Despite knowing that She’d regret it almost immediately, Anastacia gave Gobby the permission to use the fire. She just didn’t see another way out of it with even some of the goblins hopefully alive, leaving them defenseless was too risky and running at their pace would probably get everyone killed.

“King! Take me to the dead elves!” She commanded the simulacrum and armed herself with a shard of troll bone and a piece of burning firewood to use as a torch.

The pair ran into the woods. Having been around the bonfire for a while, Anastacia’s eyes weren’t used to the dim lighting anymore and couldn’t see much. While focusing on her surroundings to know where the creatures were attacking from, she used the torch to find safe footing.

As they closed in on the perimeter the creatures had set, she could feel five of them running towards the king. Now armed with something sharper than his fist, the simulacrum had no major issues dispatching the first one that got to him. Driving the sword right through it and shoving it aside, he barely lost any speed in the process. The creature looked awfully human in some ways, but the noises it made ruled out that possibility. Anastacia couldn’t get a good look at it because she had to focus on not tripping and the other four creatures that had now turned their attention towards her. She could also feel the rest of the pack start following them as they escaped. She tried exploding the corpse of the creature her friend had just killed, but doing it while running for her life proved to be more difficult than she had expected. Its bones shot off in all direction but with far too little force and merely slowed down the other creatures.

The four that had started their pursuit earlier were only a few meters behind Anastacia, she could use the bone shard to kill one but that’d leave her unarmed against the other three.

“Can I get a little help?!” She yelled, hoping that the king could figure something out.

The simulacrum, slowed down until Anastacia could catch up with him. Once they were side by side, the king grabbed the necromancer by the waist and flung her on his shoulder. Carrying Anastacia allowed the king to speed up to his maximum running speed and they started to get further away from their pursuers.

“How strong are you exactly? Well I guess someone that’s made of stone and metal won’t notice a few extra kilos.” Anastacia said and grabbed on to the simulacrums head.

She peered at the creatures that were chasing them, but still couldn’t quite make out what they were. The dead one she had passed looked a lot like a human but something was off about it. They sounded a lot like wolves but clearly weren’t, and werewolves are covered in fur. So perhaps they were other kind of werecreatures?

They ran for maybe ten more minutes before reaching the site of the battle, by then they already had a solid lead and could prepare for the battle.

The forest king stood at the edge of the area, ready to stop whatever was after them, while still leaving some distance between himself and the necromancer, in case he needed to move back a bit. The simulacrum’s behavior made Anastacia think that combat might be the king’s main function. She didn’t know much about the simulacra, but the king certainly didn’t seem like a scout or a simple manual labor model.

While keeping an eye on the direction they came from, she broke some of the fragile elf bones into sharp shards and scattered them around. They should be enough to quickly finish off any enemies that got past the king. If not, she had a few bigger shards next to her, just in case.

Unlike before, they didn’t have a massive fire behind them, so the creatures didn’t stop to surround them, instead the whole pack rushed towards the forest king. The first two met their end as the king simply cut them in half. As the third beast reached him, the forest king quickly swung his sword at it. The weathered sword was past its prime and was not designed to be used with such force, and as it hit the third beast, it snapped about thirty centimeters from the cross guard, leaving the blade embedded in the beast’s side. The simulacrum promptly assessed the situation and stabbed the remaining piece of his sword into the fourth beast’s neck.

During the fight, Anastacia kept the creatures from flanking them by shooting bone fragments to both sides of the incoming pack. Up to the point where the sword broke, everything seemed to go according to the plan. The necromancer still had no idea what they were fighting, not that it really mattered to her, as she didn’t possess Gilbert’s vast knowledge about the beasts of the world, knowing the exact type wouldn’t have helped her anyway.

The speed at which the king could dispatch the creatures was greatly slowed by the sword breaking, and as the seventh or so rushed him, he still hadn’t dealt with the one before it. The simulacrum was overrun by the beasts and fell over.

“NONONONO! Not you too!” Anastacia yelled, as their enemies bit and clawed her companion.

She was nowhere near over Alizarin’s death, and began throwing all material within her range at the beasts. The elven bones proved even less effective than she had though, mostly just bouncing off from the beasts’ thick skins. A few of the larger pieces found their mark, badly wounding their targets.

She wasn’t able to kill enough of them before they charged past the downed simulacrum, towards Anastacia. Using the bones from the ones the king and she had killed and whatever scraps of control over the situation Anastacia had, she managed to impale the last few that arrived, but that still left four to be dealt with.

With her plan in shambles and focus waning, Anastacia wasn’t able to react in time to stop the charging beasts, and the first one tackled her with enough force to toss the necromancer at a tree over five meters away.

She made an uncomfortable crunching sound as she slammed into the massive tree, but thanks to the ruby ring, stayed conscious. The beast that had hit her stood over its prey and lifted its claw to end the fight. It was interrupted by an ear shattering screech and a rain of burning pieces of wood.

“PROTECT QUEEN! BURN! SLAY! KILL!” Gobby screamed as it jumped into the back of the creature that was threatening the queen of goblins.

The goblins had taken knives and daggers from the pile of equipment and somehow lit themselves on fire. The confused beasts stood no chance as they were cut down by a horde of burning goblins. The carnage continued long after the threat was dealt with, and the last thing Anastacia saw before passing out, was her green minions rolling in the blood of their enemies, trying to put themselves out before burning to death.