The killer tree’s XP ball had a bigger share of magic than most monsters, but after splitting it five ways it still didn’t amount to much. About a fourth of a magic point, and a bit under one physical. A bit of mental math suggested the thing had been somewhere in the vicinity of twenty points.

I suppose tentacle-roots with superhuman strength must be expensive. Good thing it didn’t have a defense against magic.

“Alright, everyone, let’s get moving,” I announced. “We just gave away our position to everything for miles around, and we don’t want to be sitting here when the monsters come looking.”

“I need a few minutes,” Hana complained. “That thing messed up my ankle, and I’m still healing it. I’m so tired it’s getting hard to focus.”

“I could carry you,” Bob offered.

“Could you? That would be great, thanks!”

“Heh. Shoulder loli get,” the big guy muttered.

“Dude, you watch way too much anime,” Jenny said, shaking her head. Then she went on, louder. “How do we keep that from happening again?”

“It smells different than a regular tree,” Shasa pointed out. “If we get close to another one I’ll know. Mitsi, can you tell the difference?”

The little catgirl delicately sniffed at the smoking remains of the tree monster, and wrinkled her nose. “Smoke, guns, sweaty humans, burned wood… do you mean that icky undertone? Like rotting leaves only wetter?”

“Yeah, that’s it!”

Mitsi shook her head. “I’d have to walk right up to the tree and sniff it to spot that. How far away can you smell it?”

Mitsi turned, and started down the road. Jenny and Sheryl fell in behind her, and the rest of the group reluctantly started to move.

“I don’t know. A long way? There’s another one somewhere upwind of us, but it’s a long way off. Like, maybe on the other side of that light somewhere?”

Mitsi looked across the valley, where a lone electric light was visible maybe half a mile away.

“Dog noses OP, please nerf,” Bob muttered.

“Let’s just be glad we’ve got her,” Hana whispered back.

“Don’t count me out so quick,” Mitsi shot back, as if they’d been speaking normally. “Cat ears are really good too, and Mitsi is the smart one. I just need to put a couple of points into olfactory senses, and… ugh, sweaty people are nasty.”

“It’s not so bad,” Shasa objected.

“You’re a dog,” Mitsi said flatly. “You probably know what poo tastes like.”

Shasa flushed. “Hey, don’t be mean. I didn’t know any better back then.”

“Uh huh. I can spot the evil trees now, Tom. If I smell one should I stop and come back, or just point it out to Sheryl?”

“If it’s close enough to reach the road call a halt, and we’ll figure out how to deal with it. There’s probably a better option than blowing it up, if we have time to think about it.”

“Okay, I’m off.”

The group shook out into the same formation as before, and resumed our march.

Some minutes later Dale edged up to me. “I hate this. I keep thinking I see something under the trees, but then it turns out it’s just a shadow.”

“Best keep calm, and save your strength,” Earl said from behind us.

“I suppose they’ll catch up soon enough,” he grumbled.

“Not necessarily,” I pointed out. “It’s easy to forget, but early humans were the planet’s preeminent endurance hunters. Most predators can outrun us in a short stretch, but over a distance of miles we can run almost anything into the ground. Monsters seem to share most of the attributes of the animals they’re based on, so I imagine a lot of them will have trouble with a long chase.”

“So that’s why you wanted to use the road,” Dale realized.

I nodded. “The faster we move, the longer the chase, and the more likely it is that all the ambush predators will get tired and give up. We’ll still have to deal with birds and canines, plus whatever the crows can scrounge up from the jungle ahead of us. But as long as we keep moving, anything that’s too far behind us will have trouble catching up.”

I checked the column again. Hana was riding on Bob’s shoulder now, the two carrying on a quiet conversation. Sheryl and Jenny seemed on the ball up front, and presumably Sheryl had an eye on Mitsi. Anthony and Jason were starting to look pretty tired, but the rest of the group was holding up for now.

“I hope you’re right,” Dale said quietly. “We’ve got some fight left in us, but we’re all getting close to the end of our rope here. If this turns into a bunch of ambushes and hard fights we’re going to start losing people.”

“I know,” I admitted. “Got any other ideas for doing something about it?”

He reluctantly shook his head. “Give me a target, and I’ve got a million ways to plan out an attack. Defending is a lot harder.”

“Hey, there’s a driveway up there,” Jason pointed out. “Maybe we can get some help? They might have a car, or a land line.”

For a moment, I thought we might get a reprieve. There was a house set well back from the road, partly hidden by an assortment of trees and bushes, and the dark shape of a car in the front yard. But as we walked closer it became apparent that there was no one home. The front door and several windows were all smashed in, and there was no sign of movement. As for the car? It was up on cinder blocks, with all four tires missing.

“I smell old blood, and shooting,” Shasa said. “I don’t think there’s anyone alive here.”

“Keep moving,” I decided. “Whatever did that might still be around.”

“They might have a land line,” Bob objected.

My reply was interrupted as a blurry shape swooped past him. Hana screamed, and there was a sudden spray of blood. A moment later Earl shouted a curse, and dropped to the ground behind me. I crouched, readying my rifle and looking for targets.

“Birds!” Shasa shouted. “Look out, everyone!”

The loyal dog girl raised her shield, and hurried to stand over me. Earl crawled closer, and I saw he had a nasty set of cuts across one shoulder.

“Hana’s hurt!” Bob exclaimed. “Oh, shit, it got her throat!”

“Bring her down here,” I ordered. “Dale, take charge while I check her.”

“Okay. Spears up, get low and clump up! Sheryl, anything?”

“They were gone so fast I didn’t get a look at-”

“There!” Tyler shouted.

I tuned out the confusion to focus on my patient. Something sharp and very strong had cut a deep gash across the front of the tiny girl’s throat, completely severing all the blood vessels. Her eyes were wide with panic, and her own healing magic was working desperately at the wound. But I could already see this was the kind of injury that kills in seconds.

One hand on her head, activate my diagnostic spell so I can see what I’m doing, and stop the bleeding at her throat. Okay, there was still some blood trapped in her brain, so that gave her a little bit of time. Which of those severed blood vessels was the vein, and which was the artery? Okay, that one had blood pressure, so line up the ends and heal them back together. Focus everything on the blood vessel, and ignoring everything else. Faster. Faster. Just a little more. Alright, it was connected.

Hana dissolved the blood clot I’d created, and fresh blood rushed to her brain. A normal person would be unconscious by now, but she was doing something to keep herself from passing out. I moved on to the vein leading back down from her head, and her own healing power joined mine in reconnecting it. Great, dissolve the other blood clot and we’d have normal circulation restored.

The rest of her throat was still a mess of torn flesh, and she was struggling to breathe through the gaping hole in her trachea, but none of that would kill her quickly. I risked a quick look around, and found everyone crouched in groups of three or four with their weapons pointed at the sky.

Everyone was as ready as they could be, but there didn’t seem to be anything attacking at the moment. Hit and run attack? Or was there something else going on?

Either way, it could wait a minute. I focused on Hana again, intent on getting her back on her feet. Her magic joined with mine, working in concert to close the horrible wound in her throat. Joining a cut back together was a lot easier than replacing lost tissue, so it wasn’t long before she was good as new.

She pushed me away, coughing violently, and bent over to decorate the pavement with the meager contents of her stomach. There was a lot of blood and gristle in the mess, but I suppose that made sense. I held her hair out of the way until the coughing subsided, and she wiped her mouth.

“That was horrible,” she sobbed. “It was all I could do to not pass out. If you hadn’t been right there, I would have died.”

“I wouldn’t let that happen,” I assured her. “That’s why we need more than one healer in the group.”

“We seriously do.” She hocked up another glob of blood, and grimaced. “I can’t keep doing this. Why do they keep going for me?”

“Guess you look tasty,” Bob joked.

“You’re not helping!” She glared up at him, looking about as intimidating as a kitten.

I went to heal Earl’s shoulder, and checked around to see if anyone else was injured. But those were the only casualties of the brief engagement, and there was no sign of whatever attacked us.

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“I don’t like this,” Dale said. “What if they keep coming back? If this happens every twenty minutes we’ll never get anywhere.”

“If they keep hitting us I’ll plug them eventually,” Sheryl said. “I just need enough time to turn around and get a look at them.”

“New formation,” I decided. “Sheryl, I want you at the back of the group where you can see anything swooping over us. Pick them off if they try another hit and run. Mitsi, I want you back there with her. Your job is making sure nothing sneaks up behind her while she’s watching the sky.”

“I like this plan,” Mitsi agreed.

“Good. Shasa, I want you with Hana in the middle of the group. It looks like they might be targeting her, so your job is to make sure nothing gets her.”

“Okay! I’ll keep you safe, Hana.”

Hana gave her a weak smile. “Please do.”

“Dale, who’s got the best woodcraft in your group?”

“I reckon that would be Tyler.”

“Okay, Earl, you and Tyler are in front. It’s too risky sending someone off on their own to scout, if there are assassin birds lurking around. Just keep your eyes peeled, and make sure that if there’s an ambush on the road we don’t blunder into the middle of it.”

Both men nodded wordlessly, and moved into position with their rifles ready.

“Dale, you and Anthony go next so the point guard can fall back behind your spears if we run into something big. Jason and Bob next, then Shasa and Hana, then me and Jenny, then the rearguard. Hana, Earl, have either of you been putting a lot of points into defense aura?”

They both shook their heads.

“Good, then the birds are in for a shock when they hit someone who has. Let’s move.”

I wished I was actually that confident. But everyone was getting scared now, and part of a leader’s job is propping up morale. So I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, while inwardly I worried.

Was moving on the right thing to do? We were passing the occasional driveway now, winding back between fields and pastures to isolated farm houses. Anyone with sense would have long since evacuated, but we might find a working phone or car.

Or we might waste a lot of time searching, and get trapped when the monsters caught up to us. We might find one working vehicle, with only enough space for four or five people, and end up fighting over who got to drive to safety. We might find a working phone, call for help, and then sit still for too long waiting for it to arrive. The detours would give us plenty of chances to run into more monsters, or desperate survivors who might shoot someone.

No, I was pretty sure it was better to keep moving. We were making good time, and every mile we put behind us meant we were that much closer to safety. We’d hit the edge of town in a couple of hours at this rate, if we didn’t walk into an area with a working cell phone tower before then.

But as the minutes dragged by without another attack I worried. Having a monster attack and then just leave was a new twist. Usually they were so eager to kill us that they’d keep blindly attacking until they were all dead.

Was it because this was a bigger group than I’d been in before? Most animals are intimidated by large groups of people. Maybe that carried over to monsters?

Possibly, but it didn’t quite fit. Stealthy night hunters who specialize in flyby attacks should have swung by for another pass, if not several. Instead, they just hit us once and flew off. What purpose did that serve?

Intimidation? Mind games?

No, that seemed a little too much for a thinking monster that was only a day or two old. They were still figuring things out, just like we were.

Did our attackers fly off to report our position? That would make sense if they were supposed to be scouts, but then why attack at all? Wouldn’t it be better not to give themselves away?

Ah, but monsters might not be able to control their bloodlust. So these birds are out looking for us, they spot us and instinctively launch a flyby attack, then they remember they’re supposed to report back and fly away. That would make sense.

What comes next?

Birds aren’t as fast as planes. If a recon flight passed right over us their main group couldn’t be more than a few miles away. Maybe a lot closer, especially if they’d heard our fight with the killer tree. By now they’d have figured out we were following the road. Now they just needed to delay us a little while they caught up.

But how would they do that? This group would barely slow down for something like murder squirrels or a mosquito swarm. They’d have to find something we couldn’t kill quickly, that was already ahead of us and in a position to cut us off. That seemed like a tall order. What kind of monster could even do it?

“Hold up,” Shasa said, putting a hand in front of Hana. “I smell something weird up ahead.”

Most of the group stumbled to a halt, but it took Bob and Jason several extra steps to catch on. I mentally winced at the reminder of how inexperienced this team was.

“Weird how?” I asked. “Monsters?”

Shasa sniffed the breeze, and nodded. “Yeah. It’s sort of like the ants, only different. They’re hiding in those bushes over there.”

She casually pointed, and I squinted at the vague shapes in the darkness ahead. With the cloud cover blocking out any hint of starlight I could barely make out the bushes, even with my night vision. Spotting anything hiding in them would be impossible, but we were a lot more exposed here on the road. If something was hiding in there it could probably see us.

“Form up!” I called, but it was already too late.

A caw from the underbrush told me the enemy knew they’d been made. As Earl and Tyler started to back up there was a sudden rustling, like dozens of creatures scurrying through the bushes. Then a flurry of glowing green darts flew at us from the shadows. A lot of them missed, but others struck home with considerable force.

Dale and Anthony each took a couple of hits as they levelled their spears. Tyler hissed between clenched teeth, and started shooting into the bushes. The muzzle flash from his rifle revealed brief glimpses of chitinous horrors among the underbrush, but also ruined my night vision.

“Acid arrows,” Dale called. “Dinged my aura, they’ll get through pretty quick.”

I pitched a fire missile into the bushes, hoping to set them on fire and light up the enemy. But the plants were too wet to burn easily, and only the bush my missile actually struck caught fire. I got another brief glimpse of unfamiliar bugs, before they retreated from the glow.

“Shasa, protect Hana with your shield. Sheryl, can you see them?”

“Some, but they’re under cover and the muzzle flashes are messing with my NVG.”

“Damn it. Fine, everyone back up. We’ll take cover in the trees on the other side of the road. Sheryl, pick off anything you can.”

“Roger.” She snapped off a shot, and an insect practically exploded from her bullet’s impact.

Earl and Bob both took shots of their own, and then everything dissolved into a mess. Hana, Jason and Mitsi all ran for cover, and Shasa went with them. The rest of the group started to back up slowly, exchanging gunfire with the monsters, until they realized what was happening. Then Bob stopped shooting to make a run for it, Anthony looked over his shoulder and noticed backup was leaving, and suddenly everyone was running.

I reached the tree line, and looked back to find that a swarm of chittering, bouncing black shapes was rushing down the road towards us. Ducking behind a tree, I brought my rifle to bear.

“Take cover, and pick them off before they reach us!” I shouted, and opened fire.

It was like fighting in a room lit only by camera flashes. Jenny was right beside me, firing from the other side of the same tree I was using for cover. Sheryl was at the next tree over, firing so fast it almost sounded like a machine gun. I heard the distinctive boom of Bob’s rifle, and a couple of other guns somewhere behind me, but the flash and roar of our own weapons made it impossible to catch all the details.

The giant insects were only about twenty or thirty pounds each, and our bullets did terrible things to them when we managed to hit. But I could barely make out what I was shooting at, and the others were in the same boat. A horde of indistinct shapes bounded down the road, and in seconds they were close enough for our muzzle flashes to reveal a nightmare of chitinous bodies and clashing mandibles.

Some of them paused to spit acid arrows at us, which proved unwise with Sheryl picking them off like some kind of robot death machine. Others charged into melee, striking with mandibles that dripped acid. I ducked behind my tree to avoid a flurry of acid arrows, and blew another one’s head apart moments before it could bite me.

For a minute or two a chaotic melee swirled beneath the trees. I found myself next to Shasa at one point, her mace pulping bugs while Hana cowered behind us. Jenny joined her, spear flashing as she cut a bug in half, and I ducked behind them for a moment to switch to my pistol. Then I caught a glimpse of more bugs flanking us, and popped around a clump of underbrush to put some fire into them.

Dale, Anthony and Tyler stuck together, using pistols at range and switching to fire axes when something got close. They were tough and fairly deadly, but the fight was wearing them down.

Mitsi lurked in the trees, dropping down to ambush bugs when they weren’t looking. Her claws tore through chitin like tissue paper, making wounds all out of proportion to their actual size. But she always bounded back up into the trees after making a kill, and it was easy to see why. She was an ambush predator, deadly on the offense but all too vulnerable if something got the drop on her.

Too bad I wasn’t as nimble as she was. I held off on using magic, trying to conserve my mana. But killing things with my pistol was noticeably slower, and in the chaotic melee my accuracy wasn’t great. The second time an acid arrow grazed me some of the splash made it through my aura, decorating my arm and shoulder with sizzling droplets. One struck my hand, and the flash of pain made me miss a critical shot.

A bug’s mandibles closed on my leg, and I felt a surge of pressure through my aura. Then Jenny was there, cutting the thing in half with a lightning sweep of her spear.

“Watch out, Tom,” she chided, flashing me a worried look. “Stick close, and I’ll keep them off you.”

“Yeah, good call,” I said, looking around for another target. I spotted a scuttling form retreating into the trees, and took a shot at it. Damn it, missed again.

“I think they’re retreating,” Sheryl called over the din.

“Yeah, they’re running away!” Shasa agreed. “Go away, stupid bugs, or I’ll squish some more of you!”

“Form up on Shasa, everyone,” I shouted, moving towards the sound of her voice.

I found Hana and Jason huddled together behind Shasa, using one of the larger tree trunks as cover. Dead bugs littered the ground around them, some pulped from Shasa’s mace and others torn apart by bullets. Mist balls were already starting to form over the older bodies.

The rest of the group started to trickle in, looking distinctly bruised and battered. Most of them had damaged clothes and minor burns from acid splashes. Tyler and Bob both had nasty bite wounds from those mandibles, and Dale had taken an acid arrow to the back that penetrated his aura. Fortunately he was wearing enough armor to stop the impact, but the acid had eaten a hole the size of my fist in his chain mail. Only the padding underneath had saved him from a serious acid burn.

I counted off party members as they straggled in, hoping for the best. The last to arrive was Mitsi, scurrying down a tree like a ninja squirrel.

“There are still some left,” she announced. “They went back to where they started from, and now they’re hiding in the bushes waiting for us. There’s a crow with them, but there are too many bugs around it for me to get close.”

“How many of these things are there?” Bob complained. “We must have killed hundreds.”

“More like thirty,” Sheryl corrected. “How many are left, Mitsi?”

“Twenty, maybe? It’s hard to count them when they’re hiding and moving around.”

“Going after them will mean running through a volley of acid arrows,” I mused. “Hana, can you get everyone healed enough to fight?”

“God, this day sucks. Yeah, I can do it, but I won’t have much left. I really need to rest.”

“We all do,” I agreed. “But not with a swarm of monsters waiting to pounce. Anyone have a brilliant idea for assaulting their position?”

There was a moment of silence.

“We’ve lost most of our shields,” Dale grumbled. “Could we improvise some kind of cover?”

“Out of what?” Bob objected. “Trees?”

“We could go around them,” Sheryl pointed out. “Just circle through the woods for a few hundred yards, and then get back on the road and double-time it.”

“Don’t like the thought of playing tag with those critters,” Earl said. “If they realize what we’re up too they’re fast enough to catch up to us. Anyone have an idea what they were?”

“Termites,” Jason said. “The body shape is distinctive, and the acid spit fits. Which means there are more of them somewhere. A normal hive could have a million of them, but who knows how that translates to giant ones?”

“The ant we fought this afternoon were about the same size, and we went through a few hundred of them,” Jenny pointed out. “I bet they’ll get reinforcements if we sit here too long. Time to claim the XP?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Dale, have you guys found a better way to do that than just taking turns grabbing mist balls?”

“Not really.”

“If we scoop them all into one container I could infuse it into a liquid, so we could measure out equal shares,” Bob offered. “Only, we’d need a big pitcher or something, and it would take half an hour.”

“We definitely can’t stop here for that long,” I said. “They probably aren’t worth much anyway, so let’s make this quick. Everyone take two, and then we’ll split what’s left. Earl, can you police the area for stray bodies, and make sure we don’t miss any?”

“Sure thing, buddy. Then what?”

“Then we’re going to back up a hundred yards or so, cross the road so we’re on the same side as the termites, and work our way up through the woods until we reach their little ambush. We crushed them in one close-range melee, we can do it again. Once the way is clear we hurry on for another half hour, and try to break-”

I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and something tore a chunk out of my aura before I could blink. Bob gave a cry of pain at virtually the same moment, and I looked up to see a spray of blood from his neck.

A bird cawed somewhere among the branches high overhead, and an answering cry came from the woods behind us. Something big crashed through the underbrush not a hundred yards away, closing fast.

The crows had found us, and whatever they meant to kill us with would be here in moments.