Even with Ellen and my shield arm supporting most of my weight, as soon as I put any pressure onto the leg, my vision went white with pain. Agony expanded and receded across my body in a tide of fire. Unable to stop myself, I screamed again; voice ragged. Like all things, the tide receded, and I had my weight back on my good leg again. I had to focus myself with every step, my attention drawn to the sensation of warmth in my core that let me know Ylena’s attention was still on me.

  Almost idly, I wondered how the [Poets] and [Propagandists] would spin this disaster into the next parable for the collection.

  My next step was easier, though my vision still whited out and I still cried out in pain. I knew the pain was coming and could prepare myself for it. One more step was all I could think. All other thoughts fled, and my mind narrowed in on that demand.

  One more step.

  I did not request my body take another step. I demanded it. Making small allowances to myself by screaming, allowing my body to vent its pain.

  I never demanded more than one more step. Because I knew that should I ask for more, I would fail. Something would give out, and I would collapse. I would fail.

  By the time we reached the steps, tears flowed freely down my face. Screams turned into ragged sobs. Every movement, every twitch, every brush against something – even the bandage around the wound – was torture.

  “Put me down.” I said, voice cracked and hoarse from screaming.

  Ellen did so and gently lowered me to a knee, but even that was agony. I held on. My eyes locked onto the triumvirate of armored figures holding off an assault by Mika’s golems. The crumpled remains of the handsome male golem scattered amongst a pile of three corpses ten feet away.

  “I’ll be back at eye level when they come up now.” I tried. My attempt at a joke falling flat.

  “What do we do now?” Nora asked as she hid behind me. Even kneeling, Nora was just barely taller than me.

  I looked down at the group of armored figures, each with a blade and small buckler in hand, and couldn’t help but ask myself why they hadn’t run. It was over. No matter what they did, the Ivory Band was dead and their warehouse lost. Even if they killed us, they were too weak to hold off the scavengers that would flock here.

  But that left the question, why weren’t they running? What could possibly be so important that three people would stare down the four people, even injured, they just saw murder twenty of their friends?

  “They’re protecting something.” I croaked. More musing to myself than actually talking.

  “What?” Nora asked.

  “They’re protecting something.” Ellen continued for me. “They’ve had every opportunity to run, but they haven’t. Why else would they still be here?”

  I felt Nora’s hand tighten around my shoulder, and she asked.

  “What do you think they’re protecting? Maybe a magical artifact, a treasure vault. Maybe they’ve got a noble prisoner?”

  “Nora.” I said tersely. “If they’re going to stay, we need to draw them up here. Pick a target.”

  Nora looked at me as if I’d poleaxed her. She’d been in some far-off dreamscape thinking of adventurers, and now she was back in this charnel pit. I thought she might refuse the order, but she looked down at me and slowly a ball of water coalesced in her hand.

  Streams of water compacted and spiraled against one another until it was the size of a marble. Once she got it to that size, she added more and more streams of water. Tendrils of mist stretched from where the mist dissipated and joined the ball. The size changed wildly. At several points, I thought she would lose control of the spell, but each time she wrestled it back under control.

  Hidden as she was behind me, the three members of the Ivory band that remained had their full attention on Mika’s golems. Content in the knowledge that if we wanted to leave, we had to come down and face them.

  Their nonchalance vanished when Nora stood from behind me and opened a small hole in the massively condensed ball of water she created. A sound like a wyvern’s roar blasted from beside my head and a hair thin strand of water impacted one figure in the chest.

  A red tinted mist erupted from their back. Nora pulled the strand of water sideways towards the next Band member, but before she could reach the stunned combatant, she collapsed to a knee behind me. The free form spell unweaving into a small blast of water that almost pushed me down the stairs.

  Unwilling to take my eyes off the Band members in case they charged, I watched as the figure she’s struck fell to the floor, half bisected. The parts Nora’s spell passed through completely separate from the rest of their body.

  “Nora?” I asked in concern.

  “She’s okay.” Ellen answered for her. “Just a light case of mana exhaustion.”

  “Put her against the office wall.” I said and if the grunting from behind me was a sign, then Ellen listened.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Nora.” I heard Ellen say over the screams of anger and panic from the remaining pair. “I know you’ve got a mana potion, but promise me you won’t use it unless things get seriously bad up here, alright?”

  I heard no answer from Nora, but she must have responded because Ellen joined me again at the top of the stairs, positioned just slightly behind me to my right.

  I was glad Nora agreed not to take it. Potions were too risky at our levels. Which is why it shocked me when the smallest of the armored figures knelt down next to the one Nora almost cut in half; flipped the visor on their helmet up and poured a cherry red potion down their throat.

  Small tendrils of flesh poked hesitantly out of the rapidly healing should-be-corpse. They wiggled in the air, like vines searching for support as they strained to reach the severed lower half of his body. The speed at which the vines moved told me this was at least a Tier 3 potion, if not higher. That meant they had to be at least Tier 3 themselves. If they weren’t, their friend just signed their death warrant.

  If they weren’t Tier 3, then they had an hour, at max, before the potion ran out of minor injuries accumulated over a lifetime to heal and tried to heal the healthy parts of the body. That was when the mutations would begin.

  The vines of flesh wriggled across the blood-soaked concrete like worms out of the Hells. The wet sound as they slapped across the floor forever burned into my memory. It took five agonizing minutes for the man to be healed, during which no one moved. Every single person left in that warehouse transfixed by the horror story playing out before our eyes.

  The sound a person makes when they take their first breath after surviving purely off a healing potion was no better. A strangled gasp that rattled in the man’s throat turned into a ghostly sob that got caught and had to be choked down again.

  I desperately wished his friends gave the man the Grace to die with dignity. They hadn’t, and it would be cruelty beyond measure to allow him to mutate after the pain he must have just endured. Given a chance, I would make certain he was the first to die. Let him not be alive to suffer.

  The potion reduced the devastating and originally fatal wound to a razor thin gap in their breastplate. The man ran his finger along the line in disbelief as his friends grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him up to his feet.

  The three took time to calm themselves and the two spoke calming words to the third. During the time it took to settle down Mika’s golems didn’t move a hair. I hoped they stopped because he ran out of mana, but I would not judge him if he was simply too shocked.

  What the pair said to their fellow to get him to move once more, I’ll never know. But to this day, during life’s quiet moments, I think back to this day and wonder what could have possibly been said to get that man to move, let alone stand.

  I’d just begun the war hymn again when the first two reached me. Their bucklers up and swords faced point first at me. They swarmed me, tried to overload my defenses with the sheer ferocity of their attacks. Their styles played well off each other. The healed man moved with reckless abandon, while his partner attacked in carefully executed sword forms.

  Neither had the skills or strength to get past me, and while they were dangerous, I did not need to worry about them outclassing me.

  Metal rang against metal like a gong as Ellen used her maul like a spear to push the smaller of the pair off the top stair and down into their waiting companion. Together, the pair tumbled halfway down the stairs before they caught themselves.

  Isolated, this was the time to end the man’s suffering. With a cry of pain, I hoped my party took for a war cry. I lunged at him, my useless leg dragged behind me. A thousand dulls plows tilling agony out from the wound.

  I lashed out with my hammer and hit the man in the side of the breastplate, only to leave a small dent. I knew from experience that a dent like that would only bruise and restrict his breathing some, but with the healing potion in his system, the bruise would heal within seconds.

  I kept up the onslaught. Each hammer blow like the felling of a tree. I left dents in the man’s plate after every hit and like the [Paladins] of my Order; I tried to cluster all of my attacks in the same area.

  Standing slightly, I let myself drop back to a knee and plunged the spike of my hammer into their breastplate, opposite to where their heart was. I pulled my hammer back to reveal a split breastplate with jagged metal splinters pushed into the wound.

  The man should have been dead, but the cruelty of his friends kept him alive and against my efforts I’d just subjected him to another. Potion still active in his body, the wound raced back to unblemished skin and grew around the tendrils of metal.

  The potion tried to push the steel out, but the strips were too flexible and instead curled up into the chest with sickening squelches. Behind me, I heard Nora retch and gag. Whether she did so from exhaustion or the horror before us, I did not know.

  The man dropped in pain, their already hoarse voice cried broken sobs. Ellen was the one to grant them mercy when she collapsed their skull. She seemed content to let that be it, but I’d already seen the man come back from fatal wounds, so I furthered the job and pushed him down the stairs.

  Now dead, the healing potion lost the framework of the soul to work off of and immediately the mutations began. Stepping over their body, the man who’d given them the option raced to join their friend who’d reached the top of the stairs again.

  The new combatant was more skilled with their sword than the tragedy had been with his. But given the limited space to move their weapons and the height advantage I had, it was easier to hold off the pair. A small mana bolt, with no aspecting, shot over my shoulder and into the chest of the potion user. Sending them back a step before they could recover their balance.

  “Nora!” I bellowed, voice scratchy and dry. “Do not cast again!”

  It was a bad tactical decision to announce your [Mage] was out of the fight, but it was even worse to allow your [Mage] to kill themselves launching weak spells.

  My brief distraction was enough for the more skilled potion user to launch themselves at me and lay an assault on my shield. They struck from every angle, as fast as they could manage. A skill helped the flexibility of their blade. Small pulses of mana, visible even to my weak senses, announced when the man’s blade would bend unnaturally and reach over or around my shield to land hits on my armor.

  I let them both cast themselves upon my shield like the tide until they showed signs of fatigue. Even through the clamor of battle, I could hear their pants from the face guards of their helmets. The man’s strange blade bending skill stopped making appearances.

  Once they slowed enough, I angled my shield just so and on the next thrust, the potion user’s sword slid off the boss and into the wooden half wall of the staircase. I exploited the slip and slammed my hammer down on their lead hand. The metal gauntlet crumpled.

  They let out a gasp of pain that Ellen silence when she brought her maul down on their shoulder hard enough to fold them over the railing. Ellen finished the man when she brought an overhead swing down on his back. The force ruined their backplate and tossed them over the railing to land head first.

  When I looked back to the last member of the Ivory Band, they had their back turned. Sightline free of bodies, I could see that Mika’s two golems held the man’s attention. The golem of the pretty woman raced around the man, striking where ever he was vulnerable, while I could see the claws of the fat innkeeper golem latched onto the middle of the man’s breastplate, the claws dug painfully into the gap between plates.

  Mobility wise I was dead weight and couldn’t join the fight on my own unless they brought it to me.

  “Ellen, do your best to lure him up to me.” My words slurred slightly and Ellen looked at me with concern.

  She grabbed my shoulder and squeezed briefly before she slipped past me and charged down the stairs to face the last of this misbegotten pack of rats. I worried about how Ellen would do on her own against a fully armored opponent, but when he turned to face Ellen. I got a look at everything Mika did to him.

  Red lined his entire body in ribbon like cuts, small tears in the armor layered with small gashes in the exposed flesh. Entire sections of plates and armor torn away, including the face plate. Beneath every gap were claw marks and inches deep cuts in the flesh. Blood poured from the man in rivers and I doubted if Ellen would even need to help Mika.

  As the man turned, my attention focused back on the golem shaped after a baker or innkeeper. The golem latched onto the man’s shoulders and kicked at an open wound with its legs like a cat.

  Ellen fainted low, and when the man dodged out of the way, she brought the swing up and caved in the side of his head. Gore sprayed from the gap in his torn off face plate. His corpse dragged the baker golem with it as they landed in a heap next to the mutating corpse. Mouths, limbs, and tumors grew around a frame of metal, engulfing and incorporating the red splattered steel.

  I knelt there and surveyed the warehouse. With the last of the Ivory Band dead, calm, unrelated to Iona, who still tried to fight past the fire of my wound, swept through me. This time, pride and an unadulterated sense of joy coursed alongside the pain from my connection to Ylena and the back of my neck.

  My calm only increased when I saw Maggie waltz through the door, that spell of hers automatically blotting the ink in that journal she always wrote in. Now that a Tier 4 was nearby, I felt secure in the fact none of my party members would be in danger.

  It was over. I did my duty. Not just as my party’s sentinel, but my duty as a son of the Cult of Weeping Grace and Ylena’s Chosen as well.

  My party was safe, and I had endured. Dozens of people threw themselves upon my shield and, like the willow I bent but never did I break.

  ‘Helena would be proud,’ I thought before blood loss finally caught up to me and the room went dark.