Tag: dungeons and dragons

Chronicles of Klept: Chapter XIX

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Branches whipped our faces. Roots reached for ankles. The underbrush roared with panic, snapped twigs, crashing footfalls, panting lungs.

Behind us?

Nothing. No footfalls. No breath. Just silence. And yet, something followed.

Shapes in the trees. Movement without noise. Shadows that didn’t obey the moonlight.

Osman went down hard, crashing through a patch of thornbrush with a strangled yelp. Trunch was on him in a heartbeat, hauling him up by the collar.

“Move!” he hissed, barely audible over the chaos. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop now.”

Carrie tried to gain altitude, wings beating in time with her curses, then slammed full-force into a low-hanging branch. Her body spun mid-air like a dropped pennant.

“Carrie!” Wikis shouted.

But Umberto caught her mid-fall, an arm looping under hers, dragging her bodily through the brush as she blinked the stars from her eyes.

“Keep going,” he grunted. “Breathe later.”

The forest felt endless. Everything scratched. Everything tore. It was dark, only scattered moonlight shining between the canopy and the clouds. 

Just that quiet. That intentional quiet.

Like we were being hunted, not chased.

Inevitably, Jonath staggered. The exhaustion caught up to him and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, falling hard against a moss-covered rock, gasping. I slid to a halt beside him. “Jonath, by the light of the Prophet, you returned, how are you even…”.

Jonath looked up. Smiled, face strained with effort. And then slumped forward onto the rock, unconscious.

“Carry him!” Din’s voice, raw and distant, rose through the trees. “Carry him if you have to, just keep going!”

We turned and saw him.

Fifty paces behind. Alone. Falling behind fast.

Plate armor gleaming in moonlight. Breath coming in wheezes. A wall of steel losing ground with every step.

“No,” Umberto growled. “I’m not running all night.” Still holding Carrie half-slung across one shoulder, he dropped her gently onto her feet and turned to face the shadows.

He glanced at Day. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

Day nodded once. He stepped toward the investigators, voice low but firm. “Stay here. Lay low. Use the rock.”

Redmond was doubled over, hands on knees, eyes wide. Osman was pale, clinging to his belt like it might anchor him to the world. Jonath lay against the rock, chest rising shallowly. Day didn’t wait for a response. Neither Redmond nor Osman gave one, just wide-eyed nods and the clumsy shuffle of terrified men trying to make themselves smaller than they were.

“Everyone, drop your packs,” Day said, already unshouldering his own. “Use them to cover the investigators.”

The others followed without question. Tossing their packs toward the cowering investigators before bracing themselves for what was to come. Trunch’s pack landed with a thump, and a handful of onions tumbled out, rolling across the moss like they were also trying to flee. He muttered something inaudible as he kicked them back toward the pile.

Day didn’t pause. He stepped forward, sword in one hand, the other already tracing faint sigils in the air. His gaze swept the treeline, not nervous, not uncertain. Just calculating.

Steel in one hand. Spell in the other.

The moment something moved, he’d be faster.

“Wikis!” Umberto barked. “Your sword!”

She dashed up a nearby tree, tossing it as she moved, stringing her bow before he caught it.

Carrie took to the air again, wings pulsing dimly in the moonlight as she vanished into the canopy with a sharp intake of breath and a muttered, “Well, this is not how I typically plan moonlit evenings in the forest…”

Trunch and Yak flattened themselves behind the trunks of thick old trees, their silhouettes melting into the underbrush.

A hand slammed into my chest. Umberto pressed the sword into my grip.

It was heavier than I expected. Colder too.

I stared. “Wait, what? You don’t expect me to… I don’t…”

“No time,” Umberto snapped. “Writing won’t help us now, chronicler.”

I opened my mouth to argue again, but the look in Umberto’s eyes was the kind that doesn’t tolerate footnotes.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he growled, jabbing a finger toward the huddled investigators, “but, keep them safe, and you’ll earn yourself a drink. On me.”

Din crashed through the last of the brush, armor clanking like a slow-moving forge. He bent over, panting hard, sweat shining on his brow.

“So…” he rasped, “we’re fighting?”

Umberto cracked his neck and glared toward the dark beyond the trees.

“I hate running,” he said.

There was silence.

Not peace. Not quiet. Just, silence
The kind of silence that waits.

The forest, once filled with the crashing panic of flight, now stood still. No birds. No wind. Not even the whisper of leaves. Just shadow, and moonlight.

The group held position. Blades drawn, bows nocked, spells just behind the teeth and crackling at fingertips. 

And the only sound now… was breathing.

Deep, controlled, steady.

The kind of breathing you do when you’re trying not to panic. Trying to regain control of your lungs.
Trying to stay sharp.
Trying to live.

I gripped the sword awkwardly. Too tight, too loose, unsure where my hands were meant to go. The hilt was already slick with sweat, and the weight of it pulled at my wrist like it knew I had no business holding it. Behind me, Redmond was whispering. Soft, rapid words. A prayer maybe, or a long, muttered catalogue of regrets. Osman had curled around Jonath, shielding the unconscious scribe with his own shaking body. He had arranged the packs to form a meager protective wall. 

In the trees, Wikis was stone. She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Her eyes flicked from shadow to shadow. Scanning, calculating, waiting. 

With a smooth, deliberate motion, she notched and drew. String taut, arrow resting lightly between her fingers. Her fingers brushed the fletching, and something shimmered across the arrowhead.

A sharp glint. Then another.

Tiny needles of silver light bloomed from the arrowhead, spreading down the shaft, then hanging there, suspended, ready.

She tilted her head slightly, exhaled once, and aimed.

The forest hadn’t moved yet.

But Wikis had already chosen her target.

In the branches, Carrie was anything but still. She crawled and adjusted, wings twitching, shifting from one perch to the next like she was auditioning for a better view. She muttered to herself under her breath, more concerned with angles and potential applause than threats. I could hear her, just barely: “No, too exposed… no, too low. Ugh, these branches are the worst.”

Yak had been behind a tree.

I saw him, plain as anything, flattened against the bark, half-hidden, head low. His hand rested lightly on a dagger as he took a swig out of a bottle from behind the bar, one he’d refused to leave behind. He was still. Focused.

Then I looked away.

Just for a second. A breath. A blink.

And when I looked back, he was gone.

Not moved. Not shifted. Gone.

No rustle, no shuffle, no sign of passage. The forest hadn’t even noticed.

My eyes darted around, scanning trunks, branches, the brush at my feet. Nothing. Not even a scuff in the dirt.

“Yak?” I hissed.

No reply. Just trees. And shadow. And the vague, creeping sense that somehow, this was exactly what Yak had meant to happen.

Din adjusted his stance with the heavy breath of a man trying not to fall over. His armor creaked with the effort. Then, slowly, deliberately, he took one hand off the hilt of his hammer and curled it into a fist.

With a dull clang, he thumped it hard against the faded Sparkwhiskers sigil on his breastplate. The old metal groaned beneath the blow, echoing faintly in the stillness.

His hand returned to his hammer.

And then his beard began to spark.

Tiny arcs of lightning danced between the bristles, lifting the strands in a slow, unnatural rise, as if they were searching the air for something to smite. The hairs twisted upward like wary tentacles sniffing a storm.

He muttered something low and guttural, lost beneath the crackle of rising sparks.

And just behind him, with a sudden flash of white-blue light, a spectral anvil silently slammed into existence, hovering at his shoulder.

Trunch watched the darkness from behind a tree. Still. Calculating.

He didn’t move. Just stood, one hand low at his side, the other loosely clenched, as if holding a thought more than a weapon.

Energy crackled faintly across his knuckles. Thin threads of light curling between his fingers and flickering up his wrists. It was quiet, contained. Controlled.

The undergrowth around his boots seemed to shift. The shadows at his feet seemed to stretch, just a little too far. Just a little too wrong. Like the moonlight had missed something. Or like something had bent the light to make room. I shook my head. It could’ve been the angle. A trick of nerves and moonlight. Trunch didn’t look concerned. If anything, he looked composed, like a gentleman at the theatre, waiting for the second act. But still, the way the dark edged closer to him… it seemed to draw in.

Like it knew him.

Umberto stood like a nobleman at the top of a staircase, welcoming guests to the event – except this one had no wine. No music. Just blood waiting to be spilled.

His axe, competing with him for height, gleamed in the moonlight, every edge catching silver. He rolled his shoulders, loose and ready, then shifted his stance. His chest rose and fell in deep, steady pulses, like a drum counting down.

He spat into the dirt. Looked back at the rest of us. There was a fire in his eyes. A slow, controlled burn. I thought I’d seen fury in him before. I was wrong. This was something else.

Rage. Pure. Unfiltered. Fighting desperately to be freed.

And then he let it loose.

He roared, deep and guttural.
A sound that tore through the forest like it didn’t care what answered back.

He took a step forward, axe rising, the moonlight dancing madly across the blade.

Umberto was done running.

---

For a moment, the silence was deafening.

Then it shattered.

Snapping branches. Rustling underbrush. The shadows peeled from the treeline. Eleven hooded figures, dark-robed and fast, sweeping in from all sides. Their blades glinted wickedly, too thin, too long, like fangs drawn from cloaks.

Thunk.

One of them collapsed instantly as an arrow from Wikis buried itself just below the throat, splintering mid-impact into a hail of silvery thorns that shredded through cloth and flesh. Dozens of glowing shards embedded in his face and chest. He crumpled with a wet rattle.

A dagger whirled through the air –clang– glancing off Din’s armor in a spray of sparks. He didn’t flinch.

Umberto was already in motion, axe swinging in a brutal arc. The first unfortunate soul to reach him never had a chance, cut clean in half before he even realized he’d been targeted.

Day was a storm made flesh, blade and spell moving in perfect tandem. He ducked, twisted, slashed, the tip of his sword catching one figure in the thigh before a blast of force sent another tumbling into the brush like a rag doll. He moved like fire through a dry forest, relentless, consuming, inevitable.

But the attackers weren’t made of smoke and fear alone.

They struck back. Fast. Silent. Coordinated.

One slipped Umberto’s guard, driving a curved blade deep into his shoulder. He snarled, spun, and cleaved the assailant in half on pure rage, blood pouring down his arm like a sleeve.

Another caught Trunch across the ribs, steel cutting through the folds of his armor. He staggered, breath hissing through his teeth, shadows curling tighter around him even as blood soaked into the dirt.

The moon vanished behind thick cloud. The world shrank to movement and breath. The forest became a blur of black and motion.

Din roared, “Can’t see a damned thing!” as his hammer swung blindly through a shape that vanished at the last second.

“Wait!” Carrie called from above, sharp and clear. “I’ve got something!”

She raised one hand and flicked her fingers. Small, comet-like sparks darted from her outstretched palm like playful stars on the hunt. They struck the nearest attackers with flickering pops of silver starlight. One by one, the robed figures began to glow, dim halos of silvery shimmer clinging to their forms like they’d been dipped in starlight. Each lit figure cast pale light in all directions, breaking the dark into uneven fragments.

One glowed and froze, disoriented. Another flinched mid-strike, caught off guard by the sudden glare outlining their form.

“Who dresses like that on purpose?” Carrie called sweetly from her perch, launching another spark with a toss of her wrist. “You look like a haunted curtain.”

The man she insulted actually paused, blade faltering, just long enough for Wikis to bury an arrow in his thigh.

The field lit up in pulses, spotlights thrown from Carrie’s hands, one by one. Not perfect, but enough.

The group surged.

Wikis shot, an arrow slicing through a throat before exploding into a spray of silver thorns that ripped through the two nearest. One collapsed instantly. The other clawed at his eyes, staggered, and toppled, twitching.

Day launched forward, blade flashing with controlled fury. He drove his sword through one glowing figure’s ribs and hurled a burst of force at another, sending the attacker crashing into a tree.

Din’s hammer crushed a jaw, then a knee. He moved through the field like a forge with legs, his armor gleaming with scattered sparks from Carrie’s magic, his beard whipping in static-charged arcs.

Trunch stood calmly behind the line, flicking bolts of energy like he was teaching a lesson on consequences. One enemy dropped mid-lunge. Another staggered toward the investigators, blade raised …

…and crumpled as a blast from Trunch hit him square in the chest. His weapon clattered against the stone by Jonath’s feet.

Up in the trees, Carrie kept up her relentless barrage.

“Oh please, you call that a swing? My grandmother flails harder when she drops her knitting!”

A glowing figure sprinted for Yak’s last known location, then abruptly stopped, eyes wide. Yak reappeared behind him, slitting his throat in one fluid motion. Another followed, and another. The only sounds were wet gasps and the quiet clink of a belt pouch being lifted mid-drop.

Umberto, wounded but furious, tore into another enemy with a roaring overhead swing, splitting skull and spine in one blow. Blood streaked down his arm. He didn’t seem to care.

The last attacker turned to run.

Wikis put an arrow in the back of his knee. Day closed the distance. The end was swift.

Eleven down.

The group pressed together. Panting, bloodied, running on willpower and the last fumes of adrenaline.

No one had fallen. But everyone had felt it.

And still…

Beyond the battlefield, three figures stood at the treeline.

Taller. Broader. Unmoving.

Watching.

Waiting.

Like the real fight hadn’t even started yet.

The glowing battlefield had fallen silent.

Only our ragged breathing remained. Blades lowered. Bows held. Spells simmering just behind teeth.

The two shapes on the edges began to move.

Slowly. Deliberately.

The third, taller, broader, still, remained where it was. Watching.

The approaching figures were mounted. Cloaked, hunched over snarling shapes that slinked forward on padded paws. Not horses. Not men. Wolves. Dire wolves. Each beast easily the size of a cart horse, eyes gleaming like twin coals under hoods of matted fur.

The riders were draped in black, faces hidden, blades long and cruel. The wolves didn’t charge. They circled. Low. Slow. Taunting.

Umberto took a step forward, blood still dripping from his axe. “You want something? COME GET IT!”

Trunch tilted his head. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The only reply was a hiss.

And the sound of silent laughter.

Then the riders struck.

The first wolf lunged, but a bolt of energy from Trunch caught it mid-bound, tearing it from its mount and sending it crashing into the dirt. It yelped once before Din’s anvil dropped from above like a hammer, smashing its skull into the forest floor with a sickening crunch.

The dismounted rider rolled through the impact and came up fast, charging toward Day with twin blades drawn. Day parried the first strike, boots skidding against moss. He twisted, reversed, and drove his sword clean through the rider’s gut. Two arrows thudded into his spine a breath later. Wikis above, calm and lethal. The figure collapsed without a sound.

The second wolf didn’t hesitate.

It hit Din like a boulder, knocking him flat, snarling and snapping at his face. He roared, struggling beneath its bulk, armor scraping earth, arms locked against jaws lined with fangs.

Umberto charged, grabbing at the wolf’s thick neck, but was flung aside like a sack of flour, crashing into a tree with a grunt.

Then Yak moved.

He ran three steps up a low trunk, flipped into the air, and came down hard, daggers first, onto the rider’s back.

Steel sank deep. The rider screamed, twisted, and backhanded Yak off his perch. He crashed into the leaves and rolled, only to be pinned beneath the wolf’s other paw, its teeth inches from his throat.

Din and Yak were both pinned now, crushed beneath the beast’s limbs, struggling to breathe.

Trunch raised a hand and fired again, then again, blasts of energy slamming into the rider, staggering him sideways.

Day ducked low, blade flashing as he turned from the corpse at his feet and drove his sword straight into the wolf’s neck. Blood fountained.

Wikis loosed arrow after arrow, her breath steady. Three shafts buried into the beast’s flank. One pierced the eye.

The wolf howled.

It collapsed sideways, with a groan, on top of Din and Yak both.

The rider tried to rise.

Carrie, from above, offered help in the form of a sharp insult that questioned his mother’s lineage and fashion sense.

Trunch’s final blast hit him.

The forest went still again.

But Din and Yak lay trapped beneath the twitching corpse of the dire wolf.

The wind shifted.

It started low. Rustling leaves, stirring cloaks.

Then the smell hit.

Rot.

Decay.

Something ancient, long dead and recently disturbed.

It swept across the battlefield like a curtain being drawn, and even the bravest among us staggered.

Wikis gagged and turned away. Day covered his mouth. Umberto took a half-step back, scowling.

From the treeline, the final shadow moved.

A towering figure emerged, easily seven feet tall, shoulders like stone walls beneath a tattered cloak. His mount was worse: a massive, undead dire wolf, far larger than the others, its eyes glowing a dull, fetid green, its body held together by what looked like wire, rot, and pure hate.

It lumbered forward with slow, deliberate steps. Every footfall sinking into the forest floor with a wet crunch.

The group didn’t charge.

They stepped back.

The stench was unbearable. Osman retched behind the rock wall. Even Din grunted something that sounded like a prayer.

Then. Sound.

Chains.

Slow. Relentless.

The clink, clink of unwinding metall, followed by a heavier metallic clatter as the figure dropped his arms. Twin chained blades spilled from his sleeves like dead snakes, their weight dragging arcs in the dirt.

He began to spin them. Slowly at first. Wide, sweeping circles over his head, effortless, hypnotic. Then…

With a crack, one chain snapped forward, knocking Day’s sword clean from his hand. It spun away into the dark, landing with a sharp clang against a rock.

The second chain followed a heartbeat later, thudding into the earth just inches in front of Umberto’s boot. A warning. Or a challenge.

Umberto didn’t flinch.
Din, still trapped beneath the dire wolf’s bulk, groaned.

“I think I’d like those when this is all said and done,” he wheezed, eyeing the chained blades. “Focus on that thing. We’ll get ourselves out from under this thing.”

Carrie raised a hand, eyes narrowing, voice sharp. “Leave.”

The figure didn’t even twitch.

The spell fizzled uselessly against whatever dark force kept him upright. Carrie frowned. “Well. Rude.”

I swallowed hard.

Then stepped forward.

Not far. Just enough.

My sword still felt too heavy. Too cold. I looked at Day, barehanded but still steady.

“Here,” I said, holding the hilt toward him. “You’ll probably be a little better with it than I would.”

Day took it silently.

I stepped back toward the rock and the wall of packs.

“I believe in you,” I said.

The words felt stupid the moment they left my mouth. But true.

“You’ve got this.”

And I hoped to every gods-damned power in Elandaru… that I wasn’t lying.

The battle didn’t start with a roar this time. It started with a plan.

A bad one, maybe, but it was all we had.

Wikis and Carrie focused on the undead wolf, hoping to distract it enough to shake the rider’s focus. Arrows flew, spells sparked. The wolf snarled, snapping at the air, unfazed. 

Up in the trees, Wikis fired in tight, calculated bursts, three arrows in quick succession, one striking just above the beast’s sunken eye. It didn’t blink.

Carrie hurled more silver wisps, each one sparking light across its rotted frame. “Come on, you ugly corpse rug!” she shouted. “Over here! Bite someone with better fashion sense!”

It barely looked her way.

Meanwhile, Umberto and Day charged the rider.

The chained blades spun again, deadly arcs of iron and rot. Day ducked one, barely catching it with the sword. The impact rattled his wrist.

Umberto roared and caught another with the flat of his axe, but the force still drove him back a step. He growled through his teeth.

Trunch stood behind them, teeth gritted, hands glowing with unstable power. One eldritch blast after another flared from his palms, striking the rider in the chest, shoulder, neck. The hits staggered him, but he never stopped attacking.

“This would be easier,” Trunch muttered, “if he’d just go down already.”

Behind them, Din and Yak were still very much under the dire wolf.

“On three,” Din grunted, shifting his armor and kicking at the dirt. “One, two, three!”

They rolled.

The wolf didn’t budge.

“Maybe four next time,” Yak wheezed. “Four might be the number.”

They tried again, feet scrambling, muffled swearing erupting under the mound of fur.

The rider pressed forward.

Carrie’s next bolt went wide. Wikis hit the same leg twice, but the beast kept moving.

Day was tiring, his blocks slower. Umberto had a cut above his brow now, blood in his eye. Trunch’s blasts were getting erratic.

And me?

I did the only thing I could.

I reached into the pile of packs behind me, and my hand closed around something round and firm.

An onion. I stared at it, then stood up, and hurled it.

It hit the undead wolf squarely in the snout with a wet thud.

No reaction.

So I threw another.

Then another.

“Why,” I muttered to myself, “do we have so many onions?”

“I got them in Nelb,” Trunch called out “Couldn’t resist. The price was too good for produce of that quality.”

The fourth onion bounced off the rider’s shoulder.

He paused. Just for a moment. A small moment. But a moment.

It was enough for Trunch to land a shot square in the jaw, snapping his head to the side.

Umberto seized the opening with a bellow, charging low, axe flashing.

And in the dirt, Yak shrugged, “Onions.”

Then, finally, a breakthrough.

Carrie’s voice cut sharp through the din, more serious than before. No witty jab. No airy sarcasm. Just quiet, focused spellcasting.

A flick of her wrist. A spark of silver light.

The undead dire wolf began to shrink.

It didn’t roar. It didn’t flail. It simply collapsed inward, bones creaking and limbs contorting as its hulking mass shriveled. In mere seconds, the towering monstrosity had shrunk to something more akin to a sickly greyhound. Still hideous, still snarling, but far less threatening.

The rider wobbled, awkward on suddenly too-small footing.

He had no choice but to dismount, hitting the ground in a roll that broke some of the eerie poise he’d carried till now.

There was a beat of stunned silence.

Then Carrie, from her perch in the trees, put her hands on her hips and said, “You’re welcome.”

The rider hit the ground with surprising grace.

For a man of his size, he moved with unnatural speed, a blur of shadow and muscle, twin blades hissing as they retracted and reformed into a pair of wicked, scimitar-like swords.

He didn’t roar. He didn’t speak.

He simply advanced.

Din and Yak had finally rolled free of the collapsed wolf carcass. Din staggered upright, wincing as his armor creaked, one side caved in slightly, movement limited.

Yak gave him a look. “You alright?”

“Functional,” Din growled. “Mostly. I really want those blades.”

They took down the shrunken wolf first. Carrie blasting it with a final wisp of light while Umberto cleaved its head from its shoulders. It twitched once and stilled.

But they were spent.

Umberto bled from multiple wounds, his breathing ragged.
Day’s tunic was slashed, his ribs heaving, but his braid, somehow, remained perfect. Trunch leaned against a tree, face pale, arms shaking. He fired one last eldritch blast that fizzled out halfway. 

“That’s me,” he said. “I’m done.”

Wikis reached for another arrow, and found none. She threw the empty quiver down in disgust. Carrie, standing unsteadily on a branch, lifted her arms and sighed. “I’m out. Nothing left. I’m just a cheerleader now.”

They formed up anyway.

A final, desperate line.

Blades drawn. Breath shallow. Bones screaming.

The rider came in hard.

His swords were a blur, striking in cruel, perfect arcs. Day blocked one, barely, and was thrown backward. Umberto caught another across his side and roared, swinging his axe in reply. Din’s hammer crashed into the rider’s hip, knocking him off balance. Yak darted low, slashing across the hamstring. Wikis picked up a fallen dagger and hurled it. It sank deep into the rider’s back.

The assault continued.

He fought like a dying storm, brutal, relentless, refusing to end.

Until finally he collapsed. The twin blades fell. His body hit the forest floor, coughing blood. Laughing. Wet, broken laughter that sent shivers through the trees. They stood above him. He looked up at them, still grinning.

Umberto staggered forward. His chest rose and fell like a bellows. He turned to me, hand outstretched.

“Chronicler,” he said. “Give me a fucking onion.”

I reached back, found one in Trunch’s pack, and gently pressed it onto his palm..

Umberto took it. Looked the rider in the eye. Then shoved the entire thing into the man’s mouth. The rider gagged, his eyes wide. Umberto stomped once, hard, forcing the onion deeper. The laughter stopped. And then Day stepped forward, sword in hand. He didn’t speak. Just raised the blade, calm and precise, and dropped it clean across the rider’s neck. The head rolled. So did the onion, sliding free from the severed throat, perfectly intact.

No one spoke.

We just stood there. Breathing. Bleeding. Somehow still alive.

Eventually, we moved.

No orders. No plan. Just the quiet, aching shuffle of survivors who knew the work wasn’t done yet.

Wikis descended from the trees and began reclaiming her arrows. She worked in silence, one by one, pulling shafts from bark, limbs, and moss. She tested the fletching, checked the tips, slid the whole ones back into her quiver. A few were too warped to keep. She left them behind without comment.

Carrie drifted above the clearing, casting faint silver flickers to light the field. Din set about prying the blades free from the attacker’s wrists. He managed to undo the bolt holding one and settled with cutting off the hand to retrieve the other. Trunch moved through the dead, quiet now, his hands shaking as he worked, prying medallions from necks, gathering what little the fallen had. Each attacker wore the same thing: a Dan’del’ion medallion, unmistakable even in the dark.

Thirteen in total.

The final rider’s was different. A little larger. More ornate. Edged in silver filigree, the metal veined around the rim with faint crimson. And in its centre, a gemstone, milky white. We exchanged glances, no one quite ready to touch it for too long.

We took them all.

Then we turned to Jonath. Still breathing. Still unconscious.

Din and Umberto moved first, lifting him between them, a mismatched pair of limbs beneath too much weight. They bore it for only a few paces before Redmond stepped in, silent. Osman followed, nodding once, his face pale and tight with something close to shame. Wordlessly, they took over, cradling Jonath with surprising gentleness. Gratitude passed unspoken between them.

The cart waited where we’d left it.

We climbed in slowly, as if our bodies were still catching up to the fact that the fight was over. Trunch collapsed against the sideboards. Carrie folded herself beneath spare cloaks. Wikis sat with her back to the driver’s bench, scanning the woods. Din groaned as he pulled his dented armor into something resembling comfort. Yak climbed up beside me and said nothing.

Redmond and Osman laid Jonath carefully across the packs, arranging him as best they could.

No one spoke.

I took the reins.

A gentle flick. A whisper to the mules. And they began to walk.

Slow.

Blessedly slow, along the long, moonlit road back to Dawnsheart.