The berserker died with a fire arrow to the eye. Alex forced himself to watch as the Kruwal fell on top of the charred body of his older counterpart. In the days to come, there would be much more of that going around. Lots more Kruwal warriors to fight. Kill or be killed.

  He’d already killed many of the Kruwals back at the bridge, but it didn’t help to unwound the knot that’d formed inside his stomach now. Unlike then, this felt too much like killing a person.

  Shut the door on it, he told himself. Shut the door and move on. Forward. Always. The fighting around him hadn’t stopped. He didn’t have the luxury of mercy. Not today.

  Only two of the Kruwals were still alive on his side of the road, and he looked just in time to watch Celia duck under a sloppy swing of a sword and come up with her saber slicing a warrior open at the navel. The Kruwal gasped, sword falling from trembling fingers. One of the guards stepped in and bashed his shield against the bleeding Kruwal, who fell to his knees. Then it was the work of a single slash for Celia to finish him off.

  Seeing his only comrade fall, the last Kruwal, still holding on to his great axe with one hand, threw the heavy weapon at the closest guard and broke toward the forest. He ran favoring one leg, as a large gash oozed blood from his right thigh. For a fleeting moment Alex thought of letting him go. They’d gotten what they wanted already, and the guards seemed too drained to run after him.

  The image of Riverbend’s thatcher, Jerome, losing his head to one of the monsters, played through his mind. Would that Kruwal suddenly decided to decry violence and become a monk, or would he simply go back to their camp, rearm himself, and go after another farm to burn and other merchants to kill?

  Hardening his heart, the traces flew easily from his hands. First a fireball to explode onto his path, another taking him at the shoulder and spinning him around and onto the ground, then finally a fire vortex to make it quick. The flames rushed at him with a woosh of air and cut off his dying wails seconds later.

  There was a heartbeat of silence on the road. Celia and the guards watched him wearily from where they stood, a mixture of respect, awe, and fear between the five of them. Then the moment was gone and he heard a loud clang resonating in the air. The ringing of combat came from behind the wagon. Metal on hard-light. Kruwal grunts. Human shouts.

  He looked at the merchant. “Get the prisoner on the wagon and start turning us around.”

  She nodded, but he’d already turned to jump onto the driver’s seat. Celia’s little cabin had a top-cover but was open on both sides, and he rushed across the plush and richly decorated seat in case Valerian needed help.

  What awaited on the other side was a five-men shield wall slowly advancing against the remaining few Kruwal, pushing them away from the road toward the forest. Valerian stood at the center of the formation, covering the space of three men with his golden hard-light shield. The other guards stuck close to him on each side, the protection of the paladin allowing them to constantly stab out with their short swords against the Kruwal.

  Alex figured the Kruwal would’ve just tried to outflank them, as a formation like that was very static. But observing their little battlefield was answer enough. Near the edges of where the shield wall had advanced, four Kruwal warriors were left dead on the road.

  Three of them had arrows sticking out of their bodies, though Alex noted how only one had died by them, with the fletching poking out of his eye socket. The rest of the arrows didn’t penetrate more than a few inches. Tough bastards to kill, that was for sure.

  Looking back the way they came, he couldn’t spot Daven anywhere along the road. The archer must’ve moved to find a better angle to shoot through the forest, perhaps. From his own position, Alex couldn’t do much to help either, unless he wanted to risk hitting one of the men in the back.

  The thought of trying to lob one of his fireballs like a basketball came to mind, and it would be a useful skill to have if he ever really needed to attack a walled city. But he’d never done it before, and he didn’t think starting now when he could accidentally kill someone was the smartest play.

  He needn’t have worried. Cheers suddenly rose up amongst the men. Through the golden sheen of Valerian’s hard-light shield, he caught the back of three Kruwals disappearing into the tree line as the guards raised their weapons in the air, shouting out for their victory.

  Valerian didn’t share in the guards’ jubilation. The hard-light construct faded and he turned back toward the road, dark eyes showing no more emotion than if he’d just gone for a piss in the woods. Alex wondered if he’d one day figure out what made the paladin tick before he left, but he doubted it.

  Still, it was done. A long breath escaped him and he sat back onto the driver’s seat, relieved. He was sure Celia wouldn’t mind.

  After a moment, Valerian walked up to him, hanging his axe by his side and his shield on his back. His borrowed guard clothes were lightly spotted with blood, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He reached into a pocket and showed him Diana’s coin.

  “Were you able to do it?” he asked.

  Alex felt like slapping himself. “I didn’t even think of it,” he admitted. He’d been so focused on finishing the Kruwals off he forgot their plan B. Now who’s the idiot?

  “I remembered it just now, too. It makes no matter.” He nodded toward the last wagon.

  Alex looked back to see the four guards struggling to carry the rope-bound Kruwal into the wagons while the merchant threatened him with her sabre. He chuckled at the scene. The guards that had fought with Valerian soon rushed to help, and he noticed all of their swords were dripping with Kruwal blood.

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  A thought suddenly struck him. He had leveled up back at the bridge after killing only a few of the Kruwal. Would the same happen to these guards? He imagined at least some of them had gone through the Selection Festival like the kids in Riverbend and even Daven and Diana in their own small village.

  The guards might not have gone to any dungeons to level up, but that might even help them, as their lower levels would mean they needed less experience to plateau. In that sense, a battle of attrition situation might eventually turn in their favor, as the humans slowly leveled up and grew stronger.

  In reality, Alex didn’t even know if the Kruwal had a system like theirs. He knew it was really called the Aureate System, but the people here called it the First Gift. Did the Kruwal even believe in the First like humans to receive this gift? According to Valerian, male Kruwals couldn’t even use magic, so surely they didn’t? Unless it was a specific cultural thing where they just refused to become mages and its subsequent classes.

  There were just too many things he didn’t know. Thankfully, Valerian broke through his thoughts.

  “Where’s Daven?”

  Alex blinked. Rising from the seat, he looked around once more, then shrugged when he didn’t see the archer.

  “Gone deeper into the forest, if I had to guess,” he said. “Sounds like him to try and slip the coin on a Kruwal just to say he managed to do what we couldn’t.”

  Valerian nodded, but didn’t say anything else. As they waited for Daven, they watched as Celia and her guards worked on turning their three-wagon caravan around. In reality, she simply disconnected the smaller one at the front with her cabin from the rest and connected it to the back of the last wagon with the horses facing back toward Holdenfor.

  The last details were almost in place when a shout came from the forest.

  “Guys!”

  “There he is,” Alex said, and maybe because it was Daven he didn’t notice the urgency in his voice.

  Valerian did. He rose from where he rested with his back to a wagon wheel, shield already strapped to his left arm. “Something’s wrong,” he said.

  Alex frowned, tried to hear something. A rustle in the foliage, and another shout, “Guys, run!”

  But then it was too late. He had no time to react when a tidal wave almost as tall as he was suddenly roared from the forest, rushed across the road, and crashed against them. He couldn’t even pull on the power before the force of the water swept him off his feet, sending him tumbling back like a child at the beach caught by a swell.

  Alex’s world turned upside down for a moment. Arms whirled. Feet overhead. The roar of the wave filled his ears. He tried to breathe, but only managed to swallow down water. Any air left in him exploded out of his mouth when his back collided against one of the wagons.

  Panicking, he opened his eyes, but couldn’t see anything in the turbid water. He was choking. The surge kept him pinned against the rough wood of the wagon, water rushing at him as if it was trying to force itself into his mouth, his nose, his eyes. Like it had a mind of its own.

  He clawed at it. Pushed against the water. Tried and failed to bring out his fire powers. No air. He needed air.

  The wave dipped without warning. His head broke through and Alex coughed, hurled out what felt like a gallon of disgusting brownish liquid, heaved, coughed again. Finally, air filled his lungs. A relief sweeter than any he’d ever felt. The wave receded again, until he felt himself sliding down the side of the wagon to land in a heap over the sodden ground.

  Panting, he tried to gather his wits. The reason for his relief became evident. Valerian stood before him like a boulder amidst a rushing river. For a second it seemed like his whole body was surrounded by a golden glow. The hard-light projection looked brighter than ever before.

  Alex blinked. His eyes were hazy. Pushing himself up, his feet slipped on the muddy road and he had to hold onto the wagon. He felt dizzy. The taste of dirt and bile was thick on his tongue. He looked up again at the sound of a wave crashing against Valerian’s hard-light shield, the impact so forceful that his feet dug trenches on the earth as he was slowly pushed back.

  Waver flowed to both sides of the giant golden shield, smashing against the wagons and nearly tipping them over, only to wrap around mid air and flowing back toward the forest, where it joined a seemingly endless wall of swirling, dirty brown water, as if it was in a closed loop.

  Looking around, Alex could see a few guards struggling to stand up, having been swept away as well, while Celia and a few others sought refuge behind the wagons. He had taken the brunt of the first wave, it seemed, as no one else had been pinned against the wagons, only swept off their feet. They could still take their prisoner and retreat.

  But even as water splashed continuously against the shield, he heard that which had become his least favorite sound in the world. A Kruwal horn blasted somewhere close to the forest. Cursing, he turned to where he’d seen Celia.

  “Get out of here, now!” he yelled at her, but didn’t wait for a response as something suddenly cracked.

  He looked to see fissures appear on the surface of the hard-light, as it had back in the Dungeon when all those skeletons were smashing against it. But instead of continuing its onslaught until the shield broke, the wave stopped and retreated back to the wall of water amidst the trees. The water there was a mini hurricane, crashing and rushing and swirling around itself, gathering within it loose branches and foliage, and a heartbeat later dozens of tendrils shot out of it like the tentacles of an octopus.

  The water tendrils moved fast through the air toward Valerian, and instead of bashing against the hard-light, they flew past it and wrapped around him and his projection shield whole. The paladin struggled, managed to cut two tendrils with his axe, but more simply shot out from the water wall to wrap him tighter.

  Desperate, Alex pulled on the power, trying to form his fire traces to help Valerian out. But the power was sluggish to respond. The flow of it felt heavy and slow. By the time he managed to shoot out two fire arrows at the tendrils, which were easily batted out of the air by a sprout of water, the mass of tendrils contracted, tightening their hold, and Valerian’s hard-light shield broke with an echoing crack.

  The paladin grunted as the water suddenly wound around him instead, including his neck. Alex formed and shot off as many traces as he could, fireballs and arrows and vortexes and scythes, aiming at the tendrils, at the wall of water, at anything that moved. But his traces simply weren’t strong enough.

  More tendrils simply shot out of the swirling water wall to slap down the traces like they were nothing. Steam hissed and rose into the air whenever water met fire, and the results were always the same.

  To make matters worse, Kruwal warriors broke out of the tree line to his right, screaming and hollering, and his heart dropped. There were at least six of them, and they rushed straight at Celia and the guards as they tried to settle the startled horses, who were whinnying and stomping their hooves over the mud.

  We can’t win this fight. Not against a Matriarch mage this powerful. The realization was grim, but he knew it was realistic. He couldn’t abandon Valerian in the middle of a fight, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still get their plan done.

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