Chapter 22: Briarwolves
The sawgrass field felt endless. There was only the relentless caress of countless serrated blades mincing their legs with each step. Cassian continually healed himself and the others while they all ran a bloody path, crimson trickling down their legs like macabre tributaries.
At first he was afraid he would need to sprint back and forth to reach everyone, but soon they were all running in a tight circle around Cassian so he could touch them every few strides. He suddenly felt like the heart of a collective will. A unified, desperate desire to survive.
It was up to Cassian to keep the pace, and in large part, he realized, to keep them alive. Should anyone become overwhelmed by the pain and quit running…
Above, Farglow's panicked cries urged them on. “Please hurry! You’re not moving fast enough!! They’re going to. Oh gods have mercy.”
Suddenly Farglow’s assistant tripped and fell, slicing his arms and face. He shrieked and wailed, his face soaked with fresh blood and tears. “I can’t go on. It just…it hurts too much.”
“Shut up and let’s go!” The pantherian shouted before anyone else could react, yanking the assistant by the arm with one hand, and Cassian with the other, who had slowed to help.
Cassian wished he could numb the pain. If only he had even more control over his power—though what he was doing now was far superior than the healing speeds he had accomplished while training with Althea—then maybe he could do…more.
Thorne was already starting to let himself fall back, waving at the rest of them to keep moving. He called out, “Harakshar, I need you!” and plucked a black stone pendant from his neck, tossing it into the air. The black stone glowed red, and the flames erupted from it, blooming into its burning, vaguely human-shaped form.
They were so close to the other side. Cassian could see it. They’d reach it in less than a minute! A minute in these circumstances, however, was a lifetime. As eager as he was to escape the sawgrass, however, Cassian knew that wouldn’t stop the wolves nipping at their heels.
Thorne’s familiar spewed a jet of fire in a line behind them, erecting a wall of flames. Cassian felt a searing heat at his back and turned. When he saw what Thorne had done, he hoped it would be enough to deter the briarwolves. It wasn’t.
They could all hear the growls and vicious barking of the wolves beyond the flames as they chased them down. But then Cassian saw them leap through the flames unscathed. Three massive wolf heads, with coils of thorny red sinew growing out and around their moss bodies, orange eyes glowing with primordial hunger.
Thorne cast a sphere of glowing arcane symbols, then threw it toward the middle of the pack. The middle wolf, the largest of the three, was too distracted by Thorne’s familiar to notice its approach. When it touched the creature, the sphere flashed with blue lightning, and the briarwolf was trapped in the center of what looked like an enormous tesla coil, where it remained suspended in the air.
The other two wolves, sensing danger, split apart, each heading in a different direction. For a moment, Cassian felt relief. It looked as if they had been spooked by Thorne’s spell.
Until he heard Thorne curse and resumed his sprint. “Grumf, Sable, they’re after our flanks!”
The dwarf and pantherian didn’t hesitate to take their places, each creating distance from the center—and abandoning any potential relief they could receive from Cassian’s healing—readying for the oncoming attack.
Indeed, though it had looked to Cassian that the wolves were retreating, they were only making a wide arc to come at them from each side in a pincer attack.
Grumf and Sable each kept running at the sides of our formation, until the wolves inexorably reached them.
Grumf, the dwarf, the very picture of what you might imagine a dwarf adventurer might look like in a fantasy world, hefted his long handled two sided ax and braced for impact. Sable, the pantherian, a dark furred demi-human with golden eyes, held a heavy curved sword in one hand, and a bladed gauntlet resembling a claw hand in the other.
The wolves reached their opponents nearly at the same time. Sable made an agile leap, slashing the briarwolf across the face even as he twisted in the air and landed on its back. He lodged his clawed hand into its briar flesh, then held on as it bucked to no avail. The pantherian held firm.
On the other side, Grumf seemed to be struggling. He used the wide end of this ax to parry the swipes of the wolf’s claws and the snapping jaws, but he’d yet to land a clean blow.
Thorne raised his hands, fingers twisting into arcane formations, then circles of light appeared all around Grumf’s wolf. Ethereal silver chains shot out from them, wrapped themselves around the creature, and pulled. The briar wolf dug resisted, but they too held.
The dwarf roared, “Ye thinks a bush like you can stand up to a dwarf’s ax?!” Then he started hacking, raining blow after blow on the creature’s ribcage.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
On Sable’s side, the pantherian was struggling to make headway cutting into the wolf’s neck. The briars kept growing, and a coil of them was halfway wrapped around the pantherian. Blood slicked his fur and one of his arms was trapped. Thorne’s familiar was helping to keep the beast occupied with bolts of fire, but the situation looked grim.
It was a brutal battle, but they fought hard to buy enough time for the rest of the party to finally make it out of the sawgrass.
Cassian quickly healed everyone as quickly as he could. All their clothes under their belts were shredded, bloody rags. The flesh underneath was no better.
Before Cassian was even done with Jessen, the scout was on his feet, unhitching his crossbow and drew a rune coveted bolt from his quiver. He loaded it, then turned to Isolde. “You’re the only one on the defense team on this side. Don’t let your guard down.”
If ever there was a death flag…
Before he finished turning around, the pack leader of the briar wolves was on him. Jessen had only enough time to raise one arm in front of him before the beast clamped its jaws around him, engulfing his arm to the shoulder. Then the briar wolf was shaking its head violently, twisting and tearing with ferocious strength, trying to rend Jessen's arm from his body.
“Get out of the way!” Gareth called, tackling Isolde and Cassian—who had been shocked into inaction. Jessen’s body was whipping around like a flail, and Gareth’s quick thinking had saved them from getting struck.
Jessen’s hot and sticky blood had sprayed on Cassian and Isolde’s faces. They watched in horror as their affable, friendly, joking comrade screamed in agony, holding on for dear life with his free arm, even as part of his shoulder was already coming away from his body.
“We need to do something!” Cassian shouted. Feeling completely helpless. The grip on his gnarly staff tightening.
Isolde pointed just under the briar wolf’s feet. “The crossbow!”
Cassian saw. The crossbow, still loaded with the runecarved bolt lay there, where Jessen had dropped it when the wolf caught him.
Isolde made as if to run to it, but Cassian and Gareth both caught her by the arm almost at the same time. “Let go!” she shrieked. “He’s going to die if we don’t do something!”
Cassian shared a look with Gareth that spoke volumes. “Gareth, I’ll take the left. You take the right.”
A shadow crossed over his face for a moment, then Gareth nodded grimly.
“Isolde,” Cassian willed himself to put aside his hesitation. She was right. And without their help, she was liable to do something stupid. “We’ll get its attention. You go for the crossbow when you see an opening.”
She steeled herself. They all did. They were the only ones left. Farglow’s apprentice was cowering behind the treeline and Farglow himself was nowhere to be seen. Thorne and the others were facing their own wolves. If they could do something, they had to do it now.
“Go!” Cassian shouted.
Gareth and Cassian split up and started shouting at the briar wolf, who seemed to be playing with its new toy, but wondering why it had suddenly quit making a noise and maybe it just needed to paw at it some more.
“Hey, you big ugly bastard! Over here.” Gareth summoned ice bullets and shot them into its side. The briarwolf barely seemed to notice those. His shouting, however, did get it to perk up.
“Not over there. Over here. Come get me!” Cassian waved around his gnarly staff, trying to make as big a movement as he could, while feeling small and trying not to imagine himself becoming kibble.
Cassian and Gareth successfully drew the wolf's attention, their combined efforts causing the beast to hesitate, its split focus creating a measure of uncertainty. It released Jessen, who by that point was barely conscious, his screams reduced to pitiful moans.
The briar wolf stalked forward, looking between them eyes hungrily calculating which juicy morsel it should choose next.
Seizing the opportunity, Isolde snuck around behind the creature and recovered the crossbow. She took careful aim, and just as the wolf was rearing up to strike—having decided that Gareth was the tastier snack, she squeezed the trigger and fired.
The runecarved bolt found its mark just behind the ear, exploding the creature's head in a burst of splintered bark and viscous sap.
“Yes!” Isolde shouted. “I got him!”
Death flag number two.
If only hard won victories could be so easy. The wolf did not die. Instead, its head began to regrow. It cracked and squished as roots and briar and primordial green goo twisted out of its ragged neck into a head that wasn’t a head, its new form hideous and amorphous. Its remaining lower jaw opened wide, releasing a guttural, grotesque howl.
The monster turned its focus on Isolde, charging at her with terrifying speed. Cassian's heart sank—this was his worst nightmare. He couldn't help but think that this entire plan was a terrible idea founded on the machismo of idiots. Cassian would learn later that the only known way to kill a briar wolf was to pierce or remove its rutabaga-like heart.
As it rushed towards her, Cassian once again saw red. He felt the scream rise from somewhere unfathomable deep inside him. "Stop!"
He suddenly sensed the briarwolf's chaotic mana as it settled into his awareness. The creature obeyed.
Isolde crawled backward, staring up at its oozing, slick saliva as it dripped from the ambiguous shape of its head. Then she could see Cassian struggle, and knew they had to kill it while he still held control.
Cassian could feel his grip slipping. His friends lashed out with poison whip, ice, and even fire. But nothing affected the beast. I stood there helpless in Cassian’s thrall, but it would not die.
Cassian's entire world and focus slowly shrunk to an area as small as the head of a pin. There was only his will against something else’s will. Something vast and roiling.
He had a vague awareness that Thorne was running toward them from the sawgrass fields. But there wasn't enough time for him to get there.
Cassian sucked in a ragged breath and whispered to the briar wolf, "Why don't you just die already?"
Death flag number three.
Something snapped. The world went fully dark as he fell, feeling the darkness descend, even as the briarwolf withered into a steaming pile of black mulch.