"I am Ludrug."
The name rolled across the clearing like something earned rather than spoken.
He stepped forward as he said it, halberd angled low, iron head catching fractured sunlight. The other gnolls moved with him—not rushing, not snarling—advancing with the confidence of creatures who believed the ground favored them.
"Come and face me."
Branwen did not answer.
Her shield rose.
Rasaad shifted beside her, feet widening just enough to compensate for the stiffness in his wounded shoulder. I stepped in behind them, blade angled low, watching the length of the halberds more than the faces behind them.
Reach.
That was the difference.
They came in measured strides.
The first strike rang against Branwen's shield, iron scraping along the rim before sliding off. A second thrust drove toward Rasaad's flank; he turned it, but the length forced him to give ground.
Two more broke right.
Flanking.
Branwen's voice rose—steady, unshaken—and something answered. A second weapon formed beside the advancing pair, striking from the air itself and forcing them to check their momentum.
Xan lifted his hand.
The air tightened around him, focus narrowing.
Then—
A Tasloi burst from low brush at his side.
The dagger struck before the spell did.
Xan staggered as steel bit into his side, concentration unraveling in an instant. The cadence died on his lips. He pivoted sharply, Moonblade flashing once—clean, efficient. The Tasloi dropped at his feet.
But the interruption had cost us.
A halberd shaft cracked across Rasaad's ribs.
He inhaled sharply—too sharply.
Another thrust slipped past his guard and struck hard along his side. Not deep. Hard enough.
He did not fall.
He did not retreat.
But he felt it.
I saw it in the tightening of his jaw.
Noober forced himself forward, shoulder brushing mine. His hand found Rasaad's side, and warmth surged through the contact—stronger than before, steadier. Rasaad's breath evened, though his stance remained guarded.
The dryad moved next.
Her voice was softer, but older. Rasaad's skin darkened where the halberds had struck, texture shifting subtly, as though wood remembered how to protect itself.
The flankers adjusted again.
One broke through.
The butt of its halberd drove into my side before I could pivot fully. Air left me in a rush. A hooked edge followed, cutting across my arm.
Not deep.
Enough.
I stepped inside the weapon's reach.
That was the answer.
Inside the arc, the length became liability.
Xan joined me.
Together we pressed the gnoll back—my blade forcing its guard high, his strike precise beneath it. It staggered.
He finished it.
The halberd fell from its grip.
For a moment, there was only breath.
Then Xan looked down.
The earlier thrust—the one I had assumed shallow—had not been.
Blood spread steadily across the front of his robe.
He swayed.
The line bent.
And Ludrug advanced.
Ludrug did not quicken his pace.
He closed the distance deliberately, halberd steady in both hands, eyes fixed not on Branwen—but on Xan.
He had seen the sway.
He had marked it.
The dryad saw it too.
Her hand lifted and the air around Ludrug shifted.
At first it was a tremor. Then a sound—low, layered, rising into a furious vibration. From bark and leaf and soil alike, a dark cloud erupted. Not smoke.
Wings.
They struck him in a living wave.
Ludrug snarled as the swarm enveloped his face and shoulders, insects crawling into fur and armor seams, stinging, biting, relentless. His halberd swung once in irritation rather than precision. The formation around him faltered half a step.
That half-step was enough.
Imoen came out of the light itself.
One moment nothing. The next—a blade at the back of a gnoll's knee.
It buckled.
She was already moving before it hit the ground, sliding past the falling body, dagger reversing in her grip. The second strike found the gap beneath its ribs.
The gnoll collapsed without ceremony.
"Two," she muttered under her breath, already retreating into broken shade before a halberd could answer her.
Ludrug roared in fury. The swarm thickened around his head, forcing him to lower his chin, to fight for visibility. His halberd carved a wide, angry arc that forced Branwen back a step.
But the precision was gone.
Rasaad saw it.
Despite the bark-darkened skin along his ribs, despite the lingering ache, he stepped forward, driving a strike toward Ludrug's exposed flank.
Iron rang.
The halberd turned just in time.
But not cleanly.
Not measured.
I shifted left to close the gap the flankers had tried to reopen, blade ready, lungs still burning from the earlier blow.
Xan steadied beside me.
Pale, but upright.
A gnoll saw it.
Its halberd dipped low, then thrust toward him.
Branwen did not turn.
She did not need to.
The unseen weapon answered.
It struck the haft mid-thrust with a violent crack, driving the halberd off course before the blade could bite. The impact rang through iron and bone alike. The gnoll staggered, forced wide.
The spectral weapon did not pause.
It reversed in a tight arc and drove forward again, slamming into the creature's shoulder and forcing it back another step.
"Stand," Branwen said, voice steady behind her shield.
Xan straightened.
Ludrug tore at the swarm with one clawed hand, baring his teeth through the moving cloud.
The insects did not relent.
For the first time since he stepped from the trees—
He was not in control.
Ludrug stopped fighting the swarm.
He endured it.
Shoulders hunched, chin tucked against the biting cloud—then he moved.
The halberd drove forward in a brutal, rising sweep.
Branwen met it.
The iron head slammed into her shield with a force that was not measured, not restrained. The rim split along the dent already there, metal shrieking as the blow tore her guard wide.
The sound was wrong.
Not impact.
Failure.
The blow carried through her stance.
She gave ground.
One full step.
The formation shifted with her.
In that instant, I understood—
this was no opportunistic ambush.
This had been prepared.
The swarm thinned at the edges as Ludrug forced himself through it, insects scattering in ragged spirals.
Rasaad lunged to close the gap—but the opening had already been made.
The gnoll before Xan saw it.
Its halberd came low and fast, angled to hook and drag rather than stab.
I moved.
The weapon's arc would have taken him at the knees.
My blade caught the haft just above the iron head, turning it aside, the impact ringing up my arm. The force of it drove me half a step sideways, boots scraping across leaf-littered soil.
Xan did not retreat.
He couldn't.
The earlier wound had stiffened him more than he let show.
"Behind me," I said.
He did not argue.
The gnoll pressed.
The spiritual weapon struck its flank again, but this time the creature absorbed the blow, driving forward regardless.
Ludrug roared and advanced into the space he had torn open, halberd rising for another strike.
Branwen reset her stance, shield half-ruined but still raised.
Rasaad stepped between Ludrug and the widening seam in our formation, breath steady, posture bolstered but not unscarred.
Noober was still too close to the midline.
And the swarm was no longer whole.
It still bit.
It still hindered.
But Ludrug was through it.
This had been waiting for us.
The balance shifted.