“I think it’s bad,” Dolly said.
“My name is Semimodo, the bard of glory and thunder,” Van said as he walked right up to Reginus. “And this is my fearless crew.”
“Who aren’t ragamuffins!” Bidane called back. The rest of the team heartily agreed with her.
“I see. Well, this is unfortunate,” Reginus said, “because you happen to be crossing right through my territory. Without my permission.”
“Hey, the crags are public space,” Van said. “The nearest city’s ten miles from here.”
“If you look at your map closely,” Reginus said, “you will see that my territory extends all the way up to this pass.”
“Look, are you trying to rob us?” Van asked. “Because we have plenty of forces and we’re not going to go down without a fight.”
“Rob you? Goodness, no! I’m merely affirming the Kingdom of Huar’s right to defend its territory. There are plenty of other areas that you can pass through. This isn’t one of them. Leave, or we will be forced to expel you through force.”
“Hah, you going to sneeze us out?” Bidane asked. “I say let’s kill these bastards!”
“Kill them?” Capello shouted, snapping out of his usual trance. Sang had observed that, unless there was a fight or talking about fighting, he never paid attention to anything.
Capello drew his axe and made a blind charge for one of the golden thugs. Steel clashed as they began to fight back.
“Kill them!” Reginus yelled. “Kill them in the name of Huar!”
Utter chaos broke out around Sang. Arrows began to fly from the clifftops where the archers had been waiting, swords clashed, and screams of rage pierced the air. Sang drew her bow and began to fire at the archers who were aiming at the fighters in the party. Her arrows moved swiftly and were able to deal damage to a few of them, provoking their attention. In unison, all six of the archers above aimed their bows at Sang and released.
“Crap!” Sang gasped, but before she could be riddled full of arrows, Sahara leapt in front of her and raised her hands high.
“WALL OF WIND!” Sahara screamed at the top of her lungs, causing a powerful gust of wind to burst out of her hands, knocking all of the arrows aside. “I can cast for as long as I have magic points!” Sahara called back to Sang. “You shoot them and I’ll protect you!”
Sang nodded and began to fire concentrated bursts of arrows at her opponents, taking her time to aim. By not letting the urge to shoot quickly overtake her, she was able to aim better and, in the process, took out two of the archers. The wall of wind was constantly blowing the concentrated arrows of her opponents aside, protecting her from all damage.
On the hand-to-hand front, things weren’t going so well. Van had been knocked onto the ground by Reginus and he wasn’t moving. Sang wasn’t sure if he was dead or not—she was too far away from him to see what his status bar was. She needed to move closer, but as long as the archers were focused on her, they wouldn’t be attacking the warriors. She was picking them off one by one, but not fast enough to get into the fray with the others.
Capello and Kylian were fighting back to back, fending off the six golden armored soldiers who were encircling them. They were fierce, but outnumbered heavily. As steel clashed and battle cries were unleashed, it was growing clear to Sang that the fight would be over soon.
“A little help here!” Bidane cried as she ran toward the back of the group, where Sang and Sahara were. Bidane’s white robes were soaked with blood and she was clutching her arm.
“Wow, how are you not dead?” Sahara demanded upon seeing that Bidane had only ten health points left.
“Reginus is coming! I need to pray—distract him!” Bidane said as she knelt down and pulled out a book of prayers.
Sang snapped off two more arrows, killing the last archer before turning her attention to the golden warrior strolling up to them.
“I’ve got this!” Sahara said as she stretched out her hands and pointed them toward Reginus. “Power of flame, I—oof!” she screamed as Reginus punched her in the jaw, knocking her out in one square blow.
“Why are wizards so bad in this game?” he wondered aloud as he turned his attention to Sang.
“Die!” Sang shouted as she fired an arrow at the man, but the arrow bounced off of his golden armor. The words Insufficient Pierce floated above his head. Crap. Her arrows weren’t strong enough to break through. This was going to suck.
“Well, I was honestly just trying to get you idiots to leave our territory,” Reginus said. “You attacked first. But oh well... experience is experience, I suppose.” He swung his longsword at Sang, but she narrowly dodged it.
“Oh, no, you don’t! I’m not going down that easily,” she said as she drew her own short sword and took a stab at him. He quickly parried her blow. Steel rang out as they clashed their blades together. He was very quick, but Sang’s stamina was high enough for her to survive by parrying. Each time she blocked or dodged, however, her bright green bar would dip.
“Nice try, ranger, but you don’t have a chance in hell of winning this!” Reginus said as he flourished with his sword and knocked the blade clean out of her hands.
“Ah, crap!” Sang said, holding her stinging hand.
“Now then, I believe it’s—” His triumphant words were cut off as a flash of light erupted all around them.
“My prayer has been answered!” Bidane shouted. “I cast Mass Revive!” The flash of light struck Van, Kylian, and Sahara, all of whom had been lying on the ground in critical condition. The three quickly stood back up and immediately reengaged with the fighting. The enemy soldiers were surprised and were soon cut down by Kylian’s attacks and Van’s misdirection. Capella, however, still lay motionless on the ground, probably dead.
“Crap!” Reginus said as he turned his attention to the charging Kylian. As he tried to block Kylian’s blow, Dolly suddenly appeared behind him and dug her daggers into his back, hard. He gasped and tried to turn to face what had assaulted him, distracting him from Kylian. The older fighter stopped right at Reginus and swung with all of his might, lopping the man’s head clean off.
“Nice!” Sang said, high-fiving Dolly. “That was a perfect use of an invisibility potion!”
“No time for celebration!” Kylian said as he pointed at a larger group of golden armored thugs advancing towards them in the distance. “Looks like the reinforcements are here. Someone grab Capella’s corpse and let’s get out of here!”
Sang rushed over to Van, who was busy rummaging through the fallen enemy soldiers’ inventories.
“What are you doing?”
“Check it out!” he said, leaning up and dangling a necklace. “It’s going to come in handy.”
“We don’t have time for looting,” Sang said. “We just spotted a ton of reinforcements coming from the north.”
“Well, at least they aren’t coming from the way Reginus came. Let’s get out of here,” Van said.
Chapter Five
The canyons and crags weren’t suitable for horses to travel through and Van’s team was wearing relatively light armor—meaning that Van’s crew had an advantage when it came to travelling quickly. After a few hours of hustling, it was clear the enemy had long given up chasing them.
“Oh man, I cannot believe we got into that bloodbath!” Van said, shaking his head as he wiped some remaining blood from his jaw.
“That stupid nephew of yours!” Bidane shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Kylian. “If it wasn’t for that jackass, we probably could have just talked Reginus into letting us through. Instead, he had to go berserk and just attack. Worst of all, this counts as a negative mark against our whole group!”
“Capella’s a stupid kid, but he didn’t mean to cause this kind of trouble,” Sahara said. “He wasn’t paying attention and thought it was time to attack.”