It was like being swarmed. Not swarmed by bees, but by aggressively pointy, armoured arseholes. So more like wasps.

They missed us a lot. The flying carousel horses turned well, but not well enough to keep up with three agile people on top of a fast moving train. However I was keenly aware that they only had to get lucky three times to take us out and they weren’t having any trouble keeping up with the train.

The first one to get close to hitting one of us was the rider with the bloody arm and the grudge against Amris. He’d been circling us while the others charged and missed, or took potshots with their rifles that bounced off the many shields that blossomed from the train.

He saw his opening when one of the others got a little too close. Amris leapt onto the rider and the sudden additional weight forced the horse down onto the roof. The rider struggled to his feet, bleeding from many claw marks. I kicked the horse, with all his weapons still attached, off the roof.

The fallen rider had barely got his balance when Sarah punched him square in the face. He dropped to the roof and Amris rolled him over the side with one foot.

“Close enough?” said Amris.

“Not really feeling it,” said Sarah.

I saw movement behind them and realised that the bloodied rider was almost upon us and someone was about to get skewered.

I acted without really thinking about it. Before I knew it the crossbow was in my left hand, the runic clockwork was already cranking to reload it, and my bolt was buried in the face of the bloodied rider.

I felt a brief stab of guilt and tried to bat it away. He was a soldier in an army of Nazi cosplayers. Besides I didn’t know for sure that he was properly dead. Had I really killed him or had I just sent him to a new life on earth. Were Arkadia and Earth just participating in an exchange program? Every generation or so we send each other a bunch of fascists and their assorted victims?

“Incoming!” shouted Sarah.

The shooting started as I was turning. The rounds must have been subsonic because I saw the red glow of them in the air as they approached. Both of them missed me and I focused on the two riders who had got inside the main array of shields.

Amris made a strange coughing sound and wheezed out “Good news. The dispel shield works.”

One of the riders was staring right at me. I threw myself to the right as he started shooting again. Two bullets missed. I heard a ding, different from the various skill, perks and achievement dings that I was used to. The crossbow had reloaded and re-cocked itself.

Before he could fire again I shot my bolt. I think I aimed for his face but this time I wasn’t so lucky. The bolt caught him in the shoulder and the shock of the impact caused him to drop his gun.

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He grabbed for his lance. I let the crossbow hang by its strap and drew my Messer.

I narrowly avoided the first charge but he passed on my left side, avoiding the messer. I had a moment to assess the things before I turned to face him again. Amris was down and bleeding. Sarah couldn’t get to him because the other rider that had broken through was circling her, just out of reach, and stabbing at her and Amris with his lance.

I turned. The rider was ahead of me, above the engine of the train, slowed almost to a halt, and turning in a tight little spin to charge at me again.

I backed away from him, trying to gauge the distance from me to Sarah and Amris, trying to estimate the speed of his approach. I decided to trust my instinct. As a predator Beast-Kin and a Survivor Type my instincts were supposed to be good at this kind of thing.

I turned and ran, expecting at any moment to see the tip of the lance emerging from my own chest. I ran straight at the second rider, the one harrying Sarah. My luck was good. He had all his attention on Sarah and was presenting his side to me.

I felt my foot claws digging into the roof of the train as I fought for every bit of speed that I could wring out of my body. At the very last possible moment I threw myself down and slid under the rider in front of me.

I looked back up in time to see the look of horror and surprise on the rider behind me as his lance pierced the body of his brother in arms. The look didn’t remain there very long because Sarah punched him off his horse and then swept both horses, and both riders off the top of the train.

The notification popup in the corner of my field of vision said +2 REGENERATION AURA. So the kill only counted if Sarah herself pushed them over the side.

We both went to Amris. He had two small bullet holes in his front and two larger exit wounds in his back.

“It’s a good thing they went right through,” said Sarah. “With regeneration aura it can be a bugger to have the wound track close up and have to dig them out later.”

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t celebrate my good luck,” said Amris, still wheezing, now with extra bubbly noises.

“Ooh, I think they got you in the lungs,” said Sarah.

“You don’t say,” Amris wheezed as he searched his potion belt for the right vial.

“They’re definitely all fascists,” I said. “A huge Orc warrior and a woman with a crossbow and they shot the librarian just because he’s Black.”

Amris made a weird wheezy noise that might have been a chuckle or might just have been him trying to breathe as the Regeneration aura rebuilt his lungs. He finally found what he was looking for. Two, to my eyes at least, identical red vials. Healing magic is green, and so are a lot of medicinal elixirs and potions, but for some reason wound healing potions are usually red.

“Sadly they’re not all that stupid,” said Sarah. She was looking toward the back of the train.

Several of the cavalry had given up on attacking moving targets on a moving train and gone back for reinforcements. Each one had picked up a rifleman, and now they were dropping them off on the back of the train. There were already six of them readying their guns.

Amris popped the cork on one of his vials and downed the potion in one.

“Wait,” said Sarah, with a panicked tone, but he’d already swallowed.

Amris started to say “What?” but the word turned into a series of coughs and then the coughs brought forth flames.

“What the fuck?” I said, right as the bullets started flying.