He didn’t understand it. Didn’t get how the arbiters had failed to warn them of the danger before the cultists had set the camp aflame. Or how he hadn’t sensed anything, not the magic of the initial blast or the traces of mana within the attackers.

But he didn’t have time to think about it. They were being attacked and he needed to deal with it.

Through a grunt of pain, he leapt up, gripping his sword tightly as he rushed back over to Kana and Sierra, the sounds of cultists growing as they neared the camp. Sierra looked up to him eyes wide as Kana remained motionless in her arms.

“She’s getting cold” Sierra muttered.

“Dammit” he cursed. “Shit”

He looked over Kana, his hands trembling violently as his face twisted with anguish. Then he glanced back to the cultists as they met those from their side, or at least the remnants that’d risen from the camp. Magic missiles and skills already flying, the magical twisting and warping violently.

Caleb cursed again, then knelt down next to Kana, placing a hand against an already cold shoulder. Her mana was fading, receding from her body ever so slightly, bit by bit. This was worse than when she’d been stabbed, but now he didn’t know if there was a way to fix it.

“Shit!” Sierra cried, looking past him.

He turned just in time to see a cultist raise their sword. With a burst of speed he batted the sword away, then kicked the man backwards into the group behind. Some fell, but most continued charging at him. He couldn’t avoid the battle any longer.

“Run!” Caleb screamed at Sierra, shield appearing in hand. “Take Kana and run!”

He heard the woosh of air before he’d even finished his second sentence and a smidgeon of relief coloured his panic.

As the cultists charged him, he jumped back and levelled his magic bracelet with the masses. He fired it repeatedly at the men approaching him, cutting them down in swathes as he continued to back away, towards the quickly spreading flames.

But they continued unperturbed by the quick and sudden deaths of their allies, practically a mindless horde as they raced for him. Caleb kept firing, cursing wildly. It wasn’t enough to force all of them back.

“Stop!” he cried. “Please! Just leave me alone!”

But they continued, nearing closer and closer. He cursed, and with tears in his eyes focused on the star within his chest, and the far dimmer one on his wrist. He knew what he had to do.

The connection in his mind was instant, the power of the bracelets magic star warping in tandem with his skill. Wisps of heat shot across the across an invisible barrier, and the bracelet glowed brightly on his wrist. Then he fired.

The light was bright again, and the shockwave was practically instant this time. He braced for it, the wind pushing him back as he held to his feet, the magic bracelet disintegrating on his wrist. But as the heat and roar washed over him, he knew the power of the attack had been lesser.

He’d been panicked, desperate, and - in the end - a part of him hadn’t wanted to fire on the people.

The smoke cleared and a crater had formed in front of him filled with charred corpses and body parts. The cultists, disaffected, continued to charge forwards. He couldn’t understand it, didn’t see how they could be so brazen in the face of death, attack their enemy so relentlessly.

He tried to back away further, but the raging fire behind him blocked his path. With nowhere to go, cultists pounced, lunging at him with their swords at the ready. He cut through the first of them with a single swing, his power already seeping into his blade too now, a reflex in the heat of battle.

More men lunged at him and he cut them down too, the pain of his burned arm and the heat on his back stinging as he desperately tried to fight the cultists back. He shrieked with an unhinged anguish in some twisted attempt to frighten his enemy, to stop them from attacking him, but the tide of people kept pouring towards him.

And his sword kept cutting.

He could hear the final screams as people died all around him, some at his hand, some at others, and some by the fire behind him, knocked into it by the uncaring horde of fellow cultists as they rushed to attack Caleb and his friends.

It was sheer and utter chaos. Everything had gone to shit in seconds, and Caleb was right in the middle of it, alone. A single mistake and his life would be over, swords stabbing deep into his stomach and neck as he fell backwards into the blazing heat of fire.

And all he could think about was Kana.

How cold her skin had felt, the way blood had oozed out of her nose and ears. The lifelessness with which she’d hung in Sierra’s arms.

She’d already almost died. It wasn’t supposed to happen again so soon. That’s not how things worked. You didn’t survive a heart attack just to die in a car crash. You didn’t undergo life threatening surgery and live, just to trip randomly, fall and break your neck.

People like Kana weren’t supposed to die.

And yet, she’d laid lifeless in Sierra’s arms cold at the touch. All because she’d healed him.

He cursed himself, cursed the cultists, her brother, her and everything else he could think of.

He’d asked her not to do it again and she’d promised. But she’d lied. And now she might’ve killed herself for a dead person.

Why didn’t I just tell her? he thought, fighting against the pain of his burned side, the dull throbbing worse than ever. Would that have even changed anything?

[Alert – Your location is currently under attack]

His eyes widened as he stared at the message, his confusion growing. But he didn’t have time to care about it, didn’t want to either. The messages malfunctioning were just another surprise atop the pile of many on his plate. Another rung to the ladder of this absolutely shit day.

So he simply continued onwards, cutting and slicing desperately as he fought for his life. He was stronger and faster than the men in front of him, with a sword that could cut through them like scissors cut through tissue. But numbers were numbers, and even a thousand chickens could suffocate a lion.

They were starting to cut him. His skin was tougher than a regular person’s, but not tougher than sharpened steel. Barely nicks, not even from full swings, just pitiful stabs as they were cut down. But the nicks were building up, and some of the wounds were deeper than nicks. Cuts that were starting to slow him down, make it easier for others to find openings.

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So, he cut faster. Harder. His sword swinging wildly through the air as he waved it around. But the openings only grew larger.

The tip of a blade sliced cleanly across the length of his arm and he cried out, stumbling back. The cultists swarmed him and in a moment of desperation, he threw his shield hard, then kicked others away. But he was still surrounded and now without a shield.

In a panic, he leapt upwards, clearing the cultists as he kicked down at their faces.

He landed against the floor amongst the cultists and shrieked, cutting them back with even greater ferocity, then jumped again, slicing through the men beneath him as he leapt around over and over, his sword beginning to glow, as a tightness grew in his chest. But he was bleeding badly now, and he wouldn’t be able to keep leaping through the crowd forever.

[Alert: Two members of the Trial have entered your location]

Suddenly, an explosion of fire rocked the field. It cut through a large swathe of the battle, killing far more cultists than chosen or brigadiers, its heat washing over everyone as it knocked many to the ground. Caleb stumbled but fought to keep upright.

Then another wave of fire – one clear to his trait – washed over a group of cultists to his left, powerful enough to knock him to the floor. He tried to pull himself to his feet, but another wave of heat blasted him, another magically invisible explosion of fire rocking the battlefield only a few metres away.

He hit the floor hard, wincing as the heat singed the ends of his hair, and sheared at the surface of his skin. He didn’t understand what was going on. Didn’t know why he could sense the magic of some fire and not the others. He didn’t have time to make sense of it. In a panic, he scrambled to his feet, grabbing his sword again as he looked around.

The cultists who hadn’t been eviscerated by the flames were getting up too.

He leapt back, barrelling some of them out of the way as he fought to find an opening. But there wasn’t one. He was surrounded by a raging magical landscape, practically no end in sight.

Then he felt a magical presence above. Some screamed, then the sounds of battle were drowned out by a horrendous shriek. He looked up, spotting several goat pterodactyl descend out of the sky, snapping their teeth together viciously.

He understood the messages now.

They swooped just over the battle and snapped people up into their jaws before shooting away as they crunched bodies into blood and flesh. The cultists around Caleb screamed and scattered, barrelling over each other and dead bodies. With reckless abandon they rushed hard in all directions as fast as they could, their opponents forgotten.

He didn’t understand the sudden shift in attitude, but he was grateful, nonetheless.

He stumbled and glanced up again, watching as the monsters flew back down for seconds. He a slash of blue, and burst of flame shot upwards into the air, cutting through the monsters as they shrieked and flailed. One of the beasts fell towards him and he darted backwards, it’s flaming corpse thrashing on the ground as it died.

He stared at it for a moment, before finally realising the sounds of battle had stopped all around him.

Now that the mass of bodies had left, the dead were clear for all to see. There were far more, than he’d expected. Hundreds of bodies, some even being consumed by the still raging fire.

With weak knees and a head of exhaustion, he fell to the floor breathing heavily. His side throbbed intensely, making his breaths all the harder and his burned side stung badly, blood seeping from the mixture of cuts in the already damaged skin. But, despite it all, he was still alive.

His eyes widened.

Kana.

He looked around, forcing himself up.

[What the fuck was that?!] he heard Eriana shout out behind him. He turned to her as she cursed, a few of the others standing around as a great fire blaze on the grass behind them. He looked over them only spotting the familiar faces of Layla, Eriana, alongside two new ones too. A new brigadier in leather armour and a chosen he didn’t recognise.

Reinhard and Roeca were nowhere to be found.

He jogged forwards, frantic.

“Kana?! Sierra!? Ryan?!” he shouted. Layla looked to him, then pointed off to the right.

He looked and spotted Sierra, knelt on the ground, balancing against her sword a few others beside her. He rushed over but slowed as he neared. Roeca’s body lay lifeless nearby, mangled by blades.

But even worse Kana lay in the arms of Sierra, and Ryan lay beside her, both on the ground, unmoving as brigadier Valyre, and the Arab girl from earlier tended to him, identical healing magic flowing through them both.

“They’ll be ok, right?” Sierra said.

[I… don’t know] the chosen replied.

“But they’ll be ok?”

[I’m sorry. I can’t… I don’t know]

[Just focus] Valyre said to the girl, wincing as blood dripped from a cut on her face. Caleb watched in shock, the last of his hope withering away.

Everything had gone so horribly wrong.

[Objective alert: The cultists have collected all seven crystals of Arithor and are headed for the Caverns of Raeinor]

[Emergency Objective: Stop them immediately]

He blinked in surprise at the message as in his peripheral vision he became aware of a red marker. He turned to it, and found it hovered over a singular point in the mountains. The direction most of the cultists had run away.

“Fuck!” he heard Eriana scream behind him. Caleb glanced back to her, watching as the stragglers from the battle slowly gathered together, a couple heavily injured dragged along by others. There were less than before, even with the new additions. Even Reinhard wasn’t among them.

Caleb looked to the ground as the rest of the stragglers stopped nearby, one of the new chosen falling next to Valyre and the Arab girl to help, a different healing magic flowing from his fingers. Everyone was quiet, the silence shared between them loud. The harsh, almost fleshy crackle of the fire behind them reverberated in his ears, it’s light casting everything in a harsh orange glow.

[What the fuck happened?] Sierra hissed.

[Anya] Master Patricia said. The other brigadiers glanced to her, shocked.

[But she’s one of ours]

[Nobody else can trick the senses like that; control so many people and transform them into mindless fighters. She’s betrayed us. I sent her word of our location and circumstance when we left Kippel, in the hoped of receiving support. I led her right to us. This was my fault. I apologise]

One of the two new brigadiers cursed.

[So, we’ve lost then?] Eriana said.

[In part. It’s unlikely they recovered all the crystals, but I saw them recover a few. In our current state we can’t reclaim them. We’ll have to hope they have the patience to believe waiting to gather the other crystals will serve them better. We can regroup by that time, reorganise and try to reclaim the ones they’ve stolen]

“No” Caleb mumbled. “They got them all”

[What?!] the brigadiers said turning to him.

“W-we got a message from the arbiters- or gods. They… got them all” he said. The brigadiers looked to each other in horror.

[What was the message from the gods?] Patricia asked.

[It doesn’t matter. They’ve got the crystals. We need to go now, right?] Eriana said. Caleb looked at her, confused.

“We can’t leave”

[What?] she said, turning to him. [And what the fuck would we do?!]

“S-stay here” he mumbled, uncertainly.

[Stay here?! And do what? Fucking lose?!]

“Lose?”

[You saw the message! They’ve got all the fucking crystals! If we don’t do anything, then the calamity comes!]

[Please, what was the message from the gods?] Patricia repeated.

[They told us to stop the cultists immediately. So we leave]

“B-but, people are hurt. Kana and Ry-”

[Shut the fuck up. We’ve got healers. They can stay. They’ll either save your friends or they won’t. It’s out of our hands, but the cultists sure as hell aren’t. We need to stop them!]

Caleb looked at her, his thoughts frozen in place as the rest of the chosen remained still.

[You know what, screw this. If you guys aren’t coming, I’m going alone]

He stared at Eriana in disbelief, as she turned away without another word and charged off into the darkness, sword glowing dimly. He looked to Master Patricia, who watched as Eriana marched away, then began brushing the soot and blood of her sword.

[Brigadiers. Move out.]

[What?!] one of them cried.

[We’re tracking down the cultists, and if we have to we’ll fight whatever monster they’re making]

[But captain, I can’t leave Shaerry like this] the brigadier shouted back, his blood stained hands pressed firmly to a wound on another brigadier’s neck. [The demi-gods will heal their own first! She’ll die!]

[We’re Brigadiers, Set! We came here for a reason! I’ll be damned if I let these cultists destroy everything, just because a few of our own died.]

[But-]

[That’s an order] she said harshly. [Brigadiers, move out!]

There was a moment of hesitation, but then the remaining brigadiers stood, pulling the remnants of their weapons off the floor. Caleb watched them in disbelief, then his eyes fell on Sierra as she stood too.

“Sierra?”

“I’m sorry Caleb they’re right. We have to stop this, or everyone could die. Not just Ryan and Kana”

“But… Ryan? Kana?” he mumbled.

“I’m sorry” Sierra said, solemn. “You don’t have to come.”

She started after the now jogging Brigadiers, leaving him and the others alone with the crackling of fire. He watched her for a few moments, then at the charred remains of the ground.

He clenched his fists tightly in frustration. He looked back up to the stars, then to the chosen. Layla, Markus, and two other chosen watched as the Arab girl and another tried desperately to heal Ryan and Kana.

“Shit” he mumbled. Then, he followed the others.