With the door of their current hut wide open, the party exited one by one to the hut on the opposite side of the dirt path. Leaving Celsius behind, the group stalked their way to the next door, Kreya opening it once more for her allies to enter before closing it behind her. Unlike the previous hut, this one was seemingly left untouched, the interior being almost completely dark if not for cracks in the wooden window panels and door.

Scouting the room quickly, Logan saw it to be a combination of kitchen, dining, and bedroom. Before moving in further, Tenn threw up his hand to warn the party to stop. Crouching down, it seemed the Rogue had spotted something near the bed.

“Hello there, we’re adventurers. We’ve come to help your village, come out, it’s safe with us”, he said with a low and comforting voice as if talking to a child.

A few moments later, a small boy came crawling out from under the bed, his ashen hair painted hideous with a splatter of blood that went over his teary eyes. Sniffling, the child rubbed his eyes and snot-dripping nose as he waddled over to an open-armed Tenn. Hugging the child tightly, Logan could hear a quietened whimper through the Rogue’s shoulder.

“Good, we’ve saved at least one”, Kreya spoke under her breath.

Picking up the kid, Tenn placed him on a nearby wooden table to see eye-to-eye with the youngling. “Do you know where anyone else is?” he asked.

It was hard to hear the child from where Logan was standing, most of it was muffled cries and sobbing, but Tenn was apparently adept at hearing through the noise.

Tenn turned to the party, “This one’s parents were killed by the silversteines. He says he saw his friend run to the elder’s house”, he informed the party.

“Just as we thought, that’s the best place to look. We can’t send him to the carriage on his own, we’ll deal with the silversteine trap first and then have someone escort him there while we rest”, Kreya instructed. Her instructions were met with nods of affirmation.

Tenn spoke to the child softly once more, instructing him to hide under the bed again until he came back, and that he wouldn’t be gone long.

It wasn’t long before smoke started to rise from the opposite hut where Celsius stayed, Kreya keeping an eye on it from a slightly ajar door. It was hard to understand how many of the beasts would go towards the newly forming smoke, but it certainly had perked the interest of two of them. Circling the hut they created a small tornado of black winds that died out quick as they dispersed the puffs of smoke.

One of the silversteines landed on the roof of the hut, almost collapsing it even further as thatch bent and snapped under the creature’s weight. Growls and roars were heard being shouted into the hut, possibly finding the elemental inside. Rearing its head to the still skyward ally, it seemed to communicate the situation.

“Logan, two Lightning Shots, go!” Kreya ordered as she opened the door wide.

Rushing through the door with two open arms, Logan began to aim up his shots to the foes ahead. Aiming for the highest one first, Logan’s arm sparked with blue might as strikes of azure danced across his arm, “Lightning Shot”, he called out, shooting a thousand hands of death towards the silversteine in the sky. Coursing through the beast, it exploded over and over in static bursts as it fell into the hut on top of its ally.

Crashing of thatch, crushing of clay, the house collapsed totally in on itself from the force of a falling foe and the combined weight of two silversteines. Celsius was seen darting through the wooden window, shooting Ember Shards at the fallen beasts as he circled the mound of materials.

Moving out of the way of his allies, Logan prepared another spell for the non-zapped silversteine as it was beginning to stand from its writhing friend. “Lightning Shot”, Logan chanted again, letting loose a second torrent of sparks to the spirit beast ahead. Hitting the dead centre of the silversteine’s face caused the lightning to explode even more violently than before as it let out a roar of pain as the bolts stabbed it over and over.

Just as before, Tenn was the first to arrive at the jittering foes with the use of Dash, this time the Rogue jumped up onto the back of one of them and let loose with a combination of Ten-Point Barrage and Backstab as the party window informed Logan. It looked to be a series of ten precise piercing strikes of the man’s dagger into the silversteine, hitting a vital organ with each strike and inflicting Backstab damage three times.

The combined assault of most of his skills allowed Tenn to devastate the silversteine before it had a chance at retaliation, though the Rogue looked tired after the affair as he slid off to the side, allowing his allies to deal with the remaining foe. The combined attacks of Kreya, Iimi, Marcus, and Logan finished the other silversteine without any issue, completing the fight at a staggering pace. The floating experience numbers let Logan know that no other foe was on the way.

“Back into this hut, quick”, Kreya commanded as she waved the party towards the building that housed the child.

Skipping quietly back, the party made their way into the hut with Kreya closing the door as Celsius was the last to enter. Celsius was surprisingly unscathed from the encounter, even with a building almost falling on top of him. The child hiding under the bed peeked his head from underneath as he heard the party enter.

“That signal fire should have gathered up any silversteines in the area that were paying attention. Iimi, can you take the child to the carriage?” Kreya continued.

Iimi nodded in agreement as she moved over to the bed, calling out to the child had him crawl out without question. Picking the kid up, Iimi could be heard giving assurances to the boy as she moved to the door, checking both sides of the road before darting off into the fields again.

Tenn almost fell onto the bed as he sat down, breathing faster than normal after his skill usage.

“How long till you can use that skill again?” Kreya inquired.

“Two hours, give or take. Sorry, emotions ran high seeing that kid.”

“No worries, we’ll rest up after checking the elder’s house. I probably would have done similar if I were in a position to do so”, Kreya replied sincerely.

“Leagues different from how she introduced her character to me”, Logan thought to himself.

Thirty minutes passed as the group waited in the hut for Iimi’s return, skills ticking down their cooldowns while they scouted through the door for any movement from the silversteine menace. Oddly, the only sight of other life they got was that of their Fighter’s return from the field to the hut.

“Kid’s safe, showed him where the food and water supplies were. Said he’ll stay still while we get the others”, Iimi informed the party as she sat down.

“Good, hopefully, he won’t be alone for long if the elder’s house has a safe exit”, Kreya replied.

The party gave Iimi a few seconds to take a drink before they prepared to move on. Sending Tenn upfront, the Rogue scouted the forward path to the elder’s house. Since it was the biggest building it wasn’t hard to spot, though it wasn’t hard to spot the damage it had sustained either. Corpses were laden across the rooftops with several holes having been smashed into the building.

With the apt use of Echo Radar, Logan was able to find several other markers on his mini-map which displayed his party alongside many rats. Due to the range of 100 feet, it wasn’t going to cover the whole village, nor its fields, and due to the buildings blocking it somewhat the view wasn’t the best.

It didn’t take long for the party to reach a t-junction in the dirt path, the elder’s house sitting at the tip of the turnings. Logan threw his eagle’s eyeglass to Tenn, allowing the scout to better spy the ends of the paths as well as into windows with better clarity. Giving a thumbs-up, the Rogue darted across the path to the side of the elder’s door. Placing his head to the door it seemed like he was listening for noise.

Waving the party over, they made their way one-by-one to the building’s exterior wall, either side of the door.

“I hear whimpering inside, sounds human. No monster noises from what I can tell”, Tenn informed.

“I’ll take point just in case”, Kreya returned as she pulled up her shield to block most of her body in a crouched position.

Nodding, Tenn turned the handle of the door and pulled it open for the leader to go first. Kreya looked like a metal boulder as she made her defensive entrance to the building, a few tinks and clanks of rock and metal hitting against her shield were heard before her voice followed.

“Stop, we’re adventurers!” she spoke in a hushed tone.

Her words bore fruit as the noises stopped, her shield no longer being barraged by makeshift weapons. Lowering it, the party could peer over her shoulders a bit to reveal nine villagers covered in mud and blood, brandishing shoddy bows and fistfuls of stones. Following their leader inside, Iimi closed the door behind them all.

“Thank the above! We thought we’d see no end to these beasts!” one man cried out.

“Praise, praise be to Desma for offering us hallowed hunters”, a woman prayed.

“We’re gonna make it out alive”, a younger man spoke as he fell to his knees in exhaustion.

Looking over the survivors, Logan saw many of them to be on the hungry side due to their two-day holdout, the elder’s house possibly not holding much for all of them to survive on, that or the larder had been attacked. Their clothing was a mess of brown-cloth scraps alongside leather gloves and trousers to aid in fieldwork. No elder was in sight though.

The party currently stood within a rather large entrance hall with tables on their sides and broken pottery. It was a good size, probably 30 feet wide or so, but was in a state of disrepair either from attack or forming it into a small defensive area.

“Is this all there is hiding here? We were told of children by another we saved”, Kreya asked the crowd whilst waving her hands downwards to motion them all to be quieter.

The largest man in the bunch, 6’1” with more muscle than meat on his bones, walked forward. “That there are. We were the frontline in case of any more beast attacks, the kids, elderly, and wounded are in the back”, he spoke, putting a bit of pause and solemnity on the “wounded” part.

“Take us to them, please. The streets are clear of silversteines for now.”

Looking between themselves, three of the villagers started to move the makeshift barriers apart for the party to follow them through a door in the back. Making their way through a long corridor, the party and villagers ended up at another door at the far end, opening it into another large room that looked like it was an audience chamber.

Taking a quick headcount, Logan saw ten other survivors, half of which were children, an elderly couple, and three injured adults. However, whether aware or not, there were also a few corpses near the injured. Marcus quickly moved over to the injured to begin his healing routine with Healer’s Caress.

Kreya’s head scanned the room similarly to Logan, her body making a noticeable jump upwards as she followed Marcus to the injured.

“Roh, Wem! I’m glad you’re safe”, she spoke in a shaky voice.

Moving to follow her, Logan could get a better look at the two she spoke to. Roh was a middle-aged man with short grey hair and small brown eyes, his clothing in tatters from claw attacks. Wem looked to be just a bit younger than the man, her hair was shoulder-length and would have been a lovely blonde if not for blood spatters. Her clothing wasn’t in any better state of repair.

“Kreya! Dear, you came”, Roh spoke weakly.

“Minu looks down on us fairly”, Wem followed up.

Hugging each other tightly, Marcus could only just get his healing hands in-between them all before moving to talk to the third. Logan could see Kreya’s shoulder shaking a bit as well as going up and down as if she was crying in the embrace.

“Not my business, I’ll leave her to it”, he thought to himself.

Looking around, Logan was still unable to see the apparent elder caster of the village. Moving to the elderly couple he started a conversation, “Hello, do you know where the village elder is?”

The elderly woman of the couple looked up, “Ah, sir mage, or, Rogue? The elder left to distract the silversteines from our presence. We haven’t seen him in a day now.”

“No worry here, even though he was among farmers his magic was high indeed”, the man added.

“A Sorcerer, yeah. Do you happen to know his rank or how many spells he had used when you last saw him?”

“He hadn’t been assessed in many a year, but he talked about his old days as an adventurer being a rank 11 I think. A curse cut into his spellforce so he had to retire, but he can still cast many a spell a day, sir. Maybe five spells were shot as he ran out of earshot”, the man continued.

“A level 11 should be able to take down silversteines easy enough from what I could gather of attribute increases. Is that curse so deadly? Or did age stop him from saving this place”, Logan pondered in his head.

Thanking the elderly couple for their answers, Logan moved back to the party who now had Kreya back. The injured were healed, the heads counted, now was the time for another plan.

“Nineteen people to escort to the carriage, might be messy if any silversteines are able to spot us. We’ll go in groups of four, three villagers to one adventurer. I’ll take one extra in my first run, Iimi do you mind taking a second group over?” Kreya instructed.

“That’s fine by me, could always do with the extra workout.”

“I’ll start by escorting my in-laws and the other one who was injured”, Kreya continued.

“Thought they may have been your parents for a while there”, Tenn added.

“No, they live far south. These are my late wife’s parents.”

“Well, that’ll be why she wanted a mage on side as quickly and fervently as she did”, Logan thought to himself as he felt the scar across his nose.

Explaining the plan to the villagers, they all started to gather up themselves as well as any belongings they had taken with them to the elder’s house. Celsius would stick with Logan as no one could leave such a task to a young elemental. One by one, the smaller teams set off from the house, moving quietly but quickly across the village to the fields.

It took a good hour for all the trips to be completed, Tenn acting as a scout for Iimi’s double trip. With all the villagers at the carriage, they now counted twenty in total, the child they had saved earlier happy at the sight of his friend. Food and water were given out to the survivors who devoured the sustenance. Due to the number of them, they couldn’t all use the carriage to return home at once, so many would have to walk if they wanted to move in a big group.

Speaking with the villagers, by all accounts it seemed they were the last remaining alive. Hope was still circulating that the elder lived through the diversion, plus others hiding in the huts but that would require full extermination of the silversteines. At a guess, the village once housed just under seventy people, so an estimated forty deaths at least if there were to be any other survivors.

There was still light left in the day, alongside Logan having access to a few spells to deal with approaching fiends, so it was decided that the party would have at least one more venture into the village. The stockiest of the survivors was given the position of a driver for the villagers, carting them back to Gauntlet in trips. He could ferry five at a time easily, more if they brought children due to their small stature.

With the first lot of villagers starting the two-hour journey to Gauntlet, mostly kids sitting on the laps of adults, the party began to stalk back into the village.

Trying to gauge how many foes they would be facing, the team had defeated five of the twelve silversteines. The elder possibly killed a couple more in his diversion, so at a guess, they would need to face off against five more if twelve was the correct number of foes. The first few encounters had gone better than the team had hoped, so the estimate of four days seemed a bit high at this point.

Reaching the village once more, Logan’s repeated use of Echo Radar caused another window to appear before him.

By using his upgraded skill his allies now appeared as green dots on his mini-map whereas all others appeared as yellow. It was a step in the right direction and would help to ignore his allies when searching for dangerous creatures, but since it compiled hostile and non-hostile into the same category a harmless rat would be the same colour as a silversteine. Thankfully the sizes of creatures would help differentiate the threats.

“The elder is going to need some help, and since he is more of a confirmed case I’d prefer to go after him before scrounging the houses for any other survivors. Tenn, can you scout ahead of us while we check the buildings towards his location?” Kreya continued to command her team, her face having been cleaned of her tears.

“Can do, Logan’s Clean makes sneaking about much easier since the silversteines rely heavily on scent for tracking.”

“I have enough lightning-based spells to deal with another group, not sure how much after that”, Logan explained, hoping to hide his actual number.

“If nothing else hampers us, we’ll hunker down with the elder to recover our resources”, Kreya reassured.

Nodding to their leader the party prepared to continue to the eastern part of Moella, in search of the elder who had possibly saved a good portion of his village.

--- *** ---