Another explosion erupted in chunks of ground and timber, pelting Tim and forcing him to duck. Three grenadiers hid in the trench dug around the tent. They were this close. Why didn’t they enter the castle? Tim wiped at his eyes. His ears rang with a muffled barrier to whatever Thron was saying. The big man grabbed Tim’s arm and helped him up, guarding him with his shield.

Chris threw a clump of earth at the lip of the trench above where the last grenade tosser hid. He shot a green bolt to hit the clump. The combo spell ignited a fire of life in the spores that sprayed out from the explosion and grew over the ledge then descended. A voice shrieked. Bright light and concussive blows sent a tower of dirt and aura into the trees.

Wraiths birthed from the vertical eye slits opening in the shadows with Joe at the lead. Tim pointed at the tent sitting on a ledge over the new crater, then swiped a hand wide from west to the shore. “Goblin raiders!” Tim shouted and still barely heard himself.

Maybe two minutes separated the riders from cutting off their path to the bridge. Tim sent Travis to lead three others to cut them off. He squeezed an aura bolt to get one ready in case he needed it. Their grenades had a greater reach than he could throw an axe, not that he wanted to lose his for one throw. He crafted bird bones to the shaft while Roz and Jil chewed away Chris’s healing shrooms.

Tonda hopped out of the trench with a leather pack fit over her back. This world whispered its way through transforming it from human to jexin sized then left its work as a subtle signature of its imprint. A somber reminder of its power to make things far stranger. Something similar birthed heat at his fingertips and inside his wrist. A resonating pink glow emanated from his Aura Bow arrow in progress, leaking like blood through a tube into the feathers he crafted to the end.

“Here you go, bro.” Chris produced a spikey furred yellow fruit from his pouch.

Edke fruit - strong MP and +15% aura regen if you can peel it without ripping the stem from the seed.

“Thanks.”

“Draw your knife along this ridge, stem to stem.”

“Will do, thanks.” Tim finished the arrowhead tip and slid it back into his wrist, then took the dense fruit in his palm. He studied the ridge as Chris showed, punctured the flesh. Milky white juice beaded on the surface.

“Get that,” Jil said.

Tim sucked up the juice without argument. A buzz of aura woke on his lips. He sucked on the source until it was dry enough to cut some more. Cutting around the stem to protect the seed took care as the muscle around it tugged with each saw of his blade.

“Now eat it,” Chris said. “It’ll absorb in your throat.”

Tim gave it a shot, almost hacking it up in an involuntary shudder, but got it down. The surge of aura could not be explained in such a thin morsel. He coughed against the kick in his throat as pop fizz power bubbled out in a heat wave spreading down his chest. Pink mist escaped his lips in an exhale of refreshment. He had enough for another Aura Light.

Tonda slowed her gallop and rubbed her shoulder into Tim’s leg. Her backpack had a mix of weapons and survival tools in red to orange range durability, 4 3-ounce pouches of Eiyero, a beetle looking pendant, wall climbing spikes, rope, and a handmade screwdriver cracked down the handle. Tim’s Magic Hunt swept over the odd double box. A similar blue green aura marked the beetle’s back. Tim equipped both items to get a closer look, walking with Tonda toward the enlarged trench.

The beetle’s back had a second layer to its shell. Tim pushed on it and slid the secondary section apart, exposing a hole with matching pattern entry to the screwdriver bolt. Tim inserted the screwdriver and turned. A lock clicked and released. XP deposited into multiple skills, but the bigger surprise was the unsheathing of the tent. A prisoner jumped up and burned their way through their cuffs and lining.

Her dark robes glowed gold at the cuffs and along the rim of her hood, casting light on cocoa toned skin and two metal slits on her cheeks—one gold, one black. Like coin slots infused with aura screws to attach to her face and the energy in her brain.

Tim held out a hand to establish himself as a friend, sending some Negotiator and Politician in with his voice. “It’s okay. We have to go, but you’re safe for now.”

Swirling gusts entered one coin slot and exited the other, penning blazing numbers and short identifiers on her forehead. They conjoined in formulas to produce sparks in the computations they solved. Her lips whispered commands or questions; Tim couldn’t tell. Might be rambling as she didn’t seem to know either.

Her midnight black robe had two patches. On the main one, navy blue letters stitched HTC on the white sails, blue to match the wave lifting the trading vessel stacked with treasure and jolly pirates. “Majestic and established by time,” rang Ky’s voice in his mind, speaking the motto for the trading focused nation.

Aura blessed the mighty ship from sails to sternum and the cannons poking out in fine form beneath. The shield-shaped patch wore well with the elegance of the cloth, even with the stains of soot and blood. The hornet patch beside it matched the fight in her posture, though her eyes said not with him.

“You Farar?” She heaved and her eyes lit full golden beams.

“Not exactly, but enemies of the ones who put you there.” Again, he patted a placating hand.

She noticed the lock and key. “You freed me. I’m in your debt.” A soft side peaked out briefly under the cover of war and calculation walled over her face.

“Well—” Tim started.

“Yeah, he’s great,” Jil said with a playful hip bump. “We’re Childockian. Let’s line up and talk later. Grab your stuff. Those goblins know who he is too.”

“Right,” she said.

An invite card opened in his HUD.

Temporary alliance with Khempal, Level 15 Currencist, Hai Trade Company Hornet’s B Company.

Tim accepted the agreement and shared their titles.

“Aura Mage, huh?” Khempal returned to the tent and circled the inside. A calculation burned off her forehead. She stabbed down. Golden magma splashed at the intersection between her fist and the once hidden treasure chest. The splash filled the frame with its true shape and colors. Jealousy and excitement ran through him at whatever cool skill that was. She popped the chest and scooped up a backpack stuffed to the knot at the top. “All set,” she zipped off with a grin.

Tim picked up his pace alongside Jil. She winked and showed him who was the fastest. A horn blew from the forest behind them. Far west, down the trail but out of sight. Farar horn. “Those are friends!” Tim shouted. He still could barely hear over the ringing.

Roz pointed Tim and Chris to the bridge while he and Thron returned west.

“Roz, catch,” Tim said, and hurled an Aura Light recharge like a glowing baseball. He kept his touch on the warm tension between aura and the physical mass he added to help it carry heavy enough to make it accurate.

Roz swung his chime to catch it on the run. Tim released the skin to splash the chime with pure aura. It flashed white and pulsed with golden undertones as it absorbed into the bronze metal. Glistening energy rippled across the surface. Roz tapped a finger in salute and spun his chime into a circle of blurred blue waves, generating brighter light with each rotation.

By the time he reached the Farar, Roz’s chime sent blinding light on each booming wave. Every spin cycle facing the same direction grew thicker rings and greater power. Thron barreled into the drill bit-shaped sound tunnels, his steps light as a feather and twice as fast as normal. Jil loosed arrows from halfway between them and Tim and Chris. “Go! Get behind the castle wall.”

The dilapidated bridge didn’t quite make it to the western side of the castle. At the end there was a twenty-foot gap between the end of the road and a top mottled stone pillar connected to the other side. Danger Sense read that it could hold their weight if they went one at a time.

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The climbing spikes. That must have been why the cartel men had them. “Tonda!” Tim whistled and his jexin kicked into high gear. She was rummaging in the tent, collecting loot. Her powerful strides caught Tim at the onset of the bridge. Their boots echoed off the stone, offering a new instrument to the orchestra of explosions. One boomed from the base of the bridge. Tim hadn’t thought they were that close. Roz’s chime gave off powerful thwumps from way back in the woods. The tunnels of light cast far and terrible consequences and he’d missed one of them.

Tim tried glancing back as he ran. On the other side of the river, his wraiths retreated. Midway to the bridge, a goblin rode low on its panther. That was the one. If it got another ten- twenty seconds of sprint time, it’d have a clear shot from the base of the bridge.

Jil saw too and climbed onto the side. She quickly nocked an arrow and let it fly.

Tim kept on but glanced back to see it ping off the goblin’s shield.

Jil growled. “I’m out of power shots. That was a straight hunting arrow.”

Khempal patted Tim’s hand from drawing his arrow. “We need you to get us across.” She slid an aura coin into the gold plate in her cheek. Computations wrote on her forehead and her eyes lit with the exchange. Fire torched in her palm and hardened as she made a fist.

Tim didn’t want to miss what she could do but had his own magic to do. He took out his rope and started the knot Ky called “The elephant.” Tim made a loop wide enough to hook his target on the stone, gave it two hard spins at the end of his rope and let it ride. He extended a channel of aura into the rope until it filled the loop. Wind gusted it off target. He pressed thicker aura into the inner side and stretched it wide. The loop caught and he yanked it tight.

Jil and Khempal peppered the end of the bridge, blowing chunks of rock from where the goblin took cover. Beyond them, Roz and Thron retreated as a wave of shadows—creatures in the knight armed with steel and armor—chased them out of their woods and into the open field. Roz spun into a roundhouse and snapped his chime on a high arc. A Lightning bolt shot out of the chime. Goblin brains splat against the stone.

Tim stepped back and then ran for the ledge. He swung around using his weight and lifted high enough to catch the ledge. His fingers strained, tired from the arrow crafting. A cramp worked out from his knuckle. Tim forced through the pain to climb to the top.

A crack buckled the wall from underneath. Too much to reach past and stop from falling with it.

The quick shift put its great weight over him before he could slip out. He tried kicking out. The stone was two bricks thick and not budging. What if…?

Tim spent the last of his aura and gave a blank check to his MP to cat kick. He cast Mist and prayed against a broken toe. His foot entered the stone. He released the spell. Impact cracked across the surface. Tim whipped sideways, torquing his obliques like a Xing Hale taught him so many times, and shoved the slab. It broke apart and twisted enough to let Tim splash into the river side by side.

Cold water seized his heart, forcing out a gasp of bubbles. A heavy slab leaned into his legs, dragging him further into the dark, impossible to move under its weight and underwater.

By the time he wiggled out, he barely had the strength to kick, and the current drew him away from the bridge.

Every bit of his strength burned away in his effort to reach the surface.

He emerged facing the hole in the wall where the tower had collapsed. Exhausted but still kicking, thanks in part to the frigid water—and no doubt another big part to do with the falls no less than two hundred feet away. His strokes failed to stop the current from turning him toward the falls.

He arched and tried kicking toward the shore, but every time his right leg—it faded! All the way to his knee. Double crap!

Water splashed over his face. He rolled and kicked. Coughed the accidental gulp of water, then was really in it, upside down and choking. I can’t go over it again, he thought of the waterfall. My aura’s gone. He didn’t have time to regen before the cliff, and it was especially slow with his exhaustion.

What about his friends? His rope fell into the water with the rock. They had no way across.

Tim hit something. Its hard edge bruised his mid-back. Gasping and riddled with pain from side to side, he hooked his good foot under a ridge, pressed into another and stopped himself from being carried any farther.

Coughs wracked his body, closing his vision in a pinch of pain centered behind the eyes. Before he passed out, he found a chunk of rock and splintered wood from the squire’s bed. The frame was jammed behind two rocks large enough to keep it in position for Tim to climb on hands and knees to one of the boulders for a quick respite.

He heaved, threw up and wheezed on his inglorious crossing to shore.

Eyes burning and straining to see, he checked back on the bridge. His friends were using Tonda’s bite power and lower body strength to pull themselves up by rope to the ledge where she plowdrived cityside.

Opposite the bridge, goblins fought with wraiths. The specters appeared in a flash, and if they touched you, an eerie terror overtook the host. The more of your body they could invade, the greater the terror. This worked well for the goblins they could reach. Many of them were haunted so well all he saw was their tails. Their shrieks echoed off the trees, magnifying the macabre scene. One ended his own life with a hooked blade. The laughter as he choked on blood made Tim chilled to the bone that they were coming back and thrilled to have found such allies. How long could he keep them under control?

Papa Ptolemy showed fierceness in his killings. Skill and patience like a wisened assassin playing among adolescents.

Tim appreciated their newfound friends.

For now he’d get inside and hope his regen or maybe something he could forage would give him his leg back. The castle side of the river had an almost nonexistent ledge between wall and water. Not one thick enough to walk. His friends would meet him inside, while he had a newly built entrance via the hole in the wall from his fallen tower debacle.

Tim did his best on two hands and one leg, almost downward facing dog walking over the loose rubble. Careful and painfully slow. Never far from searching for someone or something to greet him with a threat. If the Murphy or anyone or thing else showed up in his state, he had a good ol’fashion dagger and axe waiting for it. His plan would be to wrap them, stab them and roll back down with them. Whatever it took. Might not be a fair fight, but he’d make it pay if it tried kicking him while he was down.

Rocks jostled. What he’d waited for had come. He rested on an elbow and reached to hide his dagger behind his bad leg.

Tonda leapt from a ledge in the wall to land on the rubble pile nearby. Tim unequipped his dagger and sank to his stomach. Tonda licked a scratchy tongue across his face. Right on a cut in his cheek. He recoiled, then realized the touch had left a gristly paste that soothed the burn. Tonda licked more of the aura glowing paste off her front limb and then applied it to Tim’s thigh where the fade had progressed.

Arcus weed advanced formula applied.

Tingling heat rose to the edge of the fade like waking the nerves and charging them to heal and grow. The fade stopped, but his regrowth was slow. His Recovery skill stored a trickle growth of XP, along with more Ally Maker. That was another skill ready to gain a level once he accessed a leveling jewel. He didn’t want to think about it, but they had Eiyero and were now near a lab where Ptolemy said they enchanted the nixstone. Plans for another time, if he decided to pursue the rogue leveling route and its risk for addiction.

On the other side of the river, enemies scattered to the forest with wraiths on their heels. He had some time to decide.

Tonda applied another dose to the underside of his knee.

This again?

Tim's spirit lifted at his guide’s voice. Dryfu!

A subtle change in shadows in the space leading to the gate combined with Tim’s growing strength to observe his guide’s aura helped him track the stykiller’s path. From there, he gathered enough to conclude his friends had all made it inside. Tonda’s paste gave him enough aura to try a Danger Sense. Technically, he had the MP, but when his aura was this low, all of his skills felt like revving an engine with no oil. He might try it in a pinch, but it better be life and death to risk the consequences of burnout. After a few minutes, his fade had only regressed an inch. His team needed this, though, and he had enough aura to reach the interior of the castle perimeter.

The ping eased his concerns, at least for the surface and second levels. As he suspected, the Murphy was somewhere below. And that was okay for now. We’re good inside, he told Dryfu, and rolled onto his back to let rest help his regen.

A significant deposit of XP was stored across several skills between Ranger and Aura Mage. Most of it went to Self Defense, Fleeing, and Foraging.

Deposit summary:

You encountered an enemy force greater than your skill and level yet survived. Not only have you reached safety, but you also have a rescued prisoner from the enemy camp and have stolen precious items. Set up a defensible position and hold it for daily XP returns. This area still has threats beneath and around. Eliminate them from the immediate vicinity to procure more XP. Double the deposit if the quest is accomplished by the first moonlight.

That was a first.

Like I said, I’m sorry. You’ve shown yourself to be a worthy companion. I will strive to show the same for myself.

Thanks, Dryfu. His guide’s closer proximity increased Tim’s awareness of the stykiller’s fatigue and internal injuries. Memories of dick kicking goblins then flying up to slice and pummel them into submission wrote Dryfu’s fame into legendary status. Tim chuckled, waking pain in his back and down his stomach. Stitches in his sides cramped and demanded he cease and desist. You did great.

Just relax, Chris and Jogey are coming. Roz and Thron are in bad shape. The wraith will own the night but can’t be expected to help in the day. What are we gonna do about the wall? If—

I’ll stay up long enough to cast a Protection spell. I can’t do the whole castle at this level skill.

Tim was more than glad to get and give hugs in the aroma of sweat, blood, river and whatever hormone secretes when you’re fighting for your life. His aura mage senses gathered emotion and will nearly as strongly as the more familiar smells and response to touch. Their exuberance to meet allies on the other side of war boosted him with the same vitality.

Jil might have noticed him noticing and leaned into him. His stomach lifted in a rare sensation of floating butterflies. She fit the quite ripe scene with another new flair of beauty he hadn’t expected. Yet always welcomed with as much composure as possible, as though her presence didn’t intimidate him to try and show himself as something more. Every time, her response buckled his fears with hints of welcoming adoration. Second to her beauty, this acceptance without merit bewildered him and only increased his gratitude.

That sensation abounded more than seeing his brother if he had to be honest. Chris’s grin when Tim asked Jil to help him watch the wall exuded classic cooler younger brother giving his elder a hard time. No love was lost between brothers on the run.

She kept him company on the wall, and despite the ribbing from his brother, Jil kept her distance. Her commitment to duty and her friends, to the honor of their role as night watchmen epitomized the very thing that made her so attractive. She impressed him with her unyielding dedication to what was right. As much as she hinted with her eyes that she was interested in intimacy, she knew her greater duty required her to abstain, for now.