Chapter 35: We Leave Now

  They shot up the slope with terrifying speed, legs stabbing into the snow like spears.

  Aoife shouted, “Move!”

  The trio sprinted uphill, snow exploding beneath their boots. The spiders climbed the incline with unnatural ease, gaining distance far too quickly. Lance heard one scrambling on the rocks behind him, the sound of claws shredding stone.

  Slade turned mid run and hurled his spear. Using his earth affinity he wrapped mana around it and hardened the spear to act more as a balisita. The Tip cracked against a Spider's face, snapping one of its mandibles. Pieces of the broken spear hitting the others behind but doing no damage.

  It screeched, lunging at him. Slade shoved Aoife ahead. “Go!”

  Aoife grabbed Lance’s sleeve and yanked him toward the thicker trees. “We cannot fight in the open!”

  Another Crawler leapt from the side path, claws slashing wide. Lance raised his spear, barely deflecting the blow. The force sent him stumbling backward. His hood slipped, revealing his hair.

  Aoife gritted her teeth. “Stop hiding your damn face and run!”

  The three darted between trees. Branches whipped their bodies. Frost cracked underfoot. The crawlers tore after them, skittering between trunks with impossible agility.

  Lance launched himself over a fallen trunk. Activating Arclight Guard mid jump. Lightning running around his spear and arms now that he was done hiding.

  Slade vaulted beside him. Aoife slid underneath it, rolling to her feet with a grunt.

  One crawler burst through the trunk itself, splintering the wood in a shower of frozen shards.

  Aoife gasped. “They are too fast!”

  Slade spun around and threw his hand in a upward motion, commanding the dormant earth beneath the snow to rise in a small makeshift wall. One crawler slammed right into the wall, cracking it but not running through it.

  The creature shrieked and flailed wildly before taking a step backing and charging it again to break it.

  “Damn, I need to work on that” Slade groaned.

  Lance felt a surge of panic. His gauntlets throbbed beneath the gloves. Lightning stirred faintly along his arms, responding to the fear as much as his will.

  He could not use it.

  Not yet.

  The trees thinned suddenly, revealing a drop. A nine foot slope angled sharply downward toward the next section of the ridge.

  Aoife pointed. “Jump!”

  Lance did not question it.

  They leaped together.

  The three landed hard, rolling down the slope, snow flying in waves around them. Lance hit a patch of ice and skidded sideways until Slade grabbed his cloak to halt him.

  The crawlers reached the top of the slope a heartbeat later.

  Aoife stumbled to her feet. “Keep running!”

  Three crawlers jumped down toward them.

  Two circled the slope, skittering along the ridge wall to flank.

  Lance’s pulse roared.

  Slade grabbed a jagged stone from the ground. “Lance, I swear if you do not use something soon I will feed you to them as bait.”

  “I cannot reveal anything,” Lance snapped.

  Aoife turned to him, eyes blazing. “Use it or die! Those are the only two choices!”

  A crawler lunged from the left, claws stretched wide.

  Lance clenched his fists.

  His gloves ignited.

  Blue light cracked between his fingers, lightning snapping through the seams of the leather. The corrupted air hissed as the energy burned it away.

  He drove his fist upward into the Skulker’s jaw.

  A flash lit the entire ridge.

  The creature convulsed violently and flew back, crashing into the rocks with a wet, sizzling thud.

  Aoife shouted, “Good! Again!”

  But now every Skulker shrieked at once, converging on them from all sides at double speed.

  Slade lifted his shield like a club. “Lance! Aoife! Back to back! Just like Darvish showed us!”

  They formed a tight circle.

  The corrupted shadows closed in.

  The forest trembled.

  And for a moment, Lance felt the corruption itself watching them.

  They fought well, shifting the circle so Aoife could shoot her bow when the angel was right, Lance getting a few punches or stabs with his spear in. Whenever one got close they would shift so Slade could brunt the attack, Aoife follows up with an arrow then Lance.

  Lance finally brought one down.

  [+100 XP] Corrupted Crawler defeated.

  [+100 XP] First Kill Bonus.

  [+200 XP] 10x Level Difference.

  The situation was too dire for thought. Too dire for fear. Too dire for anything except survival.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  One monster down. Four still crawling in the hell around them.

  They could do this. They had trained. They had a formation. They had a plan. Slow steps, controlled breaths, discipline over panic. Sir Darvish always said discipline was the only blade that never dulled.

  But discipline shattered the moment the snow beneath Aoife cracked.

  A dark limb shot upward, fast as a striking eel. She gasped, not even realizing she had been stabbed until the pain hit her. The hooked limb punched clean through her thigh, erupting out the other side in a spray of steam and blood. Her scream ripped through the cold. Steam rising from the piping hot blood.

  Slade broke formation instantly.

  "AOIFE, NO!"

  He threw himself at her, shield raised. Lance barely had time to react before a second crawler lunged from his now open left, its clawed arm scraping across his ribs. The blow felt like being hammered by nature itself. Something snapped inside him. He stumbled, vision exploding white.

  Slade reached Aoife first. With a savage roar, he brought his shield down over the spiderlike creature pinning her. Bone cracked under the impact. Aoife, shaking and crying, drove her daggers again and again into the beast’s eye cluster. Each wet puncture sounded like a burst fruit. She screamed with each strike, more from terror than fury.

  Two dead. Three left.

  The crawler that clipped Lance turned its attention on Slade’s unprotected back.

  Lance’s heart froze.

  "Slade, behind you!"

  The shield bearer started to turn, but too slow. The attacker’s limb plunged into Slade’s side, punching through leather, chain, skin. A sickening, fleshy pop echoed across the ridge.

  Slade’s scream tore itself from his body. He dropped to one knee, breath stuttering, shield slipping from numb fingers.

  Aoife shrieked his name. Not screamed. Not shouted. Shrieked. A sound not meant for living things, a sound that begged the world to stop, to rewind time, to make this not be real.

  Lance pushed himself up, ribs crackling under his own weight. The pain blurred everything. The snow. The sky. His friends. He could taste iron. He tried to run, to reach them, to do anything, but his legs buckled after two steps.

  He was watching his friends die.

  Because of him.

  Because he wanted to prove he was ready. Because he wanted to be useful. Because he begged his father to let him come. Because he thought he could handle it.

  Slade was wheezing. Aoife was crying, dragging herself across the ice with her wounded leg, trying to reach him. Another crawler was circling them, sensing weakness. Snow crunched beneath it like brittle bones.

  Lance’s breath hitched. The cold air burned his throat.

  "Please," he whispered. "Please, please, please."

  He did not know who he was talking to. The world. The sky. The system. Anyone.

  "Someone help us."

  He tried to stand again. The world tilted. He fell. A crawler rushed him, and he felt its hooked limb stab deep into the back of his ankle. Right through the tendon. Fire exploded up his leg.

  He screamed. He clawed at the snow, trying to drag himself forward. Blood warmed the ice beneath him.

  They were all going to die.

  Slade, coughing blood. Aoife, sobbing and refusing to stop fighting. Lance, useless on the ground.

  His lungs seized as another scream built inside him. Raw, animal, desperate. He threw his head back and yelled until his throat tore.

  "FATHER! ANYONE! PLEASE!"

  He was not calling for a hero.

  He was calling for mercy.

  His vision swam in red and white. The world narrowed to a single point of collapsing thought.

  Then something flickered in the corner of his sight.

  A soft chime. A glow. A single line of radiant blue through the darkness.

  [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

  Bond: StormSoul Variant

  Assimilation: 100 percent

  System is Detecting Bond in severe stress….

  Forcing Summon

  The world did not just shake.

  It convulsed.

  A deafening crack split the sky, as if the heavens themselves had been torn open. Wind roared from nowhere, spiraling around the ridge in a vortex. Snow was ripped from the ground in a violent storm, whirling upward like thousands of white blades.

  The temperature dropped so sharply that Lance’s breath turned to crystals midair.

  Then everything went silent.

  Every creature on the ridge turned upward. Even the crawlers froze, their limbs trembling in instinctive terror. Something ancient was arriving, something that did not belong in the mortal cold of the North.

  The light came first.

  A spear of blue-white radiance tore through the clouds, swirling with stormfire. Trees nearest to the kids disintegrated into ash, swept away by winds that howled with a voice older than old.

  A shadow descended within the cyclone.

  Wings, vast as a mountain’s slope. Claws trailing lightning in arcs of violent brilliance. A body forged from clouds and thunder, shifting with every beat of its colossal heart.

  His Bond had answered. The Storm had come.

  Its screech ruptured the air, a sound so powerful Aoife and Slade collapsed flat, hands over their ears. Lance felt blood leak from his own, hot against his neck.

  The crawlers tried to run.

  Too late.

  A flash. A roar. A storm-laced blast of absolute fury.

  When Lance blinked through the burning white in his vision, the last three crawlers were gone, torn into molten purplish sludge steaming on the snow.

  He could not breathe. Could not move.

  But he could see Aoife.

  He could see Slade.

  Their chests rose. And fell. And rose again.

  Alive.

  His Storm was still there, towering above them, watching him with eyes like swirling galaxies, fading slowly as its summoned form unraveled into mist. Exhaustion took over his body. Weather he lived or died he cared not.

  His friends were alive. That's what mattered.

  _________________________________

  The outpost had settled into an uneasy quiet, the kind that always followed the first scouting wave’s departure. Men and women busied themselves with tightening straps, checking weapons, whispering short prayers against the cold. The wind carried only the usual sounds of the North. Steel. Breath. Snow shifting like sand.

  Then the world cracked open.

  A thunderclap rolled across the ridge line so violently that several militia members flinched and dropped what they were holding. The ground trembled under their boots. Horses reared in panic. Loose snow leapt from rooftops in powdery plumes.

  “What in the hells was that?” someone shouted.

  “Was that an avalanche?”

  “No, that came from the lower ridge!”

  Another boom followed, sharper, angrier, wrapped in a screech that did not belong anywhere near human ears. A pressure filled the air, the kind that made chests tighten and instincts scream to flee. Soldiers backed away from the ridge’s edge as a column of pale blue light burst upward in the distance, flashing through the clouds like a beacon of wrath.

  Darvish pushed through the gathering crowd first, his normally steady face draining of color. His hand had frozen halfway to his sword, fingers trembling.

  “By the gods, what is that” Darvish breathed heavy

  Lars arrived moments later, shoving aside a pair of stunned militiamen. His eyes locked on the sky where the lightning spiraled downward in unnatural patterns. His breath caught in his throat.

  “No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”

  Darvish swallowed hard. “That came from the direction of the scouting run.”

  Lars’ knees almost buckled. His voice cracked, raw and terrified. “My son is down there. Thats his Mana.”

  Duke Nox's voice took over, “STOPPPPP! Send a squadron but you Lars are not abandoning this mission that could plunge the whole North into chaos, over a disobedient son.”

  The words sunk deep, everyone heard it.

  Darvish heard that and twitched, he swung around reaching for his weapon to take a swing at the Duke. the Dukes guards took a hard step forward

  Ronan intervened, stopping his arm from coming down at the duke with the cost of his buckling knees.

  “I will go!” Ronan roared, “My lord, you must focus on eradicating this threat. I will take care of your son. You must finish this so it doesn't happen again!”

  Lars just stared at Nox, the presence in the air suffocating as lightning mana crackled around the whites of his eyes.

  “We leave now then. Duke.”