Cass Sprinted with everything that she had. The boar charged behind her.

Her heart pounded in her chest.

All of its considerable Strength propelled it forward faster than a truck. Its head thrashed in wild madness, its tusks glinting with an unnatural light. There was a skill on those. Cass had played enough games to recognize a boss’s attack and to know it would be game over if she was hit.

The boar was faster than her. Faster than the assassin. Even with her stats, she wasn’t going to outrun it.

Sprint burned at full strength, but how did one outrun a beast like a semi-truck?

It was right behind her, still accelerating. Still thrashing.

Dodge screamed. Cass screamed. She threw herself to the side.

The boar barreled past her, its tusks scraping through the air inches from her skin. It buzzed with electricity.

The boar skidded on, its hoofs scraping up a cloud of dust and debris as it tried to turn after her. But, just like the smaller boar she’d fought so many days ago now, it didn’t corner well.

She could do this.

Cass didn’t wait for it to reorient itself and Sprinted toward Alyx again.

Her skin prickled as she ran. Atmospheric Sense shouted a warning. Cass didn’t hesitate.

She Wind Stepped, going incorporeal just as a field of lightning exploded off the boar’s bristles.

Cass reappeared a moment later, her face white.

“It shoots lightning?” Cass yelled at Salos.

“This is a bad plan,” he yelled back.

There wasn’t time to consider another though. The boar was charging again. Cass took off at a Sprint.

She needed another method for countering the lightning. She’d burn through all of her Focus in no time if she Wind Stepped around all of them. She was moving too fast to try the water shield she’d used against the Herald of the Forest again. She’d barely managed that while holding the shield in place, she couldn’t imagine building it and moving simultaneously.

I don’t suppose you have a skill that makes me immune to lightning? Cass asked Salos hopefully.

You think I would be so insistent on leaving this valley if I did? Salos asked.

Cass winced.

There had to be something she could do. The lightning had radiated out in a huge wave. Atmospheric Sense confirmed it had been a perfect hemisphere around the Boar. It had stretched beyond her for several more yards.

The Boar was right behind her again. There was no more time. She dodged left, scrambling to keep her feet even as she twisted out of the range of the Boar's tusks. They sparked with lightning. She was Sprinting. She needed every inch she could get.

Was distance enough? Could she just Sprint out of range?

Stamina was dropping rapidly.

Cass strained Strength and Dexterity. She pressed harder on Sprint. The air before her parted, snapping shut behind her, pushing her faster, further. More.

Atmospheric Sense reported the wave of lightning behind her. She could hear the crackle of energy fry the air. Could smell the free ozone.

She raced ahead of it.

They were almost to Alyx and the assassin. If she could just stay ahead.

She felt the tingle of the lightning against her back. It licked her neck. It raced down her spine. Convulsed along her limbs.

It burned. Her muscles seized. She tumbled to the ground. It hurt.

But she could hear the crash of metal on metal. Of Alyx and Levina’s blades crossing with force and fury.

Cass had made it. Phase one of her plan was complete.

Salos, switch the Fairy Fire to Levina, Cass instructed telepathically.

She tried to push herself back to her feet. Her body didn’t respond. There was only pain where her muscles should be.

The boar squealed again and charged past Cass, its heavy hoofs falling around her, barely missing her as it ran over her. Cass didn’t know if it was her luck, Salos’s Fairy Fire, or simply that Levina had the highest level of the four of them, but the monster needed no additional promptings to attack the assassin.

“What the!” Levina shouted, disengaging from Alyx with a shadowy backstep.

Alyx dove out of the way, her eyes wide at the sight of the beast. Her head jerked between the charging Boar and Cass prone on the ground. She mouthed something at Cass. Cass didn’t need to read lips to guess it was, “What did you do?”

There was no time to explain, not that Cass could.

The boar swept its snout at the assassin as it charged. She easily flitted around to its back, driving her dagger into its flesh. The blade sunk into its hide, but the monster didn’t slow in the slightest. It rampaged in a wide circle, tossing and throwing the assassin around.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Levina held tight to its side. She pulled a second blade from somewhere and jammed it down into the boar beside the first.

Meanwhile, Alyx hurried to Cass’s side. She pulled Cass up.

The effects of the lightning were starting to wear off, but her limbs felt sluggish.

“What did you do!” Alyx hissed.

Cass managed a self-deprecating chuckle. “Brought our assassin a friend?”

Alyx dragged Cass further away from the rampaging monsters. “What do you think we do now?”

“Let them kill each other?” Cass asked, watching as Levina was finally thrown from the Boar’s back. Cass took an unsteady step. “We should stand further back.”

Alyx glanced over her shoulder at the Boar too.

It threw its head back, its tusks sparking blue and white.

Alyx pulled Cass along faster. They were just barely outside the range of its lightning when it went off.

Levina was not so lucky. She was squarely in front of the thing, still picking herself up from her fall from its back. The instant she had to react was barely enough. She flickered out of existence, there one moment, a cloud of smoke the next, then present again as the lightning settled harmlessly into the earth.

The boar squealed and stomped, thrashing back and forth looking for Levina again.

Cass stood a little taller and tossed a Wind Blade at the assassin. She held the blade the entire time, guiding it across the terrorized meadow.

The assassin, still watching the boar, phased out of existence as the blade sliced through their body. She reformed facing Cass, glaring.

Her eyes were all Cass could see as she sprinted toward Cass. The beating of her heart was all Cass could hear.

The world went dark.

Cass couldn’t feel her staff in her hands. Couldn’t feel Salos on her shoulder. Couldn’t feel Alyx at her side.

There was only Levina’s eyes, her dagger, and Cass.

The dagger was approaching. It shone, radiating malice. It—

—wasn’t real.

Assassin’s World Broken.

Cass blinked. Her staff was in her hands. Levina was a step away, her dagger poised.

Cass brought her staff up in a hasty block, deflecting the first of Levina’s rapid strikes.

Alyx swung past her, forcing the assassin back.

Levina parried with a backward step, then threw her body out of the way as the boar barreled toward them. Cass and Alyx dove in opposite directions.

Levina leapt back on Alyx again as Alyx rolled to her feet.

The boar charged through, picking up speed even as it missed, making a wide turn to charge again. It screamed a high-pitched, angry noise.

Cass shot off another Wind Blade, then another. They raked the sides of the boar. Not deep wounds, but bleeding all the same.

Alyx threw Levina off with a spinning swing of her long sword, following that with another flurry of sword strikes.

Levina snuck a cut into that storm, leaving a long gash along Alyx’s thigh as the two scrambled apart again to avoid the boar.

It slowed enough to pursue the twisting assassin. It bucked to and fro, attempting to gouge her with its tusks.

She dodged around it, every near miss of its tusks closer than the last, every pass accompanied by a trail of shadow blades across it’s hide. They exploded into thousands of slicing shards as the boar crushed them, leaving a sea of minor cuts over its snout and along its flanks.

Alyx struck at its backside as it focused on Levina, her sword’s Reverberating Blade leaving a network of shallow cuts across its steely hide.

The boar stomped the ground, its tusks sparking again.

“Alyx, get back!” Cass shouted, but it was too late. Cass watched as the world slowed to a crawl.

Levina and Alyx were on either side of the Boar.

Cass was just barely inside the range of the lightning. She only needed to take a couple of steps back and she would be out of range.

Levina would dissolve into shadows and be fine.

But Alyx had no way of escaping. She’d be hit at point blank. The image of Alyx’s charred form was all Cass could see.

She needed to step back. Cass needed to get out of range.

Cass found herself running toward the boar anyway.

Alyx stumbled backward, toward Cass, toward safety. She’d never make it.

Cass could hear Salos demanding to know where she was going. Telling her to run.

She should run. Sprint was already active. Only, she was facing the danger. She was running into it. Why? What could she possibly do? She was too far away. The lightning too powerful.

Could she throw up a wall of earth as a shield?

Not fast enough.

What about another pure water shield, like she’d used against the Herald of the Forest?

Also not fast enough.

The clock was ticking. She had to do something.

She needed to be faster. Faster. Faster than the Wind itself.

Something clicked in her mind. Everything was clearer. The world slower. Her body, lighter.

Concept Applied: [Wind - Dex, Ala, Per

The Wind is Ephemeral. The Wind is Speed. The Wind is All.]

Cass was at Alyx’s side. Somehow the boar was still building its lightning strike. Somehow, Cass had crossed that distance in time. But now what?

Nothing had changed. They’d just die together.

Lightning erupted from the Boar. It spooled out from its tusks and its body, radiating in waves and loops of light and energy. It was slow. It rolled after them.

Cass had to shield them. But she knew—KNEW—that she couldn’t summon water or earth fast enough to create a shield.

And yet, Elemental Manipulation stood ready at the forefront of her mind. It was a quiet skill, rarely looking for her attention, unlike its loud siblings Dodge, Staff Mastery, or Atmospheric Sense. It was usually content to let her figure it out on her own.

Yet now it demanded her attention. It insisted that it could still save her. Not with a shield. Not with a wall.

Cass leaned into it. What did she have to lose?

The lightning rolled forward.

Cass extended her staff, pushing the Skill through the wood. It felt like an extension of her hand. And she understood what it wanted.

The lighting struck, but Cass snatched back, grabbing at the advancing energy with the skill. The lightning pushed toward her. She snatched up more and more of it, shoving back in turn.

The rest of the hemisphere of lightning passed around them, unaffected by the section Cass desperately grasped and held back.

The lightning burned at Cass’s Focus. It was even less willing to be controlled than fire. Even wilder than air.

The flow of time around Cass ticked back to normal speed and the burn intensified.

She couldn’t hold it anymore, but directing it seemed just as impossible.

A hand grabbed Cass’s free hand. It yanked her left.

Cass nudged her held lightning right as it slipped from her fingers.

It burst past her, exploding behind them in a sea of electricity. But they were safe.

On the other side of the boar, the assassin dropped like a stone.