“More!” Lia shouted, planting both her swords in the dirt beside her. “More, Marin!” Marin shook off her stupor and leapt sideways towards the next tree, striking it with a similarly devastating blow. Lia knelt and hefted up a ten-foot-long chunk of jagged wood from the wreckage on the ground. She tested its weight in her arms as she stood and turned to the approaching pair of monsters, then sent it screaming downfield in their direction. The missile grazed against chitin as the closest beast dropped haphazardly from the trees to the ground to avoid the attack, taking a moment to right itself before it continued its charge.
The rhythmic tremors of Marin’s rampage echoed in my chest like a wardrum and pushed me harder towards my own foe. It hung upside down in a towering emberwood, its taloned feet securely lodged in the bark as it waited motionless for my arrival. While the beast’s ovaline body was suspended ten feet above the ground, safely out of my normal reach, its bladed arms hung down nearly to the forest floor, gently swaying back and forth in anticipation. Hollow sockets watched me eyelessly below circular rows of dripping teeth as I burst into view and made a snap assessment of my position.
Six seconds until reinforcements arrive. I rushed ahead, ready to spring into the air and spear the beast through its chest, but the waiting scythes flashed up towards my gut before I left the ground. I caught the blows on the flat of my sword and was immediately thrown backwards from the immense force of the attack. A spike of pain shot through my back as I smashed into a nearby tree, and my Pain Reduction activated autonomously. Four seconds. My legs coiled up beneath me against the emberwood and launched me in for another clash, this time at a lower angle. I slid beneath the beast’s rising blades and impaled my sword into the tree trunk, activating the Shatter rune in my ring with a burst of mana.
The tree transformed into a rapidly expanding cloud of fine sawdust as it disintegrated entirely from root to leaf. With its perch suddenly destroyed, the beast clawed in vain at the air as it tumbled end over end. My sword flashed in a whipping arc over my head as I split the monster in half, rewarding me with an immediate shower of steaming viscera. The acrid slime covered my face and chest, but my body was already moving before I had a chance to react with disgust. One second.
A new pair of bladed arms hissed over my head as I rolled to the side just in time to avoid being decapitated. Time to leave. I took my feet and sprinted back toward Lia and Marin, stopping a dozen yards later to dodge another attack as the second beast raked at me with its talons from above. Our intricate dance continued as I made my way back to my companions; whenever one of my pursuers stopped to make an attack, the other would scuttle ahead along the trees with unnatural ease to position itself directly in my path.
I’ve got you. I felt a light breeze on my face as a spiked projectile whistled by, only a few inches from my left ear. It caught the closest beast square in the midsection and sent it reeling backwards as the wood exploded against its chitin. The remaining monster behind me fell back to regroup with its fallen companion, clearly having learned a lesson from the slaying of its ally. Now unharassed, I turned my attention toward the clearing Marin had created ahead. A beautiful pillar of golden sunlight spilled through the gap in the trees, banishing the otherworldly red glow around the thirty-yard-wide arena.
Marin continued to expand our haven on the opposite side of the clearing from Lia, well away from the advancing monsters. The pace of her destruction had drastically slowed as her energy reserves flagged, but she continued to carry out her orders dutifully. “Marin,” I called out as I sprinted into the clearing, “that’s enough.”
She jumped at the sound of my voice and whirled around to stare at me as if she were in a trance. “I...did it?” she asked, her arms falling to hang limply at her sides.
I put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close, rotating my body to shield her from the advancing beasts. “You did it,” I answered, “but we aren’t done yet.” I pulled her along to the center of the clearing to stand beside Lia. My appearance had stopped the pair of creatures Lia had been holding at bay; they skittered side to side in the shade of the trees, awaiting their own reinforcements as we watched them silently.
They have the numbers advantage, but they can’t press us out in the open. They have the advantage in the woods, so we can’t flush them out. It’s a stalemate. The remaining two beasts appeared from the shadows, and all four immediately scuttled into the trees, obscuring themselves in the thick red foliage. We could burn them out, but a forest fire here would be nearly impossible to stop before—
Our thoughts were cut short as a tree at the edge of the clearing buckled violently, and four shadows blotted out the sunlight above us. “Move!” I shouted, tossing Marin by the shoulder to the edge of the clearing. Eight massive razors fell on us like artillery fire as the beasts dove blade-first into the earth. I redirected the closest scythe and sidestepped the next as Lia dodged away with a tight back handspring. The monsters fell in a perfectly planned pattern, separating Lia from Marin and me with a wall of teeth, blades, and armor.
Lia and I acted before our strategies were fully formed, playing them out in vivid detail through our mental link and making minute adjustments on
