The party wasted no time, shaking off the weight of sleep in an instant. Multiple sources of mana spiked.
“Which direction, Ser Rian?” Wick barked. He was standing in the centre of the camp, and he’d locked his forearms together, his eyes closed, his face a rictus of concentration. Motes of light were slowly streaming out from the left side of his chest and gathering in front of him, forming the outline of a misshapen rectangular slab large enough to cover even his massive frame.
Lucas closed his eyes and listened. There was so much ambient noise, so many little things moving around, and the distant beastly stampede was an endless din of rolling thunder, difficult to pinpoint. Jamie stirred in his chest, arching his back and hissing, and through the bond flowed an impression of the monstercat’s intent. Lucas got a feeling akin to magnetism in his soul, directing his attention.
“South-East,” Lucas called back, orienting himself in that direction and squinting into the darkness. The moon was bright, shining silver on the rolling hills, and they had a long sightline, but he saw nothing out there.
“Rena!” Wick said.
Rena nodded. Snatching an impossibly black arrow from her quiver without looking, the Bowmaiden notched and loosed it in one smooth movement, firing directly up in the air. It screamed like a firework as it rose, the sound building in pitch along with the arrow’s height. Rena watched it with narrowed eyes for a long moment, then held out one hand above her as if trying to grab hold of it despite the great distance it had travelled.
Lucas followed her gaze upwards to see what she was trying to do, and to his shock found her hanging in the air, dangling from the arrow’s shaft by holding tight with the hand she’d held up. The arrow appeared to have frozen in place, and she was staring off into the distance.
Lucas snapped his eyes back to the ground, only to find Rena had vanished. He blew out a stupified breath at the casual display of magic. He’d felt no movement of mana.
Meanwhile, Jyn had his wand poked out of his sleeve and was drawing symbols made out of smokeless fire in the air. Once he’d finished the last arcane glyph, he drew the wand back like a fishing rod, pulling it over his head.
Lucas almost cried out as the flaming letters shot towards the Wandmaster, but the man’s blue lips parted impossibly wide and the fire poured straight down his throat with a hiss. When it had all entered, he closed his blue lips, and a glow began to build beneath his voluminous hood. Smoke started venting out, covering his lower face.
The stars on his robe lit up like embers, and he dropped to his knees. He placed one hand on the ground, and the grass around it blackened. He trembled in place, saying nothing. The scent of burning meat filled the air.
Horrified, Lucas started towards the man, but Wick stepped in his way, moving impossibly fast for such a massive man carrying a jagged slab of metal that surely had to weigh a tonne.
“Don’t disturb him, lad,” Wick said, face stern. His shield was easily big enough for a man to hide behind, but it was hard to gauge its precise dimensions when it was so unevenly crafted. It looked like a chunk of metal that had been torn out of a greater piece, rather than a specially designed shield. By its jagged face covered in nicks and scratches and gouges, it evidently did its job. “Hells, have you never seen a pyromancer’s working before? It’s a disturbing sight, but the man faces no danger from fire.”
Before Lucas could reply, Rena’s arrow whistled once more, a descending note this time. She’d evidently fired it straight downwards, because a moment later it shrieked into Lucas’ line of sight and stopped in the air with the Bowmaiden suddenly hanging from it like she’d been there the whole time. She dropped the last few metres to the ground, landing in a crouch, and the arrow popped like a bubble. Lucas spied it back in her quiver.
“He spoke true, Wick,” she said. “Beasts to the South-East. My fareye spell works ill in the dark, so I couldn’t tell you how many there were, just a shadow approaching from afar. But I reckon they’re about two kilometres out. And closing fast.” She huffed a mirthless laugh. “No wings, at least.”
Wick growled under his breath and moved to the edge of the hilltop facing the beasts’ approach. He set down his heavy shield in front of him. “We’ll have to wait for Jyn to finish his scrying.” He glanced at the Skycloak as he passed her, who was holding out a chain necklace before her eyes. At the end of it was a milky white gemstone, and it was swaying like a metronome, getting faster and faster. “Do you have any insights, Swordmaiden?” Wick asked.
“Nothing relevant,” she said, sounding far calmer than the others, like the approach of a pack of beasts was of little interest. She stowed away her necklace beneath her cloak, then looked at Lucas. “What alerted you to their approach?”
Lucas stilled, suddenly aware of his thundering heart and the monstercat hissing and spitting inside it. He was still reeling from all he’d learned tonight—his brain had overloaded and was struggling to restart. Even so, he at least knew he didn’t want to reveal Jamie’s existence to these people, not when he didn’t know what the implications of bonding with the monstercat were and, hell, what the strange little creature in the centre of his soul even was. For all he knew, he’d done something heretical, a capital crime.
He grasped for the first excuse that came to mind. “My floramancy,” he said with a grimace. They’d mentioned the Skycloak wouldn't be appreciative of that discipline, hadn't they? Hopefully that would mean no follow up questions from her.
“How does floramancy tell you beasts are approaching from kilometres away?” Rena asked, because of course the Skycloak wasn’t the only one who could seek clarification. Damn it.
“Disturbances in the grass,” Lucas lied, but then paused to think that lie through. It felt like that was something he could plausibly do, if he trained his floramancy abilities up high enough. “I can leave portions of my mana behind in plants,” he said, theorising and bullshitting at the same time. Itching to test it out, he started threading his mana into the grass around him. “It becomes part of the plant, and I maintain a connection to that plant until my mana cycles out of its system, giving me some ability to manipulate it from long distances.”
“Can you slow down their approach?” Wick asked, eyeing Jyn’s still-crouched form. Steam was rising from beneath the Wandmaster’s hood, and some of the stars on his robe’s arms were now hot enough to form little shimmers in the air.
“The further away a plant is, the less I can do with it,” Lucas said with a shake of his head, and he felt that was probably true. The thunder of the approaching beasts was getting louder by the second, and he was starting to hear other noises; snapping teeth, screeches, snarls. “They’ll be on us soon.”
“Can you fight?” Wick asked.
Lucas darted to his pack and grabbed his stick. “Passably,” he said, infusing his mana into the wood. At the same time, he started speeding up his mana flow and letting it seep out into the air, giving him a mental map of the nearby plants. His stick was bright as a beacon, but most everything else was of little use; just grass and weeds and small flowers. Concentrating, he set his mana to stiffening the grass in a perimeter around their camp, pointing them upwards like spikes. He held little hope it would delay the beasts for long, but it was something.
When he came back to himself, he found The Skycloak was staring at him, moonlight in her eyes even though she was facing away from the moon itself. “Your floramancy is intriguing,” was all she said. Of the party, she was the only one who hadn’t prepared for battle, though there was tension in her frame.
“Are you not going to ready your magic, Swordmaiden?” Lucas asked.
All three turned to stare at him, blatantly dumbfounded. Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“The fact you’d use floramancy in front of a Skycloak suggested you’re from the middle of nowhere,” Rena said slowly. “But I didn’t think you’d be such a country bumpkin as to not know how Skycloaks fight.”
“Never seen one before,” Lucas said stiffly.
Silence lingered again, and it was painful for Lucas most of all. With everyone quiet, all he had to focus on was the sound of warbling screeches of who knew how many murderous beasts rapidly closing in on their location with murder on their minds. Their footfalls were heavy, weighty, like recklessly charging horses, but there was an irregularity to them, a lack of rhythm. Lucas thought back to the twisted monstrosity he’d encountered before, and wondered with trepidation what grotesque creatures were running with such uneven tempo. He pictured beasts with too many legs, none of them the same length, shambling along with impossible speed for their insectoid frames. Would they have more than one mouth, too? Would they have claws and pincers?
Lucas fell down a rabbit hole of speculation, lost in nightmarish imagination. His heart rose to his throat, threatening to cut off his airways. His stomach trembled. He’d be sick at any moment.
A burst of heat gave him the shock of his life, and he let out a shriek of terror that would probably haunt him for the rest of his days, if he survived. The area was suddenly scalding hot, stinging his skin. Stumbling away at random, it took him far too long and too many calls for calm from his new comrades to screw his head back on and understand what was going on.
But to be fair to himself, Jyn was on fire.
The wizard was a living bonfire, a moving mannequin made of flame. There were dark pits where his eyes were supposed to be, and his lips were electric blue and sparking. His robe and wand had vanished. Had they burned up? “My apologies,” he said. There was nothing recognisable about his voice; his words were being formed by minute changes in the crackle and roar of the flames that now made up his body. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Ser Rian. It sometimes escapes me that my talents with pyromancy are uncommon; I spend most of my time around others equally learned in the greater pyromancical arts, or at least familiar with our techniques.” When Lucas shakily nodded, Jyn’s burning body rotated in place so he was facing his other comrades. “Forgive me, I felt it prudent to enter a battle-ready state immediately, and give myself as much time to prepare as I could.”
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Wick grimaced. “We’re in for a tough fight?”
“A pack of sixteen beasts has caught our scent, and only Rena could hope to outrun them. With how their chaos magic is affecting the nearby heat, I would estimate the smallest of them is the size of a wolf, and the weakest is a B-rank at minimum. There’ll be no holding back here. Prepare your greater techniques, all of you.”
Cursing under his breath, Wick hefted his shield and took on a look of concentration. A film of opalescent light started spreading over his armour, starting from his heart and radiating outwards. When it got to his arms, it transferred to his shield and started spreading over that, too.
Rena started fiddling with her quiver, moving to the back of the group to stand by Lucas. She was muttering under her breath, frowning down at her arrows as she shuffled them about into an order that probably made things more efficient somehow, but Lucas couldn’t guess as to her rationale.
Jyn was now floating cross-legged a foot off the ground, his hands on his fiery knees. The flames on his body were gaining in heat, rippling the air, and they started moving around his body like lava flows, forming symbols like he’d previously done with his wand. Every now and then some of the symbols would glow, then sink into his body. Again, Lucas couldn’t guess as to what effect they were having on him.
The only one not preparing was the Skycloak. She stood at the ready, a pace behind and to the side of Wick, facing the South-East where the beasts were approaching closer and closer —in fact, Lucas could see a dark blur on the horizon, flowing over a silver hill. If he listened close, he was sure he could hear their bloodthirsty screams. They were moving so fast it was hard to track them, appearing on one hill and then the next between blinks. They’d be here in no time.
Lucas focused on his breathing. His knuckles were popping where he was gripping the stick too tightly; it was digging painfully into his palms, but his fingers wouldn’t listen when he ordered them to loosen their hold. Paying too much attention to them meant they started trembling, so he turned his focus elsewhere, trying to plunge his mind into his mana. He’d had it moving fast to boost his external control, but he felt he’d done all he could with his floramancy with so little time available: sharpened blades of grass and thorns as spike traps, flowers that were sticky with pollen, weeds overgrowing to hopefully trip anything that passed through them. It wasn’t much, but he could only hope it would make a difference.
He didn’t need Jamie’s hearing anymore. The approaching beasts were thunderous, a stampede. Their screeches were high and piercing, no longer a question of his imagination. They didn’t need to stop for breath as they ran, and their cries didn’t change pitch or falter despite their frantic movement. Soon they crested a larger hill only a few peaks over from the camp, and they were visible long enough for him to make out details.
It was as Jyn said: no two were the same, but there were themes. Chitinous armour arranged over their bodies at random, an arbitrary number of limbs of wildly various lengths and types, gaping maws filled with too many teeth. They looked like someone had taken a bunch of different animal parts and tied them together with bits of rotting plant. Parts of their body would be insectoid, others covered in fur, only to run into a section that was slimy and molluscoid, leading into an area that was naked patchy skin.
They moved jerkily, zig-zagging for no apparent reason, as if they were constantly forgetting and remembering where they were supposed to be going and why. Even their speed was inconsistent, slowing up and speeding down without any obvious cause.
They dipped into a valley again, and the Skycloak spoke. “Maintain order against chaos, always,” she said, her tone like a prayer. “Remember who you are, and keep it in mind at all times. Your image of yourself must be clear in your mind and soul. Immutable. Project it, use it as a weapon against them. No magic you can bring to bear will be stronger than your will to exist.”
“We’re no amateurs, Skycloak,” Rena hissed.
“She does not speak for your benefit,” Wick said, glancing at the Bowmaiden. He nodded at Lucas. “Have courage, Ser Rian, and follow the Skycloak’s advice. It’ll see you through this.”
Lucas nodded shakily. He couldn’t do anything else.
When the pack of beasts peaked over the next hill, no more obstacles in their path, it felt like their screams gained a note of triumph. There were no more jerky movements; they charged in a wave.
The Skycloak slapped her hand to her breastplate over her heart. Her cloak billowed around her as if gaining a mind of its own, freeing up her movements. Her armour started to glow, swirling patterns appearing in the plate, and suddenly her armour looked like it was carved out of the face of the moon. She pulled the hand out, and with it came a gleaming white sword like she’d drawn it right from her heart, its luminous blade twice the length of one of her arms. It thrummed with power, leaving after images of light in its wake when she hefted it skyward in a two-handed grip.
“Bowmaiden! Wandmaster!” she called out, but Rena already had a crystalline blue arrow nocked and aimed, the string of her bow pulled close to her face. She loosed, and a cold wind rent the air in its wake as it soared across the valley between their hill and the approaching beasts. It struck true at the centre of their pack, and a cold mist exploded out from the point of impact, encasing the surroundings in ice for a dozen metres.
Jyn followed up with a pair of fireballs launched from each hand like cannon balls. They gained speed and expanded as they flew, and erupted into horizontal pillars of flame when they landed, forming a line of fire. He’d aimed in the beasts’ path rather than their midst, and the creatures were forced to leap through the flames.
The attacks scattered the beasts apart, but only a few had actually been caught in the effects and little damage was done even then. They were only slowed momentarily. The pack was still coming, still screeching.
Lucas slowed his mana to give himself strength, and tried to ready himself for a fight. Meditation wasn’t so easy when a battle was imminent, even with his stick in hand. He was trembling like a leaf.
Come on, he told himself. Courage.
The beasts careened down the hill and into the valley below, then started their charge up the last hillside. The hill shook with the force of their stampede, sounding like an endless explosion this close, an oncoming storm moments away from hitting. He could smell them now, rot and mould and burning shit invading his nostrils.
Lucas gave a silent prayer. He didn’t know who to.
And then they were there.
Three vast beasts had pushed to the front of the pack, each of them as large as a horse, jockeying for pole position. On the left skittered a slimy centipede-wolf hybrid with yellow spines ridging its back and two barbed mouths at the end of wiggling stalks attached to its neck where a head should’ve been. In the middle was an unnaturally fast beast with seven unidentifiable mangled heads as a body that alternated between sprinting on two mammalian back legs and a dozen or more insectoid appendages when the back legs lost balance. And last, on the right a tangle of interlocked legs with a mass of giant bovine faces occasionally visible tumbled heel over heel, almost rolling up the hill. And there were a dozen more beasts close behind them.
Once again, Lucas’ mind stuttered to a halt, the mere sight of these horrors overwhelming him. He should have expected this. Even after his encounter back in the village, he’d for some reason been subconsciously expecting more traditional monsters like werewolves or trolls. This madness was beyond anything he’d conceived of.
If he’d been on his own, he would have died in the first attack, frozen in fear and unable to mount a defence.
Luckily for him, his new comrades proved their mettle.
Wick gave a mighty roar and slammed his shield down hard enough the ground trembled and knocked Lucas off balance. The shieldmaster had timed it to perfection; at the same moment his great chunk of metal hit the ground, the vanguard of the beast pack reached the top of the hill, screeching and hollering, and they crashed against a shimmering wall that had radiated out from the point of the shield’s impact, drawing from the opalescent light he’d spawned on his armour and shield, causing them to dim. The beasts compressed like living accordions and tumbled to the ground, their screams never changing.
Before the monsters could rally, Rena and Jyn struck in tandem. The Bowmaiden loosed three spelled arrows in rapid succession, almost on top of one another: the first scored a green line through the air, the second trailed pink sparks, and the third rang like a gong when it followed the others in striking the seven-headed beast.
All three struck the same head, and it bubbled like a boiling stew with the first arrow, went still and glassy with the second, then shattered into countless pieces with the third. The creature stumbled backwards onto its mammalian biped legs, bearing its dozen insectoid ones with their pointed, spear-like tips.
Jyn attacked the beast on the right, aiming for its countless legs. He raised his flaming hands before him, forming a square with his thumbs and pointer fingers and pointing it at the dazed monster. Leaning close, he spat a small ball of flame into the square.
When the fireball passed through his fingers, parts of it fell away, siphoned back into his burning body, leaving a rune made of white-hot fire to travel swiftly through the air. It expanded as it flew, growing until it was half the size of the beast it finally struck. The symbol flashed, turning an eye-searing white. There was a sound like water poured on a frying pan, and the symbol burst apart into motes of fire the size of flies; every one of them honed in on the beast, and where they struck they burned deep holes into its many legs. When it tried to stand, it collapsed, and the beasts coming up behind it trampled it into the ground.
Lucas could only stare in disbelief. Their feats were wondrous, more than worthy of song and story and adulation. Their skill was beyond his ken, their teamwork flawless, their courage unimpeachable.
And they all combined paled in comparison to a single slash of the Swordmaiden’s holy blade.
The Skycloak hadn’t moved after the initial clash, waiting behind Wick’s flank to see which beasts her comrades would target before charging in. With her back to him, Lucas only saw her turn her moonlight sword horizontal to her right, readied. Next thing he knew, it was on her other side, the world was awash in light, and the pitch of a beast’s scream had finally changed as it died in agony. It took him a moment of blinking light spots from his vision to understand what had happened.
With the other two beasts down, she’d focused on the centipede-wolf on the left of the vanguard three. Unoccupied by her comrades, it had been able to get to its feet, and it wasted no time in lunging for its nearest foe. A fatal mistake. Faster than moonlight, she’d swept her sword before her in a broad arc. The blade itself had missed the beast completely, but the afterimage had not.
The white light trailing the blade had radiated outwards as a deadly crescent moon, and it had passed through the beast as easily as air.
Lucas watched wide-eyed as the beast fell apart in two halves. The light had struck the centipede-wolf at an angle, slicing its mouths free of the stalks then continuing on diagonally through its body, splitting it like a hot dog bun. Its yellow spines landed face down in the ground, and the grass around them started wilting. Its wounds trailed faint wisps of white smoke. Before it had finished dying, the Swordmaiden had already moved on, her blade ready for another attack as more beasts reached the peak of the hill.
The feeling of safety brought on by his comrades’ competence did not last. No amount of confidence could survive the heaving mass of monsters that followed after the faster three. He hadn’t understood what a pack of sixteen beasts truly meant until they were metres away from him.
More importantly, he hadn’t expected what sixteen beastly screams would do to him.