The archer, Vi, put her bow on her back and pulled out 2 shortswords, “I’m out of arrows,” She huffed while wiping some dirt off her face.
I was too tired to look up. All of my attention was focused on not tripping through the underbrush in the dark.
A booming howl pierced through the dark causing me to flinch.
Shit, we’re going to die
The warrior stumbled dragging Charles’ limp body, and myself along with her. She fell towards one of the small pine trees that were prominent to the south of town. Surprisingly, she beat the tree, literally. As she was falling she shot out her right arm and smashed it into splinters. Stumbling through where the tree would have been.
After a couple more steps and some sharp intakes of pain, we were able to stop our momentum and not fall over as a group. “Sorry,” she said in her deep baritone. The pain was evident in her voice, and the sickly smell of blood was permeating the air both from her and Charles.
A darting shadow came out lunging for the weakened warrior. Before I could let out a warning, Vi darted to intercept, slashing quickly with her blades and kill the wolf before it landed. Unfortunately, the lifeless body still smashed into our group of 3 and we fell like dominos.
Reflexes dulled by exhaustion, I gracefully landed face first, Shan the warrior, shook the earth with her fall, but the most concerning thing of all was that Charles made no noise when he fell.
That’s not good
“Shan get up and grab your axe, we’re going to have to fight our way out of this.” Vi said lowly, barely audible.
The hulking form near me began pushing herself up. In the half moon I could see her pained expression through the light canopy of trees. “I left it to help carry Charles,” she responded in a groan.
“Here,” Vi said, sliding one of her short swords across the ground. “Hey, tour guide, grab some of the knives out of Charles' pockets, you’re going to need to defend yourself and Charles.”
I begrudgingly pulled myself up to a kneeling position and looked at Charles' unmoving form. “I don’t know how to fight.”
A quick hiss followed by a terse reply from Vi, “For Voth’s sake. Do you want to die? Grow a pair and man up!”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Her language surprised me, of the group she had definitely been the one with the most proper speech. But now hearing her, it made me wonder who exactly she was. I complied with her request of course, on account of not wanting to die. I gingerly at first, and then more aggressively began combing through the man’s pockets.
Voth, how many pockets does one guy have.
Hidden in the folds of his clothing there were at least a dozen pockets of various shapes and sizes with weird pieces of metal or small glass vials of something.
Shan grunted heavily, followed immediately by a loud whine and a thud of small body. “Check his armguards,” she said raggedly, “He always has at least one in there.”
Sure enough she was right. In each of his armguards I found a slender knife about the length of my hand. It was plain looking, and surprisingly a little rusty. I would have thought that an assassin would have his weapons in better condition.
I glanced up and saw a large boulder that was familiar. “The main road is just around that rock,” I pointed out, even though they were too preoccupied to look.
“How far is the city?” came Vi’s snappy reply.
“Uh I’m not sure,” I responded honestly.
“Best guess?” Shan asked gauntly.
“I don’t know, 2-3 miles probably?” I responded.
There was a moment of silence until Vi quickly broke in, “I know what you’re thinking Shan, but you’ve already raged once today, the chances of you dying are extremely high.”
“The chances of all of us dying if I don’t are even higher,” Shan replied. She proceeded to pull out a large vial from the small pack around her waist, and downed it quickly.
I had been standing by Charles slowly turning in circles in an attempt to not be eaten by wolves, when i saw that exchange take place.
“Uh, what just happened.” I asked to anyone who would give me a clear answer.
“Shan’s about to get us out of this mess, or we are all going to die.”
A deep guttural scream cut through the night. I took a step back instinctively. The wolves that had been slowly drawing near paused. Shan was bent over, fists clenched into tight fists. From her silhouette I could see something very disturbing happening to her muscles. It was almost as if they were growing. She let out another roar and dashed towards the nearest wolf with inhuman speed.
The wolf didn’t have time to react as she swung a wide haymaker. Her fist connected with its body and responded with a cracking sound akin to fireworks. Additionally, it was launched 15 feet into a nearby tree.
What the hell just happened.
The remaining wolves snapped out of their confusion and came charging at her from all sides. It’s hard to describe exactly the events that transpired, but to summarized: The wolves continually gnawed at her flesh while she systematically beat the living shit of each of them until they were all dead. She had killed 15 wolves before the rest of the pack whimpered off the way that we had come.
Her entire body was covered in blood as she stood there in a daze, eyes towards the halfmoon.
Who the hell are these people?