Salamede POV

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I woke up to the warmth of Eli’s embrace. The sun was coming up in the early morning sky as it played over the trees. I got up and went about preparing the days breakfast while I left him to sleep in. As I was preparing a pot of oats, I heard him stir again as he stretched and got up off the wood floor. When he got out of the blanket, I saw his silver hair was a mess as he got up and went to get a shower with his water bark crafts.

As the oats and the filtered river water came to a boil, I felt his hand on my shoulder.

Turning around, I looked at him and felt the heady taste of him as he kissed me. It lasted only a second, but it meant a lot to me as I turned back to the foggy forest below. What I wouldn’t give to have our relationship reach this state of intimacy back at the town. Or at least not have a war hanging over everything. A sip to my right and Eli started talking.

“I got my stuff done. Once we meet back up with the orcs, we’ll probably spend a while setting up traps and attacking soldiers. The details will all be up in the air, but I’m hoping we can all stay together as a group of three.” He said hopefully as I got a bowl of oats ready for him.

“Same set up with me shooting in the back?” I asked as I handed him the bowl as a breeze blew through our little spot in the trees.

“Preferably not but if we have to, then sure.” He said as he blew on the bowl and used the spoon to mix the steaming breakfast. “Keeping them guessing is one of our best advantages. Long ranged firepower like that is something we should try to keep hidden until we start taking out the caravans. But, we will probably have to stick around the orcs for what may well be a week’s long affair or longer. Things can change in a minute and it does us no good if the orcs get destroyed in an hour due to some unforeseen event.”

I nodded and went back to finishing up the little chores and the packing that needed doing before our mid-day meetup so Eli could focus on the tasks only he could do. Getting into my leather armor and the vine suit, the time to head out had come. Eli got into his vine suit and Cell came onto the platform in his vine doll body.

Heading out towards the Crypt base, we adjusted course to go towards our last meeting site.

Surprisingly, the orc Gusla was already there, pacing nervously in the grove with a small squad looking around with equal trpidation. Eli looked at them for a moment and then dropped down to the ground floor while waving for us to follow, which we promptly did.

The soft thud caused all the orcs to jerk their heads towards us, but they calmed down when they saw us emerge from behind the tree line. Gusla came forward, the muscular red haired orc seemed relieved as she strode forward in her leather jerkin and brown pants.

“Ah, good to see you! Mor is willing to acquiesce to your plan, with some concerns.” She said quickly as bits of sweat dripped down her forehead.

“What wrong?” Eli asked in a calm tone.

Gusla took a deep breath and closed her eyes before continuing.

“The humans are relentless. We’re giving them a bloody nose but they’re pushing us back. Mor thinks a few more days and they’ll have set us far enough back to potentially kick us off the mainland when the main army arrives. It’d be long, bloody and very expensive, but we’re looking at the total loss of all of our main land territory in a week or two.” She said, with a hint of obvious desperation in her voice.

“Since time is of the essence, we start-“ Eli began but Gusla put up her hand to interrupt him.

“Mor has decided that I will take you directly to her. We don’t have enough time to keep going back and forth once a day to make a decision.” Gusla said.

Eli waited a moment before nodding.

“Then go.” He said.

It took almost an hour, but eventually the orcs led us to a small campsite under a boulder in a hill somewhere between the ruined crypt base and the Viper main base. Coming up to it, I saw Gula and her band of Frojan off to the far left with other groups of misfits as Frojan and orcs milled about the place. A table with stacks of papers and a map lay dead center in the alcove under the boulder. The back of the mini cave had bushels of arrows and packs filled with some goods all put along the wall. Off in the distance, I could see some orc bands moving through the trees along with their Frojan allies.

“Ah, here at last.” One muscular orc said as she moved from behind the table. She had short black hair and muscular arms showing from a leather jerkin over her brown cloth pants. Her physique was brutish with a strong square jaw, thick lips and short black hair, but she carried herself in a calm manner. She came forward with two guards behind her, a red head with a squat face and another with a black ponytail to go with a sharp chin. This big orc, Mor if the deference the other orcs were showing her was anything to go by, had a large war hammer strapped across her back that swayed as she maneuvered around a few of the other orcs gathered around the table.

“You’ve come at a most dire time. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say, we’re losing. It’ll be far bloodier and more expensive than what they were doing, but it’s looking like the humans will be kicking us off the mainland before Necrosis sets in.” Mor said as her red irises appraised all three of us.

“Move quick then” Eli said as he lifted his arm and let out the vine crafts he had stored in the bag of holding that we had previously used to store all of our goods while making it look like the vines were coming out of his body.

“What are those?” One particularly well dressed Frojan at the far side of the table said in an astonished tone. He had a black robe with some silver outline to his large green hide.

“Traps” Eli said casually as some of the surrounding orcs backed off a little. Eli just chuckled as he pulled one out of the big pile.

“Not finished, connect line from bottom button to top one. Sends out water blades from wood ball.” He said as he came forward and placed it on the bare bit of table at the end as Mor came up behind him.

“That could work if they didn’t have mages.” The Frojan in black said, his wide green eyes showing irritation.

“Ah” Eli said in a quick, raspy tone that showed through the wobble in the voice changing craft. “Not meant to kill all.” He said as he ran his finger along the line between the two buttons on the end of the vine with no ball.

A moment later he pressed the smaller low end one and a shell of hard dirt formed around it, attaching it to the dark oak wood of the table.

“Mages come take out traps. Spend lot of effort to take out balls of dirt. Then we hit from behind. Take out horse pullers and poison foods stuffs-zz.” Eli finished.

The large Frojan, who must have been a general or other high ranking official if he wasn’t immediately kowtowing to this unknowable beast, just huffed.

“That would work for a while. But eventually we’ll absorb all the local mana and they’d just swarm us with soldiers.” He said dismissively in a deep rumbling voice.

Eli’s response was to casually drop 5 finger sized crystals on the table like rocks. Their eyes all went wide at that, as even the orcs knew of the value such treasures conferred to their owners.

“Mother provides what we need. Ritual must be stopped. Stone blasphemy with spike pit around must be destroyed.” Eli said, his resolve clear to all.

The leading Frojan looked at the treasures for a moment then nodded.

“This is crazy. But it’s all we got. We’ll need one of you to stay behind to help us make more.” He finally said.

“Make a lot today, rest afternoon. When night falls set up traps. Mages come here to destroy traps. When mages have been pulled to the front, we will attack burning water then attack supplies from back. When supplies cut off from traps and troops distracted, we will poison food. Got poison chosen and ready?” He asked, turning to Mor.

She moved back to the right side of the table and looked at Eli for a moment as she went over some figures in her head before responding.

“We have prepared some Bells Gong, but we will need a few more days to make any considerable quantity of it. It’s derived from a special plant that causes diarrhea and fever. The main potency is that it can take one or even two weeks to get through the guts and its cure is far more expensive than just letting it run its course. But killing them would do far more for us long term.” She said in a miffed tone as she raised an eyebrow at Eli.

“If ritual is performed, orc no need to think about future. Mother does not say what is, but bad. Very bad. Better to make humans care for sick.” Eli replied coldly.

The orc general closed her eyes for a moment then opened them back up.

“Fine. I suppose your intervention helped make things better for us long term. I don’t think they’ll be able to push further into the swamps for decades after all the manpower and money they’ve expended in this panicked mayhem, even if they kick us off the mainland totally.” Mor finally said.

Eli nodded in agreement, before taking charge.

“Get mage Frojan here to help make more vine traps. Wait until nighttime, then we set up traps.” Eli said. But as he said that I felt a spirit connection come from him.

‘Go scout for a bit and get some rest. Reliable rest time is going to be a precious commodity going forward. ‘He said through the connection.

Cell and I then proceeded to take off into the treetops and head out to keep an eye on the local area, since Eli didn’t totally trust the orcs and the Frojan to do it. Not that it was totally their fault when they couldn’t get the birds eye view we had.

The rest of the day passed in much the same leisurely manner it had started until sundown came and went. When that time came, I headed back to the command post with Cell as the night started taking over. When we got there, I saw a big pile of vines the size of a man, with odd U shaped pieces of wood and balls of wood sticking out in odd places on the pile.

It took a moment, but I saw the black deer horns of Eli as he was putting the finishing touches on one of the last vine crafts by the cave entrance. Even when I knew it was him and he would do me no harm, there was a primal sort of fear looking at the odd skull and vines with bits of bones around the hips and arms as the flickering torchlight played across him.

The good distance all the other Frojan and orcs paid him said they were feeling this same fear.

Dropping down beside him, the surrounding guards gave a jump but didn’t comment when they saw it was us.

“All right.” Eli called to the mob of orcs and Frojan that were outside the cave entrance. All the people who were meandering about or sitting chatting suddenly stopped to look at Eli as he moved to the front of the pile. “We knows what to do. Do it.” He said with no preamble or theater. Mor backed him up as she came out of the back of the cave.

“Come on girls. We’ve got a surprise party to set up.” She called as the orcs started taking their crafts from the pile. As they did so, Eli came back to me and Cell as he started a spirit connection.

‘It’s worse than I thought. We can stop the flow of troops along the road to the Viper base, but if we don’t stop the fires the orcs will have no means of holding any territory or keeping the Coalition back when we aren’t around. That’s going to be the top of tomorrow’s list.

The orcs will set up the traps while the Frojan and the ‘pandego’s’ keep watch. I’ll warn you, I’m pretty tired from my work so you’ll have to take the lead when it comes to melee fighting since we don’t have the time for me to rest.” He said, showing no false bravado, acknowledging only the cold hard math that his way demanded.

‘Understood. What should we try to hide, ability wise?” I asked as a tendril of energy ran up my spine in anticipation for the coming battle.

He took a moment but finally came back with an answer.

“After looking over their reports, nothing except any items that might give away spells don’t cause our items to fail. The orcs are only just holding this area, if you’re feeling generous in describing how it’s going. This plan falls through and the main army will be at the Viper base in three, maybe even two days and have the forewarning to come up with a counter offensive. If that happens, we’re looking at having to cause tens of thousands of deaths just to get back into the base. We need to disrupt the supply lines from the main road and make traveling to Viper base almost impossible.

Another issue is if the Viper commander gets too scared, he may try to escape in a big caravan or slink out and just in case you ever spot him, according to what the orcs know, he’s a dark-skinned man with a cut across the eye. The commanders a grey cloaked mage who has a subordinate with short black hair who oversees the mages while he works getting the military, bandits and mages all working together. If the roads are still open there is a good possibility he will get away and at that point our odds of figuring out who was involved in prompting the bandit attacks on me goes down to almost zero.

We’ve kept unseen so far, but that time has passed. Realistically, it’s going to be us and the Frojan mages against their mages while the orcs slug it out with the soldiers.” He finished as I felt my stomach clench.

“Us against all those thousands of soldiers? I… I’m not optimistic about that.” I said uncertainly. The deer skull nodded before continuing in a casual manner.

“If they all bum rushed us, sure. But the soldiers will get butchered without the mages, and the mages can’t attack us on mass without absorbing all the local mana and having no magic to fight with. In such a situation, our crafts would give us a huge advantage. This campaign for the orcs is going to be hundreds of small fights with the mages as the tide of steel consolidates their gains. Which is why we need to draw as much blood as we can in this first series of engagements and make them too afraid or too understaffed to properly guard the supply lines or even make them pull back.” Eli said like he was discussing the weather.

‘One, two, three, four, five’ I calmed down around twelve and went to lean against the cave wall as the orcs finished dividing up the vine traps amongst themselves.

After a few more minutes, the orcs had finished, and the tide of green flesh moved out through the dark night. As I had come to expect, Gula’s group was put off to the side and was relegated to the most dangerous job: Stopping any patrols that would come upon the orcs and Frojan setting up the traps. I followed her group in the treetops above her with Cell staying down below on the ground level. After a few minutes, the silent tide of orcs came near the road between the Viper base and the third box fort.

Off to the right were another group of Frojan dressed in poor clothing and a few more orcs with black neck bands or tattoos. This group headed off to the side of the road near the Viper base while I, Cell, and Gula’s group guarded the side that the army was coming from as Eli helped set up the traps along the road. For a while, the cool night air idly wafted through as the rustling of dirt and ashes resounded in the air as the orcs went about making the small dirt mounds using the U shaped wood crafts and covering the vines that led up to the actual traps.

I followed Gula’s group off to the left and made my way further up the trees to keep watch on my side of the road and the darks shadows of the surrounding woods. It was a good half hour of silent watching later when I saw the faintest flicker of torchlight come down the road. After thinking about it, I dropped down in the middle of Gula’s group.

They seemed to have gotten used to my entrance by now since they just turned their heads towards me and showed no surprise beyond that as they continued to lean against and sit on various trees.

“Get ready, some one’s coming down the road. Attack after I take out the mages” I said, the small enchantment on my mask slightly hiding the roughness of my voice with an odd wobble. They all stood up straight and got closer to the road at my announcement. Cell moved forward with them while I got back into the treetops and scouted out the coming group.

Looking at them, I only saw the metal armor glinting in the fire light with the hard faces of the men showing in the helmets. As I took note of the eight archers in the middle of the pack, I finally saw what I was looking for. In the middle of the group of two dozen plus men was the grey cloak of a mage. Scouring over the group I didn’t see any of the other mages.

The mage had blond hair that stuck out of her cloaks head cover and her movements were too erratic due to the men in front of her slowing to peer into the darkness every now and then, so I decided to go for a body shot. I lifted my right arm and looked down the scope above the long metal barrel on the side of my arm. They were just a bit to the left of Gula’s group when the humans stopped to look into the darkness again.

Down below Gula and her Frojan were in position behind the large burned trunk of trees along the path, clutching wooden clubs, staff, and spears as the men started moving again. This was as good of an opportunity as I was going to get.

I used my spirit magic to activate the air pump thing. When it finished, I held my breath and pulled the trigger. The stone bullet blew out of the metal barrel with a sharp crack, that caused the humans to stand dead still for a brief moment. The mage did this as well, and then cried out in pain as her shoulder now sported a bloody hole.

That was all the time they had to react when Gula’s group charged. I activated the air pump again as the men clumped in a loose wall with shields and swords at hand. The Frojan and Gula then came into the torchlight just below the slope of the road. An older soldier with taut, tanned skin and a greying beard stood tall and proud as he shouted orders and wrestled a horn from his side as it was caught up in the sword holster at his hip.

“Form up lads! Protect the mage and-“ His voice died when Cell came bounding up the slope. They all shrunk back for a moment and that’s when I took my next shot. It took the mage in her gut, causing her to fall to the ground as she clutched at the wound. That was when Cell charged forward. Just like the fight with the mages, Cell did not follow his scions nature as he just recklessly charged forward into the melee as his two hands resting above his shoulders sprouted blades. Lopping off heads and striking shields with such force the men holding them were flung over the road, Cell totally broke the meager line of shields.

Then Gula’s group charged into the disoriented men. With the mid-section of their shield wall destroyed, the men broke completely as the Frojan slashed into them with water blades and spears. I saw Gula drive her sword through the throat of one of the retreating archers, but I kept my eyes towards the road where the doomed men had set out from. Five of the men made it out of the mayhem and sprinted towards salvation, with one of them being farther out then the others.

Another whirl of the air pump and another held breath leaning against the guns barrel, and it was four as the sharp crack rang out. These last few men were farther back and met much the same fate the first soldiers had at the start of the fight. I checked on the mage that was still laying in the dirt only to see she had been trampled to death by the soldiers.

“Clean this up before more come.” I called down below trying to sound casual, but my hands were shaking and I was having to make an effort to unclench my throat.

The Frojan and Cell got to work, moving the bodies off the road and using water to wash away the blood as I kept in the trees to keep an eye out. When they finished, the road looked unblemished from the carnage wrought just a few minutes ago. Our task finished, we went back to keeping watch over the road.

After a while, I was struggling to keep awake as the rush of adrenaline from the battle faded. Rather than risk falling asleep I came down and walked over to Cell, who was laying on a log taking a nap.

“Cell?” I said through a spirit connection. His wooden mask moved, and the shifting lights of his spherical head turned to me. “I need some rest. Would you keep watch?”

He nodded and got up before launching himself into the trees. Not wasting any time, I promptly fell asleep as soon as I leaned against the log. While my sleep was haunted by dying men, I still welcomed the blackness.

“Hey, they’ve come back. We need to meet up with the others” A voice called. After what felt like a few hours or so.

Jerking upwards, I saw Gula standing in front of me with some of the Frojan standing around behind her. Looking up, I saw the barest hint of day light creeping out into the nights sky.

“Who? Where?” I asked her as I went to lift my mask to rub my eyes. Fortunately, I stopped myself and looked around more carefully. Nope, no one but Gula and her group. I lifted the mask slightly then rubbed my eyes before I got up and re-adjusted my mask.

“Down the road. Looks to be around a hundred and fifty of them this time with at least nine mages. Looking for the lost patrol if I was a betting woman” She said as she nervously looked to the left towards the road.

“Who’s coming to help us?” I asked her.

“I sent one of the boys to ask if we should attack. We’re waiting for him to get back.” Gula said as she continued her nervous gaze towards the road.

I strained my ears to hear the coming footsteps but didn’t register anything. It struck me then that with Cell up in the tree tops he probably saw them before they could be heard. The fact that mere height seemed to confer a whole new world and sense of distance was something my simple upbringing was still struggling to come to terms with.

At that point one of the blue Frojan wearing loose brown pants and a flowing green robe came bounding through the woods as he took a moment to gulp air.

“They’re finished. They want us to allow them to pass and close in on them from behind when our main force attacks. The quad mage said to… have her line up her shots so that they go off when a trap is sprung. That way it will make them think it’s the traps doing it. He said it in a spirit connection of course.” The Frojan said in a deep rumbling tone as he leaned against the tree.

Gula nodded and looked to me.

“Seems like we’ll need to move a bit further to the main playground. Unless you could shoot them from here?” She asked, sounding completely serious.

I raised an eyebrow under my mask towards her.

“No. They wouldn’t even be in eyesight if we were in an empty field.” I responded.

Gula huffed before turning around.

“Well, at least you lot have some limitations.” She said noncommittally before the rest of the group headed out. I felt a prick of irritation at the tone she used but pushed it aside.

Cell walked along with them while I swooped up into the treetops. It felt so agonizingly slow to wait for the group to get far enough that I had to move. Having done this for weeks now, it didn’t hit me just how slow walking was from this perspective until I saw the near snail’s pace their light jog was. Where I could make a single jump to one tree in a few seconds, it took them an entire minute or more to cover that same distance. And that was with me having to throttle back due to being in amongst the trees.

But it did give me enough time to keep an eye out among the trees below me and brood at the same time. The grey cloaked mages favorite tactic was to clumsily use wind magic to hide amongst the trees and they were still amongst our foes here. What made it worse was I was starting to struggle with my purpose here and boredom is great for dwelling on things you can’t do anything about.

Scanning the still woods, now getting slightly lighter from the sun lazily rising off in the distance, the thought that kept creeping in was how many orphans and widows I had created back there. How many more I was going to make before the day was out?

I decided to take Eli’s advice and think over the alternatives when I had to stop and wait for the group to catch up. Sure enough, no alternatives presented themselves by the time we came closer to the main attack site. We stopped a few dozen yards before getting towards the main group and waited for the humans to arrive.

After discussing it with Cell, we decided he would stay in the trees with me to help hide our presence as long as possible. It took a bit, but finally the sound of massed footsteps came within earshot. As I was considering who to target first, I saw several of the grey cloaked mages zip through the lower section of the trees.

There were three of them moving along the branches, cautiously jumping among the trees as they kept an eye out on the surrounding woods. Not fighters, scouts then. They were coming close to Gula’s idle group and stopped just a few dozen feet from their position amongst the bushes and trees. Two were slinking behind a tree to the left while the third was off by herself to the right on another branch.

‘Cell’ I said to the familiar on my left in a spirit connection. ‘I don’t think I should risk taking a shot. Do it like we did last time?’

He sent a sense of agreement.

We launched ourselves through the air and Cell sent out his two shoulder arms with blades. The three mages showed a slight reaction to the whistling air behind them, but not fast enough, not nearly fast enough. Cell’s blades skewered the two mages through their mid-section as he took them down to the forest floor below with him. I rushed through the air at the same time and wrapped my vines around the mages body and head as I took her to the forest floor below as well.

Cell used his two main hands and I used my vines to cover their mouths as we plummeted to the ground below. I tilted the woman downward headfirst as I felt her struggle against my constraints. But she had fractions of a second when she needed at least two or three seconds to use any spells at our relatively low height. All three landed with a hard crunch and died instantly when they met the ground. The vines helped deaden the impact on my body while Cell had no such concerns.

Gula’s group clutched their weapons, but just stared when we disentangled ourselves from the corpses.

“Scouts” I said, like it was no big deal. But on the inside my stomach was doing flips. The surge of adrenaline and terror of the coming battle were the only things keeping the contents of my stomach in my gut.

Gula was behind a tree facing the road with the scorched surroundings and merely nodded before turning around. The stomping was getting louder, and I quickly made my way back up the huge, ancient trees.

Now the footsteps of what sounded like a mini army came pounding down the road. Back in the treetops with the early morning sun now splashing oranges and reds across the sky, I quickly looked over the road to see two long columns of steel plated men marching down the road. The inner column was a long line of archers and in the middle with several other soldiers guarding them was the nine mages. These mages were more like the ones we saw arriving yesterday, confident, immaculately dressed and decked out in the finest weapons.

Looking a bit further down the road, I saw where Eli’s traps had been laid down. The odd earth spheres looked like engorged mushroom caps when I had seen them at ground level, but from this height it looked like goosebumps running along the roads worn earth. The column of humans was now getting closer.

In this area there was a bend in the road, and as they turned right into that bend, the column suddenly stopped several yards before coming up to the line of erratic bumps in the dirt. A small group of five men went forward and threw a rock at one of the bumps.

Nothing happened and the men took a few more rocks from the road and tossed them at the odd bumps. Then one of them got unlucky and hit one with a trap. With the wood ball exposed, it sent out a wave of water blades and accompanying it was a sharp crack of Eli shooting one of the men. Two of the men were cut to pieces by the water blades and a third dropped dead from the traps ‘mysterious’ unseen attack.

The other two fell back immediately.

Surprisingly, it took a bit for a decision to be made by the humans. In the middle of the column was a tall blond haired mage, dressed in a blue, fine silk robe, pointing at what I assume was the commander of the men. He had a green and orange cloth draped over his right shoulder along with the big white feather on his helm that matched the white mustache and beard. I couldn’t make out what they were saying from this distance, but I couldn’t miss their animated movements.

Finally, the commander pointed back home towards safety with a large swing of his hand. The woman just backhanded him and pointed towards the traps. He stood still for a moment before nodding and motioned his right arm further down the road.

Poor fools.

The men started moving forward as a mage stepped ahead of the cloumn along with her guard. She had long flowing black hair and a very expensive brown leather armor. The metal breastplate had gold outlines and gold laced thread could be seen along the shirt underneath. The long sword at her back remained holstered as she stepped forward and started moving her hands in circular patterns.

When she came within spitting distance of the odd trail, she stopped. Then a small wave rippled through the earth and as it came up to the small bumps in the road, one of the traps was upended and set off. The mage seemed to assum she was safe due to being behind eight different men. This proved to be wrong.

It shot out a slew of water blades, but the men had their shields properly up this time and only one of them took a cut in the shoulder. As the water blades splattered across the shields, another sharp crack rang out and the black-haired mage clutched at her leg as blood now dripped down her side. I decided to activate the air pump and get a shot ready.

When she realized what happened, the leading mage in the middle of the column went wild and gestured towards the wounded mage as she seemed to yell at the commander. He promptly motioned twenty men forward, who quickly surrounded the injured woman who was now limping her way back towards ‘safety’ with the help of two soldiers supporting her. It seems the blond mage didn’t mind the soldiers dying, but one of her own getting hurt was unacceptable. Turning around, it was clear the group was going to leave.

But then another shot rang out. I looked back to the traps but none of them had activated. Turning back to the center of the column, I saw the blond mage laying face first in the dirt as blood from the back of her head ruined the fine silk of her attire. Everyone stood still for a moment until I took my own shot at the commander. I didn’t get him in the head, but that moment of shock allowed my bullet to pierce him in the throat.

Apparently, everyone understood what that meant, or Eli gave an order as a swarm of orcs and Frojan came scampering out of the woods towards the soldiers. Below I heard the rumble of Gula’s group moving out as well. Even as the mob moved in, the soldiers discipline prevented them from breaking and they all moved to close in around the mages as a second in command took charge, this one only having a cloth sash around his shoulder. The new leadership did not last long as another harsh crack from across the road sounded out and he fell on the road, dead as his superior.

Still, the men did not break, and the mages kept their nerve. The water and earth mages began setting up small half bubbles around themselves to provide cover against the unknown attack. The fire and wind mages had no ability to protect themselves from our bullets and tried to make their way behind the mages who could. They could have made it too, if they hadn’t been so spread out. I shot one water mage as she was getting her water shield up and another fire mage who tried making a smoke screen as she moved towards a mage setting up a water bubble. While I did that, I saw Eli getting three himself, leaving only three mages left behind a water bubble and one was too injured to be of any use.

The men bravely charged forward while the women were given a guard of ten men to help them escape. The front line of the battle was a warzone, with the Frojan spells decimating the men who now had no mages to contest the water blades and spears. Somewhere in the melee, a horn blew. Loud and deep, I had no doubt it carried for miles. Turning towards the source, I saw it was a younger soldier who had wrestled the horn from the original commander’s body.

I noticed Eli was keeping his shots on the bubble to wear it down, so I did so as well since the horn was already blown. The mage seemed to struggle every time a bullet shot into the bubble and she was forced to slowly walk as the strain of the shield demanded all of her energy. I added to her burden, but they made it to the edge of the quickly disintegrating column and it looked like they might get away.

Then Cell popped up out of the burnt underbrush on our side of the road. There was a brief moment where everything on the battlefield just stopped as the muscular mass of vines sprinted across the field towards the mages. Five of the men tried to get between Cell and the mages, but he simply jumped over them and landed on the water shield. He drew back all four of his hands and used them to punch a single point in the bubble. The water reverberated for a moment before it broke and dissipated into nothingness.

The three mages drew back, and the soldiers tried to cover them, but Cell just beheaded the two men in his way with his arm blades. He then did a sideways chop on the water mages neck, twisting it and killing her, doing the same with his leg to the injured earth mage who had been knocked back in the confusion.

The last mage, a blond with flowing green and white pants and a flowery shirt, dashed off towards safety and another sharp crack sounded out. It took her in the shoulder, but she kept going. I saw the dust whirl around her as she prepared a wind spell. Another held breath and a squeeze of the trigger with my sweaty hand. and my bullet took her in the side. That stopped her as she fell to the ground and started to feebly crawl on the ground. Another shot from Eli and she laid still for good.

The biggest obstacle overcome, I decided to go further down the road and keep an eye out for re-enforcements. Maybe I should have stayed behind, but from my back I heard the screams and pleas of dying men. Men who I helped kill.

I was coming down onto a branch overlooking the road when the shakes hit. I had been running on adrenaline since we started. Killing the mages, killing the soldiers, that had all been suppressed by my mind locked in combat mode. But the feeling of the mages crunch when they hit the ground, seeing them crawl on the ground dying, the screams of men as they were cut to pieces by water blades was now rising to the front of my mind. I felt bile rise up in my throat and I decided to not fight it. Lifting up my mask, I emptied yesterday’s meal onto the ground floor.

“Focus, Salamede” I said shakily to myself as I pulled the mask back over my face. “You’re not out of trouble yet”

“Hey! Are you all right?” I heard Gula call down below.

I looked down to see Gula walking up to my spot from behind me, bloody with a cut across her side. She was looking up at me with a question in her gaze.

‘Dammit. She must have seen me puke.’ I thought miserably to myself

“I’m fine.” I said unconvincingly. It occurred to me then that the sounds of fighting had died down completely sometime during my panic attack.

She looked at me for a moment with no expression on her face as even the vertical scar across her left eye remained still. But after a few moments, she sighed and closed her eyes briefly before opening them again and calling back up to me.

“Try to just breathe. I find exercise helps but we’re not out of this thing yet.” She said with a tone of sympathy.

I just nodded and turned back to look out over the forest. Keeping my mind blank was tough for a bit but after a few more minutes, the sound of men marching came down from the road. I looked around the woods quickly and flew back towards the battle.

Well what had been a battle. It occurred to me as I came back was that there was only the occasional yell of pain. Coming onto the… massacre, I saw a few Frojan and orcs laying in the dirt or on the road in pain. But all the humans were now corpses in various states of wholeness. I saw Eli in the middle of the battlefield, administering healing by making his spell look like it was the work of some random herbs he was rubbing across the long gash along the sternum of a larger orc sitting on the dirt road.

When I dropped down near him, he didn’t make any indication that he registered my presence. But I felt his spirit connection shortly after.

‘How are you doing?’ He asked, his voice radiating concern. That provided a bloom of warmth in my chest despite the awful time I was having.

‘I’ll be better when we are home. Re-enforcements are coming.’ I said quickly.

He then picked up the orc off the ground, who gave a surprised yelp as the blond haired, green skinned woman no longer had a long blade wound across her belly.

“More is coming. Move!” He called to the surrounding orcs and Frojan. Our first fight finished, we all headed out and back towards safety as the drum of marching footsteps now came within earshot.