Lilith pulled ahead atop her bat drake, leading the group towards the burning effigies. The Oskuutor kept their pace, shouting after them with the stolen voices of the dead.
“I’m still alive! Someone help me!”
“Help! Help!”
“This way! Come this way!”
As their group passed between two ingen trees, Amaro spotted a flare soaring high into the air. With a loud POP! It bursted into a rain of sparks.
From the trunks of the Ingen trees, two wood elementals took shape, body blocking the hoard that pursued them. A massive bonfire erupted ahead of them, piled high with the wooden effigies they had made for the ceremony.
Arik’s voice rang around them, “Keep running until you pass the bonfire! That’s where we will make our stand.”
The Oskuutor broke through the wood elementals, shattering them to splinters as they ravenously charged forward. They put their speed on full display, quickly closing the gap they had created. They reached out, grabbing the slowest of their back, only to have their arms severed in an instant by a screaming arrow. The missile crashed into a nearby tree and exploded into a thorny bramble which entangled the frontline of Oskuutor.
“Sancta!” Amaro called out with elated joy seeing the technique.
A resonant SNAP rang over the winds of the forest as all the air surrounding the Malaki combusted at once. Wreathed in a fiery white explosion the likes of which rumbled the earth, it punched a hole in the ranks of the Oskuutor.
The very same technique that had been used on Amaro and Anitus during the war games was now used as a trap for the hoard. As their group dashed beyond the bonfire, Tadios, Arik, and Sancta stood with their spears ready.
Amaro slung himself into a hug with his sister, “I’m so glad you’re safe.” Amaro felt the other bodies of his siblings hit into him.
“Now’s not the time brother! Thank you but- Where’s Raktus?”
Amaro looked at his siblings and shook his head, “Raktus is gone.” he said, noticing the quiver on his sister’s lip.
Sancta took a breath, and let it go, “We’ll just have to live through this for him. We were not expecting you to find our signal so quickly.”
“We were in the area and I was lucky enough to spot it from the corner of my eye. How did you know to burn the puppets?”
Stolen story; please report.
“It’s simple really,” Sancta said, looking past him as the Oskuutor started to tear themselves away from the bramble, “To make a long story short, brother. There’s no way the Tibur would leave us like this without clues to our survival. No one said we couldn’t burn the effigies. They only told us what they did.”
Amaro nodded, “I agree. Perhaps now we’ll have better odds at surviving.” He said, watching the crowd of monsters charge forward and disappear from sight. He could still see the prints they left in the snow, however.
“Even if we’ve taken out the puppets, those things are still going to hunt us down.” Arik said, “Stand strong. Don’t hit them with magic. Kar-Kar, what do you remember about that silver reaper story? It might help us-”
Kaara shook her head, “We’ve already tried to kill them with a bronze bell and a silvered sword. It hasn’t worked.”
“Shit, then all earth magic users erect a defensive barrier. Make trenches and walls. I’ll blow them away if they climb over.”
Rorik pressed his palms to the ground as a wide trench split open from the earth. Gornax clasped his hands together, pulling stones from the bedrock and placing them in a makeshift wall.
“Leave a gap for them to come through,” Deka said, “If we give them a gap, they might bottleneck themselves.”
“Good idea.” Arik said, nodding over to Gornax who split the wall in half. Sancta launched an arrow into the sky. The missile splintered, embedding in a row atop the new walls and instantly generating clumps of thorny bramble, “That should keep them from climbing the walls.”
As the mob reached the trench, they began swarming over one another. Each malaki used its own body to build a bridge for the others to climb across. Rorik and Gornax worked together to try and widen the gap, but it was clear the Malaki were trying to close it.
“Paxia, lend them a hand. Keep those Oskuutor from our walls for as long as possible.” Deka called out.
“On it.”
“Miiruka, you’re on healing duty. Form a line everyone! If you are injured, fall back for healing and rejoin the defensive.”
If there was anything Amaro could say about Deka, it was that he was a born leader. The others followed his command without question. He could only imagine how long they had been surviving in the eye of that horde before being rescued.
Amaro took a deep breath and drew Quinrai. He sank his fears into that unnatural calm once more. As the Malaki began to bleed through their defenses, wood golems rose up to hold the front lines. The earth magic users stayed in the back line to maintain their hold on the walls and trenches. Water magic users who could heal had gathered near Sancta. Kaara brandished her ice halberd on his left. His siblings prepared their spells on his right.
He charged his body with everything he had. Until he could feel his soul struggling. Even now, with all that he had at his back, and all that had been prepared, he feared the death those monsters brought. They would make their stand here, but then what? Would they retreat once the puppets had burned to ash? Surely they did not know how powerful these monsters were. He couldn’t achieve that calm again. His hands shook. He gripped the handle of Quinrai, but his heart would not stop racing. He had already brushed with death enough tonight, and the voice which had given him power was now silent.
The Oskuutor broke through the bramble, pouring through the gap they left in their walls. The front line jabbed with their spears, but it did not keep the monsters at bay. Amaro noticed the way their invisible bodies depressed the bramble. He could hear them from all sides. They used the voices of their fallen comrades. Discordant shouts and screams. Those voices slowly worming their way into his brain through his ears.
A bell chimed over the howling winds. Over his swarming thoughts. He reset again. He felt that calm wash over his body. He looked to Kaara, confused. That bell had not been her chime.