“You are pursued? I can aid you!” St. Cristabel snatched up her shield. “Throw the vine to me!”

“There is no time!” Kyembe cried. “They are on top of us!”

The armoured warrior growled in frustration. “Then flee! From a treetop I saw a tower fifty paces northeast! Tis fallen, but defensible!” She stabbed a gauntleted finger toward them. “If you live. Free me!”

They raced northeast, bursting through thickets, keeping the giant trunks between their backs and hungry arrows. Into a clearing they broke, and before them rose a cyclopean ruin of a tower above the forest floor. The roof and several stories had long collapsed into a pile of uneven stones at its foot, and alongside - as though slain by the rockfall - lay a broken statue, moss covered and rain-etched. A bearded face stared toward them with proud features and stony eyes.

“Inside!” Kyembe barked. They tore across the clearing, leaping through a yawning doorframe as stone tipped projectiles shattered on stone walls in their wake. Within, the second and third floors had yielded to the ages, leaving the wreckage of a narrow spiral staircase jutting from the wall, and a fourth floor high above.

The Sengezian considered holding the doorway as a chokepoint, but a glance outside shattered that notion. Garumnan warriors and leashed hounds poured from the trees like army ants. The main force clotted into a column of muscle, shields and gleaming bronze while their archers spread across their flanks like the wings of an unnatural beast. Wounded and tired, he and Wurhi could not fend off a rushing wall of spears, leaping hounds, and arrows.

“We need higher ground.” He started for the stairs.

“And get trapped up there?” Wurhi recoiled.

“They will swarm us! We have no choice!”

They rushed up the precarious stone steps.

St. Cristabel Esclanore ground her teeth within a tightened jaw.

The horde of barbaric warriors swarmed by her prison, letting fly whooping war-cries and striking shields with spears. Several glanced down at her, but vengeance drove them toward their bloody purpose without pause. She glowered at them.

Her pride towered too high to bow before these minions. To scrape low before unworthy underlings would be to spit on her own dignity. As though summoned, a familiar figure suddenly loomed by the pit. One arm of his dangled in a sling before him.

“What?” Her eyes grew wide.

The giant of a man came to an astonished halt. “You!” The word tumbled limply from a slackened maw, before it closed in a tight grin. “The Three smile on me, I’ve found you!”

“Overgrown vermin.” Her tone was frost-bound and caustic. “I am cursed to lay eyes upon you.” He had discarded his river-soaked bandages and she noted the horrid scarring that had ravaged his flesh. “I see you have succumbed to some pox since you last offended me with your presence. Your outside now matches who you are within, but were you not abominable enough?”

“Oof!” Eppon blew out a breath. “Couldn’t you be a little sweeter?” He patted his broken arm meaningfully. “You paid me a great wound already!”

“In response to you paying me grave insult.”

“You could have warned me!”

“I gave warning, twice.” The final word was bitten off by clenched teeth. “And granted you opportunity to make apology. Instead, you strove to grapple and paw me.” Her voice was flint. “Vermin! I was in full right to split you to the gullet and leave you for the crows. Instead-” She pointed to his sling. “-I gave you that as a mercy. You are making me regret being so soft.”

“By the Three!” he roared in laughter. “You’re a woman and a half! I have to squash some cock-grabbing cowards, but I’ll be back for you!” His eyes twinkled. “I’ll make you my wife!”

“What?”

At his raucous mirth, she cast her eyes down for a heavy stone to pitch at him, but he had retreated by the time she’d found one suitable. Giving a dark look to the spot he once occupied, she let out a heavy sigh and sat on the hull of her dugout. With her shield at her side and her bearing sword across her knees, she drew a protected wax tablet and bronze stylus from her closest pack.

“How unfortunate.” She tapped the needle-like point against the tablet’s oaken frame, and began to scrawl a new entry into her chronicle.

Vrooosh!

White hellfire exploded the turf in a column of ash and burning foliage. The cluster of warriors nearby cried out, driven apart by the unearthly heat shimmering the air, but remained largely unharmed.

The beam had struck none.

Kyembe swore as he ducked behind the broken wall.

Clatterclatterclatter!

An answering volley of arrows lashed the stone. His flesh hissed, the hellfire’s price slithering up his arm. Groaning at the agony, he channeled eldritch energy to heal himself, but he could hear the warriors advancing on the tower once more.

“Back!” he roared, rising to loose another beam. The fire came slowly and erratically.

Vrooosh!

The beam leapt forth once more. Turf exploded. Once again all escaped with only superficial burns. The stuttering light of his ring provided them plenty of warning to spring aside.

The Sengezian cursed himself. His master had warned him to practice with his ring on each hand, much as how he had with his blade. Yet the boy had remembered all the years of agony it took to perfect the eldritch channels of one arm, and had not relished the thought of repeating the ordeal.

His master had not forced him, but had shaken his head, the jewels shining at the end of his plaits. “Better the sting of today over the sting of death tomorrow,” he’d pronounced grimly.

Kyembe had never regretted shrugging off those words as much as he did now.

“There’s got to be fifty of them!” Wurhi cried, rolling another large rock to the broken wall over the doorway. She had gathered a pile from the wreckage of the upper part of the tower. “How many have you gotten?”

“None!”

“Shit! Shit! We’re going to die!”

Kyembe fired upon the horde once more. Another miss. He cursed, turning desperately to Wurhi. “Look to the trees! Do you see any sign of ogres?!”

The Zabyallan peered over the wall, but shook her head after a few heartbeats. “Just more of these arrow-spitting bastards!”

He nearly howled in frustration. The illusionist’s trick had been raising a cacophony to bring forth the giants, but none had come in all that time. Something was wrong.

“You can stop all that noise!” a familiar voice roared, quieting the din of the hunters.

The volleys of arrows paused.

A familiar figure had come amongst their attackers. Eppon the Bear-Breaker’s towering form rose just within the tree line, slightly obscured by brush. “You can stop your festival tricks, scum! They’ll not help you anymore! Uncle Lukotor bade The Three hide your tricks from the ogres, just as they hide us!”

“By the Stars.”

Wurhi looked to Kyembe. “What’s wrong!? What’d he say?!” she demanded, having no knowledge of Garric.

“Their wizard learned of my trick.” In disgust, he cut off the illusion. “We are alone!”