Chapter 41

As the light dimmed, I looked around us and saw woods and towering trees surrounding us. It reminded me of the forest areas with the floors of the Dungeon, or some of the forests I walked in as a kid back home. While the forest looked dense, there was ample space between the trees to move around, as the rest of the foliage was sparse. I looked around and was surprised to see that I was alone. I quickly scanned the area around me and dashed to a nearby large tree, before crouching down and touching the rune on my earpiece. I tapped on my bracer and brought up my area map, hoping that it would help, but the display was empty. It looked like we were going to have a blind challenge this time.

“Hello?” I whispered, glancing around for threats. “Can anyone hear me? Are you guys, okay?”

One by one, the rest of the party responded to my call. They were all okay but didn’t know where they were, or the enemy was. Katie asked us to wait a moment, so she could commune with the roots. After a few minutes, she returned and said that her view was being blocked.

“Okay, that makes sense,” I replied with a sigh. “They want to make sure we are blind and hopefully get a better show this time.”

“Tap the next rune above the one we use to send our messages and it will be fine,” Darius said cryptically.

I placed my finger on the rune we used to speak and trailed my finger up the earpiece until I felt the next one. As my finger covered the rune, I began to hear a light buzzing in my ear. I removed my finger from the rune and the buzzing ceased, but I touched it again to find out what this was supposed to do. It was faint but persistent in my ear, and I turned to look around when I noticed that the intensity fluctuated when I turned around. I could pick up five distinct increases in the intensity of the sound and it took me a minute to realize that this was a form of locating beacon. I had no idea of the range, but I could tell that at least three of the five members of our party were in the same general direction.

“I see what you mean, Darius,” I replied. “I am heading for the close-knit trio. I would suggest all stragglers do the same. Keep your eyes out for targets, because I have a feeling they are just as split up as us. Hopefully they don’t have a way to communicate like we do, which will give us a much-needed edge. For now, I am going to head toward the three that are closely clustered together. Based on the bracer map compass, I will be headed northwest.”

The group acknowledged and reported which direction they planned to go. Based on their own observations, it seemed that Katie, Dilbar and Ilthvana were the trio that was close together. We agreed to keep each other up to date on our status and started towards the others. I drew my sword as quietly as I could and began my trek toward the others. I kept my eyes darting around, looking for movement, while I listened for anything out of the ordinary. I knew I needed to be careful since they had two archers that could launch an attack before I would even realize it.

For the first twenty minutes, I was on edge. Constantly looking for threats and feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge more than once. Each time I looked, I would notice a raven and knew they were showing our current progress to the others. It was around the twenty-minute mark I got that feeling again, bit this time it was different. I felt a sense of foreboding in my stomach and immediately looked around. I saw a nearby tree and dashed over, sheathing my blade as I went. I slung my shield onto my back and began to scramble up the side of the tree, as quickly and quietly as I could.

I made sure to go as high as I could safely manage, hoping to hide in the dense foliage as I waited for whatever gave me that feeling. A few minutes later, someone came out of the trees, somewhat quietly. As they came into view, I realized that it was one of their spell casters. Given how tall they were, I knew it couldn’t be the dwarf, which was good news. The dwarf had been wearing a chain mail underlay that was probably elvish and would allow him to cast spells despite the added armor. That’s not to say the Dragonkin mage would be a cake walk. it had dense scales that gave it an added layer of natural protection.

I watched it stalk out of the bushes, looking around warily. I glanced over where I had approached the tree, looking for any signs of boot prints that would give away my position, but there was too much vegetation to really see anything. Still I held my breath and slowly reached into my belt pouch to find some stars. I pivoted on my toes as quietly as I could, picked a tree behind it and tossed a star at a higher part of the tree. The sound of the star sinking into the tree had the desired effect and the Dragonkin turned and fired a blast of energy at the tree. The energy arced from its hand and slammed into the tree, stripping it of bark and damaging a small chunk of the trunk.

I threw three more stars and again it turned towards the sound, frantically firing spells towards where it thought the sound had come from. Panic and agitation could be seen on the mage’s features, as it desperately looked around. The mage slowly started backing up to the tree I was in, and I saw my opportunity. I slowly drew my blade and waited for my target to get closer before leaping off the branch I was on. As I plummeted, I readied my strike, hoping the mage’s body would cushion some of the damage from the fall. As I neared, I swung the flat of the blade as hard as I could at the mage’s head, hoping to knock it out before it could retaliate.

I watched as the mage began to turn and it only caught a glimpse of me for a moment before the blade came into contact with the side of his head. I worried that I might have hit him too hard, as his eyes rolled back, and its body fell limp to the ground. We landed with a thud, the mage’s body absorbing some of the impact from the fall, but I still got a bit hurt. A few seconds later, there was a flash of green light as the mage disappeared from the field. That meant one of theirs was gone, though it took a bit of my health to get rid of it. I sheathed my sword and decided that I needed to close the distance with the others.

“Heads up everyone,” I announced through the earpiece. “I just ran into their Dragonkin mage and was able to get the jump on him, literally. They are now down one member of their party.”

There was a course of both acknowledgement and happiness over the earpiece before I used the earpiece to reorient where I needed to go. It seemed that there were now four grouped near one another, with one other closing in. I targeted the larger group and began darting through the woods towards the others. I did what I could to limit the noise I made and the exposure I left myself in as I moved between the trees. I periodically used the tracer in the earpiece to make sure I was moving towards the others and making sure that I was staying on my path. After another twenty minutes of moving through the forest, I heard Katie come over the earpiece.

“Pathios, you need to hurry,” she said with some apprehension in her voice. I think we have some of them nearing us and we worry it will be their heavy hitters.”

I acknowledged her and broke into a full run, caring even less about what I needed to watch out for. My goal was to get to Katie and make sure that she was okay. I was in a full sprint when I felt that apprehensive feeling and dropped into a slide just as an arrow went flying above my head. I ground to a stop and grabbed my shield, scanning the area I believed the arrow came from. I listened for any sound and used my free hand to grab a few more projectiles. I slowly got up and made for a nearby tree when an arrow flew by, grazing a scale on my armor. It looked like the archer was on the move as well, but it was hard to tell since they were moving very quietly. I moved my shield quickly out of the cover of the tree and heard the thunk of an arrow striking it. That meant that there were three arrows gone, but there was no telling what size quiver they had.

I watched the area from which the arrow came and decided to take a risk. I turned out of the cover of the tree and held my shield in front of me as I charged towards where I believed the archer was. An arrow was shot at me, which I was able to block with my shield and I adjusted my trajectory to match where it came from. If there had been denser bushes and means to mask where they were, I would have had a tougher time, but the second arrow to strike my shield during my charge showed me a hint of where they were. I turned and changed my trajectory again, this time moving away but keeping my eye on the point where I saw them. I had a feeling something was going on, but I couldn’t let this archer get the best of me. As they began to lean out to take their next shot, I tossed two stars at them, and watched as they darted to get away from them. I then turned my trajectory again, heading to the left of the tree the archer was using for cover, hoping to move fast enough to throw them off for a few moments.

I began charging a divine blast, pouring in as much energy as I could and still maintaining the blast without firing it. Again I waited until they popped out of cover again to fire my blast at them. I watched the golden energy burst from my palm like a missile towards the tree and I could see the momentary surprise from the archer as it bore down on them. The blast struck the ground near the tree and let out a small explosion of energy and force that destroyed a little over half of the tree at the base. I heard a groan of pain and surprise and thought I saw the archer get sent flying from the blast. As the dust settled from the blast, the sound of crunching and snapping wood filled the air, as the tree began to fall due to the excessive amount of missing trunk. I continued running and turned towards where I saw the archer get blasted to. I drew my sword as I approached, and they were just getting up. As I drew closer, I noticed that it was the male archer that I had seen before. He looked a little beat up, with his left side torso showing discoloration from the blast. His skin would have shown burns and damage from the blast, but I figured the lack of burn or scarring was due to the protection that was placed to keep us from killing one another.

“You are a clever one, I will give you that,” the archer said as he drew his longsword. “But your cleverness is about to come to an end.”

I smiled and stopped just out of reach, placing my sword on the ground as I stored my shield on my back. I picked my sword back up and walked towards my waiting adversary.

“We will have to see about that,” I replied with a grin. “Still, I am enjoying this new experience and will learn what I can from it.”

The archer smiled and nodded, before launching into a run at me. I planted my feet and got my sword ready to block or parry whatever attack was going to come my way. I felt the same sensation and realized that while I was distracted with this member of the Quetzalcoatl Pact House, another was trying to approach from behind. As the archer neared to strike, I jumped to my left and watched as someone rushed past. I landed and pivoted in time to bring my sword up to block an incoming strike. My blade was pushed aside by the strike of the Warhammer colliding with it, however the woman who attacked put too much force but not enough control in her strike. The momentum continued and I saw an opening to strike with the pommel of my blade. I watched her eyes widen in surprise as the pommel collided with her nose and heard the sickening crunch as the crystal in the bottom of the blade broke her nose. I glanced to my left and saw the archer had turned and was coming to back up his partner. I kicked at the woman, striking her shield, and I was successful at knocking her back as I parried the incoming strike from the archer.

I let go of the grip for a second and sent a Divine Blast at the woman, striking her shield again and knocking her prone from the impact. I was barely able to get my hand back on the blade before the archer began to press his attack, though his rage at my persistence was making him sloppy. I blocked and parried, biding my time, but knew I couldn’t wait too long, or the woman would be back up on her feet. I let the force of his next strike feed me the momentum I needed to spin around and hit him in the head with a back kick. I then snap kicked his knee and kicked him in the chest knocking him back a few paces. At this point, the other one had gotten up and looked pretty pissed off as she approached. She had tossed her shield to the ground and had taken a two-handed grip on her war hammer as she began to charge me. The archer had finally shrugged off my attack and joined his comrade. I had hoped to keep some charges, but I knew I had to head this off now. I channeled the power of the gems in my sword and focused the complete power of the blade for my next attack. I waited until they were closer before unleashing the full power of my Dragon Breath attack. I slashed the air in front of me, unleashing a fiery wall of death towards the two of them. I watched the horror in their eyes as the wall barreled down one of them, widening as it approached and making it impossible for them to dodge it.