The sound of fighting filled the air. It wasn't the loud clanging of swords so much as the sound of so many men moving through foliage at the same time.
CLANG!
Broken by the occasional clanging of swords.
Nimbi held Canes in his arms. He had rushed forward for him as soon as he was falling.
There was blood spooling from his mouth, but he was still breathing. There was a bloody red wound where his pearl had been between his collarbones. Nimbi froze the outer layer of the wound.
"Fall back n' circle him!" Nimbi commanded. "Don't rush into your death like fools! Five men on me!"
The old man shouted. Despite his outrage, he didn't rush Hiems.
As long as he's still breathing, there's hope, Nimbi thought.
Nimbi had experience, but he was a soldier. He had less mana than Hiems did, and he knew it.
I should have warned the boy! A stray thought lashed into Nimbi. His whole future had been in front of him!
Stridere was of no concern to the old man in that moment. He was thinking about Canes.
The young man who'd come to the house of Nix only a decade or two since, looking to follow his father's footsteps, despite his mother's wishes.
The old man gritted his teeth. He pulled out his own sword.
"Sir Canes is alive!" Nimbi yelled. "On my command! For Sir Canes!"
———————————————————
Aureum saw the commotion from a distance.
What is that idiot doing?!
She rushed forward.
Most of the Nix soldiers were occupied with Hiems, so she was lucky. By the time her head had caught up with her eyes, she saw a little of what was going on.
Hiems had taken the high ground by leaping into the branches of an old tree. That wasn't enough to stop the soldiers that swarmed.
Hiems fought for his life with each step she took.
Ice was flung with absolute abandon of any thought of stamina. During the time Aureum took to run up towards him, three men died.
At least Aureum's hands were free. She had taken a chance and tied Gemmo to her back. She'd told him to be quiet, and he'd complied. For a little while.
Now it didn't matter.
"Imes!"
Garbled occasional words would go basically unnoticed in the chaos.
Another man's scream was cut off as Hiems cut a throat. That was with the icy sheen of the sword Hiems had held onto during their escape.
I've brought Gemmo into this, Aureum thought, dazed.
She paused. Now was not the time for foolish regret. She was here now, and she had better make herself useful if she didn't want Hiems to die.
Hiems was using mana with abandon, in a cornered situation. There would be a toll to pay later, on his body, but gritting his teeth and bearing the pain didn't explain this lunacy.
Why did he start this fight?
She had somewhat seen and somewhat heard what had happened.
It explained his actions, but it also didn't. At least not for her.
He's smarter than this, she thought. Where is his confidence coming from?
Another wave of ice shot out from the tree. It didn't kill anyone but pushed more men down. One still held onto the tree. Hiems kicked his face and jumped to another tree.
This made a new standoff. The men circled Hiems again.
"This man is only a beast," the old scout said. At the same time he raised his hand in a particular motion. Three men rushed in. One died and two fell back down.
"Carefully," he said, looking back at his men. "Tire him out and kill him."
Hiems was already becoming less deadly, and the battle was only just begun.
But Aureum's attention wasn't on that. She saw the pearl Hiems clutched in his hand, the one from Canes. It was shining, with ice turning his offhand gray.
"So he's insane," Aureum murmured to herself.
Any mistake and he's dead, Aureum thought. Dead. Dead. Dead.
He was using the pearl to reinforce his own mana.
She summoned her spear and leapt into the fray with abandon. There could be no hesitation if she wanted to save his life.
In most cases, hastily using a pearl like this wasn't only taboo. It was suicide.
It wasn't sitting and slowly gnawing away at a beast's pearl. He was trying to directly control the mana from the pearl of another human being, without internalizing it and letting it stabilize.
Different kinds of elemental mana would react to each other and inevitably conflict. Even if the mana reaction was beneficial, like wood or wind mana feeding fire, it would pull or push the mana in the sorcerer's body in a strong way. Which in practice never became a "good" thing.
The only thing that had kept Hiems alive was that the mana was theoretically the same. It was ice.
Yet, theoreticals weren't practicalities. Fire mana burned at different temperatures. Ice mana similarly had its own little peculiarities that each sorcerer held from individual to individual.
It wasn't mana naturally condensed. It almost had a mind of its own.
It would conflict with Hiems' own mana. Nevermind about the fact that his own mana was against him.
Hiems had had his own death in mind as well when he stole Canes' pearl.
———————————————————
Stridere ran through it all. Most of the faces of men he saw in momentary panicked glances weren't horrified or in pain. They were furious.
Rage and sorrow in equal measure.
Stridere didn't trip, luckily, and he was small enough that he was beneath notice now. These men knew of only one man that was their enemy. Nobody cared to stop and grab him as he darted around them.
Not that he stuck around long to give them much thought on it. Before Canes was on his knees, Stridere dashed for some shrubbery.
He couldn't have told what gave him such a quick reaction. Maybe it was every inch of him waiting for something to go wrong. Maybe it was that Hiems had told him to run, and he was already half thinking of it when he needed it to happen.
Still, even though he ran, it was not away from the chaos but back towards it.
For Stridere, the youngest orphan of too many siblings, there was no "away" from the chaos.
His parents had died. He barely remembered their faces. That wasn't the tragedy, not for him.
The tragedy was what had occurred after. Each of his brothers and sisters had been picked up by a relative or family friend. None of them were old enough to run a house by themselves, but the older ones could at least help out.
Stridere was also passed around by the families in the village. He was not abused or broken savagely. He was pitied and largely neglected.
Until he was no longer pitied and only neglected.
He was constantly hungry, and as he grew older, he took what he needed. He had no other real option.
Many overlooked his small thefts, but with each year he became more and more of a blight to look upon. He hardly ever washed or groomed himself. Far too many bones showed. He was constantly doing evil tricks that were his only form of entertainment.
After a few more years, enough was enough. The women of the town forced a meeting. Each family was held accountable, and each one came up with an excuse for why they couldn't bring him in.
Long and lengthy were their excuses. Some even suggested other families that could take him in, out of necessity or malice. It became a large and loud argument among everyone of importance in the village.
"Enough!" Finally came from one of the matriarchs that had called the meeting.
"If he was a slave, at least he would be fed," came a murmured comment in the silence.
Despite how some fought against it, no one fought hard enough in the end. This was the simple solution from selfish people.
Simply, they got rid of a problem they couldn't stand to look at. Even if it was one they slowly created.
Stridere, from his seat under the window, had free tickets to the worst play in the world: the decision over the rest of his life.
The first day he had been furious. He became a terror he had never been. He harassed everyone as he had never done before, throwing pinecones at heads with abandon. He stole everything that wasn't nailed down.
What was worse was that even those who had chased him down yelling before only sighed and looked away. The most evil even sneered at him, knowing his time was up.
His siblings hardly looked at him, which was normal at that point.
Of course he tried to leave. He spent a whole hour walking out of that stupid little town. And he spent a whole hour walking back.
It was all he had known. Everyone he'd known his whole life thought this was what was suitable for him. Maybe they were right.
Until an old man of no beauty to anyone, a hunter that lived on the outskirts, had asked for him. By name.
Umoris had needed him.
So Stridere ran towards the chaos, despite how hard it was, to run past countless men in the hope they would overlook him. In the hope they would not grab him and give him a worse fate.
Despite the terror, it was moments before Stridere was through the thick of it. He had guessed that their camp was behind them, but he could not see it.
A hunter like Umoris had years of experience, but Stridere had only a few lessons. Mostly, they were chores.
This isn't hard, Stridere thought.
He was looking for the greatest concentration of wood mana in what was quickly becoming a background of ice mana, and he was wood as well.
He swallowed.
It's hard, he thought.
He was looking for wood mana in a forest.
But he would do it. With a bit of concentration fueled by all of his adrenaline, a clump of ice mana that was being mixed with the mana of the natural forest came into focus.
Maybe that's the camp!
With that, he was off.
———————————————————
Hiems spotted Aureum first, and despite all the hot sweat dripping from his head, he felt cold.
His hand was frozen, of course, but he was beginning not to feel that.
"No," he breathed.
Aureum continued forward despite his quiet protest against the universe. She took the fight to the back. A stabbing leap into the back of the first man she saw.
There was only the moon overhead, and they were under the thick foliage of the trees. For her, flight was not a choice. Nor could she leap over their heads.
The next moment a few turned their heads towards her.
Hiems had to act. So he jumped from the trees over them and fell down next to her.
"You brought Gemmo, too?!" He said, seeing the bundle and small head on her back.
"Where else would he go?!" Aureum shot back. "Get that thing out of your hand if you don't want to die!"
"Just focus on the fight!"
For a few moments, a few swings of weapons from either side, they held their own. Aureum hoped that she could tip the scales.
It was deceit born of surprise. As the soldiers of Nix adjusted, Aureum took a gash to her side.
"AHH!"
She let out a short scream. Hiems came from a little behind her, his sword killing the man. He grabbed her and Gemmo with his arm, none too gently, for he lacked the open hand for that, and lifted her away.
"Wagyuh?" Gemmo was surprised but not sounding hurt. "What? What?"
"Leave!" Hiems commanded. "Don't you understand this is suicide?!"
They were in the branches of some tree. Aureum couldn't directly see the men of Nix beneath them, but she could hear them.
He took a hand and froze her wound.
"Ha," Aureum took a breath as cold pain hit her side.
She smacked his hand away. She reached forward to smack the other hand holding Canes' pearl, but he pulled it away. Not that it would do anything. His hand looked almost fused to it.
"Don't bother with me!" She said. "Focus on yourself! What were you thinking using that!"
"I—
"Well, well, well, monster," an old and hoarse voice broke their attention. "Who's the pretty lady? Is she yours?"
Nimbi was beneath them, holding the other ones back.
"…"
Hiems didn't reply to that.
"Yeh," Nimbi called up. "Who needs to reply to such a thing? Say, is that a kid with her too? That one yours? How 'bout a trade? We take you and let them live?"
Hiems eyes darted around. There were at least ten men left.
I thought there were more—
Hiems' head swiveled. Aureum twisted away. The man who tried to grab her got a slash to his neck and a kick.
He fell down.
"Attack!" Nimbi said.
What they faced was attacks from both directions. Hiems focused on the ones that had climbed up the tree, and Aureum…
SNAP!
Aureum tried to step onto a branch, and it broke.
She found herself falling. Hiems was there for a glimpse. Then all she saw was the tree.
Aureum turned with one thought.
I need to fall on my front.
Gemmo was still on her back after all.
"AUREUM!"
The last thing she saw before hitting the ground was a group of angry faces with sharp swords looking up at her.