The body of Chuffa’s horse lay at the base of a rocky outcrop.

  Napoleon nuzzled it as the group ran past, but no one said anything. Instead, they each kept watch for familiar bodies as they raced on for agonising minutes past more signs of battle, a chill gripping their hearts despite the summer night.

  Fila swayed in her saddle, blood running freely from her nose, one eye bright red as she strained to keep her spell going on so many.

  When Thror called for a brief halt, she almost fainted with relief, and then she saw what the [Guildmaster] had spotted.

  A bare, pale arm stuck out beneath the body of a lightly-armoured [Bandit].

  “Shen?”

  One of the seven riders approached and scrambled down with an awkward twist.

  He knelt on the torn ground as Dusty and Aelind? hauled the corpse off. It wasn’t the first they’d found, but it revealed the first of the adventurers they were seeking.

  The dark-haired man knelt, examining the young, still [Rogue], muttering Skills as everyone held their breath.

  “She’s alive. Barely. She might not make it still.”

  The rush of exhaled air could have knocked down a Bronze-ranker, and Marie dashed over to give him one of the few healing potions Osric had provided to them, if they even qualified for the name. Shen poured it down her throat, massaging it to make her swallow as Thror took charge.

  “Shen you stay with her and do what you can. If there’s a chance at moving her, head back towards the road until you meet the second group. Everyone else, they can’t be far. Weapons ready a-”

  At first, Marie thought an aurora borealis had appeared in the summer sky, and her eyes darted up to a curtain of energy rippling across the heavens, but then the sonic boom followed, and with it, a veritable tide of mana as a hilltop barely a couple of miles away exploded with light.

  “-that’s them! Go!”

  —

  For less than a minute, Brunalda’s eyes shone violet as arcane energy surged through her. The dried blood on her skin flaked away in the sudden ethereal heat and the lacerations across her body seeped wisps of purple power.

  In the first few seconds her spells shook the ground beneath her as she reformed it to raise herself up and encased her lower half in stone until she was held by it, looking out at the thickest collection of [Bandits] as they sought to push the adventurers further south still.

  “{Earthen Eruption}.”

  They’d started to flee the moment the lights had begun, but with a wave of her hand and the application of another Skill, a cone of hillside a hundred yards wide and twice that in length was ripped asunder and shot skywards in a shower of rock and stone and blood and bone as five [Bandits] were instantly pulverised.

  A few on the edges of the destruction rushed to hunker together and activate Skills.

  “{Flamewave}.”

  A wash of roiling fire rolled across the moonlit terrain towards them, bathing them in burning orange, scattering one group and forcing the other to summon a wall of shields which glowed blue as they dispelled the magic.

  Figures began to rush up from all sides as the [Soldiers] masquerading as bandits threw off any pretence in the face of a true threat to them all.

  “[Dêem a Eles Uma Saraivada].”

  “[Carga da Víbora].”

  “[Forma??o: Areias Movedi?-”

  “-m Só Corpo].”

  A flight of arrows and thrown spears hurtled towards her, until Quartz lept off his one good leg.

  “[Redirect Ire].”

  Shafts changed direction midair, following the waist-high figure as he tumbled away from the easy target of the static Brunalda, and cartwheeled off to the side.

  But even with his Skill and years of experience and his diminutive stature, his wounds took their toll, and there were so many…

  An arrow nicked his chest and a stone clipped his head. Then a javelin pierced clean through the meat of his shoulder, sending him reeling as he landed.

  “{Ring of Rime}.”

  Half a dozen charging [Soldiers] found their feet encased in ice, accompanied by an audible snap as one that had been mid-stride went over and his ankles shattered like glass. Those that were close were unaffected though, and they laid into the goliath as she struggled to raise fists to block them, losing two of her fingers to the knuckle as one of them snarled a Skill and sliced through her flesh like butter. Her mind was wavering as she called out Spells as fast as she could think of them.

  “{Barkskin}, [Enlarge Spell] {Venomspray}, {Gust of Wind}.”

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  It wasn’t enough, but then Quartz darted back into the fray, throwing his body between an axe-blow that was aimed at her waist and catching an incendiary Skill heading for her unprotected back.

  “[You Can’t Ignore Me].”

  The axe cut through him like a scythe through grass, glancing off his ribs, exposing bone to air, and his already-injured leg ignited as he kicked to block an ethereal sword of fire, and he began to scream.

  —

  Thror and Chiritta led the adventurers in the two-mile sprint for the hill. The air held a strong metallic tinge with a hint of sweetness that turned sour at the edge. Half a dozen [Bandits] lay dead in their wake - injured men and women they’d come across in their rush - and as they crested the final rise, they saw the body parts of others scattered over the hillside in front of them. But Marie’s [Twilight Vision] showed her that more were alive, and still fighting around one point: the body of a goliath, her lower half encased in stone, her upper half pierced by a mass of blades.

  One thing stood in their way - capering about her form, though his legs were on fire. A smaller figure, at once screaming and laughing maniacally, darting in the way of the men and women that were trying to finish her off beyond all doubt.

  As Marie half–fell half-ran down through a trough of blasted earth, Napoleon at her side, she swore she saw a sword sever one of Quartz’s hands as the part-halfling part-dwarf spun away from an attack, a rictus grin stretched across his face, and a faint voice came across the summer night air.

  “[Like for Like]!”

  One of the attackers fell back clutching his wrist where his own hand was now held on only by a strip of skin and muscle, but three others closed in on the quarterling and kept on stabbing.

  Marie momentarily went deaf, and her vision blurred as Thror used the Skill that had once given him his name, and as her sight returned she saw almost a score of [Bandits] ahead had fallen to their knees clutching their ears.

  Thror was already halfway up the hillside, closely followed by Chiritta and Embris and an older alati she didn’t know well flitting along beside, the mounted men and women charging in their wake. For the first time, Dusty Brow’s armour snapped into place, encasing her in steel, and before she had a chance to think of what she was heading into, Marie was one of twenty adventurers falling on their foe like screaming banshees.

  Those in front were met by the the few [Bandits] that had remained on their feet after Thror’s acoustic assault, but the first was pulverised where she stood as the huge tabaxi’s mace crashed down on her head and reduced her body to a smear of meat on the ground as he raced for Quartz and Brunalda.

  A lance of fire blasted from the tip of Embris’ spear as she ran, charring the side of another’s face and setting his hair alight.

  Chiritta threw her staff like a javelin. One of the [Bandits] ducked the improvised missile, but as it landed behind him the squirrel-beastkin was suddenly standing there, holding it once more, and took out the back of his knees just in time for the wren-like alati to sprint past and slice a line of red in his neck with a razor-sharp wingtip.

  There was no time to fully register the spraying blood and flying teeth and snapping bones as Marie charged alongside Dusty at one of the [Bandits] struggling to get to his feet. The [Resonance Striker]’s spear pinned him to the ground through the waist.

  [Adrenaline Surge], [Swift Blow].

  The spade she wielded lashed out and sliced deep into the man’s forehead, jarring her hand as it glanced off the bone, then passing with barely any resistance as the tip tore through his eye.

  He fell back, screaming, which only redoubled in volume as Napoleon latched onto his leg, until Dusty’s [Echoing Strike] took him through the throat.

  Marie was already running for Brunalda and Quartz, but by the time she got there Thror and the frontrunners had already dispatched the few [Bandits] that had remained standing.

  Screams and gurgles rang out as the other adventurers put paid to their foe, though a handful had taken wounds in the brief skirmish. The ones round the hilltop however, only had eyes for the goliath and quarterling that they’d come to rescue.

  Brunalda wasn’t moving, and Quartz was sat with his back to her earth-encrusted legs, his own no longer on fire but charred and melted. flesh fused together He held the shining ropes of his intestines where they’d spilled into his lap, singed from the heat.

  Hands shaking, Marie pulled out the first two potions that came to hand and fell to her knees next to the diminutive man. There was so much damage…

  As she uncorked the first vial with her teeth, he held up the stump of a hand. It wavered as he spoke.

  “Not for me, la-” he broke off coughing and globs of red dribbled from his mouth. “Save Bru, if you can. And the others.”

  As she froze in indecision, she felt a heavy paw descend on her shoulder and a weighty voice spoke.

  “He’s right. He’s past the point of saving.” Thror’s dark eyes gazed down at the [Lureweaver] with one part regret and one part pride. “What’s the Skill?”

  The corner of the quarterling’s mouth twitched up.

  “[I’ll Have the Last Laugh]. And I did, didn’t I?”

  Marie looked round at the bodies littering the hillside.

  Twenty-five? Thirty?

  It was hard to tell when some of them were in pieces. She blanked the reality of the sight from her conscious mind as Aelind?’s whip cracked out to lash round the last one’s neck, and she hauled him to his knees to better decapitate him.

  She opened her mouth to reassure Quartz, but as she did so she heard him sigh, and by the time she turned back she was greeted by a glassy pair of eyes.

  Thror pulled her shaking body upright as the adventurers began to gather round the deceased quarterling and the body of Brunalda, still pierced with arrows and swords and spears, and then a couple of them were feeling the goliath’s body for a pulse.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “There’s a lot of wounds, but not much blood. She’s lost a lot.”

  A moment later, Algar stepped up and peered closely, regarding the assembled Silver-ranks and Thror with tight lips before muttering a Skill under his breath.

  “[Appraise Carcass].”

  Noses turned up at that, but only a couple. Algar himself tilted his head as if listening to something.

  “She’s not dead yet.”

  At his words, Marie reached up, hands trembling so much she almost dropped the vials and, half-lifted by Aelind? and a burly part-tabaxi in order to reach, began pouring a healing potion into the lolling mouth of the goliath.

  She cursed as some leaked out of a gash in the unconscious [Mage]’s neck, and paused in her administration as she tried to stem the flow as it ran down across charred skin and into the countless lacerations and abrasions covering her chest.

  “Goliaths are hard to kill. She’s tough. Keep going Marie. We just need to buy her time.” Thror sighed as he swept his gaze out over the hilltop. “Dammit, why are there so few healers amongst adventurers.”

  At his words, she kept pouring until the vials ran out, heart pounding at the lack of any effect, but as she let the last glass bottle fall, she sensed more than saw a tiny movement, and as she homed in on it, she watched the edges of the wound in Brunalda’s neck begin to reknit with a glacial slowness that was agonising to watch.

  Someone had started singing part-way through, and it took a second before Marie realised that it was Fila, and that she could feel her own pains easing in the presence of the noble daughter’s Skill.

  A couple of others laid their hands on the goliath’s motionless body and murmured their own Skills, but still there was no visible effect.

  Less than a minute later the young woman had to pause, leaning on her horse for support.

  “I just need a second. [Note of Inspiration] and {Lesser Rejuvenation}. It’s all I can do for her at the moment.”

  “It is all we have. It will work or it won’t. Stay here and try to revive her…” The [Guildmaster] paused as he considered who he was speaking to. He made a split-second decision. “Jenila, and you, allagi, stay with her and watch out for more [Bandits]. The rest of you, there are still six missing. Marie?”

  She realised what he wanted.

  “I need more paper, and a quill again.”

  A few seconds later, nineteen men and women of Wayfarrow were off riding and running once more, following a glowing paper bird as Fila remained with the body of Brunalda and tried to keep her from death’s door, protected only by an injured hammer-wielding woman with a shield strapped to her back and one of Algar’s hunters clutching a longbow.

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