In the woods south of Lóthaven, Faye was covered liberally in dirt, squirrel excrement, blood, and God knows what else. Bruises ached with each movement she made. Cuts that had not had time to heal were twinging every time she stretched the skin. Her breathing was slow, but heavy, and her limbs trembled. But her eyes were focused and clear.

The creature she was standing off against prowled, a deep, bass growl rumbling in its chest that set Faye’s innards vibrating. A higher pitched whine accompanied the growl now, the only indication that the creature might be in pain.

Her stolen dagger was still in the creature’s side, wedged between two of its ribs. The dagger hadn’t slowed it down, but it had made it think twice about launching straight for Faye.

Which she only saw as a good thing.

Every few steps, the creature’s long neck would shift position. Its head was eerily stable, like a bird, and it would shift higher from and lower to the ground periodically. Its reflective eyes would occasionally disappear into the darkness as the angle from the moonlight stopped hitting its retinas.

Those were moments that Faye’s instincts screamed at her to attack.

But she held back.

She was sure that this creature had more intelligence than the night squirrels she’d fought just a few minutes before. She didn’t want to make a mistake.

But what if waiting is the mistake?

She shook herself, mentally.

Focus.

The time to second-guess yourself came and went, ages ago. As did the time to chastise yourself.

The creature moved a step closer in its wary circling, and Faye did the same. Closing the gap between them to only a few strides.

She bared her teeth.

“Come on… come on…” she urged it. If it came at her, she would be certain its options were limited. She’d seen it attack. She hadn’t seen everything it would do if she came for it.

It took one more step forward. Instead of mirroring it, she retreated a step, then tripped. She leaned back, windmilling with one arm.

That’s when the creature launched itself forward, its claws scrabbling in the dirt and twigs of the forest undergrowth to get purchase and speed toward its prey.

Two bounds away, it reared its head and unnaturally long neck back, opening its jaws wide.

Before it snapped forward to take a bite out of Faye’s face, she suddenly regained control of her ‘fall’. Pulling her blade back into an inside right guard, with the blade parallel to the ground. She bent her rear leg, crouching close to the ground.

The creature had committed, despite Faye’s miraculous recovery, and still came for her. As it reached the apex of its lunge, Faye matched it.

She shoved forward with all the strength of her legs, twisting her torso and snapping her arms out straight, with the tip of her sword aimed directly for the open maw of the monster.

Its teeth came down and tried to catch the wooden blade. A horrific squeal emanated from the blade and the creature’s teeth, like nails on a chalkboard magnified by a thousand, vibrating up her arms and into her head. She gritted her own teeth and rammed her shoulder into the creature.

Or tried to.

The tip of her blade inched closer to the inside of the creature’s mouth, and she forced herself forward, and it abandoned its attack. Its clawed paws slammed into her torso and pushed her away.

It spun in the air and landed in a crouch, audibly growling this time, hissing out its frustration at the same time.

Faye feinted forward with her body, shouting “boo!” at the same time.

The creature spun away from her, presenting its injured side to her in its haste to get away. She saw a dark patch of blood around the wound, and the handle of the dagger prominently sticking out. She grinned fiercely.

“It’s only a matter of time before I win,” she said. “Lie down now and I’ll make it quick. I’m not going to let you win. I’m not prey.”

The thing’s head twisted a little, as if it was listening to her.

“No, not prey. I promise you I’m walking away from this. I have strong friends. They’ll get you if I don’t.”

She didn’t really think it would understand her. But her own words were life affirming. They strengthened her resolve. There was no way she would die out here. Not happening.

Got to get stronger, Faye. Prove ‘em wrong.

She dashed forward in two quick steps, pivoting at the last moment and launching a devastating two-handed slash from above. The creature hadn’t expected it, somehow, and it scrambled backward in a fear response before spinning again to protect its weaker side. Then it snaked its long neck out and tried to snap at her from inside her guard.

Moving from a forward, attacking motion into a rear defensive one that quickly reminded her of her sword instructor. He would have torn her a new one for misjudging the attack like that. She needed to be fully in control of the flow of the fight and should know exactly where she should be to attack and not be open to retaliation.

She took short steps back as the creature came for her, bobbing left to right. She tried to mirror its movements, but with her sword, to prevent it getting too close.

“Fu—,” she began, but at the last moment, the snapping jaws of the creature disappeared, and it darted away into the forest. “Hey!”

She stared into the darkness it had vanished into.

“That was my dagger.”

But an insidious thought wormed into her consciousness, and she brought her guard up again. She spun on the spot, watching for any signs, listening for the slightest sound.

What if something had scared this monster away, too?

Panting, trying her best to keep her fear under control, Faye tried to look in all directions at once. Suddenly, the thought of being out in the forest levelling was no longer as tempting as it had been.

Her arms ached, a bone deep pain that made her tremble with every movement. The adrenaline that had been fuelling her movement for too long was beginning to get the better of her.

She shook herself.

She needed to stay focused. Something else might be out here.

Ailith rolled her shoulder. The dire wolf had taken a good run at her and she wasn’t wearing her armour.

Last time I make that mistake, she vowed.

The guard was lying still. She couldn’t see him properly. The dire wolf was standing over his legs, as tall as Faye at its shoulder made for a monstrous wolf.

Its eyes were fixated on Ailith. Every time it made to move, she mirrored it. She didn’t want it out of her sight. It was all she could do to hold it there.

[Guardian’s Hold] was doing its job, forcing the wolf’s attention to stay locked on Ailith. Without her weaponry or armour, there was little that she could do with the wolf, other than hold it off.

The sense she got was that it was distinctly weaker than her, though a monster’s level was rarely the only indication of how dangerous it was.

The wolf shifted. Ailith narrowed her eyes.

This is it, then.

It bared its teeth, then launched forward. It was fast, and its fur bristled with cold and frost icicles. The aura of devastatingly cold air that surrounded the wolf battered Ailith like a physical thing. Shifting her feet at the last moment, to pull her off balance.

She felt her balance shift just as the wolf pushed off with its front paws. Its open jaw launched for her neck, and despite knowing that she needed to get her arm in the way to live, she was twisting the wrong way.

She sensed a familiar skill off to the side.

Ailith’s eyes widened, and she allowed herself a grin. The wolf aborted its attack, though the momentum still slammed into Ailith’s unarmoured form. She was taller and wider than the wolf, but the monster was made almost of pure muscle. It shifted her back three steps.

It disengaged as quickly as it had launched itself at her.

Her [Warrior’s Rage] engaged as Ailith caught the sounds she had been waiting to hear since the moment she’d sent Faye away. She held a hand out, and a moment later her favourite siege hammer’s handle slapped into her palm.

She gripped it and swung the heavy weapon around to bear against the wolf. It was called a siege hammer, but Ailith had always thought it was more like a maul. The giant head of dense stone gave off a strong sense of earth aura, and she grinned as she brought it up in front of her.

Arran didn’t say anything to her as he stepped up beside her. His ability had taken over the wolf’s attention. It was one they didn’t use often. The number of times that it made more sense for the monster to attack Arran than herself could probably be counted on a single hand.

She felt her cheeks heat a little.

This is embarrassing. Her teammates were fully equipped, and here she was, their guardian, practically naked against the dire wolf.

There was no time to don armour.

But she rolled her shoulder again. Her hammer should work well enough. She felt the rage of the warrior’s spirit rocking through her body, bolstering her, burning away the pain and aches.

This would be interesting.

A dire wolf.

It was standing over the guard’s body. Arran’s [Duellist’s Gaze] skill would keep it occupied for another few heartbeats, and then he would either need to attack or retreat and allow Ailith to take on the wrath of the beast. He wasn’t sure she’d be able to without her armour.

Five heartbeats later, the skill dropped. He felt his connection to the wolf break apart.

It shook its head, like it was ridding itself of an annoying bug. Then it crouched and barrelled into a sprint. It almost vanished from sight, but Arran tracked it through his battle sense.

“Gavan!” he called.

The mage had been waiting for the right moment, but his reactions weren’t enough this time. Arran cursed. These dire wolves were enough to give anyone premature grey hair.

Slender but deadly icicles slammed down into the ground around where the guard was still lying. Once they had sunk two handspans into the ground, they grew tines that merged and formed a ice barrier around one side of the downed guard.

Nodding, Arran turned toward the dire wolf. It had stopped moving and was using its ability to blend into the snow to hide from his companions.

“New approach,” he said to the others. “Ailith is to get the guard and leave. Gavan’s on overwatch. I’m taking on the wolf.”

Ailith and Gavan just grunted at his words. Internally he smiled. They never liked it when he changed tactics on the run but sometimes it was necessary.

He’d take their complaints over losing one of them any time.

Pointing with his blade, he indicated the direction of the wolf. He heard Ailith sprint for the ice wall that protected the guard. She was typically stronger than him, so she wouldn’t have a problem dragging the guard away if they couldn’t run on their own.

The wolf, sensing its prey moving, started moving in toward them again.

“Incoming!”

“Spell ready,” Gavan called.

“Take it down,” Arran replied.

If they were really lucky, Gavan’s spells would take down the monster before it really got the chance to do some damage.

They hadn’t had much luck, lately.

It’s about time, then.

Gavan’s mind was filled with whirling motes of magic that he could bend to his will. They shone around him, showing him the natural flows of the world and the environment around him. Outside of the town, with the blankets of snow everywhere, there was an overabundance of ice-blue motes of cold elemental magic.

He let his skill grab them and bring them toward him, swirling like a tempest around his still form as he took position a dozen strides behind Arran.

“Incoming!” Arran called out.

Gavan fixed his gaze on the direction Arran indicated, but he couldn’t see the wolf. Mentally grimacing, he readied a spell. He would have to rely on Arran’s directions.

The magic in the area was raw power, and as a mage Gavan was uniquely placed to manipulate it. His system control had always been more potent than his teammates. He mentally grabbed as much of the magic he could, brought it down to the point internally that fuelled his spells.

“Spell ready,” he called. It was all he could say without breaking concentration.

“Take it down!”

The sword tracked the wolf, but only its direction. Arran had said it was coming toward them.

Gavan thought about the best application of the magic and decided on a wave of energy that would blast outward in an arc.

Starting half a dozen steps in front of Arran, Gavan pushed the motes of magic to manifest.

[Magic Manipulation] manifested the motes of ice magic in a series of tiny, deadly splinters. In an instant they appeared as if from nothing, then flashed forward with an accompanying crack of displaced air. The cold blast leaked backwards even to where Gavan was standing, the gust of wind ruffling his robes.

Switching to a different spell, [Array of Detection], Gavan laid out an area around the downed guard and Ailith, protected even as they were by his earlier [Barrier].

He held up his left hand, fingers splayed wide. The signal for all clear.

Ailith picked up the unconscious guard and began running, her gait a distance-eating movement that would see her and the guard back at Lóthaven’s walls in moments. Gavan had no hope of keeping up with them, so instead he prepared a healing spell.

[Knit Wounds] was a low-level spell, but it would help for now. Indicating the unconscious guard in Ailith’s arms was as easy as thinking it, and he gathered the energy from his internal reservoir rather than the environment — he didn’t want this spell tainted by the element.

A sudden snarl and ferocious growl ripped into the cold air, and a heartbeat later Arran replied with a shout and ringing steel.

Gavan let the healing spell activate, then turned to Arran and narrowed his eyes. He would need to time his next spell carefully.

Ailith felt the cold nipping at her more and more as she ran. She wasn’t certain but it felt like the wolf was attempting to slow her down with a skill or spell. She shook her head and ploughed onward.

It wouldn’t matter if she got inside the walls again.

Holding the guard over one shoulder, her giant hammer in the other hand, Ailith kept her focus on the ground and avoided overly snow-covered areas.

The guard wasn’t much of a burden, but her breathing was shallow and hitched every few moments. Ailith wasn’t sure that she would make it, redoubling her efforts.

Don’t you die in my arms, woman, she thought.

She recognised Gavan’s healing spell as it took hold of the guard’s wounds and tried its best to close them. It wouldn’t be enough, Ailith knew. The dire wolf was no mewling lamb. Even Ailith herself would be hard pressed to survive in one-on-one combat with the thing with the frankly awful armour the town equipped its guards with.

She shook her head. She’d have to have another word with the armourers.

The sounds of battle made her swerve away a little, getting too close without being ready to handle the wolf would be too tempting a target for the monster.

As the dire wolf and Arran’s combat moved further away, Ailith made a mistake.

She let herself believe that she’d make it back without issue.

She had even thought the words.

We’re going to make it, guard. Hold on.

And that was when the ground ahead of Ailith’s headlong sprint erupted into the distinct impression of three wolves.

Arran parried a swipe of the dire wolf’s claws. The power behind the swipe was enough to brush aside his guard, but he used the momentum to sidestep and skip backward.

He landed a cut and thrust, earning a snarl of rage from the wolf’s maw. Its blood dotted the snow around Arran as they circled and weaved in and out.

The snow itself was churning into a slushy mess that made the footing treacherous. Arran wasn’t too concerned but he knew that it would start to affect him well before the wolf.

As he disengaged to give himself a chance to breathe, he felt the cold air splitting as a lance of ice the size of his arm streaked past his head. The wind of its passing tugged at him, threatening to pull him into the displacement.

The ice lance split the ground with a deafening crack, and the shards that it split into blasted out into the wolf.

Pity that the main lance had missed, but Gavan had ensured that his spell would still do something.

Arran gritted his teeth and jumped forward, his arm extended in a thrust.

[Deceptive Thrust].

Though he had been standing four paces away from the wolf, his skill activated to send a blade of pure force into the side of the wolf as it flinched away from the shards that had shredded its muzzle.

Arran landed the blow with a shout and twisted the blade as he pulled it back. The wolf was quick to counter, snapping only an inch away from his face — its hot breath smelled of rotted meat.

He threw himself backward, slicing diagonally upward.

He frowned and cursed; his cut had barely scored the beast’s hide. His ordinary attacks were doing barely anything. He couldn’t even use his burgeoning [Stance] because it was mostly for sword-wielding enemies.

The dire wolf barrelled through his attack and got its claws on his chest, but a blast of energy pushed Arran bodily away from the monsters’ jaws as it tried to clamp down on his face.

Gavan was sweating, despite the frigid air. He took in great breaths to try and give himself as much air as possible. Throwing out the large offensive spells this fast was drawing on his reserves quicker than he normally would go through them.

He was worried that Arran wouldn’t last on his own.

But as he sent the ice lance to explode in the wolf’s face, he saw, and felt, the explosion in front of Ailith. The cloud of snow resolved into the shape of three wolves.

Cataloguing them quickly, he thanked the gods for their mercy. They were ordinary wolves, albeit with a clear affinity for the snow and ice all around them.

Ailith was too far away for him to target with a bolstering spell. He had mere moments before they were upon her.

[Fire Darts].

He conjured five darts of flame that flickered and sputtered with sparks as he held out his dominant hand. He spat the words to activate them, and they launched forward in a roaring streak that seared itself across his vision.

Blinking away the afterimage, he turned back to Arran and held out his other hand, this time sending a blast of pure force, softening it just before it hit its target, so that Arran was pushed away from the descending bite of the dire wolf.

Something inside of Gavan stabbed him with pain and he cried out. Clenching his jaw against the pain, he turned toward Ailith and her precious cargo, readying himself for another blast of [Fire Darts].

Ailith still smelled the burning air that the flaming darts had ignited around the three ice wolves in front of her, but she grinned and lunged forward thrusting the head of her hammer into the teeth of the first wolf. The heavy hammer smashed the wolf’s head aside, the singed fur blackened and an angry red patch of skin seeping blood as she knocked the beast aside.

The other two wolves dodged her hammer’s handle, one of them snapping at her hamstring, the other trying to get its teeth in the dangling arm of the guard.

Ailith screamed out a curse as the wolf’s teeth tried tearing out her tendon but praised her lucky stars that she’d had enough attributes to ignore the majority of the wolf’s razor-sharp teeth.

At the same time, she tried to lift the guard’s form higher than the wolf’s snapping teeth but wasn’t really sure if she’d succeeded.

The land dipped down from here to the town gate, which was around three hundred paces away. Ailith slid down the snow-covered hillside on one knee, desperately controlling her balance with her hammer furrowing the snow.

The two wolves had quickly turned and were dashing after her. She could practically feel their breath on her neck.

She aligned herself to the open gate, then activated a skill.

[Guardian’s Rush].

She felt the power of the system surge through her legs, and she launched forward in a horizontal leap that brought her two dozen steps in front of the wolves.

But as she landed, the snow parted to reveal a hardened layer of ice, and just before her feet touched it, she knew she’d go down. Tucking her arms in to hug the guard, she fell into a roll, slipping across the ground and ice.

Her hammer slipped from her fingers.

The furious pants and rapid patter of wolves’ feet on the ground told her she didn’t have much time to get on her feet, but she had to wait to come to a stop or the guard would tumble away.

She rolled and rolled, eventually coming to a stop.

Spitting out snow and dirt, and probably some blood, Ailith came to her knees, leaving the guard on the ground. She stepped over the woman’s limp form, one foot on either side. She shook herself and put her fists up.

This won’t be pretty, she thought.