With a horrified look on his face, Jonathan, the shorter brother and also the one who I’ve barely heard speak more than two words at once since we met, runs up behind the man who stabbed me and breaks his torch in half across the back of his head. The man falls to the ground unconscious and the knife slips out of his grasp. Jonathan looks at me with a worried expression and I shout at the brothers, “Get the fuck out of here. The both of you. And don’t look back.”

Turning away from them, I erase them from my thoughts as I focus all my attention on the group running at me. This isn’t good. He might have just given me a death sentence with that backstab. Why the fuck would he stab me? A bunch of thoughts and explanations run through my mind but they’re all useless right now. It doesn’t matter and he doesn’t matter.

I have to physically shake my head to clear my thoughts but that just means the pain from my side becomes more apparent. My breathing is erratic, I keep involuntarily groaning and letting out whimpers, and there’s a tremble in my hands that wasn’t there before. Corbin’s remnants are five yards away from me now and they’re getting closer with each passing second. Shoving my left hand into my pocket, I take out a fistful of dirt and ready myself.

Seeing this, they stop about four yards away from me and start picking up rocks from the ground before pelting me with them. Are you fucking kidding me? One grazes against my temple and opens up a pretty deep cut. All I can do is put my arms up to protect my head as much as possible as I trudge forward under their hail of stones.

They have no intention of letting me close the distance and run away whenever I grow too close. This can’t go on any longer. When I’m a yard away from my next target, I cast Flash right in front of his eyes before he can take the chance to turn away. The one I’m chasing shrieks in surprise and falls onto his back when he tries to blindly scramble away from me. Not letting go of my chance, I rush up while still being bombarded by rocks and dive onto his prone body.

With both hands on my knife, I shove it into his heart using all of my bodyweight and he inhales sharply before slowly exhaling his dying breath. Quickly pulling the body up by its collar, I stand up and lean it over my left shoulder, effectively turning his corpse into a makeshift shield. They haven’t stopped throwing stones at me for a second since they got into range but with something to block them now, I’m finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. But that relief is short lived because I can feel something warm and wet running down my left thigh. Looking down, the whole left side of my shirt from where my ribs are and down is dyed crimson with blood. That son of a bitch got me pretty good.

When they see the stones aren’t as effective anymore against my new companion, they stop throwing them but they don’t make a move. It seems we’re at an impasse since they’re not willing to approach me and I’m bogged down with lugging around a corpse. The final four have me surrounded but instead of charging in as one and ending it all like they should, they instead look around nervously at each other, expecting someone else to make the first move. I’d love to take them up on it but I’m at a heavy disadvantage. If I let go of his corpse, the stone throwing will resume and there’s no way I can catch up to them while carrying this body around. It’s a stalemate and it’s not in my favor.

Various ideas, plots, and plans come to mind but they’re all interrupted by one of the four screaming, “What the fuck are you idiots all waiting for!? Get in there and kill him! He’s already on his deathbed, one last push and we’ll rid ourselves of this nightmare.”

One of his allies responds back with furious uproar, “You fucking do it then! You’re always the one going on and on about what we should do but you never take the first fucking step! You’re too limpdick to go first and do it yourself but you’re man enough to order us around? Go fuck yourself. You saw what he just did. He knows how to use magic. I’m not getting anywhere close to him.

“I didn’t even want to do this stupid shit in the first place. But you braggarts kept going about how genius your plan was and how it would go off without a hitch. Where did that leave us now? We kidnapped the girl but her brother barely hurt him at all and he’s probably dead on the ground over there. I’m fucking done.

“Hey, Red Hair. Isaac, was it? I didn’t want anything to do with this. If you promise to let me live and not come after me from now on, I’ll leave right this instant.”

Ohh, fuck me. The gods are finally smiling upon me at my most dire moment for once in my godsforsaken life. Thank the gods everyone down here are imbeciles and can’t organize themselves to save their lives. Killing Corbin last night has proven to be such a windfall time and time again. Looking at the man who is staring at me nervously with imploring eyes, I nod my head and say, “Deal. Leave and I won’t look for trouble with you from now on. Our slates are clean.”

He breathes a sigh of relief, turns around, and starts walking away. One down. The one who spoke first so vehemently is red in the face as he screeches at his former ally’s back, “You fucking whoreson! You’re actually going to believe he’ll keep his promise!? He’ll kill you in your sleep and your dead soul won’t know what even happened! Come back and let’s finish this!”

The one I made a deal with pauses in his steps but doesn’t turn around. He says with his back still turned, “Be that as it may, this is my best option. Out of our group of 12, eight are dead and we didn’t even know he could use magic until moments ago. He’s kept such a huge card up his sleeve until he needed to use it and I can only assume he has more. Even if he does renege on our deal, I can only chalk it up to me being too weak to make him keep it. Just like Corbin instilled in us since we got here, the strong survive and the weak perish. The way I see it, we’re the weak ones and we couldn’t even keep our lives.”

With that, he kept walking without looking back once. The one he was arguing with only got redder in the face and for a moment, I almost expected his head to spontaneously explode. As he stares murderously at the back of the one walking away, his entire body trembles like a leaf in the wind, unable to contain his emotions. I seem to recognize him as the one who shouted, “Get him,” during our first fight earlier. The other two are also looking unsure of what they should do. The departure of their former ally and their visibly dwindling number seems to have shaken them to their core.

The one who wants to be their leader looks at the remaining two and shouts, “Well? What are you waiting for? Get your asses in there and finish him off. I’ll be right behind the two of you and I’ll make sure I’ll cover your weak spots.”

Silence. The other two, including the boy who I’m the most familiar with, only stand there in silence and glance at each other. Judging by the way they’re standing and holding themselves, they’re already done with this fight. They already had one foot out before the one I made a deal with left but with only the three of them remaining, any determination and confidence they showed at the beginning of the fight has completely left them.

Seeing this, the one with the red face starts storming up to them with a huff. His plan isn’t a bad idea. It’s very similar to the shieldwall we practiced in Candle. He wants the two of them to act as the bulwark and he wants to be the floater that will look for openings.

But the problem is that there’s no trust between them. The shieldwall is built on trust. Most battle formations are built on a trust between your allies but the shieldwall is especially demanding in this regard. If you’re in the bulwark, you have to be able to put your full faith in the people next to you and that they won’t crumble under pressure otherwise you’ll get surrounded in a sea of enemies. This is why they wouldn’t let me be a part of the bulwark even though I was a shield user. They didn’t believe my small stature and my scrawny arms could keep up with the people around me.

Even to be assigned a floater role in a shieldwall, there has to be trust between the bulwark and the floaters. Floaters have to believe their bulwark will hold strong and won’t break apart during a fight. The bulwark in turn has to believe the floaters behind them will help dwindle enemy numbers while protecting their weak points. It’s the same here. The red faced one is promising he’ll be a good floater for them as long as they act as the vanguards. Empty promises don’t mean shit in a fight for survival.

The red faced one marched up to the last one aside from the boy and tried to grab at his collar with such an intense aura of authority that if I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought he was their leader. But his hand is roughly swatted away and he’s forcibly shoved backwards. A look of surprise appears on his face though I’m not sure why. Is he delusional or something? What, exactly, from this entire night has shown him that he has become their de facto leader now that Corbin’s dead? What is going on inside that mind of his?

After a moment of stunned silence, he tries to do the exact same thing again only to be rebuffed once more. What is this farce? Corbin, you beautiful bastard, how in the fuck did you have the patience to put up with 12 of these idiots? The man with the red face grows more enraged after every failure until he can’t contain it anymore and rushes over to the boy and stabs him in the neck with one swift motion. Whoa.

What the fuck? At this point I’ve dropped the corpse I was hauling around and I’m just watching this… bizarre show intently with fascination. The boy drops his knife and tries to cover the wound with both hands as he stumbles backwards weakly before ultimately falling on his back. The red faced man looks at the other man who kept shoving him and shouts, “You see!? I can be like Corbin too! I’m not afraid of anything or anyone! Now get your ass over there and finish this fucking travesty of a fight!”

Travesty is fucking right. I have no idea what I’ve just witnessed and I don’t want to know. Aside from the one I made a deal with, there’s only two left and they’re having a standoff as they circle around each other while brandishing their knives. It seems that… power play didn’t achieve what the red faced man wanted. Jonas and Jonathan have come back over since the intense fight from before has devolved into a circus show. Jonas watches the duel between the former allies with a confused expression and asks, “What is happening?”

Sighing, I shake my head and answer, “Don’t ask me, I have no idea.”