We sat very still. One monster at a time had been challenging enough, but five at once might prove too much even for Amelia and my combined talents.
“They haven’t seen us,” said Amelia quietly.
“It looks like they are intent on reaching the tower,” I replied. “Even if they did see us, I’m not sure if they’d care. They seem to be being drawn uphill.”
Sure enough, even as I spoke, the second bear reared up on its hind legs and scanned the area with its fierce little red eyes. It looked straight at us. Then, it snorted flame, dropped to all fours again, and ignored us to continue uphill.
We had no time to consider what this might mean, because at that moment a shout pierced the air, coming from the direction of the tower. It was followed by shouts, the voice definitely that of a woman.
I jumped to my feet. “We have to help her!”
Amelia put her hand on my arm. “Wait, we don’t know what’s up there. It might not be safe.”
“Obviously it’s not safe, there are monsters running up that hill. But we can’t leave a woman up there to die. We might be able to help.”
“What if the voice is a trap? I have read of enchantments before that could lure strangers to their doom with false voices.”
The clouds above the tower flashed with lightning, and thunder boomed out overhead. The sound of a woman shouting came once more.
“You might be right, Amelia, but I can’t take that chance. If someone is in danger up there and I could have helped, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
“Alright, I’ll come with you.” Amelia smiled, as if she was secretly pleased that I’d made the right decision, though her face still had lines of worry in it.
“Leave the food,” I said. “We can come back for it if all goes well.”
And if it didn’t, then it would become food for flies, just like we would.
Chapter Eight
Side by side, we both began to make our way up the hill. As we climbed, we glanced around to see more and more bears and boars emerging from the trees at the bottom of the hill, all moving upward.
“Be careful,” I said to Amelia as we crested the top of the hill, “we don’t know what we’re going to find.”
The top of the hill flattened out into a broad, open space littered with fallen stones, the remains of the tower and defenses which had once stood here. In the center, two remaining walls of the central tower still stood, soaring up from the middle of a wide flagged plaza with weeds and young trees growing from cracks in between the stones.
All around the hilltop, bears and boars were converging on the central tower. Flames flared from the mouths of the bears, and freezing fog blasted with every breath of the boars. My sense of their Elemental Cores was pulling me in every direction, and a glance at Amelia’s grim expression told me she was feeling the same thing. It was an assault on our Elemental Sensitivity.
At the same time, the roaring and stampeding of the magical Beasts made an incredible racket. Above the top of the ruined tower, the spinning vortex of cloud blocked out the sun. Lightning flickered from within its depths.
Suddenly, a great fork of lightning crackled down from the cloud to the base of the tower. Unlike regular lightning, this elemental force was a deep purple in color. The boom of thunder that followed this was deafening, and we both ducked instinctively. Through the ringing in our ears that followed the roar of the thunder, we heard the fierce shout of the woman again.
“Come on!” I yelled to Amelia, and we both broke into a run.
I dodged the great stones lying on the hillside all around the tower, Amelia at my side. The tower walls blocked our view of the central plaza, but as we ran around the side of the tower, bringing the central plaza into view, I pulled up short.
Amelia gasped as she stopped beside me.
In the middle of the plaza, flanked by the ruined walls and tumbledown stones of the old tower, a woman was holding her own against a relentless attack by monsters.
She was tall, nearly my height. A leather skirt with shining runes swirled about her slender legs, and her long, silver-white hair was whipped about by the wind of the storm. A leather breastplate hugged her figure, showing off the curve of her hips and her generous breasts. Her skin was olive-colored, her eyes a bright violet, and her expression was fierce but terrified.
Scattered around the plaza were the corpses of several monsters; it looked as if she had fought off several waves of attackers already. As we watched, more were lumbering toward her from every direction.
Most of them were bears and boars, just like the monsters I’d fought yesterday, but there was one creature that was different. Its body was like a gigantic lizard, scaly and shining, with a neck and head like that of a snake. It stood on all fours like a lizard, but it was easily twice as tall as a man. The long, sinuous neck swung the horrible head back and forth as it moved toward the woman. As it swung its head, a long, forked black tongue flickered in and out, and lightning crackled around its jaws.
The bears and boars were congregating around this monstrosity. They crowded forward as a group, spouting flame, frost, and lightning at her, but then they snarled and drew back rather than press the attack.
For a moment, I wondered how she had defended herself so far. She had a sword, a broad-bladed shortsword, but I couldn’t see how she could have held off so many monsters single handedly.
How had she done it?
The answer came when the woman let out a shout and slashed the air with her blade.
The thunder boomed again, and lightning shot
