Lucy dove, rolled, and felt hot breath skim her neck. She came up on one knee and slashed, steel biting into the warped wolf’s underbelly. Tough hide turned the strike shallow, but it was enough to stagger the beast into a pine with a yelp.
“Seb, lock the big one!” Gus barked.
“I’ve got it!” Sebastian roared back. The dwarf tank lowered his shield, slammed into the matron warg, the one easily three times the size of its brood, and planted his boots. Runes along his tower shield flared. Bulwark. The matron’s jaws crashed down, scraping sparks from the iron rim as he grunted and held.
“Underbelly’s the soft spot!” Gus called. “Lucy, thread the needle!”
“Working on it,” she said through clenched teeth.
Lucy sprinted, vaulted the off-balance warg she’d wounded, and took it from behind. Two quick stabs under the ribs. One more through the spine. It shuddered, collapsed, and stilled.
“Three pups down,” Selena reported, voice low and amused from somewhere she shouldn’t have been. The rogue-ranger hybrid ghosted out of the shadows, shortbow already drawn. “Mother’s in a mood.”
“Aren’t we all,” Gary muttered. He lifted his grimoire, black leather, silver leaf, and far too many teeth for a book, and chanted. Purple-black script coiled off the pages like smoke. “Spirits of marrow and mire, heed, Wither Chain.”
The spell hit the matron like tarred lightning. Sickly light snapped around its legs and sank into flesh. The beast snarled and bucked, tendons tightening under its hide.
Gus raised a hand, palm brightening with gold. “Hold fast!” He swept the light in an arc. Sanctuary Veil washed over the team, thin, warm, and barely there, then collapsed into glowing sigils along their gear. “You’re covered. Don’t get cocky.”
“Me? Never,” Lucy said, and lunged.
They’d met only two weeks ago in Fort Anjelica, bonded mainly through the same bad idea: skip orientation, take a starter kit, and “prove” they didn’t need hand-holding. Back on Earth, they’d been gamers spread across time zones, syncing raids at ungodly hours. Here, the Journals had matched them during intake, and a tavern argument about build synergy turned into a party sheet:
Sebastian: Dwarf Warden, shield specialist, taunts for days, stubborn as bedrock.
Selena: Shadow Archer, a rogue who never met a throwing knife she didn’t love, shortbow for precision, venoms for flavor.
Gary: Shaman, spirit and necrotic strands, totems when there’s time, curses when there isn’t.
Gus (self-appointed leader): Paladin, radiant support, off-tank, part-time Battlemage when he forgets he’s the healer.
Lucy: Duelist, footwork and steel; fast blades, faster decisions.
They weren’t great. Not yet. But they were getting there.
“Lucy, on me!” Sebastian braced as the matron tore free of the Wither strands and lunged. He took the hit square on the shield, knees dipping. “Gus, little help?”
“Already on you.” Light poured from Gus’s gauntlet into Sebastian’s back. Radiant Mend sealed a bleeding gash, the scent of ozone cutting through wet fur and pine sap. “Gary, reapply the debuff!”
Gary’s jaw worked. “Cooldown!”
Selena stepped into the lull. “Fine. My turn.” She slid left, vanished behind a spray of leaves, and reappeared half a heartbeat later with three knives already in the air. Venom Kiss. The blades sank into the matron’s flank; green fire licked the wounds.
The beast shrieked. Birds exploded from the canopy.
Lucy kept low, reading the rhythm of breaths, the hitch of muscle under fur. Mark. Step. Riposte. She darted in on the creature’s blind angle and stabbed where belly met breastbone. Not deep enough. The hide fought the blade like a corded rope.
“Hard angle!” she hissed, sliding out as claws scythed the space where her head had been.
“Try opening it,” Gary said, flipping a page. “Gravebind in five… four… three, ”
The matron feinted at Sebastian, then snapped for Lucy, jaws a cage of razors.
“Don’t you dare, ” Gus started.
Lucy dropped into a slide on dead needles, momentum carrying her under the beast’s chest. She drove her sword up in a vicious, two-handed thrust, and felt it bite, then grind into something softer than bone.
The matron convulsed, front legs buckling. Sebastian slammed his shield into its muzzle, pinning it just long enough for Lucy to wrench free with a wet sound that turned her stomach.
“Now!” Gary shouted. “Gravebind!”
Shadow bands cinched the matron’s limbs, dragging them wide. Selena’s bow hummed; two arrows laced with black-green venom were buried to the fletching along the jawline.
“Finish!” Gus’s voice was iron.
Lucy surged to her feet, pivoted with the turn of the beast’s head, and when it lunged again, mouth opening wide to take her whole, she met it halfway. She drove her blade straight up through the palate and into the brain.
The world narrowed to steel, bone, and heat.
The matron thrashed once, jaws snapping shut hard enough to shove the sword deeper on reflex. She yanked her hand back in time to keep it attached as the blade vanished to the hilt.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Then everything went still.
One heartbeat.
Two.
The giant warg sagged, exhaled a long rattling breath, and collapsed in a rain of needles that swallowed half its bulk.
No one spoke.
Then, as if embarrassed by the silence, five Journals pinged in perfect harmony, soft chimes unfolding into whispering script.
+1,820 XP
Matron Warg (Elite) Defeated
Loot Available: Blood-slick Fang (Uncommon), Sable Hide (Rare), Matron Gland (Alchemy), 14 silver, 2 copper
Party Bonus: +6% (Synergy: Tank/Healer/Control/Skirmisher/Striker)
Sebastian leaned his forehead on his shield and laughed once, half relief, half hysteria. “Tell me that says ‘short rest available.’”
Gus scanned his page. “Short rest available.”
“Praise the strands,” Gary said, sagging onto a stump. His book purred. It actually purred. “Didn’t love how close that got.”
Selena flicked blood from an arrow. “Speak for yourself. I had a great time.”
Lucy wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, tasting copper and pine. Her fingers shook. She made them stop. “We need to move,” she said, voice steadier than she felt. “Noise like that carries.”
Gus nodded, leader’s mask snapping back into place. “Seb, carve the gland before it sours. Gary, sanitize the site. Selena, perimeter watch. Lucy, ”
“Yeah?”
“You were insane,” he said, smile quick and genuine. “Also perfect.”
“Keep flattering me, paladin,” she said, retrieving a spare blade and bracing a boot on dead fur. “But buy me a drink in Pendle and we’ll call it even.”
“Deal,” he said. Then, quieter: “Nice work, Duelist.”
She slid the sword free. The forest seemed to breathe with them, needles whispering, sap bleeding, sunlight cutting ragged bars through the boughs. They’d thought the Dark Woods were a training ground. A place to grind, gear up, swagger.
Not a warning.
Lucy rolled her shoulders, eyes on the deeper trees to the east where the light thinned to gray.
“Short rest,” Gus said, more to the forest than to them. “Then we keep pushing. One more clearing, then we turn back.”
No one argued.
They should have.
They rested in a ring of old stumps, letting health, stamina, and mana tick back up while Gary’s campfire hissed at a damp log. The last of the travel rations from Anjelica were long gone; they’d been living off the woods for days, warg meat, wild greens, and whatever fungi Selena’s “don’t eat that” lecture approved. Gary’s cooking had even picked up a few low-level buffs. It wasn’t much, but the warmth in Lucy’s limbs felt like courage.
“Okay,” Gary said, stirring a pan with a twig. “This stew gives +1 Vigor and +1 Morale for… thirty minutes. Probably.”
Sebastian squinted. “You sure it’s not +1 Botulism?”
“Shut up and accept the buff.”
Selena tipped back her head and yelled to the trees, “THIS. IS. AWESOME!”
Three heads snapped toward her.
“Are you trying to pull every mob within a mile?” Gary hissed.
Selena stuck out her tongue. Lucy snorted, then lost it, tumbling back on her stump with a helpless laugh that pulled everyone along for a few seconds. Even Gus smiled without looking up, still hunched over his map. For a rare moment, the world felt small and theirs.
They packed up at mid-afternoon and pushed east. The trees began to thin. The ground leveled, the air cooled, and the smell changed from wet pine and loam to open grass and night.
“Edge of the woods,” Sebastian murmured. “We did it.”
The timberline broke like a curtain. They stepped into a vast field brushed silver by moonrise. Behind them, the Dark Woods threw a long black shadow; ahead, the land rolled away into twilight. Far off, something cut the horizon, straight lines against wild country.
“Do you see that?” Gus breathed.
Four towers, one in each quadrant of a massive clearing, their silhouettes hard against the bruised-blue sky. The nearest stood maybe a quarter-mile out, ringed by fallen stone and long grass that rippled in the evening wind.
“We made it,” Gus said, louder now. He turned, face bright. “We actually, look at it! This is claimable land. Has to be. A hub. A base. The gateway to the eastern edge of the Dark Woods. We could anchor here, build a safe route for parties.”
Lucy felt something open in her chest, joy, clean and sharp. They’d come so far from that first awkward meeting in a noisy tavern. From the arguments about builds and gear. From the decision to skip orientation and prove they could make it alone. Stupid then, maybe, but right now all she felt was pride.
“Grumpy Gary is even smiling,” Selena whispered.
“I am not,” Gary said, smiling.
Sebastian clapped Gus on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him. “Call it, leader.”
Gus pointed toward the nearest tower, grinning like he could see the future engraved along its stones. “Name first,” he said. “We need a banner. Something that’ll sound good in ballads when they sing about us in Pendle. We’ll be the…”
Something big moved in the grass.
It didn’t rustle. It didn’t hiss. It just rose.
Six legs. Scales like wet slate. A head too long, jaws too wide. The thing surged out of the swaying field, and the world turned inside out.
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the wet, soft thunk of impact.
Gus’s sentence ended in a strangled breath as the creature’s jaws closed on him mid-word. His upper body vanished behind teeth. The crunch was a noise the forest wasn’t built to carry.
His legs took a single step forward, like they hadn’t heard the news, then folded and dropped in the grass.
Time shattered.
“Gus!” Selena’s scream never made it past her teeth. Her mouth hung open, soundless.
Lucy tried to move. To run. To do anything. Her body ignored her. Every muscle locked. Only her eyes obeyed, flicking helplessly from the fallen half of her friend to the monster lifting its head for another chew.
Paralyze Stare.
A tiny line of Journal script scrolled at the edge of Lucy’s vision, cool and clinical.
The creature turned toward them, gore glistening, eyes like polished stone. It watched them not like prey or threat, but like furniture, irrelevant until in the way.
Tears slid down Lucy’s cheeks. She couldn’t blink them away. Her lungs burned, stuck between inhale and scream.
In the far distance, the towers loomed, so close, so stupidly close, and the sky above them went from purple to black in a long, uncaring breath.
The basilisk, because there was no other word for it, took another step. Grass bowed around six clawed feet. It chewed once, slowly, and swallowed.
Lucy’s smile was still on her face, that brittle, impossible smile from a minute ago that wouldn’t leave. Happiness had become a mask.
The creature’s gaze slid past her, then back. Her vision sparkled at the edges. Her knees wanted to break, but the paralysis held her upright like a cruel joke.
Something flickered at the edge of the field, far left, near the darker grass. A thread-thin vein of blue-white light stitched the air and went out. Another pulse. Closer.
Footsteps in the silence. Slow. Certain.
Lucy’s eyes were the only part of her that could move, and they tracked the light like drowning tracks a breath.
The basilisk’s head tilted, interested. It shifted its bulk, opening its jaws for whatever came next.
The night split, just a seam, bright as a blade.
And then everything went white.