The banneret ran a woman through, his sword emerging clean out the other side. Red Sentinels advanced, cutting down enemies with precision, driving those who still stood back toward the gate. It seemed as if they had finally gained the upper hand, felling enemies faster than they appeared, with the banneret dismantling the corpses and rendering them useless.
Pressed against him, Helspira’s breaths slowed. Authority overrode panic, and Sikras shouted to Rowan, “Fall back!”
Marred by the blood of his victims, Rowan looked the part of a devil. He rounded on Sikras from the distance separating them, drenched in red, teeth bared. “Are you daft? Vessik is right through those gates! We end this today.”
Sikras snarled. He didn’t have time to argue. Helspira didn’t have time. “Then, end it alone. I’m falling back.”
“You can’t be serious. Thrice a failure? Thrice a letdown to your kingdom?” Rowan glowered at Helspira’s limp body knowingly. “Hers is but one life. One life that would have betrayed you, no less! You’d doom the whole of Nyllmas for a single soul?”
A familiar darkness filled Sikras, spreading like a slow poison. “You give me far too little credit, Rowan. I’d doom all of Siaphara.”
Rowan cursed and turned away. He shouted a war cry and gutted another foe before advancing.
“Sikras!” The clack of rattling bones rose above the screams as Benjamin emerged from the fray and ran over, coated in blood. “Shit! Is she okay?”
“No. We need to get her out of here.” Sikras leaned her into Benjamin’s arms as he seized his scythe to help himself upright. “Please, Ben, I know you don’t want to abandon the R.S, but I’ll fight Vessik. I’ll kill him. I’ll stab him in the fucking face, whatever you want. Please,please, just find the cleric, threaten his life, if you must. Make him fall back into the forest with you, however far you need to go to ensure safety. I can’t—”
“Hey.” Benjamin silenced him, readjusting Helspira in his arms. “I have your back. And I have hers. Tell me what else you need.”
“Even with demonic healing abilities, she won’t last long unless—” A frenzy of screams cut off Sikras as another explosion near the village gate blew Red Sentinels backward, like they were ashes in the wind.
His broken arm tried and failed to shield his eyes as their surroundings molded in a temporary orange glow. Smoke from the explosion cleared, and seemingly from nowhere, carved into the wood at the gate’s entrance was a giant glyph depicting a jagged symbol.
A constant high-pitched tone accosted Sikras’s eardrums. He scarcely detected the voices of baffled survivors who gathered their weapons and charged the gate to fight. But, for every Red Sentinel who bolted into the threshold, a surge of lightning sprang up from the ground, coursing through armor, blood, and bone. It took the deaths of three sentinels before the remaining soldiers backed away from the gate.
Sikras narrowed his eyes. Such powerful magic. Fuck. How was Vessik doing it?
No time to figure it out.
“Damn it all!” Rowan cursed, kicking the severed head of an enemy, as he stormed from the gate. “We had them on the run!”
Tension pulled at Sikras’s shoulders as he stepped backward. The R.S. would never advance now. Not with an obstacle of this power. They had lost too many in the fray, and there was no telling what awaited on the other side if they even managed to bypass the glyph by scaling the village walls.
They would have no choice but to fall back.
Sikras snapped his focus toward Benjamin. “Find the cleric. I won’t be far behind.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Ben asked.
“I think I can buy Helspira some time.”
Benjamin hesitated and adjusted his grip on her. “What are you going to do?”
“Try and mend some old fences.” Sikras stole a final, concerned glimpse of Helspira as he squeezed the scythe’s snath. “If that doesn’t work, I’m not above falling to my knees and begging whilst rending my tunic for dramatic effect.”
“If anyone can pull off dramatic, it’s you. If the cleric survived,” Ben said, “I’ll hold a place for you in the line.”
A cursory glimpse of the survivors made Sikras cringe. By the looks of it, it would be a long line.
With Helspira in his arms, Benjamin started for the forest. He cast a knowing glance over his shoulder. “Good luck, Sikras. Tell Death I said hi.”
