Tom watched anxiously as the darjee swept over the slope and raced toward their fort. Kai and the fwyn that the darjee had tried to ambush had barely made it back in time, but thankfully they were here. Tim didn’t even want to imagine how badly this would go without Kai helping them hold the darjee off.

Most of the fwyn had gone deeper into the fort for something, but the one Kai had been with had taken up position behind him, while Gwen was behind Tim.

It was odd. This new fwyn didn’t smell the same as the others. The majority of them smelled earthy, like fresh loam mixed with stone's reassuring stability and strength. This one, however, smelled sickly sweet but with undertones of something pungent. It was almost like rotten eggs, just not quite as nasty.

Tom didn’t understand why the fwyn smelled so different, but he didn’t want to ask about it either. A lot was happening, and a lot was changing at the moment; it felt stupid to ask such a little question.

It was even worse now that the fwyn had made this fort. The stone they’d raised had kept the earthy smell of the fwyn somehow. It was almost overpowering being among it like this.

‘Don’t worry, we’ve got your back,’ Tim said, his voice cutting into Tom’s deliberations and making him glance over to his brother.

‘Yeah,’ Tom said, agreeing with whatever Tim had said without hesitation. He trusted his brother to make all the decisions; Tom was just happy to go along with what he wanted most of the time.

‘Get it together, Tom. Now is not the time,’ Kai said, his eyes fixed on the darjee with an intensity that made Tom shiver.

‘Sorry,’ Tom mumbled under his breath, shifting position to make sure he was ready for the darjee. People depended on him; he could think about these strange smells later.

A wave of freezing cold blew over them as ice flew overhead, smashing into the ground and forming a sheet of ice to trip up the darjee. Barely a moment later, Tom had a brief whiff of something burning as Kai moved forward fast enough to be little more than a blur.

Gwen said something garbled in a language that Tom didn’t understand, her tone sharp and urgent. Before Kai could even hit the ground after his high jump, Gwen and the fwyn stepped up and threw out their hands.

Ozone and the sweet, rotten egg smell filled the air as lightning blasted from Gwen, and the fwyn hurled an orb of brown and black energy. Tom felt himself watching the flight of the orb with interest. The concentrated energy felt almost familiar somehow.

Looking back to the fight between Kai and the darjee, Tom felt a little envious as he watched Kai move with deadly grace and a level of precision that he could never emulate. Tim was more likely to be able to fight like Kai; Tom knew that he lacked the flexibility and agility to keep up with them.

Since they were boys, Tom had always been the strong one, the brute force to back up Tim’s plans and ideas. Now, things were changing; Tim was picking up the lessons from Kai with a speed that Tom couldn’t match.

The training and the sparring had helped Tom develop his strength, and he felt more confident in a fight than ever before. The problem was that Tim was growing faster and learning more every day.

At this rate, Tom would be left behind and no longer needed. He’d spent his whole life protecting his brother, protecting the only family he had left. The idea that Tim wouldn’t need him anymore was a terrifying one.

‘Garec bel!’ Verdan’s voice echoed through the fort as a spray of fist-sized stones blasted past them. The heavy projectiles struck the darjee with enough force to knock them off their feet, slowing them down even more.

The howls of the darjee and their screams of pain as they pushed through the attacks to reach them were secondary to Tom. The word that Verdan had used was ringing in his mind. Garec. It resonated with him, just like the smell of the earthy fwyn. Something deep inside him bestirred itself as he focused on that sensation of resonance.

‘Tom!’ Tim’s voice was distant, but the urgency brought Tom’s eyes up to see a trio of darjee bearing down on his brother. The dog-faced monsters had bypassed Kai in search of easier prey. One of them bore a patch of scorched fur where Gwen had hit them with lightning before, and another had disgustingly rotten flesh running up its right arm. Injured as they were, they would still be too much for Tim.

Their magic support hadn’t been enough to stop the darjee, so it was down to Tom. Tim could fight one on his own, so it was down to him to take the other two.

Determination swept through Tom as he moved with purpose, a walk becoming a steadily increasing run as he pounded past his brother. Something was awake in him, something new that rumbled like the boulders of an avalanche. Slow to start but unstoppable when it got going.

That image of a rolling boulder lingered in Tom’s mind as one of the darjee bared its teeth and raced to meet his charge. Lowering his shield and focusing on bracing it as best he could, Tom bore down and charged directly into the creature.

Tom kept his eyes on the darjee as they came together, noting absently that the brown wood of his shield turned grey as they covered the last few feet to each other.

Tom expected to knock the darjee back and follow up with his mace before it could recover. The darjee was tall but slender, so he knew his bigger build meant he out massed the creature.

In reality, Tom hit the darjee and dropped his shoulder, ramming into it with everything he had and sending the creature flying with a surprised cry of pain. Stomping down with his front foot, Tom felt his boot gouge up the ground ahead of him as he came to an abrupt stop.

The darjee flanking the one he’d rammed was on him in the blink of an eye, claws glinting in the sun as they raked toward his chest. Hours of training with the fast-moving Kai was all that saved Tom as his shield snapped into place in front of him, blocking the attack.

The claws screeched as they skittered over the stone shield, leaving behind a long furrow where they’d struck. The darjee’s other hand grabbed onto the edge of the shield, and it tried to wrench it to one side. Hunching down slightly, Tom resisted the pull for a moment before moving with the pull and bringing his mace down at the darjee.

His mace bore a flanged head with a pointed tip, but now it was covered in stone, and the flanged ribs around the head were dotted with small stone spikes.

Tom knew he should have been shocked or concerned about the changes to their equipment, but it all had a rightness to it that bypassed such feelings. Besides, Tom rarely focused on why things were happening; he just accepted the world for what it was and moved on.

The darjee had managed to duck out of the way of his stony mace, but Tom was quick to press the attack, his mace moving in constant sweeping motions as he drove the darjee back.

The creature snarled and growled at him, slashing out with its claws and trying to get around his flank, but Tom bore it all on his shield. The menacing thrum of his mace as it rushed through the air was enough to keep the darjee from committing to something more drastic.

The darjee that Tom had bashed with his shield had been stunned by the impact. With a few moments to recover, it had just been starting to groggily get back up when the one that Tom was pursuing backed up into it.

The impact between the two was minimal, doing little more than delaying them for half a moment as they broke apart. Unfortunately for them, that was all that Tom needed.

The darjee had been keeping just out of reach of Tom’s mace, so even a slight delay in its movement gave him the opening he’d been waiting for. Tom's mace was in motion as soon as the darjee stumbled over its fallen companion, the weapon whistling as it came thundering down.

Realising it was in a bad position, the darjee made a split-second choice and tried to block the stone mace. It chose poorly.

Bone and flesh alike were broken and ruptured as the stone-enhanced mace struck the darjee’s crossed arms with all of Tom’s strength behind it. Yanking the mace back from the ruined mess of the darjee’s arms, Tom finished the creature with a swift overhead strike, planting his mace directly into its face.

Burning pain rushed through Tom’s right leg as the other darjee clawed at the closest part of him it could reach, but the second swing of his mace dealt with that problem before it could strike again.

Looking around, Tom realised that the battle was all but over. There were only half a dozen darjee still standing, and they were pulling back from the death trap that the fort had become.

Burnt, broken and decayed bodies were scattered all around the fort, including one lying at the feet of his brother.

‘Tom, are you okay!’ Tim shouted, rushing toward him with a concerned expression.

‘Yeah,’ Tom said, turning to face his brother and wincing as he put weight on his right leg. He could feel where the claws had hit him, and the burning pain of the wound wasn’t fading.

‘What happened to your shield?’ Tim asked, looking at the stone-covered shield in Tom’s left hand. ‘And where’s your mace?’

‘Oh,’ Tom said, glancing down at his empty right hand with a frown. Looking behind him, he saw that his mace was embedded in the chest of the second darjee, though it had lost its stone enhancement. Reaching over and grunting at the pain from his leg, Tom retrieved his weapon and started limping back to the fort.

‘You’re limping. Did they get your leg?’ Tim asked, sighing heavily as Tom shrugged and didn’t answer. ‘Come on, let’s go see if anyone has any bandages.’

Tim moved to support his brother, but Tom glared at him and carried on limping. He’d get there under his own power; he’d had worse wounds.

Kai was methodically working through the fallen darjee, ensuring that no survivors were hiding among them and that any wounded were finished off.

Meanwhile, Verdan was talking with Gwen and Gruthka, gesturing first at the fwyn gathered at the entrance to the fort, then at the dead darjee.

Tom hadn’t spent much time examining the fwyn in any real detail, but even he could pick up how shocked the small creatures were. Verdan had told them about how the darjee hunted the fwyn. This might be one of the few times the fwyn had won against the dog-faced creatures.

‘Are you two okay?’ Verdan asked, looking over to them with a concerned expression.

‘Yeah, but Tom needs a bandage,’ Tim said, pointing to the wound on Tom’s leg.

‘I’ll take care of that, and then you should speak to Kai,’ Verdan said, addressing Tom as he gestured to the stone-clad shield Tom was carrying.

‘Yeah,’ Tom said, considering the shield with interest as he realised that there was a slight link between it and the rumbling motion within his core. Carefully taking hold of the link, Tom unbound the shield from him. A brief moment passed with nothing changing, and then the stone began to slough off the shield, falling to the ground as dust.

‘Iacha,’ Verdan said as he crouched down in front of Tom and reached out with one hand to touch the wound on his leg. A wave of soothing energy flowed into Tom’s leg, making the pain he was feeling seem distant and removed.

‘Thank you, Verdan,’ Tim said earnestly, inclining his head to Verdan, who waved off the thanks.

Tom glanced down at his leg and realised that the bloody gash that the darjee had given him was now half the size. It was as though the healing had been sped up by a week or two.

‘All the darjee are dealt with,’ Kai said as he walked over to them, his eyes lingering on Tom.

‘Excellent, they should be on the backfoot now, so we need to act quickly,’ Verdan said, tapping his lips in thought before nodding to Kai. ‘Take Tom, Gwen and Dru and head for the left half of the ruins. I’ll take Tim and the rest of the fwyn over to the right. Our priority is to secure the prisoners, but make sure that none of the darjee escape if we can help it.’

Dru was apparently the name of the fwyn that used the brown-black energy that Tom had sensed earlier. He gave the diminutive and large-eyed creature a nod, smiling in satisfaction as it nodded back.

‘Very well, call for us if you need support,’ Kai said, hefting his spear and motioning for his group to follow him.

Locking eyes with his brother, Tom tried his best to communicate his faith in his skills. Tim would be safe with Verdan, and Tom would watch Kai’s back. This would be fine.

Hefting his mace and shield, Tom hurried after the fire sorcerer, Gwen and Dru falling in behind him.