Yaric was certain that their strategy was the right one, or at least the best one available to them, but implementing it was a nightmare. They had fought all through the night and were confident that the skathári would be back after the sun set again. If they were going to attack in daylight, they would have to do it that same day or face another night of close calls. Against an enemy that could very well hit a dozen homes at once.
Worse, no one had come away unscathed. They were down to a single spear, and not many of the arrows Yaric had fired were still serviceable, but that wasn’t the biggest problem facing them at the moment. They had almost been killed on several occasions just hours earlier.
Li Na had fallen and had a skathári stepped close enough to reach her with its impossibly quick strikes. Sven had tried to step between them with nothing but a sword, while Li Na had beaten him to it and struck the skathári with her mace, which she achieved by jumping right between those deadly arms. She always favored defense through offense, but this time she had been lucky.
Sven had only just avoided being bisected when another of the creatures had unexpectedly landed right beside him, and Yaric still wasn’t sure how he’d put two and two together to realize that more skathári had been summoned and were approaching from his rear.
It was Lauren who had come the closest to dying though. The dried-up lines of blood running down her face, along with her new, jagged haircut, showed just how close she’d come to losing her head. Lauren had started moving the moment her spear had been shattered, throwing herself backward instead of trying to retreat, and yet she’d still been a fraction of a second from decapitation.
And all Yaric had been able to do was watch helplessly.
In short, all four sat in silence as the sun kept climbing, glancing up at each other every few minutes as if to make sure their friends really were there. Yaric kept checking his hands whenever he looked back down, even though they sat motionless on the table. He continually felt like they were trembling, despite the adrenaline from the fight being long gone. Yet they would have to leave within a couple of hours if they wanted to attack the nest at midday when the sun would be highest.
The barkeep approached them with four steaming bowls of porridge, dropping them off one by one. No one had ordered anything, but Yaric was grateful, nonetheless. He had to force the first few mouthfuls down, after which he had to force himself to slow down. Plates were brought out before he’d even finished, followed soon after by heaps of eggs, sausages, and freshly baked bread. Yaric was so distracted by his thoughts that it was only then that he realized that the barkeep would have overheard Chase promising to pay for anything they ordered.
“So we going straight there?” Li Na asked nonchalantly, though Yaric could hear the reluctance in her voice.
Sven sighed and looked out the open door, taking a moment before replying. “No, we have at least two hours before we have to go, maybe three. I thought we could go back and get out of our armor for a bit, maybe clean ourselves up. A couple of hours to relax and some clean clothes would help.”
“I don’t wanna take my armor off and put it back on,” Li Na complained.
“I agree.” Lauren’s voice was quiet and subdued. “Lying down would be great, but I’m not cleaning my armor just to put it back on, and I don’t want to put sweaty armor back on either. I’d rather just leave it and wait to go.”
“Yeah, and we’d just dirty another set of clothes.”
“Okay, so we find somewhere outside then? Because we can’t lie down without getting cleaned up first,” Sven replied, pointing to their filthy armor.
“You all can rest on those benches there,” the barkeep said, having overheard the conversation while bringing another round of drink. “Just lie back, I don’ mind.”
Yaric held back a snort at the generous offer.
“Maybe you can help us,” Lauren asked, looking up suddenly. “Is there any way we could replace our spears? We would like to purchase several.”
“Sorry ma’am, we don’ have spears round here. I think some have boar spears, which migh’ work, but all those folk have left. Most of those who hunt use a bow.”
“So we can get hold of arrows at least?”
“I believe so. Best ask Chase, he’d gather them for you. Unless you want to go around knocking on doors?”
Three villagers burst through the doors just then, laughing and talking loudly about the message that had been sent to call the herds back.
“Hear that? Maybe we won’t have to fight,” Lauren said hopefully. “The livestock will be the targets again. We just have to wait for the reinforcements.”
“But they won’t be back today,” Sven explained. “It leaves us with the same three choices; leave the villagers to the skathári, try and fight them off again tonight, or attack first, on our terms.
“I’ll go get those arrows from Chase,” Sven announced, already standing. “I know where to find him.”
Sven turned and walked away before anyone could say anything, leaving the other three to watch as he walked out the door.
“What was…”
“Leave him,” Lauren said, interrupting Yaric. “He needs to do something to help, he’s never been good at waiting. Let him sort this out.”
“Okay,” Yaric agreed reluctantly.
“We can help by having some kind of plan ready when he gets back. We need to work out how we’re going to do this with only one spear.”
“I might let you borrow it if you ask nicely.”
Lauren looked Li Na up and down slowly. “No, you keep it. A spear suits you.”
Li Na narrowed her eyes dangerously, but Yaric couldn’t hold back his smile. At least his friends were talking again.
“Well, I’m not making any plans from this stool,” Li Na said casually, swinging herself off her seat and heading to the tables with benches after making sure to grab her spear.
The others followed, with Yaric carrying Li Na’s drink as well as his own. Li Na sat on the edge of a bench and lay back, then lifted her feet to place her lower legs on the bench beside them, somehow managing to take up two benches despite being the same size as most 1st years. She reached down and patted the floor beside her when she saw Yaric with her drink.
“So how do we do this?” Lauren asked after Yaric had joined her on the other side of the table. Neither lay down.
“I was thinking it might actually be better without spears. Even getting that close is dangerous, but we can keep pushing them back with our spells from a safer range. And moving through those boulders would be easier as well.”
“That could work,” Lauren admitted. “What are you worried about then?”
“We’re tired,” Li Na mumbled from below the other side of the table.
“Yes. I’m worried about how long we can keep casting that spell without making mistakes. And we can crack through their armor, but spears work best once there are enough cracks.”
“Your headshots seemed to work best. It took fewer arrows and killed them faster.”
“We can’t rely on hitting such small targets every time. My idea was to use fire, they hated it.”
“No.”
“No!”
Yaric had barely finished speaking when Lauren and Li Na both rejected the idea, one a little more forcefully than the other.
“That attack they used left us helpless. We don’t have any way of defending ourselves against a mind attack. I know you were unaffected Yaric, but we couldn’t even stand. And they only used that attack when they started to burn. We can’t risk it. Not unless we can somehow burn everything at once.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Yaric acknowledged. “You're certain that was a mind attack though?”
“Well we were crippled, and you didn’t seem to know what was going on.”
“The noise hurt a little, but it was just the sound.”
“’Cos you have no brain to affect.”
Yaric took one of the fresh buns and slid it across the table. It disappeared over the edge just where Yaric expected Li Na’s head to be.
“Phufff…” A hand appeared over the edge of the table and started feeling around. “Butter please.”
“I think our wind blades could get through if the exoskeletons are cracked enough,” Yaric continued, ignoring Li Na, “but I don’t know for sure. I really don’t want to test in during an attack on the nest. Not if it’s our only plan.”
“We still have one spear,” Lauren reminded him.
They were still discussing their option when Sven returned. Walking about the village and organizing some additional arrows had obviously done him some good, as he had a wide smile on his face when he spotted his friends sitting at a different table and hurried over.
“Chase is going around to collect arrows for us. It looks like we’ll get two, maybe three quivers worth,” Sven said as he sat down opposite Yaric. “And most of them are the heavier ones you prefer.”
“Heavier arrows?” Lauren asked, turning sideways to look inquisitively at Yaric.
The sound of Li Na’s boots dropping heavily on the floor echoed through the room, followed soon after by the sound of scraping on the bench opposite Lauren and Yaric.
“Like this,” Yaric replied, pulling one of the arrows from his quiver. “It’s nothing major, but the arrows hit harder, and the thicker shaft doesn’t shatter as easily.”
“I think mine are the same.”
“Yes, I asked for these specifically and they gave you the same without asking.”
Li Na’s boots thumped down on the bench, one after the other.
“Were they able to get us anything else?” Yaric asked, turning back to Sven just as Sven looked up from his lap.
“They said they had rods which could work. I didn’t think something like that could be useful, but it turns out they are three meters and only slightly thicker than a spear. Chase has someone sharpening the ends. I still don’t know if they will be useful, but we’ll see.”
“Should have got a three-meter mace,” Li Na complained lazily from the bench.
“You should have brought one of those big war hammers,” Yaric retorted.
“Did.” Li Na yawned loudly, still out of sight on the bench. “Just not the big two-handed one. My horse isn’t going to carry it all the way here.”
“Blunt force doesn’t seem to work anyway,” Lauren commented. “They’re so light it just sends them back.”
“Yeah, that’s why you smash them into the ground.”
“It would just…” Lauren trailed off. “Okay, that could work.”
“’Course.”
“You’re going to have to really go to work on weakening that chitin,” Sven said, bringing the conversation back on track. “We need to be able to smash through with what will effectively be sharp sticks.”
“Yaric thinks air blades could work as well,” Lauren informed Sven.
“Seemed to work. I scored their armor with it. It just doesn’t properly penetrate, so the exoskeleton would have to be very weak for that as well.”
“But it has better range,” Lauren smiled.
“And you guys can’t break your wind blades,” Li Na added.
“Is this it? There’s nothing else we can do? I’m really worried about how much of an advantage daylight will actually give us, especially if retreating will be as dangerous as Yaric thinks.”
“There are other possibilities,” Yaric explained, hoping to cover Sven’s concerns. He was truthfully just as concerned though. After their first encounter, he’d have preferred to assault the nest with four hundred archers, not four students. And incendiaries. Lots of incendiaries!
They spent another hour going over possible strategies that they could use to assault the nest with what they had, along with the potential tactics that could allow those strategies to be successfully implemented.
Chase came by with bundles of arrows tied together and several long spear shafts. As Sven had noted, they were very thick, almost too thick to hold comfortably, but they should at least give more mass behind their thrusts.
“Don’t know how long those points will last,” Chase said apologetically, pointing to the sharpened end of the wooden spears. “We haven’t been able to cut up those bodies yet. Axes go rebound until they go blunt.”
Lauren decided to answer his obvious question. “They were hit multiple times by arrows at close range, fired from a bow with a very high draw weight. We couldn’t get through either, not until a dozen arrows in the same place started fracturing the exoskeleton.”
“Ahhh… maybe a chisel then? We’ll keep trying. Good luck with your hunt!”
Yaric and the others left soon after. It was almost time to leave, and they still needed to pick up the rest of their gear. The initial plan had been to travel light, but that went out the window before they even left.
The ropes and nets were left behind, but everything else needed to be taken along. Specialist items couldn’t be dispersed among them as there were only four to begin with, leaving Lauren and Yaric to carry every quiver and all the spares they couldn’t fit.
Yaric’s armor had fittings that allowed him to carry two quivers on his left hip, which allowed him to easily carry all three when he strapped the third to his back. He also took his sword, looping the belt over his shoulder and around the quiver to carry it on his back like the Corporals had taught him. It would take time to pull it off, and he knew it wasn’t likely to do much good, but Yaric felt far better with a melee weapon close at hand. He didn’t even bother with his shield.
Lauren had to strap two quivers to her back, but she also looped her sword over as Yaric had done, to make space for the quiver on her hip. She still took her large shield, along with one of the spears.
Li Na took everything. She carried another two quivers for the two archers, though Sven soon took one off her, as well as her mace in its sling, her shield, the hammer she’d boasted about, and two of the spears. It was quite a feat to hold everything and still move, raising some doubts about their mobility when they got to the boulders. As Li Na pointed out, they could just drop anything too difficult to carry.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Sven took his sword and shield, the quiver he’d appropriated from Li Na, and as many spears as he could carry. It was getting close to midday when they finally left, overloaded, and yet feeling horribly unprepared.
They took the direct route, keeping Kald at their back. The terrain was too difficult to traverse while carrying everything, but they were able to unload some of their weapons, have half climb the obstacle, and then pass the rest of the equipment up. Still, it took an hour to travel almost two kilometers, at which point they slowed to approach without alerting any sentries.
It didn’t take long to find the lookout as it hugged a large boulder that formed a slight overhang. Yaric signaled for everyone to climb back down the rock they were looking over.
He was nervous they might be heard and cause the alarm to be raised before anyone was ready, so he quickly drew the rock in front of them on a small patch of sand and pointed to it, followed by the two rows of rock on the other side that formed a path directly to the lookout.
A seedpod was placed to represent the skathári. Li Na was closest to the boulder they’d climbed down, so she turned to it and searched for something to represent the others while Yaric was quietly drawing the terrain. She placed a small stone in his hand and pointed to Sven, then another and pointed to Lauren, a tiny piece that had chipped off something larger, and pointed at Yaric, then dropped a large rock into his hand and pointed at herself.
Yaric placed Sven and Li Na’s markers on either side of the entrance to the path, in an ambush position, then placed himself and Lauren in front and further back, in line of sight of the skathári. Anything emerging from the path between the rocks would find itself surrounded and standing in a half-circle of students. Then Yaric cupped his hand and summoned a fireball.
Lauren shook her head vigorously.
There were several minutes of back and forth, with everyone trying to gesture to get their message across. Lauren was against using fire, but Yaric managed to convey that using their bows would be certain to trigger an alarm call, while all four of them dousing the skathári in flame, from multiple directions, had a good chance of bringing it down quickly. All they had to do was lure it closer.
Sven settled the matter when he pointed to the bows, making sure that they would still be available as a backup. With the matter settled, Sven and Li Na moved around and into position, followed by Yaric and Lauren. They jumped straight down, landing in full view of the skathári.
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK!
“Dammit!”
The skathári didn’t move from its position and instead started raising the alarm immediately. Two arrows streaked down the path, landing one after the other. The additional power provided by Yaric’s custom bow was noticeable, however, leaving deep cracks with the first shot. Lauren’s just skipped off.
Yaric’s second and third arrows took it in the face, each dazing the skathári while stress fractures built up. The third went straight through.
There was no point keeping quiet now, as skathári were clearly visible against the blue sky, sailing toward them in wide, leaping arcs. None of the skathári had been able to see their destination when they jumped, and it showed. Skathári landed all over the place, often between boulders or right on the sides of the slopes, sending them tumbling. The daylight was also more of an impediment than anyone had guessed, as they seemed to struggle to locate the position of their attackers. Bright light obviously disorientated them.
‘Argh… we don’t have lighting stones with us! And last night…’
Once they did, however, they moved straight into the attack, shuffling forward as quickly as they could while clicking in anger, showing the aggression everyone had been expecting from the lookout.
“Use the path as a funnel!” Yaric called, taking over. Such a simple assumption had thrown their surprise attack out the window, and now it was up to him to salvage the situation. There was no way he was going to allow the fight to devolve into close-quarters combat.
The other three started using wind to knock skathári back, amplified even further by the four-meter-high row of boulders on each side of the path they created. Massive eddies formed in the small gaps and wider sections, ripping up dust and creating chaotic maelstroms of wind.
Yaric focused on the few skathári that had landed higher up on top of the boulders, and close enough to see them. Those skathári didn’t bother jumping down, where they would join the bottleneck, but clambered over the rocks toward Yaric and his friends.
It took a lot of focus, but Yaric was going beyond simply hitting his targets. The power of his bow gave him an undeniable advantage, propelling arrows with such velocity that at this range there was barely any drop, and they struck so quickly that he could aim for the much smaller heads without concern, so long as he kept firing calmly and smoothly.
The villagers were partly right. This was nothing like the disastrous fight the night before, at least as far as actually killing skathári went. With plenty of arrows and no reason to conserve them, along with clearly visible targets illuminated by the early afternoon sun, all six skathári on the rocks above were down before they could get close enough to jump down near his friends. Yaric quickly joined them.
Things were not going as well on the ground. Skathári clung to the rocks, driving their legs into the stone and slowly pulling themselves forward. A few were still occasionally sent tumbling backward after losing their grip, often smashing into their friends on the way with loud clacks of chitin on chitin, but they were slowly moving forward.
All two dozen of them.
Twice one of the skathári blown back and out of sight tried to leap into the area where they stood, but both times Yaric was able to put an arrow in their face when they paused at the apex of their jump, sending the tumbling and knocking them back enough that they went straight back into the wind and out of sight.
Still, two dozen skathári were closing in, and once they made it out of the chokepoint the fight would be impossible. Yaric tried shooting the almost stationary targets but found hitting anything to be impossible. Constant streams of air ripped his arrows off course, making his bow all but useless. Lauren had already abandoned hers after the unlucky encounter with the lookout, switching to a wooden spear and adding her magic to the fight.
There was nothing they could do. The same spell that almost held the skathári back also prevented any other course of action. Yet, if they were to drop the spell, the skathári would be on them in less than a minute.
“Fall back! Get back up that boulder!”
Lauren, Li Na, and Sven turned back immediately, while Yaric cast his own spell to keep the skathári back and give them time. He turned and ran as soon as the others were up, making a giant leap to get most of the way up, with Sven pulling him to the top.
“Another wind spell.”
The skathári had paused when the wind died down, unwilling to let go of their handholds just yet, but they weren’t going to waste the opportunity. They continued crawling across the rock, much faster now with nothing holding them back.
Four spells slammed into the ground in front of the path and tore back down, kicking up a large amount of previously undisturbed dust from where the students had been standing just seconds earlier.
“Can you change the spell composition?!” Yaric shouted, turning his head.
“To what?!” Lauren looked a little pale, but her voice was firm when she shouted back.
“More oxygen!”
Understanding almost immediately, Lauren nodded and dropped the spell. Li Na dropped hers as well.
“I can too! I’ve been practicing that one!”
‘That one?’ Yaric thought to himself, confused, but he simply nodded to Li Na and moved beside Lauren, still sending streams of wind down the narrow path as he went. Sven moved to stand beside Li Na.
Lauren and Li Na replaced Yaric and Sven’s spells, sending powerful winds blasting through the pathway. The noise made by the air whistling off rocks picked up again.
“Now we add fire, but focus on volume! The wind will carry the spell for us!”
Yaric placed his arm next to Lauren’s while Sven crouched down to do the same with Li Na. He nodded to indicate that he was ready, then fired off his spell.
Flames roared down and into the path between the rocks. The torrent of flames was large, far larger than anything they had cast before, but nowhere near as powerful as Yaric had hoped. The fire still burnt out before making it all the way down the gap, and the blazing gale didn’t entirely fill the gaps between the rocks. The wind spell did, but the flames weren’t spreading far enough.
Then the buzzing started.
It wasn’t too bad at first, with the wind tearing down the path and the skathári trying to attack while being scorched with flames. Yaric started to get hopeful that they might finish the fight before the skathári could recover, but his hopes were dashed when Lauren, Li Na, and Sven all dropped to their knees, almost simultaneously. Sven fell back due to starting in such an awkward position, and Yaric found himself propelling a wall of flames all of three meters away while his friends groaned beside him.
The noise still wasn’t as bad as it had been the night before, even with so many more skathári launching the attack, but that didn’t mean that Yaric’s friends would be much help. There was nothing he could do, and they were currently stuck between a rock and a hard carapace, so Yaric started sending arrows into the head of the nearest skathári while the others tried to fight through the attack.
Just like before, it didn’t last long. They seemed to hold the attack for as long as they sensed fire, but stopped soon after the flames went away.
“What now?” Sven asked, staggering back to his feet. He had to catch Li Na when she stumbled, still holding one hand to her head.
“There’s too many,” Yaric acknowledged helplessly. “And it takes too long to kill each individual. If we can’t hit them all at once, we can’t win.”
“Retreat?” Lauren asked hoarsely.
Yaric stared at her for a moment, deep in thought.
“Did you manage to master the component for creating methane?”
“Uh, Yaric, we can’t…”
“The oxygen didn’t amplify the flames,” Yaric said, interrupting her just as the skathári started crawling forward once again. The closest was just meters from exiting the chokepoint. “The air carried the flames forward and the oxygen made it burn quicker, so we got bigger flames in exchange for less time. But methane will give us fuel.”
Lauren looked very reluctant, but Yaric just waited, almost pleading. She spent a moment searching his eyes before nodding cautiously.
“You cast the spell, we’ll add the flames.”
Exhaling deeply, Lauren turned to face the approaching skathári and raised her hand with her eyes closed. It took several seconds, almost too long, as the nearest skathári were just about an arm’s length from the exit, then Lauren unleashed another stream of air. This time she’d changed out most of the nitrogen components for methane. She couldn’t do all of them, as methane was a far more complex spell form, and they hadn’t had enough time practicing, but at least 50% of the gases roaring down the gap was methane.
“Okay, now we add the fire,” Yaric stated simply, moving toward Lauren once again. She was still looking unsteady on her feet, so this time he moved to stand partly behind her and wrapped his left arm around her waist, supporting her, while his right arm was held close to hers.
Li Na ducked under and stood in front of Lauren, ready to cast her own spell, with Sven moving to stand guard. More fire would do nothing, so he kept watch for jumping insects.
“Now!”
Yaric’s plan was both good and bad. The methane worked exactly as he had hoped. Flames roared down into the gap, turning the entire pathway into a firestorm. More than that, they continued all the way down, bathing everything in searing flames that everyone could feel from on top of their boulder. The skathári instantly started screeching and buzzing, but there wasn’t enough of a mental attack behind the cries to do more than momentarily stagger Lauren and the others.
There was the briefest moment of elation. Unfortunately, Lauren had been projecting her spell for several seconds before the flames were added. Massive amounts of methane were sent into the narrow tunnel under tremendous pressure, but much of it started to dissipate as it went, forming high concentrations above the pathway, inside the sheltered depressions in the wall, and at the end, where the stream of air started meeting obstacles and slowing down.
BOOM!
The shockwave seemed to go right through Yaric, rattling his chest and causing a piercing pain in his ears. Luckily it dispersed as it went, and they were far enough away that they weren’t in danger of serious injury, but the other three had been hit by a second mental attack just an instant before.
Lauren’s spell cut off when she fell back into Yaric. He didn’t catch her, instead choosing to wrap both arms around her and fall back as well. The air seemed to reverse direction just as they hit the ground, pulling back toward the epicenter of the explosion, causing Yaric to roll so he would be between Lauren and the skathári.
There was no more buzzing, no roar of hurricane winds, no clacking of insects moving over the rock, just a constant, insistent ringing.
Yaric tried to help her to her feet, but the explosion had just been too much. A long night of close calls and near misses with the very first mind attack, followed by two more mental assaults with no proper recovery between them had left the other three struggling to keep fighting, or even just stay on their feet.
Sven and Li Na managed to sit up by facing away from each other and sitting back-to-back. One of the spears sat across Sven’s lap, while Li Na inexplicably had her mace out. Yaric put Lauren’s arm over his shoulder and carried her over to the other two.
“I’m going to check on the skathári,” he said, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. The others weren’t much better, gesturing back and forth to indicate they didn’t understand. Yaric’s stomach dropped when he noticed that Lauren had yet another trail of blood, this time from her ear.
It didn’t take long to make his intentions understood. He was nervous about leaving them in that state, but most skathári were completely motionless. Those that moved were just twitching occasionally, but other than that there was no sign of life.
Yaric jumped down, relieved to faintly hear the crunch of gravel when he landed. Skathári were too dangerous to approach, so Yaric settled with casting his fire spell repeatedly, bathing each in turn. Their wings were already gone, and most actually had cracks in their armor, so it didn’t take long for them to start smoking. Soon the nauseating smell of burning hair filled the narrow gap, despite the lack of hair on their bodies, but Yaric pressed on, determined to ensure that every single skathári was truly dead. He paused between each to check back on his friends, but nothing else stirred.
Beyond the pathway was a deep gulley, almost eight meters from top to bottom. Bones and desiccated remains littered the ground, scattered around a central mound of leaves and rotting vegetation. Pale white orbs were just barely visible inside the pile of debris and very difficult to spot in the shadow of the gulley. Not so the single skathári that stood between Yaric and the eggs.
THUMP!
The beetle launched into the air, arcing high above the edge. Yaric scrambled back frantically, unhooking his bow and drawing an arrow at the same time. He loosed just as the skathári reached the apex.
Spinning head over heels, the skathári crashed to the ground in front of him, landing face-first on the rock.
Another arrow stuck the top of its head, followed two seconds later by a third that took the skathári in the face when it looked up, still sprawled on the ground. It dropped its head when another arrow sent cracks spiderwebbing across the forehead, forcing Yaric to switch back to the top of the head. Spreading the damage so much slowed him down, but his fifth arrow finally did the job, cracking through the carapace and penetrating deeply with an audible squelch while his bowstring hummed.
‘I can hear better!’
There was no way Yaric would risk climbing down into the narrow gulley, and he was starting to get anxious about the condition of his friends, so Yaric just threw fireballs from the top. The distance was too great for him to incinerate everything like he’d done with the adults. Fireballs struck the mound repeatedly, bursting briefly into flame before dying out. Yaric switched to speed, focusing on throwing them as rapidly as he could, and then he rapidly switched to his wind spell.
The blast of air dug deeply into the mound, scattering the rotting vegetation and prompting him to quickly redirect it into the ground almost directly below where he stood. The smoldering debris didn’t seem to be reacting, but white smoke started drifting upward the second Yaric stopped channeling. It wasn't long before licks of orange flames started peeking through the plant matter, bringing with it yet more unpleasant smells. Yaric only waited long enough to be certain that the fire would spread before beating a hasty retreat.
The complete silence after the fight that ended just minutes earlier was unnerving, and Yaric kept a constant lookout for more skathári moving in unexpectedly. He felt stretched to the breaking point, and all at once it became too much. Yaric ran for the boulder his friends were waiting on.
“Did you get them?” Li Na croaked.
Yaric unhooked a canteen from his belt instead of answering, uncorked it, and handed it to her. Li Na drank deeply.
“They were already dead, or almost. I burned them to make sure they couldn’t get off one last attack when I went past. There was only one in the nest.”
“Look at you, fighting these things on your own,” Lauren said hoarsely, smiling as she did. Li Na passed the canteen to her.
“I used my bow,” Yaric shrugged. “And you’re the one who blew everything up.”
“Nuh ah, the fire ignited it, and I cast mine first.”
“Are you saying you used fire instead of a mace?” Yaric teased, grinning at the thought of his trap.
“Didn’t you feel that shockwave?” Li Na retorted, wiping the smile off Yaric’s face. “Was a mega mace. I crushed them. I bet those bugs were cracked all over.”
Yaric chose not to answer.
“Are you guys good to walk?”
“Yeah.”
They weren’t. It took half an hour before anyone was up to climbing down the boulder, and even then, it was only after Sven suggested Yaric lower them down with the rope he’d brought. Sven hid it well, but Yaric still caught the smug smile when he thought the others weren’t looking.
It was late afternoon when the students made it out into the open fields in front of the village. All the spears were left behind, and Yaric had to carry Li Na’s surprisingly heavy hammer, but they managed to stumble back under their own power.
More than one villager took off running when they saw them, eventually coming back with Chase and a few others.
“Did you get them?” he immediately asked, his earlier nonchalance entirely gone.
“Maybe,” Sven acknowledged.
“Maybe?”
Chase was wide-eyed as he looked them up and down. They didn’t look like victors, at least not to his eyes.
“It’s almost impossible to search that terrain, too dangerous. And we aren’t in any condition to fight right now.”
“And that explosion?”
“You heard that?” Li Na asked, sounding excited.
“Had everyone in a panic,” Chase replied. “If you can’t fight what will happen tonight?”
Sven didn’t correct Chase’s assumption regarding the explosion. “We keep telling you these things are dangerous. You refuse to listen. You don’t seem to understand that when they come in here and carry away your cattle they aren’t hunting, they’re just casually picking up a snack.
“Now we’re here to protect all of you, it’s our job. But if you keep throwing yourselves in front of vicious monsters, you’re on your own. None of us are going to jump between you and creatures like that again. Tonight, the people's safety is your responsibility. Move inside the wall, lock everything down, and do not leave until the sun is up! Understand?”
Chase swallowed nervously and nodded. “You heard the wizard!” he shouted, turning to the villagers nearby. “Get everything you need to protect inside the walls. The gates close at sundown! Anyone outside will face those creatures on their own!”
Everyone rushed off in different directions, leaving the students to make their way to the small house they’d been given.
"That wasn't entirely true," Lauren said softly. "There's no reason to think there are any more skathári still alive."
"They keep forcing us into dangerous situations," Sven replied gruffly. "We're here to help them, to protect them. But that doesn't mean they can push us into danger just so they don't get inconvenienced. It's time for them to take some responsibility for their own safety and stop using us like shields."
"Yeah."
Lauren was silent for the rest of the walk, but Yaric knew she agreed with Sven.
Yaric had to help them all with their armor, though no one bothered to clean up. It seemed like the repeated mental attacks had been even worse than Yaric had thought, or at least the long-term repercussions were. Everyone had their hearing back and there were no major injuries, yet Yaric was the only one able to move freely.
“I’ll see if food can be brought here from the tavern.”
Yaric was halfway to the door when Li Na spoke up. “And a keg.”
“Okay, one keg as well. And what do you two want?” Yaric asked, turning to Lauren and Sven and making Li Na grin tiredly.
All three were sprawled out in the living room, too tired to go any further. Armor and weapons lay scattered across the floor.
“Food. All of it.”
“A pillow.”
Yaric knew that she was joking, but he still fetched a pillow for Lauren before leaving. It was time to make good on Chase’s offer, because he intended to do exactly what his friends had asked.
He was going to bring back entire kegs, along with all the food.