Faye ducked into the courtyard, avoiding some stands of vines across the entryway. Activating [Swordfighter’s Sense], she knew where the remaining Primalists were.

Six.

Quite a few.

She hesitated only a moment. A barely noticeable stutter to her step.

Too late to back out, still our best shot.

Her opponents had noticed her the moment she had stepped into the light of the courtyard, the glare of the weak winter sun lancing down from above to make an irregular shaft of sunlight across the centre of the courtyard. Floating pollen and other things illuminated the edges of the light.

Hidden away in the recesses of the shadows were the Primalists, and whatever else they might be hiding.

Huddled together against the far wall were the children. Each one looked terrified, and not a single one moved when Faye and Taveon made their entrance. She saw their hesitant looks at their captors and Faye’s rage flared.

Throwing out her left hand, Faye activated a spell.

[Scorching Lance].

The thick bar of fire caught the Primalist in the near corner directly in the belly, and his ragged clothes immediately ignited into a full blaze. His screams were horrific. The others scrambled to move and react.

Congratulations! You have defeated a level 10 [Primalist Caller].

Experience awarded.

Faye pushed the sound away. Of course it was horrific, it was fire. She held onto her composure as her rage flared hotter when she looked at the kids.

An arrow flew through the air in the blink of an eye, and Faye stepped aside just as the archer loosed it. It skittered off the paved stones of the courtyard, piercing some woody vines with a thunk.

Taveon let off a spell. She was not sure what it was, but with a rush of air one of the Primalists let out a cry of pain.

The middle of the courtyard was further from the thorns and flora the Primalists had grown, but it was also bathed with light and surrounded on all sides by enemies. It was the least logical place to go.

At least one Primalist was a mage, because the thorns and vines started growing thicker and quested out toward her boots. She stepped back smartly, throwing a [Fire Dart] toward one of the shadowy figures that could have been the mage.

The archer was perched on a mass of wood in the back right corner. Another arrow flew out.

Faye still had [Swordfighter’s Sense] active, so she had no trouble slipping aside as the arrow was released. Its flight streaked past her close enough for the passing to sting. She flinched but threw herself forward regardless.

A man with a bare chest, covered only by some spare pieces of leather armour, came for her in a roaring charge.

Faye deactivated [Swordfighter’s Sense] a moment before the pain in her head started, the edge of it enough to warn her it was coming.

She pointed the arming sword directly at the oncoming man.

Thick tendrils of plant matter and thorns reached for her from the floor, but she dodged or jumped over their clumsy attempts at reaching her.

For a moment, she grinned. Her body was able to move with the barest thought and with precision that would let her win any tournament back home.

Then the Primalist hit her with the power of a speeding train.

Her stance and movement collapsed back into nothing, the man’s weight, and momentum too much for her. Faye panicked for a moment.

When she hit the floor, the impact should have knocked the air out of her lungs, but she simply coughed out and weathered the blow. The Primalist landed on top of her and reared back to attack with an elbow.

She jabbed out with her left hand, hitting him in the solar plexus — the soft part of the chest just below the sternum. But he also endured the hit, just as she had survived the landing, and brought his elbow down in his own attack. She got her forearm between the strike and her face, but the impact sent her head spinning anyway.

A moment later, the man’s weight disappeared.

Taveon threw out another two spells in quick succession. Faye watched them zip past her face as she regained her senses. They looked like almost-invisible ovals of air.

Feeling able to use the skill once more, Faye activated [Swordfighter’s Sense]. She was not fast enough to avoid the next arrow, which snapped out and hit her in the shoulder. To her surprise, the arrow did not pierce her, but it erupted into vines that wrapped her right shoulder and upper arm in a painfully tight bind.

Struggling to her knees with her right arm tightly bound, Faye had to scramble to avoid the next arrow. If the archer was able to continue binding her, she would be helpless.

The brawler was coming back in, his face lumpy and bruised from Taveon’s attacks.

Waiting for him to make an attack, Faye ducked away, but the binding changed her centre of balance enough that she wobbled, and in that moment the brawler’s fist slammed into the side of her face.

She let out an involuntary groan of pain.

Then she swarmed upward and slammed her head into his nose as he loomed over her. He cried out and stumbled backwards, hands covering his nose as it torrented blood.

Another arrow flew out, but this one skimmed past Faye and hit Taveon. The archer had changed targets.

The old man grunted, but he had anticipated the strike and neither arm was bound to his side as Faye’s had been. In retaliation, he sent spells flinging toward the archer, who was sent scuttling for safety.

With the archer out of the picture for a few moments, Faye tried concentrating on burning away the binding vines covering her shoulder. Before she could, however, a small swarm of lesser briars emerged from the pile of vegetation around her.

Transferring the mana, she had been about to use on the vines into her open palm, Faye let out [Fire Darts] into the two briars closest to her, then realising what was happening, she pushed herself to her feet and charged away into the shadows at the edges of the courtyard.

They’re trying to get me to waste my mana, she thought. With this shoulder accessory, I can’t exactly do anything other than cast spells, either.

Narrowing her eyes, everything was darker here, Faye focused on what her Sense told her. It seemed she had a moment of respite, as the two closest Primalists moved away from her — she figured them for the Callers — so she used a quick burst of mana to ignite the vines on her shoulder.

With a snapping burst of energy, the entangling vines broke apart. The rush of blood that flowed into her hand gave her pins and needles. The vines had been so tight that she had been unable to drop the sword, but now her hand was turning numb she transferred it to her offhand.

The brawler had followed. His face was covered from the nose down in blood, and his entire torso was covered as well. It was a harrowing look. His broken nose added to his rage, and he came at her with arms wide, seeking to entrap her.

Focusing, Faye stepped backward at the right time to bait a lunge out of the brawler. He leapt forward in a spear tackle, but Faye shifted her direction and chopped down with the sword in her left hand instead of backing in a straight line.

The sword landed on the back of the brawler’s neck. He dropped to the floor.

Congratulations! Your group has defeated a level 12 [Primal Pugilist].

Experience awarded.

Faye blinked at the different class name but did not have much time to think about it because an arrow clattered against the stone of the courtyard wall. She ducked down behind some of the thorns and foliage, hopefully presenting a smaller and less visible target for the archer.

The Callers were ready, though. They cast a spell that glowed vibrant green, causing the vines and flowering plants of the edges of the courtyard to grow rapidly. Faye watched as before her eyes, the vines reached across the gap, fingers stretching like long lost lovers to entwine and twist together. In seconds, the barrier was an impenetrable wall of thorns as thick as her finger. Each thorny vine was creaking, squeezing tighter against others to mould into a solid wall.

“That’s impressive,” Faye said. Then, holding up her left hand, she gathered the mana there into a mass of explosive energy. When she was ready, she fed it into the vines, igniting it as she pushed it through the tiny gaps left behind in the wooden wall.

The greenery let off a massive amount of smoke as it went up in flames.

“Dammit,” Faye cursed. She had seen what she should have already realised, chastising herself.

I’m wasting more mana!

Drawing back whatever mana she had expelled that could be recovered, Faye turned and followed the path back to the entrance of the courtyard. Taveon was ducked behind one of the bushes, flinching as arrows flew past his head every few seconds.

Faye let a [Fire Dart] go, targeting the archer. In the space, Taveon stood and retreated into the opening of the courtyard, Faye following.

“We can’t retreat too far,” Faye said. “What will they do to the kids?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Taveon said, he pointed.

Faye looked at the back wall, fear’s icy fingers sliding down her spine as she realised that the three other Primalists were standing behind the children — who had all been made to stand in front, holding hands and bawling their eyes out.

Only the archer was not using the children as human shields.

Of course, that did not mean the Primalist Callers were unable to use their own spells. One of them threw a spell over the heads of the children, causing them to flinch, that Faye had to dramatically duck to the floor to avoid.

“Taveon…” Faye started, but before she could say anything, the archer walked into view, holding three arrows loosely in their left hand as it cradled the wood of the bow, their right hand already drawing a nocked arrow to their cheek.

“Move!” she shouted. She crashed into Taveon a moment before the archer loosed, pushing the man against the wall just enough that they both avoided the speeding arrow.

The time it took for another arrow to be nocked was depressingly fast. The archer took another step forward, raised the bow, and drew back to their cheek. It was a smooth, practised motion that loosed an arrow in seconds. The snap shot hit Faye in the left arm, fortunately striking a steel plate hidden in her gambeson. It tore the small plate of metal out of the padded jacket and bounced away, with the broken arrow.

The force imparted by the speeding projectile was enough to make her whole arm numb, and she dropped the sword with a curse.

Taveon threw out his arms and a transparent wall of energy blossomed into view before them, blocking the way into the courtyard.

“How is it?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the barrier he had summoned into being.

“Numb, hit armour, painful not debilitating.”

“Good, get ready. He’ll loose the moment the barrier ends.”

“Which is?”

“A few more seconds,” Taveon replied. “Sorry, I cast it too quickly for anything else.”

She shook her head. A few seconds was better than nothing.

The barrier seemed to expand slightly, as it if were taking a deep breath, and then just… popped out of existence.

An arrow screamed through the motes of fizzling mana. It was slightly off course, and Faye surged forward when it passed them.

She knew that the archer was able to get off a quick shot, but every archer’s weakness was close combat. She had to get in close.

Her left arm was numb, and her right arm was still weak from the entangling vine. Her sword was still on the floor behind her. She had been burning through mana at a prodigious rate, enough that she doubted she had enough for a lance.

As she ran forward, her [Swordfighter’s Sense] told her that the hostiles in the courtyard were growing. The Callers were putting their summoning skills to work. The children were surrounded. The archer, not as surprised to see Faye charging him as she had hoped, raised the bow with an arrow already nocked.

She had one chance.

Feinting to her left, Faye ducked down, watching as the arrow tip dropped, slightly — not enough.

Pushing off with her leading leg, she jumped to the right, raising her barely functioning arm.

The archer had expected something, the arrow was still aimed at her. His hand did not quite reach his cheek before he released.

Mana in Faye’s right hand ignited into a rapid release of [Fire Dart]. She pushed out a second dart.

The arrow leapt from the bowstring. [Swordfighter’s Sense] let Faye feel its power as it bowed and sawed through the air, spinning rapidly from the twist in the fletching.

Her darts leapt forward with a speed only magic could produce, engulfing the arrow before continuing onward. The arrow did not waver in its course. It slammed into Faye’s chest.

Faye let out a cry of pain, but she was satisfied to hear an accompanying scream from the archer.

Taveon followed up Faye’s spells with his own. She felt and heard them rush past her. The crumple of the archer and clatter of his bow hitting the stones was accompanied by the notification sound.

Congratulations! Your group have defeated a level 10 [Primalist Archer].

Experience awarded.

The pain in her chest was making it hard to breathe. She looked down to see the shaft of wood sticking from her armour. The arrowhead was partially buried in the cloth of the gambeson. With a hitch, she grabbed it and tried pulling it out, but with a hiss of pain she let go. It was jammed between a couple of plates of metal and wouldn’t move.

She contemplated leaving it, for a moment, but a shout of pain from Taveon made her throw caution to the wind. She grabbed the arrow shaft with both hands, as useful as her left hand was, and half-pushed, half-pulled the arrowhead down and away from her armour. It pulled some of the fabric out with it as it went, tearing stitching and eventually getting stuck in the fabric but no longer jabbing her with every breath.

Ignoring the tears streaming down her face and snot dribbling from her nose, she stood up and tried to draw on her reserves. There were still three left to deal with.

Footsteps, behind her.

She spun, holding out her right hand, already drawing the mana to ignite.

But instead of Primalists, Faye gasped in shock as she recognised Hoza, the militiawoman charging down the alley toward the courtyard, her spear held in one hand, shield in the other. Faye absorbed the loose mana once more, smiling as the woman nodded at her.

The woman’s armour was mismatched, and ill-fitting, but another arm was more than welcome in the fight.

Then, the woman shifted as she ducked some overgrown vines and Faye saw the slower, but no less determined form of Maggie behind her.

Taking hold of her shock, Faye indicated to Hoza to join Taveon.

“Three left, magic users.”

The militiawoman grimaced as she nodded. “Aye, just our luck.”

Maggie was gasping, holding her belly as if she had a stitch.

“You should not be running about, I’m sure,” Faye said.

“No, definitely not,” Maggie gasped out, but she was staring past Faye as they turned back to the courtyard. “Couldn’t let you both take them all on though, could we?”

“We could have,” Hoza muttered, “but she wouldn’t stay still.”

Faye grinned. She was glad for the backup, even if it was ill advised.

Then, she settled into her game face. She stooped and took up the sword she had dropped, striding forward as if she wasn’t bruised or low on mana. As they stepped forward, the distant sound of thunder rolled across the sky, followed shortly by another earth-shaking roar.

Then I guess it’s onto whatever that thing is, she thought.