From inside the Steading, they were able to look out of small defensive slits in the walls that overlooked the causeway and see the lesser briars crawl over one another to reach the door. The small, many-limbed monsters were basically sentient thorn bushes that faintly glowed with an internal, crimson light.

A far cry from the Awakened that they had defeated. Unfortunately, there were dozens and dozens more lesser briars than there had been Awakened.

The maliciously thorny carpet would have no trouble masticating a young adventurer to death. Of that, Faye had zero doubts.

“Okay, we’re trapped,” she said.

Dáithí gave her a strange look. “Trapped? Why’d’ya say that?”

“Because she does not know our Steading, boy,” rumbled the deep voice of Steader Bánn as he descended the stone staircase. “Now, I suggest you find yer mother and apologise for scaring her like that.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Now.”

The boy nodded and darted off into the bowels of the ground floor of the Steading. Faye tried to hide her smile.

“Thank you, lass, for what ye did.”

Faye turned the smile onto the Steader. “Of course, Steader Bánn! Thank you for the support.”

Steader Bánn actually frowned when she thanked him. She paused, unsure if she had somehow offended him.

“Without my daughter, it would have been for naught.”

“How so?”

“It were her that imbued the arrows, lass. Without it, they just bounced off.”

Faye’s eyes widened. “Oh! I thought that was a skill of yours.”

The Steader was already shaking his head. “Not at all. I’m a Steader, lass, not an adventurer like you. I have no access to skills like that.” The Steader frowned and crossed his arms. “I am once more thankful my daughter decided to take the path she has.”

“That’s nice to hear, Father,” the daughter in question, Ceri, said from the top of the stairs. She beamed at Faye and her father and skipped down the wide steps. “I think we all made a good team. Though, Faye, I admit I was terrified when I saw those things hit you like that!”

Faye grimaced and rubbed her chest. The pain had already faded, but the memory lingered much longer.

“Ah, as was I, I assure you.”

“How’d’ya feel, lass? Need a healing tonic?” Steader Bánn said.

“Who needs healing?” came the loud call of Steader Meirí as she entered the entry hall. “What are you all standing about for? You’re making my hallway look untidy. Come on in, all of you.”

Faye blanched. “Uh, thank you, ma’am, really…”

“None of that. You brought Dáithí back home. I saw you stand up to those monsters with nary a thought for yourself. Husband, bring our guest inside.”

“But what about the briars?” Faye exclaimed. “Won’t they break in?”

Steader Meirí gave Faye a strange look and a bemused smile. “No, of course not. The walls are sturdier than that, my dear. Plus, we already brought in your two animal handlers. They are quite happy to be inside.”

Faye shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m really not trying to be rude. It’s just, Arran and my friends are still out there, and I can’t sit inside safely whilst they are. Is there another entrance I could leave by?”

The Steader looked at her husband with a barely concealed look of frustration, but Steader Bánn shrugged at his wife.

“The lass is right, love. She is an adventurer, it’s what they do.”

Steader Meirí let out a huff as she nodded, and quickly strode away. Faye went to say something, but the other woman had already disappeared.

“I saw you take those hits,” the Steader said. He was looking at her with a critical eye. “I’ve known strong men that would not turn down the chance to sit behind safe walls during a small swarm like this. How are ye not even tremblin’ at the thought of going back out there?”

Faye shrugged. “I levelled, which is the whole point of being out here, and I feel better than before the briars showed up, honestly. If I can get out of the Steading safely and back to my friends, I can tell them what’s happened here.” She frowned. “We’ve been incredibly lucky that everything has been so weak.”

Steader Bánn grumbled and nodded when Faye said she had levelled.

Ceri snorted, loudly. “Lucky that you utilise fire and I was on the roof with father to imbue his arrows.”

Faye perked up. “Ah, yes! How did you do that? They were glowing. What did you imbue them with exactly? Could I do that?”

The Steader put up a hand. “Before you both get into that… there’s food and drink in the kitchen. At least have something to eat before goin’ back out there. My wife would feel better if ye did.”

Faye nodded, and she followed Ceri quickly to the table.

Immediately, Ceri started explaining what she had been doing. Faye had not seen the girl do anything, but that was because standing in the open when performing exacting magic such as imbuement was stupid.

Ceri was a steady, intelligent young woman who was perhaps wasted on an out-of-the-way farmhold like this one, but it appeared that her time away as an apprentice had not been wasted; not even a second.

“I have a skill for it now, of course,” she was saying. “But really, there are plenty of mages and enchanters that don’t use an exact skill if their manipulation ability is high enough.”

“Manipulation ability?” Faye queried. She had cupped her hands around the warm ceramic mug the Steader had placed in front of her. It felt good to have something warm after being outside for so long — the cold weather was easy to forget when she was in the throes of battle.

“Yeah, it’s not a skill skill, it’s the kind of ability the system cannot put a number to,” Ceri replied.

“Oh!” Faye exclaimed. “That’s good to know!”

“Mhmm.”

The girl was an eager teacher. Faye lapped up everything she had to say. Apparently imbuing mana into weapons was the first form of enchantment that many crafters or enchanters learnt. Many of them would not specialise in it, it was considered a crude and inefficient way of using magic.

Faye replied that she hardly cared if it was crude. Her sword had bounced off the Awakened Briar, which had almost cost her dearly.

The process that Ceri described sounded almost simple. Faye suspected that it was easier said than done, however.

“It’s hard enough for people to manipulate mana as it is,” Ceri said, “that you’re more likely to have nothing happen. Buuuut… I should warn you that imbuing an object too much will cause an adverse overflow.”

Faye narrowed her eyes. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

Ceri blinked. “If you think it means ‘explodes violently’, then, yes, yes it does.”

They both laughed at that. Ceri’s teacher had shown her the result of over-imbuing once, and she had striven hard to make sure it never happened.

“I don’t think I’ll get there soon,” Faye said, “and now that I’ve eaten and drank — thank you ma’am! It was delicious.”

Steader Meirí had come back into the kitchen just as Faye was making excuses. She really did think that she had to get to Arran and the others.

“Your friends are strong,” the Steader said, as if she could sense what Faye was thinking. “They will be fine. I brought you these.”

She held out two glass bottles. They were small, would fit probably in the palm of the hand, and were filled with liquid.

“I’m afraid we only have one of each to spare.”

“Uhm,” Faye said, swallowing a little. “Are those potions, by any chance?”

Steader Meirí nodded. “Aye, of course. As I said, we don’t have many. But for bringing Dáithí back, you should have these.”

Faye was about to say that she could not accept them because she had had adverse reactions to potions in the past when something she could not quite remember twigged in her mind.

“Of course, thank you, Steader Meirí.”

She accepted the bottles and tried to keep hold of the fleeting memory, but it was gone. She felt a strange assurance that she would not have the same issue as before but could not for the life of her remember why. Shaking the strange sensation away, she tucked the bottles into a small belt pouch.

“The one in the square bottle is healing. The circular is mana.”

Faye’s eyebrow rose. That would be important to remember. She felt daft for not asking, but honestly, she had almost expected any potion to follow the rules of most video games. Red for health and blue for mana. It seemed that was not the case.

“Thank you, really. For the food, hospitality, and the potions.”

“Nonsense!” the woman said, waving away Faye’s thanks. “As I said, you saved our boy.”

“Aye,” Steader Bánn said as he stepped into the room. “That you did, lass. I’ll be sure to let the Guild know, too.”

“Are the wards set?” his wife asked.

“Aye, that they are.” Steader Bánn turned to Faye. “If you’re insistin’ on leavin’, just know that once the wards are up, they ain’t coming down for a full day. And don’t stick around to watch too closely. Ceri developed a nasty surprise for besieging forces, didn’t’cha, my girl?”

Ceri nodded. “Withering spell. Nasty. Should work wonders on forest monsters!”

Faye agreed. The monsters were more wood and plant than meat and bone, if they even had anything that Faye would normally have expected in a living thing.

The Steaders showed Faye to the small, secured, and secret, entrance at the back of the Steading. The passage led from their cellar out into the outskirts of the land beyond.

“It comes out in a field, should be far enough out that you don’t see no monsters,” Bánn said to her at the first of the locked doors. “I cannot leave the Steading grounds, as I said. I don’t trust the lads, neither. Ceri, though,” he said with a smile at his daughter, “has a good head on her shoulders. She’ll see you right.”

Ceri was an adept at slipping through the passage beneath her parents’ Steading. She explained quietly that it was because there had been many secretive exits throughout her youth to play or avoid chores. She said that she had always thought her parents had allowed them all to learn of and use the passage — some kind of training, perhaps.

Faye was not sure that letting children play in a secret escape tunnel was the wisest choice parents could make, but she did not want to argue with the results. The final door was in a section of passage that had turned at a right angle, no light sources were present, and the thick, barred door had a small viewport to look through.

“You have to dowse your lights if you brought them with you,” Ceri whispered, “Da’s always said that just because most people don’t find this door doesn’t mean it’s always safe.”

Faye nodded. She drew her wooden sword. For a moment, she lamented the loss of the sabre beneath the thorns and bodies of the lesser briars.

“Good luck, Faye,” Ceri said, when they had checked the coast was clear. “We will engage the ward the moment I’m back inside. Don’t try and get in for at least a day, okay?”

“Of course. Thanks, Ceri.”

And soon enough, Faye was alone.

The final door to the Steading’s escape passage quietly but firmly shut behind Faye as she stepped out into the dark of a field to the north of the main Steading. A natural wall had been created at this edge of the field by raised earthwork and thick, hedge-like bushes. Shielded from view, Faye felt satisfied that she could skirt north and join the road leading to the others easily enough.

In the distance, about two hundred metres south, she could still hear the strange creaks and cries of the briars, lesser and Awakened. But here, Faye’s breath was the only sound.

She carried on, darting forward along the edge of the natural wall of the field.

If her mental map was correct, she was only a relatively thin field’s distance from the road. At a convenient break in the growth atop the earthen embankment, Faye scrambled up and over into the next field.

This one had been ploughed, and the great rents in the earth provided a somewhat uneven path. She cursed. If she traipsed across the field, it would be patently obvious to anyone who came across her path that she had gone that way.

She looked about her.

Is that something I should even be worried about?!

She soon decided that she did not need to worry. Setting off at a brisk walk, Faye tried to ensure that she moved carefully across the furrows in the soil. The earth had been turned and whilst it did not capture her feet like mud might, it was still loamy enough that she sunk in by a few inches with each step.

She could see the road ahead. The moon had emerged from over the eastern horizon at some point, and its meagre light reflected from the relatively open road. She was only fifty metres or so from it when her [Swordfighter’s Sense] pinged for something near the road.

She dropped to a knee immediately, hoping she had not been seen. She kept her eyes wide to try and see whatever…

Ah! she thought. I see you.

At least two figures were visible, but their silhouettes were hard to make out. There were no light sources behind the pair, and it was almost a combination of her Sense and her senses that were telling her they were actually present.

There were no indications they knew Faye was there. In fact, they were heading south along the road, toward the Steading.

Keeping low to the earth, Faye moved forward a little slower than she had been. She kept her Senses poised. As she got close to the road, she pinged the active version of [Swordfighter’s Sense]. It told her that the two figures she had seen were, somehow, already hostile as they stood enough in her mind easily.

There were no other hostiles in range of her skill.

Hostiles moving towards the Steading raised all kinds of alarm bells in Faye’s mind. Not least was the fact that two humans were possibly behind the attack on the Steading.

It was no swarm at all, she realised. A swarm doesn’t go where it’s told.

She quickly vaulted the wall at the side of the field, it being only a low boundary marking in truth. On the road, she followed quietly and soon was close enough to hear an unhurried conversation.

“The adventurers are at the beast corpse. Why are we heading in the wrong direction?”

“We know one of them went to the Steading, fool. Why fight more of them when we can dispatch one on their own easily?”

“But the others…”

“Can fight the adventurers for us, and we shall return to gather the spoils.”

Faye’s hand tightened on the handle of the sword.

What do I do? The others are facing more than these two. But I don’t think I can take two unknown opponents at once…

Faye’s thoughts were cut off when a harsh burst of sound and light blasted from the Steading. The sounds were the screams of the briars, and the light was a violet wave of magic that flowed outward from the walls in pulses.

The two figures had stopped, dumbstruck as much as Faye.

“Goddess’ Eyes, what is that?”

“The briars bonds are breaking en masse,” the second figure said. “The Steading is protected.”

The other spat. “Cursed Steading walls, I told you we should have stayed by the beast.”

“Bah, you cannot see beyond the end of your nose. The adventurers are too much for the likes of us. Let the others weaken them.”

“Or kill them!”

“Perhaps!”

“Gah, the Goddess does not love cowardice!”

“It is not cowardice, brother, it is prudence. I shall break open that stone egg and deliver the soft yolks inside to Her.”

“You’re a fool, and I’ve listened long enough. You’ll next see me sating my fill whilst you watch, empty handed.”

Before the other could reply, the figure turned and stalked off the road, stretching out into a full run by the time they reached the tree line.

The other figure watched them go and for a few moments stayed still. Faye was half certain she would follow the first figure into the forest.

But she turned and regarded the walls of the Steading again, walking forward with purpose.

Faye stalked closer.

Okay, one on one is much better odds.