Arran grunted as the dire wolf bodily slammed into him. It almost knocked the wind out of him, but his hardened body merely hitched before allowing him to throw himself around the wolf’s body, sword flashing and slashing as he moved.

The wolf was too close, it was able to twist and attack him with a furious speed that left him breathless. It was all he could do to keep up.

The wolf disengaged briefly and let out an ear-splitting howl that rang his ears and tried to disorient him. It almost worked, too.

In the end, it was Gavan’s intervention that ended the fight.

“Arran, move aside!”

He reacted without questioning. Slamming his pommel into the wolf’s jaw, he knocked aside its attack and sprinted off at an angle, heading away from where he’d knocked the thing’s teeth.

A moment later, intense heat roared out behind him and the force of a blast of magic picked him up and threw him forward.

He cursed just before he hit the ground.

Gavan clamped his jaws shut on the latest burst of pain that bloomed behind his eyes. He was dangerously low on magic. If he forced himself to cast more spells, he’d end up insensate around the wolves. That would not only put his own life in peril but those of his team, too.

He couldn’t countenance that.

Making sure that the dire wolf was down, and it certainly didn’t seem to be able to move, Gavan looked toward where Ailith had landed.

She was grappling and punching the wolves. She’d lost her grip on her hammer at some point, but Gavan wouldn’t hold that against her. He could barely lift the thing.

Pulling a slender blade from its scabbard on his belt, he ran the opposite direction, toward the downed dire wolf. Ailith was on her feet, and she had more than enough health to survive those wolves until Arran got there.

The problem was that Gavan’s last spell had knocked their fighter on his arse.

Singed fur and blackened skin greeted Gavan as he came to a halt near the wolf’s corpse. He already knew it was dead, but he had to get closer to confirm his suspicion.

[Analyse]

~ Dire Wolf, level 16 ~

Deceased.

He grimaced. No wonder they had been struggling. A second-tier monster like this so close to the town…

Gavan shook away his inner thoughts. That would be something the Guild would deliberate on; it wasn’t his job to worry about the larger picture.

He got his hand underneath Arran’s armpit and flipped him onto his back.

Arran spluttered away the snow that had covered his face. He was breathing hard and had his eyes scrunched shut.

“How are you?”

“I am in pain, a lot of pain,” Arran said. “Can you heal me?”

“I’m out.”

Arran’s drawn-out moan made Gavan grin, internally anyway — he couldn’t let the man see how amusing his antics were, or he’d never stop.

“Ailith needs help.”

Arran’s face smoothed out. He asked for Gavan’s hand, so he pulled him to his feet.

“Thanks. What’s she dealing with?”

Gavan turned to look at their guardian.

“I don’t know.”

Ailith’s skin was turning blue, darkening through to black. It wasn’t accompanied by pain. Not anymore. The pain had stopped just about the same time that all feeling had ceased.

It had worried her, at first.

But she didn’t let herself stop fighting the wolves. Their elemental affinity was perfect for this weather, the cold air and snow on the ground combining to give them extra strength and toughness when Ailith was drained by the very same things.

That didn’t stop her from slamming her numb fists into their ribs, neck, and throat as often as they got close.

Unfortunately, the guard that she had been lugging around was still unconscious. The moonlight didn’t light the woman’s face, but Ailith could tell that the proximity of these ice wolves was not doing her any favours either.

A howl and a muffled boom over her shoulder told her that the other two were still engaging in combat with the other wolf. She grit her teeth and growled out her pain through a low, chant-like sound that the wolves echoed with their own growls.

“Come on, I can take you all. You’re not getting her.”

The looks in the ice wolves’ eyes told her that they were confident they might get more than one meal, that night.

Arran narrowed his eyes. The wolves surrounding Ailith were all white and blue, the moonlight shone from their fur in a way that made it look like they sparkled with frost. He was sure that the elemental wolves were deadly if Ailith had to stay in a close combat engagement with them.

Not for the first time, he cursed their lack of a ranged attacker. Gavan could fill that role — Arran grimaced, because Gavan wanted to fill that role but the reality of their situation meant that Gavan supported the team as the healer more often — but in this situation, Gavan had already pulled them through the encounter with the dire wolf.

Arran wasn’t sure the mage could help against these other wolves. He was out of mana, and the way he grimaced, the headaches had already started.

As Arran ran toward his team’s guardian, who was admirably still standing tall over her unconscious charge, he scanned the wall of the town. They were about a hundred yards distant which meant that the guards would be able to see them.

If anyone had been standing on the walls.

He shook his head.

For only a single, low-level guard to be on duty at night was madness.

But he threw thoughts of guard rotations aside, because he was almost close enough to intervene.

Gavan trailed Arran’s running charge by a dozen steps and the other man kept pulling away from him with every lunge. Though Gavan tried to keep up with the physical aspects of their work, his class was, in the end, a non-physical attributed class.

He wouldn’t make excuses about it, but it didn’t change the reality of the situation.

He put his head down and pushed harder.

Wolves are pack animals. It’s in their blood.

When one would rush her from the left, another would nip in from the back and try to bite out her hamstring.

They got close enough a few times that Ailith was sweating. One wrong move and they would cripple her, tear her throat out, and send freezing cold throughout her body.

When one of them launched straight for her throat, instead of meeting its leap as she had done before, she crouched low.

Turning into the attack of the other wolves, as she had expected, she caught a snap of teeth against her cheek that stung but she headbutted it away. Her hands pushed out and straight armed the second wolf away, just as the third flung itself overhead.

The one she had headbutted was still rather close, so she grabbed its head and neck between her forearms, then pulled it over and used her legs to propel it high into the air behind her.

The wolf that had sailed over her darted in and instead of attacking Ailith, tried to worry at the downed guard’s leg.

“Oi!” Ailith shouted, rushing back to her feet and in the face of the wolf. It seemed to grin at her before growling and darting back out of reach.

Then came a sharp pain in the side of her right leg.

She gasped out and dropped, the leg no longer able to bear her weight.

An icy pain spread throughout her lower leg, making it tough to even think about getting back to her feet.

The ice wolf’s maw was covered in her own blood, the dangerously intelligent look of maliciousness in its blue eyes enough to make her shiver from more than the cold.

Arran watched as the gods seemingly intervened, because Ailith somehow managed to throw one of the wolves directly in his path.

It came down on its side, tumbling to a stop and it had already bounced back to its feet when Arran reached it.

He lunged forward, the sharpened steel tip of his blade sinking easily into the wolf’s body. He hit something vital, because the wolf instantly dropped down to the ground.

Ice wolves didn’t bleed as much as an ordinary wolf, but he felt the icy magic the wolf naturally held in its grip release.

Ice Wolf defeated. Experience gained.

Arran felt the system’s reward for completing the kill flow through him, and he grinned as he darted forward again.

His breath caught in his throat when one of the other wolves darted in and practically tore Ailith’s thigh apart.

The burning heat of his anger coalesced into a desire, the coursing emotion flowed through his arm, into his hand and his fingers gripped hard.

[The Final Lunge].

As he stretched out, his body, arm and sword forming a perfect line aimed directly at the wolf that had taken part of Ailith’s leg in a bite, Arran felt the system take a portion of his stamina and health to project the essence of his sword, the steel, the sharpness, the cutting intent.

Everything that goes into a lunge, projected out in a blast of energy that speared the ice wolf in a spray of magic.

Ice Wolf defeated. Experience gained.

Gavan saw Arran’s perfectly executed skill. He grinned, but even as the fighter came to a stop, sliding across the snowy ground as his lunge and projected energy cut the second wolf down, Gavan sent himself surging forward.

At the last moment, feeling that the last of his reserves were only just out of reach for the spells he could cast, Gavan threw himself toward the final wolf. His slender rapier was easily wielded without much in the way of physical strength or attributes.

Never before had he wanted more physical attributes than he had been granted. But never before had one of the team been this close to death with only Gavan’s physical ability standing between them and certain death.

The last wolf, recognising that it no longer had allies, tried to avoid the kneeling Ailith’s arms and it darted in from her injured side to attack the downed guard.

It was still watching Ailith’s hands when Gavan slid in, his rapier poised, arm coiled like a spring.

The ice wolf, Gavan wasn’t sure how, sensed his approach and turned at the last moment, its muzzle rippling in savage warning, the bass rumble of its growl enough to send sweat inching down his back.

But it was too late. The wolf was stuck scrambling backward and Gavan was in reach.

He snapped his arm out, sending the rapier forward and through the wolf’s eye in a single thrust.

Successful combat.

Ice Wolf, level 13, defeated.

Moderate experience gained.

Experience shared among all combatants.

Ailith collapsed backward, gritting her teeth around the pain and tried not to cry out loud too much. The wolves were dead, but where there were some monsters there were always others.

She closed her eyes and pressed her arm across her brow.

“You’re fine, just a scratch.”

She tried to say something back, but it just came out as a pained hiss of air through her clenched jaw.

Arran didn’t say anything else. It’s how she knew he was truly worried.

But the flow of a liquid across her exposed skin and open wound was enough to bring down the pain to more manageable levels.

“Ah gods, that stings,” she said. “Come on Gavan, stop being selfish. Where’s the healing?”

“I’m out,” Gavan replied. She couldn’t see his face, but she heard the headache through his words. She would have winced if she had been able. Instead she sighed.

“We’ll get you back to the Guild. They’ll patch you up.”

“What about the guard?” she asked.

Arran scrambled about for a few seconds, not responding. Ailith tried looking at her leg, but the effort of sitting up drained her too much. She laid back on the frozen ground.

“She’s breathing, at least.”

She just nodded at that. Good.

The healing concoction that Arran had poured on her leg was a tiny barrier against the tide of pain, but it was all they had for now. She summoned up her willpower from the depths of her being and forced herself to sit up, then ever so slowly got to her feet.

By the time she was mobile, she was shaking from exertion. Arran had one of her arms over his shoulders, and Gavan was struggling to haul the guard with them.

They were a sorry sight, Ailith was sure. But at least Faye had listened to her and had gone back inside the town. The wolves would have torn her apart.

Thank the gods for small mercies.