Although Shayjol’s lungs ached from his panting breaths, he hardly missed a beat as he kept moving against his own fatigue. Drawing deeper than he knew he could, he pressed forth with his mana, feeling it coil within him around a rune he had been perfecting for quite some time. The rune shook and looked ready to collapse, but Shay planted his feet and closed his eyes, turning his full attention inward for a half-second, willing the rune to be whole and powerful.

It stabilized, and he felt a torrent of energy pour out of him. Throwing his arms to the sides, he released a wave of force that staggered his allies, but more importantly sent dozens of the tiny gremlins flying against the walls of the cave, many rolling back down the slopes of the hive-like cavern. His mana sight flickered and for a moment he was blind, but he shook his head and despite the pounding in his head, managed to keep his vision from blacking out entirely.

Tory shouted something, and his mind swam trying to figure out what it had been. But she had motioned forward and Sentir had immediately run past her, so he assumed they were heading the right way. He forced his body to work, and ran after them, having to rely wholly on the hope that he wouldn’t stumble or suffer a serious attack before he could recover at least a little.

He vaguely understood that Torysen and Sentir were still casting magic. Tory guided the battle with her unusual stone vines and bullied the gremlins aside with bounding strikes from that great magic sword of hers. Sentir played a more tactical role, holding larger forces at bay with his familiar, albeit powerful, force waves and removing flankers with small, piercing bolts of light.

It was all Shayjol could do to track where they were going, and keep a small space around him free of enemies. Even then, his arms and legs were missing a fair bit of flesh from myriad attacks, but he was too tired and panicked to feel the pain.

Shayjol’s mana and stamina had depleted hours ago, and his health was reaching a critical point that he never thought he’d see it. He had been running on sheer willpower, desperately trying to restore himself whenever they managed to find a crevice to rest in for minutes at a time between waves of the gremlins. He had seen his endurance and willpower stats both rise, something he had never witnessed without the effects of Focus Points before, but even that small improvement hadn’t given him the boost necessary to be regularly useful.

As he ran blindly, he finally noticed a distinct change in his surroundings. The cool cave air seemed to circulate and swirl around him for a moment, and then he felt the ever-foreign feeling of warmth from that bright star above the planet that Mason relied on to see. He broke into a delirious giggle, and stumbled into the light before collapsing heavily on the ground. His own laughter sounded distant, but he knew it was his. It was just so funny to think Mason could only see because of some giant ball of gas forever away!

Torysen grabbed the young Darkest Night as she made it into the light. Heaving him over her shoulder, she pulled him well past the edge of the cave and began barking orders at the archers stationed around the entrance of hill. They were slow to the upbeat, but quick enough.

As gremlins began pouring out of the cave, they were hit by a wall of arrows. They screeched and wailed as they were torn apart and pinned to the stone and to one another. But for every gremlin that fell, more ran on from behind. Torysen immediately called Clearsay over, telling the small cook to go rouse the rest of the band, and bring every arrow they could find.

Clearsay had begun to scurry away before Torysen remembered, “And get Shaywise to heal her son, and we’ll need Treyjol’s axe as well. Be prepared for a battle!”

“Alright, Captain!” Clearsay chirped, resuming her sprint back toward the heart of the ramshackle camp.

Torysen set Shayjol down against a tree and grimaced. The boy barely stirred even as his head rocked back against the wood. For a scouting mission, this had gone about as horribly as possible. Leornal and Mason were lost- a pair of facts that she had highly mixed feelings about - and she had almost lost Shayjol as well. Though the boy was trouble, Shaywise would have killed her if anything had happened to him. But Torysen suspected the kind-hearted woman still might over the loss of the human boy.

In retrospect, she should have forced the human to stay in camp. His powers were too unpredictable, and he was an asset that she should never have risked. If the rest of his people found out that he had been lost on her watch, that could sow distrust during the initial peace talks when they finally arrived.

She regretted letting these thoughts creep in as her muscles stiffened and cooled. She hadn’t had a lot of fight left in her, but now that she had slowed, fatigue was rushing in through the floodgates of her consciousness. Her band needed her though, and she returned her attention toward the cave entrance to see flurries of arrows bombarding the rush of maggot-like, clawed creatures. Two lines alternated fire, and it was barely enough. Even with a third, the monsters would still be approaching.

Thank the Source they still had spells.

Sentir sat on his knees not too far off, in a meditative stance she knew him to employ when he was trying to quickly restore enough mana to engage his more powerful sensing abilities. She was grateful for his steadfast dedication: A lesser fighter would have collapsed from his wounds.

At that thought, her head swivelled back to Shayjol, and she saw his mother rushing up, kneeling by his body and instantly activating spells that Torysen would never be able to comprehend. To Shaywise’s credit, though she looked stricken, her tight features revealed an inspiring focus that held back motherly panic.

Treyjol charged into the fray, trusting the archers to avoid him, and she was impressed by the diligent way his axe flashed through the battlefield. He hardly swung it without chopping or crushing at least one gremlin body.

Watching them, Tory understood how Shayjol had endured the last several hours of torturous escape. His parents, though they weren’t truly combat focused, had impressive fortitude. It was a shame, really, that the boy lacked discipline. With a little dedication, and much better friends, he would have made a good member of the band. She had so few melee fighters with her.

But it was his fault they had almost been slaughtered by Geralt. They never should have entered that city without a full force. That they shouldn’t have gone so deeply into the hive without more support was a regret of her own.

But she could still remember well the fight with Geralt, and if it weren’t for the stamina boost from the human’s strange spells, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to continue holding her own against the man. Who among her band could have taken her place in the defense? They would have been massacred.

She wiped a wet patch from each of her cheeks and reminded herself that after this she was going to redouble her attention to caution. Then she summoned the last dredges of her power and pulled stone vines from the ground at the entrance of the cave, tangling and ripping apart every gremlin she could get their tendrils around.

Trekking up the wide, curving staircase in the center of the mall, the two adventurers jumped quickly into action as the floor rumbled and shook, and a strained sound erupted behind them. Both of them crouched with weapons in hand, turning back around to face the entrance of the mall, but Mason broke the tension by laughing in glee.

The broken fountain seemed to have been fixed, and water gushed and spurt all over the lower level of the mall as the water pressure built back up and tried to press through the broken pieces of the statue which had clogged its jets. Leornal looked wary, but Mason scurried back down the stairwell, stepping over bodies and rushing to the water’s edge with his mouth open to catch the spraying water.

"Oh, god, that's not good," he laughed, even as he went back for some more of the water. "It's chalky, to say the least. I can only hope my vitality protects me from strange ancient diseases, I guess!"

Leornal passed slowly down the stairs, and stayed well out of the range of the water which sprayed unpredictably as the water pulsed. "If you know it's a bad idea to drink that, why do you do it anyways? I would have expected the Biord to act like this but... please tell me you're not among the more intelligent of the humans?"

Mason grinned as he turned back to his companion. Water dripped off his short, mousy brown hair and he wiped it from his brow to prevent impairing his vision. Thankfully his clothing was somewhat water resistant, but nevertheless, he shivered as the heat left his body. "Don't you know, Leornal? I was picked as the first human in the Trials because of my vastly superior strength and intelligence. I'm the true champion of the human race!"

The archer raised an eyebrow at that, "Then you're clearly doomed. And I suppose, so am I," he gestured to the mall, indicating the predicament of being trapped in an underground city that was poisoned by an unknown element and doomed to corruption and decay. That gave him a thought, "Did it occur to you that you may have just drank the poison which killed these people?"

Mason's eyes went wide, "Shit," he spat, "fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh my god, I'm going to die. Why didn't you stop me?"

It was Leornal's turn to laugh, "Truly the greatest your species has to offer.” He shook his head and beckoned to Mason, “Don't worry, the poison was airborne. If it's still around, we'll die no matter what we do."

"Well that's not very comforting at all," Mason mused.

He heard rubble move in the distance, and then a pulsing noise not unlike the sound made by one of the Darkest Night’s force spells. Demon's eyes narrowed and he drew his sword, rushing back up the stairs toward Leornal

"Activate your mana sight, Demon," Leornal urged, moving further back past the fountain.

Mason did, and what he saw confused him. Similar to the heat above a fire, he could see the air shimmer and warp, but it was clearly glowing with a mana hue.

Off in the distance they heard a voice chime, "Attention, the city's defenses have been breached, and the Committee For Disease Management is urging all residents to join together in their local disaster-zone. Specialists will be present to provide a final barrier to the spread of the as-yet unidentified poison. We assure you that the Archmages are hopeful that they can discover a cure before it's too late."

Even the recorded voice seemed uncertain of what she was saying, and Mason frowned imagining what he would do if he had been told that an incurable and unidentified disease was going to wipe out his entire city. He shivered as he realized the Trials were basically no better, or might be worse if he couldn't find a way to strengthen humanity quickly when they arrived.

Refocusing on the shimmering that was intensifying down a hallway on the first floor, Mason decided on a whim to switch from his sword, to his staff. This wasn’t likely to be a fun opponent, whatever it was.

The concussive, pulsing noise grew worse, and suddenly a flash of light flew out of the hallway and up into the air above the fountain. The little water that had managed to spurt up rather than out to the sides seemed to curve around the ball of light, spraying out even further.

“Well what do we have here, hmmmm?” chimed an oddly young voice. Mason couldn’t see clearly with mana sight on, so he turned it off, and in its place he saw two glowing orbs.

“It looks like we have intruders!” chirped the second orb. Both of them were about the size of watermelon, and were composed of round, metal panels that swirled around a core of tightly packed energy.

“Ah, and here we haven’t even had any time to charge up! But we can’t let alien invaders live in the city, and these two don’t seem so strong at all!”

Leornal and Mason exchanged looks, but neither moved or spoke, uncertain of what provoking these two beings would do.

“Look, they aren’t even of the same race! How odd. Oh well, mysteries are for the Archmages. We were told to kill any foreign entities that entered the city until they could restore it, and I guess we should do it.”

“I was really worried when we ran out of power that we wouldn’t be able to do our job! But now that the city is waking up, we’re awake again. It feels so good too!”

The two orbs swooped excited around each other, splashing water all about and casting off large, concussive waves that shook the ground.

“It looks like these were two spirit guardians left to defend the city,” Leornal explained trivially to Mason. “I’m not sure if we should fight or run from them.”

“Yeah, I think we’re on the same page. I guess we try running, and fight if we have to?” Mason suggested, never taking his eyes off the two orbs which seemed to be… playing?

Leornal nodded, but Mason didn’t see it. All he heard were feet stomping along rubble and moving up the stairs, and Mason swore, but sprinted up the opposite flight quickly.