“The wall is working!” Adam swung again, using cleave with his axe. It had replaced the sword as his most effective weapon. The wave of force he projected cleaved through a dozen sets of legs before dissipating. The creatures looked like a cross between a raccoon and a giant spider. The legs were large enough they appeared to be from a crab with all the chitin around the joints. He didn’t know if it was a cross between the more familiar mammal and a crab or a spider, and he didn’t care. They had horrible, dripping fangs, a terrifying silhouette, and were too quick for any of the others to pin down. It even had the stereotypical mask of a raccoon, however, that just made it more sinister as they hissed. One hawked a loogie at him that was clearly poisonous, if not outright acidic. It steamed as it flew through the air.
“We just need to keep their numbers from building here!”
He dodged the poison blob and brought the axe down on its head, splitting the skull through to the jaw. That dropped the monstrosity. More were coming.
“Why aren’t they going over the wall? They look like spiders!” Liz spaced the words with grunts of exertion tied to each shot of her bow.
“Freaking spiders,” he grumbled. “I think the razorvine crown is doing the job!”
He spun in place to get extra torque on a blow and glimpsed the darkening sky. Several of the spidercoons were floating down with all eight legs extended to slow their fall.
“In the sky!”
He grunted as his axe bit home, then put a surge of strength into the blow, severing the front half of the raccoon from the back. It screamed horribly, scrabbling at the dirt before finally falling still. That was his twenty-third kill of the night. The attacks were getting worse.
Liz trusted Adam to do his job, with Carl somewhere in the dark working to reduce the incoming numbers. She turned and immediately started to shoot at the descending creatures. She channeled her first skill, Volley, and aimed at three that were clustered together. Her arrow glowed white, then burst into flame. It erupted from her bow when she released the string, splitting in flight to two, then four, and finally eight arrows. The three spidercoons caught seven of the arrows and fell from the sky. Two more landed immediately after, skittering toward her. She nocked another arrow and drew back, taking the time to aim her shot. Just before the nearest one leaped at her, she loosed the arrow. It hit with a wet smack, rocking the creature back. It slumped, legs spasming open and closed; one eye was neatly bisected by the arrow.
Kyra closed the gap and swung her staff, smashing the flying spidercoon to the ground with finality. They were deadly up close, but just as fragile. She shot Liz a quick glance to make sure she was good, then went back to patrolling the back line. She was a melee fighter of last resort, instead responsible for keeping Adam in good shape. Right as she turned around to check on him, he yelled in pain and anger. She saw the ragged wound on his shoulder and instinctively cast lesser heal on him. He grunted out a thanks and used another cleave to push the monsters back. They were finally starting to thin.
“Why are they getting so aggressive?”
Adam grunted again. He was too busy fighting to answer.
Raven rushed by, waving with a wide grin, then continued on her way. She had finally gotten a job as a trapper at level five, just the day before. It had been a busy week. They were all level five, now. Her mind wandered for a moment, thinking about the long week she had spent with her new friends. The pressure had formed them into a weird, completely dysfunctional, but close family. She nearly tripped and returned her attention to the present. She smiled wide, somehow looking both cute and innocent while also projecting pure insanity. Her hands held onto unformed traps, waiting for the spell to finish. At least, she called it a spell. It didn’t appear to work the same way Kyra’s spells did.
Adam made a call. “Kyra, do it!”
Kyra nodded, standing still and crossing her arms. The staff was heavy against her chest. It had gone to her a few days before, especially when the others saw it enhanced spellcasting. She felt a little like Doctor Strange when waving her hands, but there were no cool traceries of light. At least, not visible to the others. It was like a ghostly framework was building in her vision. She finished the spell, and a brilliant orb of light shot into the sky. It bloomed into a flower roughly forty feet above, just about even with the tops of the trees. It cast a bright light to the ground, and that caused each and every one of the spidercoons to hiss, then turn and flee. Some weren’t quick enough to get to shade, and they inevitably tripped, fell, then withered as if under a magnifying glass and bright sun. They began to sizzle, smoke, and collapse into themselves.
Kyra fell to her knees, panting from the effort. Her mana pool filled faster than ever, but the flare spell emptied her mana from full, and she hadn’t even been close. A little trickle of blood dribbled from her nose and around her mouth. She began to shudder.
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“How low was she?” Adam rushed over to hold her. Liz shrugged. “Damn it, I forgot to keep an eye on that.” He laid the small woman on the ground and pulled the stopper from a small vial. It was a colorless liquid, but it smelled faintly of strawberries to him. Kyra always insisted it smelled like freshly picked blackberries. He tipped the liquid into her mouth and waited. Her skin tone immediately brightened to its natural color.
“Thanks,” Kyra wheezed.
“You’re the healer, not me,” Adam said. He looked down at her, and she smiled up at him. “Don’t do that again.”
“If I didn’t, how else would I get you to hold me like this?”
“Finally!” Liz shouted. Adam shot her a look, but Liz was too busy dancing in place, celebrating, to notice.
“Hey,” Kyra said softly. “I’ve been on death’s door before. It doesn’t scare me.”
Adam shook his head, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Yeah, well it scares me.”
She laughed. “It doesn’t scare me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to welcome it, either. I wasn’t anywhere close. Even if you hadn’t used that potion, I would have been up and annoying all of you again in the morning.”
He snorted. “You’re not annoying.”
“Would you just kiss her already!”
“Liz, would you shut up,” Adam said with a tone of exasperation.
“Yeah, do something better with that mouth,” Raven said. She leaped at her girlfriend, trusting the large woman to catch her effortlessly. And she did, snuggling her close. Liz laughed, then kissed Raven softly.
“Gross,” Carl said as he walked in past the small hill of bodies. “We’re clear for tonight.”
“Thanks, Carl,” Adam said. He straightened his posture, disappointing Kyra. “Uh, good work, team.”
Adam stood with Kyra in his arms, then carried her to the only hut they had managed to erect so far. It was crude, with thatch for the roof, and a pile of leaves for the bed. But it was more comfortable than the dirt, or even the grass. He laid her down, kissed her forehead, and turned to walk out. She caught his sleeve.
“Tonight.”
He looked back at her and saw the look on her face. He smiled, then took his cloak off. Another of the loot rewards. He carefully hung it over the doorway, then stripped down and cuddled into the leaf pile with her. They were asleep in moments.
Liz and Raven took watch together. They did most things together, at that point. Nearly inseparable, it was easier to get them to work together than schedule different watches. Carl grumbled under his breath as he trudged to his corner of the fortification. It was dry, at least. Not that it rained, wherever they had ended up. He had just bunkered down where his hut was to be constructed the next day, putting his cloak over himself, when he realized the flare had not gone out yet. That piqued his curiosity.
“Hey, how long has the flare been up?”
Raven looked up from where she was carving into yet another of the spidercoons. The meat smelled usable, and the legs were stiff and strong. She figured she would harvest half the monsters and let Liz loot the other half. At least, that was what they had agreed on before starting. A glance at the sky showed what was obvious by the bright light: the flare was still overhead. The spell was new, having only been unlocked by Kyra the day before. But Kyra had mentioned it stayed lit for thirty minutes OR until all the enemies in an area had been slain. The enemies were dead, at least, nothing was moving around near the entry to their fort.
“Like twenty minutes,” she shouted back. Liz looked up then, puzzlement on her face. Carl got up and trudged over to the two women.
“Why is it still on?”
“I don’t know,” Raven said. She crossed her arms and looked at him. “It’s not like anything is left alive out here. I mean, aside from us.”
Liz walked over and draped a hand over the smaller woman’s shoulder. She kissed the top of Raven’s head before speaking. “Kyra said–”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I was there too. Thirty minutes or everything is dead,” Carl interrupted. “I can see everything here is dead. So why is it still in the sky? It kind of lights up the night. Makes it hard to see.”
Liz nodded, then slowly nodded a second time. “It lights up the night. It’s not just something that helps us fight against creatures of the night. It acts like a beacon. Carl, go get–”
The light went out. Carl broke into a flat sprint straight at the hut where their two wounded teammates slept. He threw the cape aside and stepped in.
“Something’s wrong.”
Adam was up and dressing in two seconds flat, while Kyra mumbled something and turned, too deeply asleep to register Carl’s words. The small man looked at the bare shoulder he could see, then blushed and turned away.
“What is it?” Adam was half-dressed already. He needed his shirt, then the leather vest that protected him. Another of Raven’s unmentioned skills.
“The flare just went out.”
“So?”
“Just now.”
“Oh. Okay, go. I’ll be there in a moment.”
Carl rushed out, just catching a glimpse of Kyra’s hair falling from her sleepy face. He sprinted back to the gate, or where one would be in time.
“What have you seen?”
Liz shook her head. She was gripping her bow tight, ready to draw the nocked arrow in a heartbeat. Raven walked back and forth across the archway, repeatedly dropping traps. They wouldn’t last long, but it was a great early warning system.
“Nothing yet. But we heard something a moment ago, that’s why Raven is putting traps down.”
Raven nodded. She was concentrating on the spell, each cast becoming more difficult than the last. She was nearly at the maximum of ten she could cast at present. A rustle in a nearby bush made all three stop moving. They even held their breath. Liz quietly stepped to the side of the arch where she readied to attack. She waved for Raven to get back. Carl took the opposite side of the arch, looking out into the night.
The rustle sounded again. Liz put tension on the bowstring, not quite drawing it. Adam jogged up with Kyra at his side. They looked at the tension in all three of their teammates and slowed to a stealthy walk. That was when the bushes parted and a shadow stepped out.