The moon was out, and the road him and Celis rode down was empty, and barren. The crickets and birds were unusually quiet. Alisson kept his eyes trained ahead, down the road.

“We should be crossing into Evering’s State right about now. Stay. Alert.”

He said, although Alisson doubted that he needed to. Alisson was brazenly cutting through the cult’s lands, the equivalent to spitting in their faces. Alisson didn’t exactly think the cult could do anything to halt him however, he didn’t exactly fear them. That disregard that Alisson had for these, cultists, this, band of idiots, extended so far that Alisson thought it was less of a hassle to go through some cult-controlled land than deal with security checkpoints in Salva’kar. The cult didn’t exactly manage its borders, they just murdered anybody who trespassed. That to Alisson was far simpler than needing paperwork and a good reason for traveling through a country with a plague problem. The cult was not an officially recognized country, just like how he was not an officially recognized sentient being, that made it easier to stay hidden; two outcasts from the majority are the same to the grand scheme as one outcast.

Despite Alisson’s own confidence in his ability to deal with the cultists, he wasn’t going to be an idiot and neglect to even keep watch; threats are judged taking into account one’s active poise against them, but if one were to lax due to their own confidence, the threat would be drastically more dangerous, and the calculations altered. Thus, the overconfident one would be overwhelmed; where if they simply had kept on the status quo and not been overconfident, it would have turned out as expected. This was the reasoning Alisson had developed from seeing many times over how small threats could become dangerous solely with a change in mindset – How an expert adventurer party could be slaughtered by a few goblins and a battlegroup dissected by a few guerrillas.

The two of them remained quiet, not only because there was nothing to talk about and that him and Celis were too busy scanning the surroundings, but also because there was an invisible pressure to not break the quiet of the night. It was times like these that Alisson did not want to speak or make idle chatter. He could only think of that time with the goblins, him and Celis were absentmindedly talking and then, out of nowhere goblins had attacked. He wasn’t going to let that happen again, and the eeriness of the night was certainly keeping Alisson on high alert for such a thing.

An hour passed in that silent, and dreadful anticipation. All the while, Alisson could’ve sworn the sky had been faintly reddening and tinting colors; But every time he looked to his peripheral vision, he was disproven. For the life of him, Alisson was expecting something, anything to happen – but alas, his paranoid glances down the road and at the surrounding tree line revealed nothing. This, anticipation, he felt, it dragged on and on, and it soon became clear to Alisson that his body would’ve preferred something to happen, to ease his darting eyes and to mitigate the gradually increasing tempo of his heart. The strain of his anticipation yielding nothing was unbearable.

Alisson even had the sudden thought to scream out in frustration, but that crossed a line and his mind redoubled itself with critique, and he realized his own emotions. He promptly discarded them as best he could with disgust at himself for having such demented thoughts.

Like the anxiety that wafted at the edges of his mind, Alisson still saw that mounting red gradient in the sky, it was as if the moon were tinting red, and thus it’s rays of light were painting the sky with red. Again, every time Alisson looked up to the sky, and his eyes focused solely on the sky and the moon, the colors were as normal, as if he’d been imagining it.

And very well might that be the case, thought Alisson. His building paranoia and expectancy might have been causing some sort of placebo in his mind, a, self-fulfilled prophecy, as one might put it.

It was then when the numerous factors all came to a head. The red mounting at the edges of his vision, his paranoia-driven darting eyes and his anticipation. He saw it, a blot in the sky of white. He looked up to it in both confusion and in slight glee of something finally happening. He stared at the blot, half expecting for it to disappear like with the mounting red of the sky like before. But, instead of it vanishing, he heard it. It was a howl. Like the roar of an incoming arrow or mage rail.

“…What the hell…?”

He murmured. It was then, a split second after he muttered those words, that he realized it, realized too late; the blot had been soaring right toward him. His eyes widened, but it was already over, it came too fast.

White flashed in Alisson’s vision and his ears were assaulted by a screechingly loud explosion. The ground shook and he almost fell off his stallion. The stallion’s legs wobbled, it was unstable from the rumble of the impact.

It had been a magic artillery strike. The kind fired from stationary guns, the kind used against armies and cities. The reason Alisson could identify it, was because it hadn’t hit him. In fact, it had missed by nearly a mile, but yet he felt the effects clearly. Alisson, regaining focus, saw immediately in the sky:

Three more of those blots of white, those magic artillery shells, howling toward them.

“M-move it! Now!”

He shouted, and whipped the reins of his mount. His and Celis’s mounts both broke into an intense gallop down the road. Before he could say anything more, the spells crashed into the nearby forest, impacting seconds apart from each other. The quaking almost tripped the horses mid-gallop. Once the flashes of white cleared, he saw the sky, and not only did he see more strikes coming for them, but he saw that the sky was now a bright red, and the moon was a sickly crimson shade. He saw smoke rising into the sky, for the magic strikes had ignited the dense forest surrounding them.

As they sped down the road, multitudes of these magic artillery strikes rained from the sky, bombarding the forest around them. One was even close enough that he could see the explosion over the tree line; the horses had to momentarily pause to get their footing after that one. Pure terror coursed through Alisson’s veins. He couldn’t think about what was happening, nor develop any plan or explanation, he clung to his stallion, praying to Sidonia that one of those spells didn’t hit them. Every time he tried to get something formulated in his head, the loud detonation of a strike would turn whatever was in his mind to dust.

It was a few more minutes of that hell, until the sounds and quakes gradually calmed and halted. Alisson rode on for a straight minute, as if not noticing the end to the barrage.

“Alisson!”

Celis’s call pulled him to reality immediately, and he slowed the stallion. After a moment, him and Celis were side by side on their mounts, scanning the sky fervently, at a halt.

“What in the hell was that!”

Celis said in a rushed whisper, clearly still frightened and on a rush of adrenaline.

“I don’t know. It’s like a battlegroup just called a fire mission(1) on us.”

Talking with Celis slowly cranked the gears in Alisson’s head, and his mind soon ran with its usual speed.

Firstly, those were magic artillery strikes, that much was for sure. The only people capable of using such firepower, and in such a sustained barrage, would be humans.

Who? That’s obvious. There’s no other humans in this territory, it’s the cult. But just how did they see us coming? And how did they call in a strike without any artillery observers to spot for them?

Generally, aerial mages spotted for artillery batteries, but, Alisson hadn’t seen any mages floating above the trees that were giving information on shot placement back to the battery.

Were they blind firing?

It’d explain their accuracy. It’s a stupid thing to do, to fire without any observers, but perhaps these cultists were just stupid enough to go through with blind firing.

“It’s them. It’s the cult. Only humans are capable of that kind of firepower, and the only humans here are those fanatics. There has to be a city or some kind of fortress nearby, I can’t imagine a convoy of wagons towing cannons would be stalking us.”

“Then what do we do?”

Celis asked hurriedly, still giving scared glances to the sky.

“You, submit…to the Lord.”

A cracked voice down the road answered Celis’s question. There was a figure wrapped in a black and simple robe. His face was obscured by some sort of large conical hood, with two cutouts for the eyes. His voice had not sounded human, it was like more a series of deep clicks than words.

Alisson had been so focused on the sky that he hadn’t noticed the man. It was clearly a cultist. Alisson didn’t think he’d see one naught dozens of meters away so nonchalantly. Alisson didn’t wait to be the fool. These were not a group you could negotiate with, that much was made plain by what rumors he’d heard of them. He laid his hand on his rapier and prepared to leap of his stallion.

As soon as his fingers reached the hilt of Enhérejär however…

An extreme forced slammed into his side and he was tackled to the ground. He hadn’t even had time to draw his rapier when he saw the shimmer of a knife soaring for his neck. His arms were already grappling with whoever had pinned him before he had time to think. The aggressor was in the same black robe as he’d seen the cultist wearing down the road, and the knife he was shoving at Alisson had an odd and diamond shaped blade.

Alisson’s body moved on its own, he let go of the blade and tilted his head. The knife cut Alisson’s cheek as it plunged into the road and past his face. In the brief moment he had, Alisson drew one of his own knives in a flash and jammed it into where he thought the aggressor’s throat was. Alisson twisted the blade, and although he felt the familiar feeling of impaling someone’s throat, he didn’t hear any gurgle or yelp of pain. The cultist fell limp and Alisson deftly got to his feet, drawing Enhérejär in a blur.

He saw another cultist wrestling with Celis, and without thinking he launched a Pictun spell right through the head of the bastard who was trying to kill his apprentice. Before he could even confirm the death of the cultist and safety of his apprentice, he heard the familiar whiz of a blade, and hastily sidestepped out of the way of another cultist. He easily stabbed the cultist through the back of the spine, if they wore armor, than such a half-assed strike would do little; however, they were clad in nothing but a robe it seemed, for the cultist fell to the ground limply with Alisson’s strike.

For that brief second, Alisson had the time to look up, and around, if only for a moment. He saw in the surrounding forest and on the road, dozens of black robed cultists. He felt Celis against his back, her baselards drawn. The both of them eyed the surrounding cultists for a split second, before all, yes all, of the surrounding cultists, charged.

Please, – Alisson prayed – Be able to handle yourself.

With that last thought, Alisson rushed forward to meet the swarm of cultists, spells brimming at his gauntlets and at the tip of Enhérejär. Alisson deftly weaved side to side and up and over cultists. He was like a rock in a river, seeming to serenely avoid all danger. He stabbed back quickly and fiercely, killing two or three cultists with every barrage of thrusts and spells. When he had the respite to let Enhérejär shift form, he opted for a backsword and buckler, as per his usual crowd control means. So, he sidestepped and bobbed under knives left and right, Alisson abusing their short ranges as Enhérejär shifted form in his hands.

When Enhérejär was finally done shifting – It only took a few seconds but to Alisson it felt like hours – He promptly turned the tables. He chopped and diced the robed aggressors, unrelenting in his advance; It was to be expected, they unarmored, and had only but simple knives. It felt odd however, their bodies offered little resistance, inhumanly so, and none of them screamed out in pain – Alisson was so used to those two things that he only noticed when they weren’t present.

The battle lasted all of about thirty seconds, but across the ground, a few dozen black robes lay unmoving at his feet. Thankfully, Celis was able to hold on, though he hadn’t the chance to actually pay any attention to her, as he was too caught up in fighting for himself.

“…Very well. You have chosen the journey of the heretic.”

Alisson’s heart flared as he remembered the last cultist down the road, and he raised Enhérejär at him, preparing a spell. Before he could fire, the cultist who was observing them disappeared. He was engulfed by a silent and black shadowy flame, vanishing from view with a loud sound akin to someone exhaling. With his leave, the sky and moon faded from red back to their usual colors, and the area was coated in darkness once again.

The two of them stood there for a moment, exhaling heavily and giving wild glances at the surrounding forest. Alisson noticed in his frenzy of darting eyes, that there was no blood, not on Enhérejär, not on the ground, and not on any of the bodies of the cultists. Just why the hell was that? Did they not bleed?

Alisson finally heaved a large sigh and looked over to Celis. She looked at him in turn, clutching her shoulder. Blood flowed over her gauntlet and down her chest plate, seeping through her cloak. She smiled at him weakly.

“I got nicked…”

There was also a slash across her cheek, just like Alisson had, so blood ran down and into her mouth slightly. Her hand glowed blue, and he heard the soothing hum of a healing spell. Those wounds of hers weren’t something a little healing couldn’t fix up, so he didn’t worry about her. She did well to only have suffered a couple injuries.

“Well. How was it?” Alisson asked, “That’s real battle you just experienced. I didn’t help you at all and I wouldn’t have been able to. We were outnumbered, and we were ambushed.”

Alisson said, pacing to their horses, that seemed to have sustained a few minor cuts in all the frenzy. He was glad the cultists hadn’t targeted and killed them, that was for sure.

“It gets the blood going…”

She chuckled nervously.

“Hm. Mount up. We’re moving. We can’t let them pin us down like that again. Judging from their response time, there’s some sort of base of operations around here.”

Alisson still couldn’t shake the thought from his head, just how did they manage to seemingly materialize next to them like that? Were they waiting deathly still for the right moment? Or did they really encroach on him and Celis without their notice?

And – Alisson glanced to the sky – Just why had the sky been red and the moon crimson? Some sort of spell or hallucination?

He pushed the thoughts out of his head.

They were in a warzone now, he couldn’t get bogged down on his emotions, he’d had it far too easy; Alisson hoped he hadn’t gone lax with his slack of recent battle.

Alisson noticed that Celis was eyeing him with a hint of concern, and he tilted his head slightly at her.

“Um…Do you want me to heal your cheek?”

“I’m fine. It’s a scratch, save your mana for more important wounds, as having access to healing magic, you need to know what to prioritize your mana on.”

Celis nodded hesitantly. Alisson didn’t understand her concern, he’d already stopped bleeding, he was fine. When he was an apprentice, nicks like that plagued his body constantly; He almost didn’t feel the one now on his face.

The two of them mounted up, and set out a quick gallop. When Alisson shot a paranoid glance behind them out of instinct, he saw the bodies of the cultists evaporating into a black mist.

He didn’t question it, and sternly set his gaze forward.

“Expect to be ambushed, expect that they will have the numbers on us, and expect them to have support and reinforcements around every tree.”

He said loudly for his apprentice’s sake. The biggest threat at present were those magic artillery cannons, wherever they were. Perhaps him and Celis had drawn too close, and the cannons were already too close to be used. Alisson hoped that was the case; He didn’t want to be tied up fighting cultists only to be blown away by a single well aimed strike. These were cultists, Alisson didn’t think that they were hesitant on blowing their own people to hell if it meant achieving desired results.

The cultists themselves seemed to be of no threat, just a horde of children with sharp things. Though, they were quite agile, and attacked well in coordination, and seemed to be unreceptive to pain.

In the midst of his thoughts, Alisson saw once more a cultist appear over a hill in the road. Alisson drew Enhérejär immediately. They closed in, and the conical hooded cultist simply stood in the middle of the road, staring at him and Celis. Then, without warning, the cultist vanished like last time, with that exhale-like noise. The sky tinted a red color once more.

Before Alisson had time to draw a conclusion, his stallion, halted. It was like the horse froze into a statue within the span of a second. Alisson was flung off his stallion due to his momentum. He landed with a roll and got to his feet. Apparently Celis had also been flung the same way as he, however she wasn’t able to nimbly roll and had simply taken the brunt of the fall with her gauntlets and shins. She scrambled to her feet beside Alisson. Alisson was about to look behind himself to question what the hell had happened to their horses, when two blurs flashed right passed him. It was them, the mare and the stallion, they both bolted right past Alisson and Celis, right down the road without a second thought.

Alisson thought quickly.

Their mounts would not abandon them, they were too loyal for that. Their stop in motion, it was too synchronized, too quick; They must’ve been under some sort of influence or illusion. It was far easier to fool animals than people with magic after all.

Alisson broke into a run.

“Keep pace – We can’t lose them!”

He said to his apprentice. They wouldn’t be able to keep pace. They were Nekomata yes, but they were not draft horses. The most they could do is figure out where the steeds were running off to and chase them in the long run if their mounts were truly not turning around.

After a few seconds of running, Alisson saw in the surrounding forest, hundreds of red dots appear. He soon recognized them to be the glowing eyes of a serval hundred cultists, all in their black, conical hooded robes.

There were so many of them that Alisson couldn’t see past the wall of black robes to the rest of the forest.

Alisson mind froze for moment, his jaw agape, shocked.

It took the sight of a dozen knives flying for him through the air to shake him out of his shock. Thinking on his toes, he tackled Celis to the ground, wrapping his arms around her head and holding her near his chest protectively. Together, they avoided the knives that’d been evidently thrown at them as they hit the ground. A few knives bounced off the armor on Alisson’s backside, the impacts sent shivers down his spine.

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The two of them scrambled to their feet. Alisson saw immediately four cultists charging them with immense speed out of the forest. It was a piece of Alisson’s mind that not all of the near thousand surrounding cultists were attacking at once.

“Ignore them! Keep moving – We’ll fight through them!”

Alisson said to Celis as they both broke into a swift sprint down the road and up the hill that was in front of them. He threw Enhérejär backwards, hoping its split would be enough to handle their four pursuers. Enhérejär split into four needle-thin spikes, however only one of them hit their mark, the other three cultists easily evaded.

Alisson clicked his tongue as Enhérejär flew back into his hand and reformed, like a harpoon being reeled back in.

Alisson broke off his forward sprinting for a moment, and turned on a dime backwards. He was able to catch one of the pursuers off guard by his sudden turn around, impaling them straight through the chest. The remaining two were quick to react, and attacked Alisson at once from two angles.

Alisson fired off a Pictun spell at one and bobbed around the other with a quick dice of Enhérejär, killing both within the blink of an eye.

Alisson hurried on to catch up with Celis, trying as best he could to ignore the thousands of staring cultists in the forest at either side of him. Alisson caught up with Celis, and together, they crested the hill. The sight Alisson saw at the top of the hill sent another episode of disbelief through him. It was a city, walls, houses, and all, right before them. It was eerily illuminated by the red sky and moon solely; the lights of streetlamps and windows were no where to be seen. It looked more like the black shadow of a city, something that nobody should be living in. Further down the road, hugging the walls of the city and lining the road, were more cultists; their eyes were red and still affixed on the two of them. Alisson saw their mounts sprinting headlong into the city’s gate.

He flicked his head to Celis, and the two of them broke into another sprint down the road. Alisson prayed with all his heart that the surrounding thousands of cultists, lining the road and submerged in the forest, would not attack.

They made it all of about halfway to the city’s gate when that hope was shattered. At first only a few cultists broke their staring and charged, and for that they were dealt with by either Celis or him with relative ease.

Then it was every dozenth cultist, then every tenth, every eighth…soon all hell surrounded Celis and him. They fought with crazed ferocity; it was like a never-ending torrent of inhuman warriors that had little regard for their lives. Alisson could easily dice one or two with out much thought, but twenty? Or forty? All at the same time?

That put Alisson on the back foot, even a fighter of his caliber couldn’t deal with an unrelenting and seemingly endless supply of enemies from every angle. That was the kind of resistance that caused Alisson and his apprentice to slowly focus more and more on killing cultists than traveling down the road, until they were at a standstill, unable to move, their backs against each others, and a circle of black robed cultists, hundreds deep, surrounding them.

“Tch! They just keep coming!”

Alisson cursed as he cut down a dozen cultists at once with the power of Enhérejär’s whip-like formation. The two of them were thoroughly out of breath, with no respite in sight. At this rate, he feared any number of things could be happening to their mounts. If they were executed, that was him and Celis done and dusted. They would half to travel all the way back to Daigoro for sub-par mounts that wouldn’t have their training or gear; It’d endanger the rest of the mission.

That’s given we survive this damned place!

Alisson could scarcely think more than that, he was too caught up trying not to be overrun.

“Alisson, my spells, I can try and bore our way through-!”

Celis said in-between strikes at encroaching cultists. Alisson thought for a moment at her proposal. Surely, she had more mana than him, but was it enough to dig their way through this ocean of robes?

“Do it.”

With those words, he took up a defensive position next to Celis, and reformed Enhérejär into a rapier and buckler.

“Fult!”

He was now protecting a 360° field of vision, and that was impossible with solely Enhérejär, plain and simple. Even with its whip-like form, it wasn’t enough. So, a few stretched wind spells were the best Alisson could do, though they were little more than paper cuts that just barely cut through the cultist’s robes, he launched one after another, over and over. It did what Alisson hoped, and made the cultist’s approach far harsher a climate, and they were far slower, shielding their face and slowly powering forward through the weak spells. With their sudden slowness, Alisson didn’t have a problem using the range of his rapier and dealing away with them as they neared.

He was running out of mana, fast. It was annoying to Alisson, these wind spells were, beside a few Pictun spells, the only real usage of his mana, and his supply was already vanishing before his eyes. He cursed his own shortcoming.

“Pictun!”

He heard Celis shout, and a bright yellow bathed the area. About a dozen spells were shot at once from Celis, the spells plunged into the cultists that were standing in the way of them and the city gate. Celis didn’t stop there, she followed up the initial barrage of expensive spells with the weaker Pict spells. Slowly but surely, a wider and wider area free of cultists was carved out by the spells.

Alisson didn’t wait. He lightly pushed Celis on the back and she gave a brief look at him before breaking into a sprint through the newly created ‘tunnel’ in the cultist ocean. Alisson cut down another few cultists before turning and following in Celis’s wake. She continued firing spells as they ran, but gradually the cultists were regaining ground and filling the gap that Celis’s barrage had caused.

Now’d be a good time to have a flight spell…

Then, it happened; The cultists had fully swarmed back around the two of them, and their sprint was ended with the closing of the gap. They were only but a few seconds away from the gate, it frustrated Alisson.

“Again!”

He shouted to Celis, and prepared himself for another round of defensive action. The thought crossed him to use the Obice spell to cordon off a side, so that he could better defend, but a combination of Alisson being stingy with his mana and the fear of the barrier being broken down quickly eroded away the idea from Alisson’s mind. He didn’t want to use any more mana, just in case things really got serious.

Alisson decided quickly,

A few wounds were worth far less than their survival.

Enhérejär.

The buckler that had been on Alisson’s left hand peeled away into another backsword. Alisson didn’t like this way of fighting, he hated the thought of having no defense and relying completely on the enemy being overwhelmed. He was not good at duel-wielding, but this was one of the few times he thought that an extra blade would come in handy.

When the cultists did ebb and flow toward Alisson, he cut them down with as swift and concise as strikes as he could manage, as even his speed was no match for the hundreds of cultists surrounding and pouring toward them. He cut down one after another, both his blades were constantly in motion, and he himself was darting from all oncoming angles of attack around Celis, trying as best he could to keep a radius free of cultists around her.

“Fult-!”

Eventually, his efforts were proven to be not enough, and he was on the verge of being overrun, so he fired off a few wind spells. The cultists however, unlike last time, were completely unaffected. The reason being left Alisson with another sight for sore eyes. The cultists, all of them, bowed their bodies subserviently, and the waves of visible air passed harmlessly over their heads. It was not all at once either, as the spells encroached, they’d duck – His spells did little more than create a few waves in the cultist ocean. After a second, Alisson noticed a single cultist behind him, lifting his knife to impale Alisson. Alisson grimaced in anticipation for pain, unable to do a thing as his body was already cutting down another couple cultists. Out of his vision Celis backstepped, and impaled the cultist through the side of the neck, and Alisson mentally breathed a sigh of relief.

After that, six more cultists flooded into where the other had been, it became apparent that the defensive radius Alisson had tried to keep up had failed.

“Pictun!”

Thankfully, their time was already up. Celis poured a second barrage of magic down the road and through the gate. The two of them broke into a sprint without hesitation. They both had the same idea.

As him and Celis passed through the open portcullis over the now evaporating corpses of a few dozen cultists, he saw for his own eyes that the streets of the city were inundated with more black robes, all of them beaming their bright red eyes straight on him and Celis. Together, they fired spells against the mass and forced their way into the city proper. With cultists closing in at their backside through the portcullis, and the streets seeming to visibly ebb toward them, him and Celis quickly enacted their silent idea.

The both of them quickly scaled a nearby building.

As Alisson clambered over an empty bazaar stand, he leapt up to a windowsill. When he hoisted himself up to the window, he saw through it perfectly a normal and lit living space. Three cultists stood in the dead center of the room, staring directly at Alisson with their burning red eyes.

Alisson forced his body to climb faster.

As he pulled himself up to the roof of the three-story building, he was glad to note that Celis had kept pace with him, and was but a split second behind. From the top of the building, Alisson could see clearly the surrounding streets of the city. All of them were filled to the brim with black robed people, staring directly at him. They seemed to all be shoving against and past each other to get to the two of them, and Alisson realized that they were on a time limit. Surprisingly, not all of the cultists tried to scale the building as him and Celis had, and simply shoved up against it, like the water against a dock. The ones that did, only a few that Alisson could see, climbed with terrifying speed and intent, they were determined to reach him and Celis. Their glowing eyes seemed eerily similar to the reflection of the red sky off the tops of the city’s shingles.

Alisson tapped Celis on the shoulder to follow as he turned toward the city center. Alisson needed to find those horses, dead or alive, either was better than nothing. There was a large belfry tower in the center of the city, Alisson would start with that for a good view to spy out any signs of their mounts.

Knowing Celis wouldn’t have any trouble keeping pace, he broke into a sprint across the rooftops, deftly vaulting over parapets and sliding down arrays of shingles. A few cultists, the sparse ones that had climbed after him and Celis pursued them across the rooftops. Alisson was happy to see that him and Celis were far faster than the cultists, and they were easily outrun. Some cultists came from the front, as they’d climbed up before the two of them, and those were dealt with either with an abrasive shove or with the quick slice of a blade.

Knives soared passed both him and Celis, they were thrown either from the trailing cultists or some on the ground. Some knives hit Alisson, and thankfully, his armor did its job and bounced all of them without much fuss. It wasn’t long until him and Celis reached the belfry tower, most likely due to their abundance of motivation to do so. They both easily made the large jump to the belfry’s walls, and they clambered up the side of the large tower, using the intricate architecture and engravings in the stone to their advantage. As thrown knives bounced off of the stone wall around Alisson, he seriously started to question where exactly the cultists were in the magic department. The magic cannons, the horses’ abrupt stop and apparent betrayal, and the red sky above had to all be the work of magic, powerful magic at that; but Alisson so far hadn’t seen a single cultist cast a spell.

The number of knives bouncing off the stone wall of the steeple around Alisson gradually decreased as his altitude increased, and soon, he made a final clamber up to the steeple’s belfry. As he stood, Alisson realized immediately,

The sky was no longer red, and the moon was gone, obstructed by a thicket of clouds. He was almost growing fainthearted from all the shifts in the sky and of his own negligence toward whipping up some sort of explanation for it. On a hunch, he looked down the walls of the steeple. Sure enough, he couldn’t see a cultist in sight.

For a moment Alisson’s heart flared – He’d done it, he’d found the secret to all the inner workings of this mystery cult – When the moon was obstructed, the cultists were gone, and the sky was normal-!

…Until he remembered that the moon had been completely in the open the other couple times the sky had returned to it’s black, and Alisson’s slight hope was crushed immediately. It must have been a coincidence then, Alisson glumly concluded.

Still, the matter was on his hands, the cultists, the perhaps tens of thousands that had flooded the streets only the minute before were all gone, there wasn’t a single robe or glowing set of eyes.

Celis too who was beside him let out a short gasp of disbelief at the sudden and colossal shift of situation. Even the throwing knives that the cultists had used were nowhere to be seen.

Alisson, being the pessimist that he was, concluded that the results before him might very well be temporary, and that they were not out of the woods yet. He almost instinctually knew this, as the ominous veil of pressure that had rested over his shoulders was still present and oppressive as it had been.

“Come on,” Alisson lightly tapped Celis with the knuckles of a hand, “Let’s use this break to look for the horses, a stable, some movement, anything…Now would be a good time to heal as well.”

He said, eyeing Celis’s few wounds. She briskly activated her healing. After a second, Alisson felt a soothing chill at one of his wounds from the throwing knives. When he looked over, he saw Celis tepidly holding her hand out toward him. He didn’t know whether to thank her or tell her to conserve her mana, so he simply looked away.

The two of them sat still, looking over the black shadow of the city, Celis healing the both of them. It was extremely unsettling to Alisson. City’s, especially of this scale and craft, were almost always at the very least illuminated at night. His mental image of warm orange candlelight pouring out of windows and splashing across cobblestone roads was completely contrary to what he saw:

There were no lights. There were no people in the streets. There were no traces of smoke, no sounds of idle chat either.

There was however, the hoos of owls and the chirping of crickets and birds, and Alisson surprisingly found himself grateful for the noise. He did take note that these sounds did not come from the city – There were no birds or crickets or anything alive within the city but him and Celis. Rather, the city was engulfed and surrounded, as if melding into the surrounding forest. It was comical to admit, but if one were to be traveling by, the city him and Celis were in would be incredibly easy to miss amongst the outlines of the trees and hills due to it’s lifelessness. He was thankful that the sky had been red when it was, for Alisson doubted that he would’ve been able to make out the city for a city, he most likely would’ve interpreted the outlines of buildings to be rather the hills of a dark plain thanks to the elevation he’d had.

Alisson promptly wondered if it really was a city. Surely, it looked like one in architecture, but use? Not at all. It appeared, at least to Alisson at that moment, that no one was living here.

Could one really call a city a city if it was not inhabited? The basic definition is a place where people live and as such even the most modest of scrap-holes can be called cities and towns…But here, no one lived, no one went about a daily life, and certainly no trade was passing through.

As Alisson scanned the city, he was a little relieved to see the outlines of what looked to be magic cannons against the dark blue of the sky. At least Alisson now had a definite origin for who’d been hurling those artillery spells at them. As Alisson scanned the streets, looking for the horses, he spotted an ounce of movement.

There was an outline of what looked to be a lady in a noble’s dress, walking down one of the dark roads.

“You there! Stop!”

Alisson called, but the outline didn’t stop, and simply kept on walking until they disappeared around a corner. He was far from the figure, but that shouldn’t have mattered due to the quiet of the town.

“What was it?” Celis asked in a whisper.

“Something...”

Alisson muttered, shaking his head. He eyed the area around where that figure of a person had been, but he saw nothing after that, it was like they’d disappeared.

This whole situation, Alisson didn’t like it, not one bit.

“There, by the northern gate.”

Celis said in a whisper, and she lifted a hand to point. Alisson quickly looked over, and indeed he saw the dark outlines of two horses round a corner and disappear from view. They were across the city, so Alisson hadn’t heard them.

Alisson and Celis looked at each other sternly. They both nodded and started off toward the northern gate. Carefully dropping down from the steeple, they both landed on the rooftop of another building and continued as they had been before across the city’s skyline. As they ran, the sky gradually became red. When it was as bright as it had been, Alisson heard the whiz of knives and he knew already what had happened. He hesitantly turned to his side, to see a street flooded with black robes. He turned his gaze forward, but when he did, he saw that the streets that had been in his vision and that had been completely empty, were now filled to the brim with the damned cultists.

He was left to wonder just how the cultists reappeared so perfectly like that; he had turned for less than a second, but the streets had all been engulfed and filled to the brim. Alisson looked to the sky, and noticed, that the moon had just slipped out from under the shade of the clouds.

Could it be…?

They were approaching the northern gate when Alisson saw what they were looking for, in the middle of the crowds of cultists, were two bumps, and Alisson picked them out to be their horses. It seemed they were being led by a few cultists with leads, Alisson could see this easily as they were going against the flow of black robes.

“There!”

He shouted to Celis. The horses were being led out of the city, through the northern gate.

If that’s the case-

Alisson eyed the city’s walls. He saw a tall building hugging the wall, they could use that vault over the walls and catch the cultists that were leading the horses by surprise.

“We’ll go over the wall-!”

He relayed Celis and they continued on toward the northern wall. Alisson hoped that the horses wouldn’t pull some kind of disappearing act on them, as had the cultists and that figure earlier done earlier.

The two of them made the last jump to the building that was near the wall. Alisson suddenly felt the distinct noise of house sized thundering footsteps, akin to a hobgoblin or Bear. He ignored it, and focused on making the last large leap to the wall of the city.

A fatal mistake. The rooftop that was before Alisson’s feet suddenly crashed and caved in on itself, and he had to a jump a split second earlier than he would’ve liked to.

Alisson saw clearly what had made the building crumble whilst he flew through the air. It had been below and hidden from Alisson’s view, but it was massive, only slightly shorter than the building itself. At first Alisson thought it was an ogre, that distant cousin of goblins and orcs that could wrestle with Bears. But, due to it’s skin color and attire, it obviously wasn’t ogre but it certainly had the humongous body shape of one. It was a stumpy humanoid, pale brown, and was wrapped in chains, and wore a large and torn tunic and trousers. If a man had suddenly grown to the proportions of an ogre, than that’s what it would’ve looked like, Alisson thought. Alisson could only make out it flashing it’s small eyes at him, a gleam of red were buried within them.

Alisson shoved the appearance of this oddball out of his head momentarily and focused on himself. He was midair, and thanks to his jump he was headed for the wall of the city. Celis was beside him in the air, he could see her gasping out in shock from the building literally being ripped down by the arms of some sort of monster; He was glad that she was able to still jump preemptively despite the fright.

It became clear however, after a split second of thought, that he wouldn’t make the rim of the city’s wall, and neither would Celis. That was due to the fact him and Celis had jumped early thanks to the rooftop being ripped away from under them.

There was now one path for the two of them: soar smack dab against the wall of the city, and slide down into the ocean of cultists waiting below.

Up against a wall like that, surrounded on all sides, and with that ogre-monster only a dozen meters away…

Alisson made up a second option quickly. He had a pretty good chance of making it out solely with his life and a bin-full of wounds…if he didn’t have to protect Celis. She could fight for herself, yes…But for so long? Against the never-ending tide? The two of them would get separated, Celis would grow tired from fighting and get wounded left and right, and that’d be the end of her.

He grabbed onto her midair.

“Go after them. Stay put, I’ll come to you.”

He said briefly, and he pushed her as hard as he could toward the wall and into the air. He himself was shot down due to his exchange in momentum. He saw Celis briefly, she was staring at him, wide eyed, and then, she was gone, over the wall. He hit the side of the smooth city wall, and slid down.

As he landed, he impaled a dozen cultists with Enhérejär, and cleared a small radius. The cultists at first stared at him as he got to his feet.

He lifted Enhérejär over his elbow and crouched into form.

“Alright you bastards. Who’s first?”

…

Alisson-!

But he’s gone.

I hit the top of the city wall, and thanks to my momentum I’m sent rolling over and off the other side of the wall. My fall is cushioned by a tree, and I land in a thicket of bushes heavily.

“Ow…”

I shakily stand, pushing my way out of the bush and brushing off the tree branches that’d I’d snapped on my way down. My gaze remains lingering on the top of the wall.

It all happened so fast I could barely process it…First that big ogre thing destroyed the building we were on with a wave of its arm, and then Alisson, he…

I frown with a steeled face.

I heard my master. I need to find our mounts, and wait for his return. I draw my baselards, clenching the hilts tightly. When I do, I feel an acute stab of pain in my left shoulder, and I recoil. When I look, I see that my shoulder is a little more forward than it should be.

I…I’m…

My eyes twitch, almost in anger, and I grab onto my left shoulder with my other hand.

And without thinking,

“Ah!”

I collapse to my knees in pain, grinding my teeth.

Gah! I’m so stupid! Why did I do that!

Reprimands flows through me, but at the same time, I’m happy I got it over with on instinct. I rise on wobbly legs, a hand glowing blue clenching my shoulder.

Ha…that’s twice now…maybe my shoulder labrum is screwed up…

After a moment I shake my arm out and rotate my shoulder, I still feel pain but it’s manageable. I take in my surroundings and get my bearings.

The horses-! Where are they!?

I shoot glances all around me, but none of the roads and paths around the city have anybody walking down them; In fact, there’s not a single living thing that I can see.

Alright, I have about half of my mana left, I have numerous small scratches and cuts on me from the previous attrition in the city, and I have no clue where my objective is. Those cultists could’ve led our horses in any direction…so what, do I just pick a direction and start walking-

Then, down a road and over a hill, I see the conical tip of a black hood.

Oh crap!

I dive back into the bushes. As they come over the hill, I watch them with intent. My mind breathes a sigh of relief when I see that it’s only four of them and not the flood I’d been expecting. Behind the four cultists, I see them, the horses.

I smile in spite of myself with realization. Alisson, he wanted me to cut them off!

I need to strike fast, and kill all four of them before they can react and escape.

As they close nearer, I prepare my spells, and wait for the right moment. I was practically breathing down their necks when I chose to attack.

Three Pictun spells slammed into three of them and the last one turned to me, recoiling in surprise, until a stiletto came soaring into their neck. I hopped out of cover and limped over to the horses, they seemed to be ecstatic with their neighing and eager movement. I pat down my mare and leaned down to retrieve my stiletto. When I pulled my stiletto out, I noticed there was blood dripping from it, and that there were pools of blood on the road from the cultists who’re hit with spells.

Before I’m able to question it, I soon realize why the horses were so worked up.

I almost heard it too late, the snap of a stick. I turned immediately to the source of the noise, and I saw it, a Spidertail, right behind me. It was trying to sneak up on me-!

Before I could even scream out or draw my weapons, its tails shot out for me, and my arms were caught right in front of me. To break free, I reach my wrists over and draw my baselards, cutting the two tails that were restraining my arms in my draw. The Spidertail was almost point blank to me, and, without any opposition, its paw shot at me. I too took the opportunity of the space, and impaled the thing’s neck. Its paw still shot for me, and I was knocked off my feet, the wind being blown out of me. I flew across the air and hit the wall’s of a small ditch by the side of the road.

I felt an acute pain in the back of my head, before my vision darkened, and my body limply slid into the bottom of the roadside ditch within the shrubbery.

***

1. Fire Mission. An act wherein frontline infantry or rear echelon units call in either a tactical or strategic bombardment of an area or enemy force. Most fire missions are conducted with nearby artillery batteries at the tactical level for suppressive action, however.