. "Are you kidding me? How are there this many!" she said as she took a step back.

"I don't know Amber but it seems we came out here at the worst possible time," I commented with an equally shaky voice.

Lucian looked at me with a noticeable fear in his eyes.

"Zeph? What are we going to do? We won't outrun them, that's for sure."

I looked back as my sister started walking toward the horde of monsters that were coming in our direction.

"The only thing we can do. Stand our ground and hope for the best." I said as I turned around to go after my sister.

As I walked into position I thought I would call out what I thought would be the best strategy.

"Lucian, use your healing to keep us in the fight and use your light arrows to delay enemies that we miss."

"On it!" Lucian called.

"Amber, could you try to keep the sides busy with your Area Of Effect skills?"

Amber got into her battle stance

"Leave it to me!"

"Sis and I will keep them busy in front. Try to hold out as long as possible."

We were as ready as we could be and as the monster horde came closer we could see the different types of monsters. Mostly they were wolf-type monsters that we fought before in the attack on Birchbridge. They normally wouldn't be a big challenge for us but there are A LOT now. There were also some bigger variants of them and some that looked more like bears. We had never seen those before and if they were as much stronger as they were bigger than the others, we would be in for a big fight.

After a few minutes, the monsters were close enough for Amber to start using her attacks.

With an almost dance-like move, she swung her staff elegantly from her right to her left. The staff now pointing backward with the small crystal in the tip glowing brightly. Meanwhile, the air began to move around her from the ground up in a circle that was about 1 meter in diameter. A soft red glow started to become visible as I could feel more and more aether gathering in one place. Suddenly she called out "Fire burst!" as she swung the staff forward with force. The tip now pointing forward towards the enemies.

Just in front of the monsters that were still rushing towards us, a red glow appeared on the ground. The red glow quickly grew in intensity as the center sparkled for a fraction of a second until it exploded in a burst of fire as the monsters ran on top of it.

3 monsters died instantly and 5 more were pushed away by the force of the explosion. This explosion was the queue for me and my sister to jump into action.

As Lucian started firing at the enemies that were coming from the sides, Amber kept casting Fire Burst to keep most enemies from flanking Sis and myself.

I moved quickly and as I sprinted towards my first target, I cast a power buff on myself to increase the strength of my attacks.

A soft red glow engulfed my whole body as I activated the buff skill.

"Tenacity!" I called out as my spear gained a red hue.

As I ran into the stampede of monsters I charged my second skill.

"Dark Strike!" I called out as my body was now engulfed in a dark purple aura.

In the blink of an eye, my spear went from left to right and the only sign that something happened was a sharp straight white line, seemingly, lingering in the air for a second until 3 monsters dissipated into the air.

As my body was now bowed down Zephyria took her chance to use her skills to let me recover from my strike.

"Lumina Raystorm!" Sis called out as 5 beams of light separated in a horizontal line shot forward missing me by a hair.

As 4 monsters fell I spun my spear into action and slashed 1... 2... 3... monsters. All fell as my sister kept shooting off monsters around me one after the other.

"Soaring Shot!" she called out multiple times. The skill being very effective as it acts almost like a sniper rifle shooting precision shots in between my own attacks.

This was the first time I was in this kind of combat situation and all the training I did with my sister, to try and match each other's movements, really paid off right now. The fact I knew what I was doing in front meant I could perfectly time my sister's attacks to keep me and my sis on the offense constantly.

As I felt I was getting warn out from all the slashing I decided to switch positions with my sister. As I made my final attack, I ducked backward as Sis made a small jump flying over my head and landing with a swift strike, felling another monster.

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The moment I was in her previous position, just a second later, I immediately started charging my own ranged spell.

Just like with Amber a circle of wind quickly erupted from the ground and turned to a dark purple hue. A few seconds later 10 dark purple colored short beams of pure energy appear around me.

"Shadow Missile!" I called out as the beams shot up in the air and, with force, came down on 10 different monsters. 5 of which I already damaged with my sister while charging.

"Prism Strike!" Sis called out as she disappeared for a second and reappeared a few meters from where she was standing. Looking around her I saw the surviving 5 monsters also disperse.

Everything seemed to be going well so far as Amber kept firing her Fire burst every time too many monsters came around. But we were starting to feel the effects of this short but intense battle.

"I don't know how long I can keep this up Zeph!" she shouted as she unleashed another Fire Burst.

Suddenly Lucian called out a warning.

"Watch out Zeph, Zephyria! Big monsters are coming in!"

As he said that we saw a few monsters being flung aside as a bear-like monster burst through into the frontline.

I was just quick enough to react and get my sis out of range of its attack but had to rush in to keep another monster from attacking her as she would land directly in the strike path of another monster coming from the side.

*clang* My spear clashed with the monster's claws as I managed to jump between it and my sister. Moving my spear to the side made the monster fall forward as I could slice its head off.

Sis and I moved closer to the carriage as the amount of monsters didn't seem to go down, no matter how many we killed.

Sis started charging her light spell again as I jumped forward trying to kill as many small monsters as I could and trying to stay out of range for the big guys.

"How did nobody such a large group coming? What is going on?" I shouted out as I slashed down yet another monster. This time however I was distracted by movement near the chart and saw a monster getting ready to streak Amber in her back.

As Sis shot out Lumina Raystorm, she turned around and in an instant clashed with the monster. While she tried to push it away, with obviously more difficulty than I had protecting her, she managed to overpower it and slash it across the neck. Before the monster disappeared it managed to slash Sis across her legs which made her fall to the ground.

"Ow shit, Zephyria! Are you ok?" Amber asked in a panicked and worried voice.

"Don't worry about me. Keep firing! I will live." Zephyria said as she tried to stand back up noticing a blue glow around her.

Lucian saw it happening and quickly unleashed his skills.

"Healing Circle!" He called out as a blue glow appeared, centered between me and my sister.

I wondered why he would use this spell but a moment later 2 monsters attacked me of which one I could defend against but the other bit into my side.

Pushing the second monster away and killing it with a quick strike, I shouted my thanks.

"Thanx Luce, Great call."

"Don't worry about it, just stay focused!" he shouted.

The bigger monsters had now arrived close enough to the carriage that we couldn't ignore them anymore and while Sis kept striking the smaller monsters I focused on dealing damage to the bigger ones.

"Dark Strike!" I shouted as I rushed towards the bear-like monster. In a flash, I struck the monster and my momentum flung me past it. As my strike hit I thought it would at least slow him down. When I looked back, I saw it hardly did anything.

Shocked on seeing the difference in power here, I quickly tried to strike again but from the back and using the momentum to reach my friends as soon as possible.

While I rushed towards the monster's back and unleashed my skill for the second time, Zephyria called out my experience to the others

"Uhm guys, the big monsters are a lot stronger," She said with a tone that was absent of any hope of defeating it.

Suddenly we heard shouts coming from the carriage. As I rushed towards it I saw a monster starting to attack it. Trying my best to get to it, I wasn't fast enough and one of the carriage wheels broke off.

We were now trapped.

We had nowhere to run to. The monsters were now all around us, and although we could see the end of the group we were running out of options.

Our energy levels were dropping and our stamina was running lower with every enemy we could kill. Lucian kept using his healing abilities to keep us alive but he also started to run out of energy,

Without warning, a massive explosion erupted from the back of the horde. The monsters we were trying to fend off jumped back in surprise. I looked at Amber as she was as much surprised by the sudden blast as we were.

"Don't look at me. This wasn't my doing." She said bewildered.

Then, the monsters all turned around and rushed to whatever was going on on the other side. This gave us a chance to assess our situation and see what our options were.

After more explosions and some increasingly louder battle cries, we saw some people in armor burst through the monsters. It looked like these monsters were even less of a threat to them than they were to us. The larger monsters were cut down swiftly by 3 of them. It took them no time at all to kill all 3 large monsters, showing us how weak we actually were.

When the final monsters ran off and the area was clear the people approached us.

"Are you all ok? Is anybody hurt?" One of the men asked.

We all took a good breath of air in relief.

"No, we are all ok. Thanks for the rescue" I said.

"That's good. We are guardsmen from Stonebridge. We were on our way back when we saw the large horde of monsters running towards it and were worried they might attack the city. Seems you saved the city by stalling the horde." the guard said relieved and happy that nobody got seriously hurt.

It was then that I noticed something was wrong with my sister. Her vision got blurry and she suddenly collapsed. I was just in time to catch here and prevent her from falling hard on the ground. I still felt that my connection to her was strong but she wouldn't wake up.

The guard, worried from seeing her collapse, called in a healer from his team.

"What happened? Is she alright?" he asked, almost sounding panicked.

The healer arrived and asserted the situation. Feeling her forehead and using an analysis skill to see if she had cursed or poisoned. Luckily the healer finished his check with a soft smile.

"Don't worry, she is just feeling sick. Her temperature is a bit high and the battle just now must have taken a toll on her already weakened state."

I knew this wasn't good when we boarded earlier. So it did get worse. The whole battle was such an adrenaline rush that I never noticed it getting this bad. I thought as I picked up my sister, one arm under her shoulders and the other at her knees.

"Bring her to my house in Alora. She can rest there." Amber suddenly said.

"Are you sure Amber?" I questioned. "I would be very thankful if we could take you up on that."

"We just survived a fight to the death and I have my life in order thanks to her. Of I mean it! Now let's hurry." Amber turned around and saw the carriage, one wheel on the ground and in no state to continue.

"You can all take our carriage. We will stay here and fix this one and take it back to Stonebridge." The guard proposed.

"Zeph, Amber, Let's go then. Even though Zehyria is just sick, I don't want to waste any more time. I'm worried about more monsters dropping by." Lucian suddenly said with conviction.

He is just as scared of another attack as we are. And right he is about that. I thought to myself.

"Ok, I will take you up on your offer," I said as I brought my sister to the carriage.

After a few more minutes the coachmen turned around the carriage and we went on our way.