“Enemy reinforcements!” someone yelled in the mists behind them.

Edwin whirled around, trying and failing to see anything, let alone the enemies in question. The fight was going well, the last pockets of resistance being overwhelmed or surrendering to second battalion’s forces. They would soon be done with their objective for the day, but the idea of enemies behind them worried him.

“I’ll hold them off!” he called to Bordan, starting to run in the direction of the noise.

“Be careful!” the former soldier shouted after him, unwilling to take his eyes off the few remaining enemies that were sandwiched between the advancing adventurers and soldiers.

Edwin left the row of Marradi wagons behind, following the sounds of fighting. As the fog swallowed everything around him once more, he worried for a second that the noise was nothing but a mirage, or the shouts a Marradi plot to lure them out of position. Finally, dark silhouettes emerged from the endless grey, solidifying into the small number of adventurers that had been left behind to secure the path of retreat. Past them was an indistinct mass of red-clothed soldiers, the first of which had already recovered from the surprise of meeting resistance and were pressuring Edwin’s allies hard. Even at a glance, Edwin could see that the adventurers were severely outnumbered, two squads against at least a banner, maybe more.

If the Marradi weren’t held here, the rest of ninth auxiliary would have nowhere to retreat to. It couldn’t be helped, Edwin thought with a mental sigh, and lowered his head. In the thick fog, nobody saw him coming.

He smashed into the side of the chaotic Marradi formation and immediately began swinging. Having used this specific maneuver over and over again, he’d gotten a lot better at it than when he’d first charged the back of a Marradi line on that bloody field all those weeks ago. Instead of tripping over his tumbling enemies and falling on his face, he kept his footing and started slashing at the surrounding soldiers before he even came to a stop. Fighting in such a tight press of bodies was not an easy task with a weapon as long as his glaive, but gripping it just below the long blade, his inhuman strength allowed him to wield it like a deranged joining of a sword and a quarterstaff, slashing with one end and stabbing with the other, smashing enemies away with the haft if they came too close.

The trick was to survive the first few seconds, when enemies were all around, close enough to sink a dagger into the joints of his armor. His lips pulled back into a strained snarl, mana flooding his muscles until his skin turned scarlet under his armor, and the centuries-old relic weighing as much as a grown man came alive in his hands. The glaive spun and spun, the silver veins flashing in the dim light as it cut through armor, flesh, and bones, the misty air rushing through the roots singing a dark tune of pain and blood. Ten seconds later, every soldier around him had either fled to a safe distance or fallen on the ground, dead or pretending to be so to escape his wrath.

Edwin slowed down and stopped, breathing heavily from the exertion. It had only taken moments, but moving the heavy weapon this quickly while overcoming the need to wind up his strikes through sheer strength took more out of him than an hour of regular combat would. Behind him, the fighting still continued, but he was surrounded by a circle of calm, the wide-eyed Marradi too scared to approach him. Seconds ticked by and the stalemate continued. Finally, a horn’s mourning call sounded in the distance, ordering 5th division’s troops to retreat.

“They’re running!” a man shouted, shouldering his way through the crowd of soldiers. “Push now and we can encircle them and wipe those dogs…”

The officer reached the inside of the circle, confusion replacing his stern expression as he came face to face with Edwin.

“What the…? Why are you all just standing there?! Kill him! Attack, gods damn it, or they will get away!”

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Edwin took a swing at the officer, but the man quickly backpedaled out of range, losing some of his bravado as he pushed back into the safety of his men. Taking a few more threatening swings, Edwin hoped to keep the enemies away for a little while longer, but under the eyes of their commander they finally sprung into action again, advancing toward him from all around. He took two quick steps forward, feigning a wide sweeping strike at his opponents’ heads to make them cower behind their shields, then whirled around and charged at the ones behind him that had just started to follow after him. A few quick stabs, a kick, an elbow strike that dented a shield, and Edwin could shoulder through the last few enemies and join the thin line of allied defenders.

“Oh, that was you, Edwin!” one of them sighed, barely managing to avert his spear before stabbing Edwin in the face.

“Thought you guys might need help,” Edwin huffed in return, slotting in beside them.

“What we need is for the others to hurry the hell up!” a marksman shouted, sending arrows flying between his comrades’ heads as quickly as he could place them on the string.

“Last man!” Bordan’s voice called in the distance behind them, then again a little further away: “Last man!”

“That’s it!” the leader of the adventurers shouted. “Thirty seconds, then we leave as well! Hooold!”

“They’re getting away!” the enemy officer shouted from among the enemy soldiers. “Archers, shoot!”

“Archers?” Edwin wondered aloud, swiping to keep two Marradi at bay. “They can’t see anything! How would they—”

A loud whistling announced the volley of arrows that passed by over their heads, flying toward their retreating allies.

“They’re shooting blind!” someone yelled. “We need to go, now!”

“Fall back!” the adventurers’ leader yelled. “Shields up, stay together, remember the markers! Fall baaack!”

“Don’t let those cowards flee!” the enemy officers shouted. “Kill them all!”

“Don’t chase!” someone else yelled. “Watch the arrows!”

The adventurers immediately began to hightail it out of there, retreating with much less grace and coordination than Edwin had seen the proper soldiers do. Being at the very end of the line, Edwin tucked his head in as arrows started to fall around them. He really wished he’d brought his shield. Leaving the enemy infantry behind, they headed away from the road when the fighters at the front suddenly began shouting again.

“Enemy archers! Go left! Left!”

Edwin cursed, following the others as the entire unit veered left to evade the archers. Any other time, finding an unprotected unit of archers at close range would’ve been a cause for celebration, but with their numbers low and enemy infantry close by, they had no time to waste here.

It was these thoughts flashing through Edwin’s head that caused a moment of inattention at the worst possible time. When his foot failed to find solid footing, instead slipping into a small hole in the ground and explosively bending sideways, he reacted too slowly. Gasping at the unexpected pain, Edwin slammed into the soft grass, his hands opening reflexively to cushion his fall. He growled, pulling his foot from the rabbit hole and picking up his discarded glaive. His right ankle was already tingling with the unmistakable feeling of magical healing as he began pushing himself up on his knees, craning his head to find the other adventurers when another flash of pain almost threw him down again.

He swayed, still on one knee, his free hand grasping at the arrow protruding from his throat. It was still stuck there, Walter told him helpfully, his analytical mind clinically assessing Edwin’s injury. It had likely shed most of its momentum impacting his spine, then scraped along the bone and just barely managed to exit out the other side before it ran out of energy. Edwin couldn’t find it in himself to appreciate the information as he momentarily found himself unable to breathe, the deepest parts of his fleshy brain sending a barrage of signals of flight and panic. Holding his breath, Edwin steeled himself, grabbing the arrow just behind the steel tip and snapping it, the shock sending pulses of pain through his body. Finally, he ripped the arrow out of his neck, immediately collapsing onto his hands and heaving, blood splattering onto the grass.

He stayed there for a few moments, air whistling through the hole in his neck as he breathed deeply, then grabbed his glaive and pushed himself to his feet – meeting the wide eyes of a Marradi archer, standing not five meters away. The two stared at each other for a few long moments, then the archer, barely more than a boy, turned tail and bolted into the fog, the arrow he’d been preparing to fire clattering to the floor, forgotten. Edwin reflexively took a step to give chase but stopped himself when he realized that he was all alone in a slowly-clearing fog, surrounded by hundreds of Marradi soldiers. Picking the direction where he heard the least amount of yelling, Edwin started to run, the moist air painfully rushing past the hole in his throat that was already starting to close.