All of the information combined into a distilled, crystalline image in our shared consciousness, and we executed a counterattack in perfect harmony. Lia charged ahead of me, leveraging her natural speed to pursue the more distant of the two beasts. She leapt into the air, drawing her swords as she soared over the snowbanks towards her target. The monster was engaged with a half-dozen soldiers, hunched back onto its hind legs as it slashed its bladed arms at the group with impunity. Lia’s jump placed her perfectly between the closest soldiers and the beast just in time to redirect the falling scythes. They skittered along her paired swords as she deflected them outwards, allowing her to step inside the monster’s guard. In a flash, her swords combined into a massive, double-bladed axe, which she hammered down onto the beast’s body with a devastating crunch. Its midsection burst open in a fountain of dark ichor which splattered against the shocked faces of the soldiers behind her.
While Lia carried out her attack, I dashed towards my own quarry. The closer of the two beasts had already slain most of the guards nearby and was closing on the remaining two that had turned to flee. It was bizarre to watch the scene from my accelerated viewpoint; while the monster skittering towards me appeared to move at a regular pace, the retreating men looked as though they were half-frozen in time, sluggishly pumping their arms to no avail. I saw the faintest hint of a reaction on their faces as I blazed by them, sprinting headlong towards the approaching beast. When I came within range, it predictably reared up on its haunches and readied its bloody scythes. A final burst of strength threw me forward into a slide along the ice, and I slipped beneath the falling blades, recalling my sword and cutting a quick arc to slice open the beast’s armored carapace. It managed to take a few staggering steps to turn and follow me before it toppled onto its side and quickly bled out.
As the beast died, my mana burst out in a fresh wave of Detection and found the surrounding fields empty of additional monsters. The information was comforting, but it wasn’t what gave me pause; I remained frozen in place with a deathgrip on my weapon as I waited for the dark presence to arrive again. After a painfully long second of hesitation, I breathed a sigh of relief when the world remained still, then joined Lia on the main road where she stood monitoring the remaining soldiers. Most of them stared in total awe from across the snowy fields, making no effort to hide their slack-jawed expressions of shock and confusion.
A trio of slightly more composed guards approached us with white-knuckled grips on their belted swords. They each wore fur-lined leather over chainmail and displayed the crescent moon of Yoria on their chests, but the gear was worn down and poorly maintained compared to what I had grown used to seeing on Virram’s men. “You’re...them, aren’t you?” the lead man asked in a thin, wavering voice.
I furrowed my brow at the strange question. “We’re who?”
The sound of my voice made him jump. “The ones from the attack on the throne,” he answered nervously. “The ones who...well, from the…” he trailed off, looking back at the ruined gate. He scanned the faces of his companions, looking for some sort of moral support, but they both stared unfalteringly into the dirt at our feet. He swallowed hard before he continued, his voice barely higher than a whisper. “The Umbral Flames.”
Anger flared in my chest at the name, but Lia calmed me through our mental link and responded before I could. “We saved you. That should tell you who we are,” she said calmly.
He nodded, seemingly heartened by her response. “We knew you were coming. Ever since we saw the fire—well, we didn’t see it, but Roberts saw it, and he got the rest of the Fourth up, and they saw it, and they told us about it when we came for night watch, saying that the fire was a sign that you would be back, and we needed to report it to King—” He clapped a hand over his mouth to interrupt his own babbling. “Sorry,” he whispered through his fingers.
“So, Virram already knows we’re coming?” I asked, annoyed. “I guess I don’t know what I expected; he would’ve heard about us coming through the Mountain Gate one way or another.”
The guard took a sudden step back and began to visibly shake. “Are you going to...to kill us?”
I raised an eyebrow at him and his silent companions. “That depends: Are you going to try to kill us?”
“No!” shouted the head guard. With slow, deliberate movements, he unfastened his sword belt and threw it into the snow. He hesitated for a moment, then snapped his head to one side to stare at his allies. “Do it,” he whispered.
The man on his right leaned forward and cupped a hand over his mouth to whisper in the lead man’s ear. The gesture made little difference; the Enhanced Senses from my shared bond with Lia were powerful enough to let us hear the man’s heartbeat, and his whispers were like shouts aimed directly into my own ear. “If Roberts finds out we let the Umbral Flames through without trying to stop
