There’s a whooshing sound and the crossbow bolts hit an invisible bubble that Flynt sweeps out in front of them for just long enough to get through the initial volley. I release the initial arrow toward the most forward creature, and it hits hard enough to cause it to stumble—but it’s too far away and it’s too dark to really tell the exact amount of damage. That’s frustrating.
Meg rushes forward as is her way while Flynt ducks behind a nearby cart. I pull one of the explosive arrows, despite what Meg said, and aim for the back of the pack, releasing before I can rethink the strategy. It misses my moving target to impact hard with the ground, sending up a geyser of forest floor and creature bits. I zeroed out at least three of the creatures in the blast, but I don’t have enough room to shoot another one—they’re now too close to Meg, or, she’s too close to them? They kind of meet in the middle.
A blur that I recognize as Tyrus comes in from the back, flanking the creatures, and I pull another arrow, sighting on one that’s launching itself toward Meg. The opposing momentum ensures that the arrow penetrates deep, and Meg catches the creature on her sword before flinging it away.
They’re small, about as tall as my waist, with dark green skin and big yellow eyes that almost seem to glow in the growing dimness. In some ways they resemble the river goblins we faced on our first outing, but these wear clothes and carry actual weapons—some with crossbows, others with what look like machetes, or at least something close to it.
My next arrow goes wide, and the follow-up just wings one of them. I realize that some are starting to get wise to the sniper. They get sights on me, and I push Jonas out of the way just as a small flurry of bolts come hurtling toward us, most embedding directly in the tree. One gets snagged in my cloak.
Flynt uses that moment to cast a small fire spell, aiming at the dark pit in the center of the campsite. Something in it catches, casting flickering firelight over the battlefield. The creatures—definitely more like the goblins I had originally expected—hiss at this development, and descend on Meg, who is getting overrun by them. More are coming out from the trees, carrying machetes and axes, screeching at us as they hurl themselves forward.
“Keira…” Jonas says, urgently.
“I know, I know, I’m trying here, there’s only so fast I can shoot!”
I peg another two in close succession, the red damage counts (8, 11) barely visible in the flickering firelight. It slows them down, but they’re definitely beefier than the river goblins, and there are more of them. A lot more.
Meg slices off one’s head, which the damage counter just reads as an X, and she kicks another aside into the dirt to get stomped on by its own companions. She clobbers a third with her pommel (6), the force knocking it off balance and into the fire, soliciting a high pitched wail from the creature. Damage counts come off it like smoke, but I can’t actually read them against the flames as it struggles—and fails—to crawl out in time.
I pull one of my serrated arrows and draw it heavy, sighting on a slightly larger creature that’s hanging back a little and shouting at the others in a language I can barely interpret as a language. The arrow pierces its temple and drops it mid-sentence, soliciting another X from the damage counter, which I’m interpreting as a critical hit; we haven’t had those before that I’ve noticed, but I suppose we’ve also never taken out creatures with single strikes before—the river goblins tended to be one-two punches, and I was behind the tree when I blew up those thorgs.
A much smaller barrage of bolts heads my way, impacting in the ground in front of me. They know approximately where I am, but I think the fire is throwing off their vision: they can’t actually see me.
There’s a clap of force centered in the middle of the rampaging horde and it blows them back in all directions, little red 8s coming off each. One of the creatures impacts with Tyrus and sends them both sprawling with a shout. Flynt visibly curses but Tyrus rolls with it and gets the advantage, stabbing down hard with one of his daggers; I can’t see the damage counter, but the creature doesn’t get back up. I follow Flynt’s spell with a half dozen arrows, all dealing double-digits worth of damage, dropping three and taking one down enough that a slice from Tyrus’s dagger finishes it pretty easily.
Meg cries out as a pair of machetes slash at her legs; most of those around her seem to be taken care of—there’s a pile of corpses in her wake—but at least five swarm the tall woman and her massive sword. Some of those who were blown back by Flynt’s spell are making for the trees on the other side, only to get met by the fast, shadowy figure of Tyrus, who even my elven senses have a difficult time tracking in the flicking firelight and encroaching night. I pincushion the back of one fleeing creature, causing it to stagger, just as I realize that Jonas is rushing into the fray. A single crossbow bolt fires toward us from the other side of the camp to embed in Jonas’s right thigh, landing him on his hands and knees.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Flynt glances back toward us and draws a deep breath, rubbing his hands together and muttering before he makes a run for it, leaving cover and rushing toward Meg. She’s in movement, cleaving hard into one of the creatures I’ve already hit (13), and it looks like they’re going to collide, but Flynt drops to the ground a couple paces in front of her and slaps the dirt with both hands. It’s like sound pulls in on itself for a moment, and then the creatures are all blown backward again, this time with even more force.
Two are thrown into one of the tents, the momentum tangling them in the canvas and cracking one hard against the center support poll. Three are blown toward me and I emerge from the trees, quickly thwipping arrows into them before they can get back to their feet—though they seem dazed and one was probably unconscious. Meg stabs down (12) at one that remained tangled in the fallen bodies of its nearby comrades, snarling at her.
“All down!” Tyrus shouts. “No more up this way.” He emerges down the slight hill, looking like he’s been through it: his face, arms, and armor are all covered in blood. He’s moving okay though, so it must be the bad guys’. Meg is cursing as she examines her own wounds while Flynt helps, and I crouch down by Jonas who has tried to pull the bolt out of his own leg and is looking peaky.
“I think those things were poisoned,” he mutters, his words a little slurred.
I curse and pat around his waist for his small pack, pulling it open and extracting one of the healing elixirs. “Take this.”
“Not going to… help.” He winces. “Get the arrow tip out, it’s stuck in there.”
“Bolt,” I correct as I inspect his leg. I feel the others coming up too, tentatively. Flynt says my name but I’m too focused on what I’m doing, working as quickly as I can while I continue to make the stupidest correction imaginable. “I shoot arrows. This is a bolt.”
I tear the cloth of Jonas’s pants, trying not to get woozy at the sight of the blood. Pulling one of my scarfs off, I tie it as tightly as I can around his upper thigh, then use a stick to twist it tighter, making it a tourniquet; last year, I worked on a terrible survivalist thriller that the filmmaker apparently strove to make as realistic as possible, and I learned this alongside things like how to identify and disarm various hunting traps. I’m hoping this is as successful as triggering that deadfall trap was against the giant.
“Joe,” Tyrus says, tentatively, approaching almost silently. He grabs Jonas’s shoulders and holds our healer’s hands tightly as Jonas leans back against him.
“Keira.” Meg’s voice is hesitant.
“You have to get it out.” The slurring of Jonas’s words is getting worse. “I can’t heal until it’s out.”
I stare at the wound for what feels like forever, but can’t have been more than a microsecond. My hands are filthy, covered in dirt and blood. My knife can’t be much better. The magic has to be able to counter that, right? Bacterial infections can’t hold any weight against magical healing… right?
Why is it me doing this? Why doesn’t one of them? But I’m here, and time is of the essence, so I force all that out of my brain as I pull my knife and cut a slice in Jonas’s leg. He screams out as I do it, and worse as I reach my fingers in to pull out the little arrow head, which is about half an inch into the meat of his thigh, almost to the bone. Thankfully, I don’t actually see his bone, and it doesn’t appear to have hit an artery. The wound is bleeding, badly, but it’s not spurting everywhere, it’s not drenching me. Which, that’s what punctured arteries do, right?
I have no idea. I’m not a medical professional. I’m so far out of my depth.
“Jonas?” Meg is on her knees behind me, and it’s the pain in her voice that makes me realize the screaming has stopped.
“Dump the elixir down his throat!” My voice is shrill and urgent. I can feel Jonas’s pulse getting light as I clasp my hand over the wound. “Force him to swallow it!”
Tyrus almost fumbles the vial, but with Flynt’s help manages to get the elixir in Jonas’s mouth. He’s vaguely coming to, and swallows before coughing and gagging at it, but I watch as the wound heals up and the gray edging of it fades. I glance at Meg, whose own face is ashen, then hand her the second healing elixir. She hesitates, but takes it and downs it fast, sitting back into the grass. I look up at Flynt whose hair is plastered to his forehead by sweat, his jaw and shoulders tense, hands fisted at his sides. He meets my gaze. His expression is something I’m not sure how to read. Fear and relief and utter disbelief.
We just stay huddled there for a long beat, all of us processing the last few minutes. Flynt glances back over his shoulder at the campsite—more than a dozen little bodies visible, and who knows how many Tyrus got hidden in the woods on the far edge of camp.
“What are we doing?” Flynt asks softly.
“What we came here to,” Meg replies, her voice equally downcast. “This is what it is.”
As she says that, I notice the small medal in the corner of my vision.
> [WELCOME TO LEVEL 4]