A sharp inhale came from behind him, and Alex was surprised to realize it was Valerian. “It’s a Kruwal,” he said, and his voice had never sounded so on edge.

  The screams were picking up now, coupled by other sinister sounds. Doors being kicked in. Wood splintering. Children crying. The whole western side of the village was under attack.

  The red-skinned beastman stopped as people scrambled away from it. At his feet, Jerome the thatcher lay headless on the ground, his wife Roselle knelt sobbing beside his body. It didn’t bother batting an eye at her, like she was of no concern anymore. It simply threw its head back and roared, a deep, terrifying sound that reverberated in the air.

  Then the sound changed, and Alex realized that was no simple roar. It was a word. This beast is fucking speaking. Fear suddenly shot through him. Not speaking. He’s calling someone. A call to arms. To war. And from somewhere further north in the village, an answer came in the form of a blowing horn, three quick blasts that seemed to grind through the air and into the ears.

  The Kruwal grinned. Its—no, his teeth were a dark gray, its canines larger than any humans’. Alex dearly hoped they weren’t like that for the reasons he was thinking. With the blade of his axe still dripping blood, he lifted it into the air and pointed it right at the chaser crew. A challenge.

  Alarmed, Alex looked to his side, searching for reassurance in their strongest member. He found none. Cedric had lost all the bravado from before when he stepped in front of Lanna. He stood stock-still now, mouth agape as he stared at the hellish monster.

  “What do we do?” Diana asked, her voice shaken.

  Valerian stepped up toward the red-skinned beast. “Nothing to do but fight against the Kruwal,” he grunted. The smile on the monster’s gravelly face only widened.

  Valerian didn’t have his shield with him, or his short sword. But as he walked up, his forearms started to glow a faint golden-yellow, the same color of the giant light-shield he’d formed back in the dungeon.

  “Cedric, what do we do?” Daven repeated his sister’s words, looking expectantly at the crew leader.

  He didn’t respond, and a ball of dread formed on Alex’s stomach. If these Kruwal were enough to shake the indomitable Valerian and the powerful Cedric, then what the fuck could he do?

  “Cedric!” It was Lanna’s voice that snapped him out of his shock. Him and Cedric too.

  The crew leader glanced back at them, eyes wide, and he finally seemed to take stock of what was happening. The villagers were huddled by the wall of the inn, trying to put the crew between them and the monster. A few cried and hugged each other, trembling as a high-pitched scream rose somewhere in the village. Orson and Bryon, the village smith, stood in front of the group, arguing with each other in hushed words, arms waving and pointing. Alex overheard Bryon speak of duty and priority.

  “Uhm, fuck,” Cedric muttered, then shook his head. “Alright, alright. Let’s get everyone into the inn. The walls are made of stone, we can fortify the doors.”

  “What about Valerian?” Daven asked, just in time for a great clang to ring in the courtyard.

  Alex flinched. In the middle of the yard, Valerian and the Kruwal were locked in a contest of arms, one with a great-axe and the other with his literal arms, which were crossed in front of his body to block the blow of the weapon. Gold sparks flew as iron grinded against hard-light.

  The red-skinned beastman disengaged and swung low, aiming to cut the paladin at the knees. Valerian didn’t retreat. Instead, he stepped into the guard of the Kruwal and landed a blow to his chain-mailed chest. Alex had seen Valerian destroy monsters in the dungeon with a single punch. Here, the Kruwal only grunted and took a step back.

  “He can handle himself for now,” Cedric said, certainty finally back in his voice. He moved closer to the door that led back to the inn where his glaive leaned against the wall. It hadn’t recovered its bronze shine yet, the blade still a dull iron-gray. He grasped it by the shaft with one hand. “We need to—”

  “No, chaser,” Orson cut him off. Bryon stood behind him, eyes narrowed in resigned anger, arms crossed over his barrel-like chest. “We need to get to the other side of the bridge before these monsters do. Most villagers are there for the festival. If we hole up in the inn, they’ll be slaughtered.”

  Cedric sucked in air through his teeth, then nodded. “Very well, we’ll move to the bridge as a group and my crew will cover the retreat. Dungeon rules, everyone.”

  The horn blew again, twice in quick succession. In the distance, a great chorus of roars rose in response. Dozens of voices that cut through the screams of the villagers. More Kruwal.

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  “Shit,” Alex cursed. It seemed he would get his choice of leaving the village as soon as possible, though chased out seemed more appropriate now.

  “No time!” Orson said. Pulling Lanna by the arm, he started ushering the villagers out of the courtyard through a gap in between the inn and the chicken coop, southeast toward the river. Bryon scooped up Jerome’s wife from his cooling corpse on his way, and one of the men even picked up the small old woman and put her over his shoulder like a bale of hay.

  “Let’s go Daven,” Diana said. She pulled on him like Orson did with Lanna, and Alex followed after them.

  “Wait, no!” Daven cried. “Our things are upstairs. My bow!”

  “You can always get another bow,” Cedric tried to assuage him.

  “Easy for you to say.” Daven nodded sullenly at the glaive in his hand. “Do you just carry it everywhere with you? Why?”

  Cedric hesitated, then chuckled grimly. “For situations exactly like this,” he said.

  Alex couldn’t fault his logic. When they got to the edge of the building, the crew leader turned back to the courtyard.

  “Val!” he called. “We’re moving out!”

  Looking back, Alex thought he heard the paladin grunting, though he couldn’t tell if it was an affirmative or just the impact of another strike of the axe against his glowing arms. He’d pushed the Kruwal back toward the pigsty and away from the villagers. Even if Alex tried to help him, he’d be more likely to hit him instead of the beast. When another blow rained down on Valerian, he took it with just one arm raised above his head, and with his other he punched the Kruwal on the thigh and stomach in quick succession.

  The beastman didn’t seem to feel the effects this time, smiling wickedly at his opponent. Valerian’s arms suddenly dimmed until they stopped glowing, like a flashlight that’d run out of battery, and for a moment, Alex thought they were about to actually abandon the paladin instead of helping him out.

  The Kruwal must’ve had the same thought, because he went to raise its great axe for a final decapitating blow. Only he stopped. The Kruwal’s body went taut all of a sudden, his eyes widening in surprise.

  Alex’s eyes did the same when he saw that the golden glow that had been on Valerian’s arms was spreading across the frame of the Kruwal like a spider web. Wherever Valerian had hit him with a punch—on the chest, stomach, thighs and both shoulders—served as the epicenter for the spread, until they all connected to form a golden net of hard-light trapping the Kruwal in place.

  Alex stared in awe. “Fucking hell.”

  “Impressive,” Cedric agreed, before he put a hand on Alex’s shoulder and steered him away. “Come on, he’ll catch up to us. Our priority is the villagers. We can’t let them get too far ahead.”

  Alex didn’t need to be told twice and took off at a jog after the others. The last thing he heard from the courtyard was the sound of bones being crushed.

  xxx

  The Kruwal had been going house to house coming down from the forest, kicking in doors and terrorizing the few villagers that had stayed home instead of attending the festival on the green. So they only noticed their group when they sprang out from the grove of willows by the riverside and ran the twenty-some yards of open space between them and the bridge.

  It was a pair of the beasts coming out of a house a few doors north of the Bedstone inn that sounded the alarm. One of them was dragging an unconscious middle-aged woman by the hair out of the front door, but the other had a horn hanging from his neck.

  As soon as he saw them, he blew on it, a deep grating note. Alex didn’t think that meant good news to the humans.

  “Go! Quick!” Orson yelled at the villagers as they finally got to the bridge. The lines on his wizened face seemed to deepen as he looked at the likely dead woman with the Kruwal. Alex didn’t know if it was the scene itself that bothered him, or if it was the fact there wasn’t anything he could do to help her instead.

  The people streamed past him, running across the bridge. The villagers on the other side hadn’t been idle either. Half a dozen carts had been overturned to clog the passage in the middle of the bridge. Barrels, large trestle tables, and even a whole tree trunk that was being used as a bench in the festival buttressed the carts. A type of clay-like cement had been used to strengthen the make-shift barricade.

  As soon as the first person arrived at the blockade, the clay started to slowly melt away in a section of the barricade.

  Diana gasped at the display. “An Earth trace. The Reaper must be helping in the defense.”

  Alex almost expected Daven to make a snide comment about mages, but one of the little girls from the ceremony had tripped on a rut by the river, rolling her ankle, and the archer was too busy carrying her toward the group of villagers waiting for the barricade to open. Despite his own cynic nature, a sliver of hope wormed its way into Alex’s chest at the sight of the preparations being made.

  Valerian had caught up to them when they were halfway to the bridge, so maybe they could hold the Kruwal off using the carts, or at least scare them away. Surely with the crew, this Reaper, and all the villagers, they could come out on top.

  That pipe dream was soon dispelled when dozens of the red-skinned monsters suddenly started pouring out of the houses and side streets further away from the bridge in response to the horn. There had to be nearly thirty of them, and they roared almost as one when they saw the villagers fleeing.

  The sound made his bones vibrate inside his body.

  “First save us,” one of the women commented, and Alex wholeheartedly agreed. Because at the level he was at now, the Second surely wasn’t going to do it.

  [Status]

  Name: Alex Hart

  Level: 6

  Class: Mage

  HP: 80/80

  MP: 130/130

  [Attributes]

  Strength: 6

  Dexterity: 10

  Vitality: 8

  Power: 13

  Soul Affinity: 13

  Free Points: 10

  [Skill Points]: 3

  Fire Proficiency - 3/5

  Water Proficiency

  Lightning Proficiency

  Air Proficiency

  Earth Proficiency

  Arcane Proficiency

  [Locked]

  [Locked]

  [Locked]

  …