I twirled a steel bangle around my wrist, fidgeting to pass the time and manage my agitation. For a change, I had a pair on each forearm since my gauntlet was stashed in a storage room nearby, along with my helmet. The bangles were still disguised as amateur jewellery instead of coating my fingertips because a knight had given me one of their throwing javelins—its range preferable to claws. Or so Yis claims.
I was in the room over from my missing armour, still surprised Yistopher had included me in his plans without my pleading. Not many options were open to him, and I was annoyed that I hadn't thought of a similar strategy.
We were hunting ghouls, the supposed pair of child-sized elites from the castle. However, we were luring rather than pursuing, with Yis being the juicy bait and me, the club, to strike the catch in his metaphorical plan. Perhaps that was my issue when offering ideas. I needed to use more silly metaphors to hide the actual risk of the undertaking.
I’d needed to remove my armour since it was perceptible to the knights and even more so to the mana-sensitive creatures we sought. While I hid away, Yistopher had taken up position near the stairs, blocking the ghouls from climbing one of the two ways up to the third floor and presenting himself as a lone target. Leonarda and Oteli were below, hopefully with Tometh by now, holding any breaches on the ground floor.
Yis knocked against the wall twice; it was all clear. I didn’t reply and kept my breathing shallow and shifting to a minimum. Despite the occasional giggle or cry from down either end of the hallway, there were no attempts to take the bait, each supposed expression of joy sending more shivers down my spine than the cries.
I counted the seconds in my head, determined to go on the hunt if nothing happened by the time I got to one thousand.
Yis knocked once, and I pressed my ear against the wall to listen more closely when there wasn’t another to accompany it. I felt the mana gradually flow out of my room and down the hallway towards the approaching threat Yis had warned of, yet I couldn’t sense it. From what the knights described, it had been as much a challenge to perceive the small ghoul as it was me.
During its brief attack, I noticed it could draw mana to its core before consuming it, letting it reach through its entire form without a build-up, creating a flow akin to the ambient mana—a greedier and less elegant version of how mana entirely ignored where my body was.
Another knock, it was closing in, and I let the mana it pulled flow through me without contest. The ceiling creaked as the ghoul crawled into my perception, its extra pincers stabbing into the plaster. I stepped away from the wall, positioning myself near the door, my hand hovering over the handle. Yis thumped the wall, and I yanked open the door, keeping my vision overhead.
The ghoul was closer than expected, its neck twisting unnaturally to look down at me. I thrust the javelin before it could extract its pincers, and its pale eyes widened in shock. The steel point punctured its right eye, causing the creature to twitch as the javelin drove through its skull and into the plaster. The ghoul’s screech was cut short, but I still tensed for the counterattack.
However, its limbs drooped while the body and head were pinned to the ceiling by the buried pincers and my javelin. Yistopher bounded towards us in several long strides, sword drawn and raised at his stalker.
“It’s dead?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said, twisting the javelin. “I wish they were all this small, easy to kill for a change.”
Yistopher frowned. “It’s a child, Valeria. Don’t wish something so cruel.”
I pulled at the javelin as black blood trickled down the handle. After a few tugs, I dislodged the steel with the ghoul stuck on the end. I nudged it off with my boot and wiped the javelin on the carpet. “It’s not. Let’s find the other so we can help downstairs. It sounds like they need it.”
Yistopher sighed but didn’t continue the admonishment, instead leading us to the next ambush spot. Stones cracked beneath us, and a distant spell rattled the windows. While the lower floors had been left in better condition than the ransacked and debased offices upstairs, the decorations in the hallway were all damaged. The ceramics and heirlooms from the capital had fallen from their pedestals, with the fortunate lying on their sides and the not-so-fortunate in pieces on the carpets covered in dirty shoe prints.
“What if we capture the next?” Yistopher asked, stopping at a crossroad to wait for the next giggle. “We’ve studied the larger—”
“No,” I said without a second thought. “First, you complain I’m being cruel, then you want to experiment on it? Nothing deserves that.”
He held a finger for quiet, so I glared at him instead while we waited. The next clue never came, so we continued, moving far enough away from the dead ghoul so the next one didn’t get spooked by the blood. “It’s weak enough to capture and hold, and we get to add an elite to our research.”
“If you’re concerned for them, then the best thing we can do is kill it. Not prolong the suffering.”
“As our resident expert on all things witch, wouldn’t you want the chance to study the curse more? Learn how it interacts with you?”
“If I’m the expert, listen when I say no. Let’s kill it and go help.” To emphasise my point, the building shuddered violently, and smoke leaked through air vents along the floor. “We don’t have anything to capture it with.”
I followed Yistopher’s hurried steps and prepared to say no again. There was nothing to gain from studying the ghoul, and even if there were, it made me feel sick. Mother’s arguments for her experiments echoed in my mind, and I was ready to snap if he came close to repeating any. However, he remained silent and broke into a run as laughter echoed from up ahead.
I kept my pace steady, trailing behind to shadow him as he entered the open double doors to the Map Room in the centre of the bastion. He slowed to examine the table showing the city's layout and defences but was quickly distracted by the side of the room stuffed with coils of rope. They were the discarded options for the rope bridge we’d crossed, the thin, heavy, frayed or short that weren’t up to the task.
“Do you think it could have gone up?” he asked, crossing the room to the opposite door that opened to the staircase we had been at previously. The Map Room was between the two staircases in the bastion beside the turrets, and if the ghoul reached the third floor, it would have access to the unsealed turrets.
I sat on the table and picked up a small wooden figure holding a spear and shield, stashing it in my pocket after a short appraisal. “No. All the mages are down here... Well, most. The body is still there, right?”
Yis checked down the passage with the dead ghoul. “Still dead.”
He shut the doors to go back out the way we came and settled against the wall by the stairs to repeat the trap, pulling out a rag and a small vial of brownish liquid. Yistopher pinched his sword under his arm so the blade stuck out before him, tipped the vile onto the rag, and polished the blade. I eyed the javelin lying on the table beside me and shook my head. The steel tip was stained in the ghoul’s black blood, but it wasn’t mine, and I didn’t have a rag and oil hidden inside one of my pockets yet.
When the performance didn’t draw out the predator, he started casting, bouncing a ball of light between his palms and fashioning a miniature shield from our limited mana. Unsurprisingly, the mana usage was more enticing. As mana slowly drained from the room, I slipped off the table to hide behind it.
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Yistopher was supposed to knock when he spotted it, but he kept his arms folded, concentrating on the haze from the shield spell. I stood when the pull on the mana got stronger, but he slowly shook his head.
A ghoul crawled into my narrow view out of the doorway. Rather than pincers, a long spiked tail blurred towards Yistopher’s unprotected neck. The patch of haze shifted to block, the tail wrapping around it and cutting his cheek instead of his throat. I jumped onto the table, knocking over the carefully placed miniatures as I ran across.
The mana shield dissipated as the construct was absorbed by the ghoul. Yistopher grabbed its tail and pulled the ghoul from the ceiling, pinning it to the ground. “Grab a rope.”
I jumped off the table and ran to him with my javelin ready, but he turned his back to block me from making the attack. The ghoul struggled in his grasp, one hand dedicated to the tale while his other tried to wrestle all four clawed limbs and bared teeth away from skin. “Any of them, Val. Hurry up.”
It wasn’t the best moment to argue, so I dropped my weapon and dashed back to fetch a thin and easy-to-tie rope.
Yistopher didn’t wait for me to return, lifting the thrashing ghoul by the neck and holding it at arm's length. The tail snaked out of his grip, curling around his fist. He slammed it down onto the table, twisting the ghoul into its back. “Tie it to the table.”
I threw the coil of rope over the ghoul, keeping one end in hand. I left the end over the ghoul's neck and ran over the table again, sliding the coil under the table. I repeated the acrobatics until the ghoul had a dozen cords fastening it to the table. Yistopher still pressed down on it, claws slicing through fibres and its tail wriggling out of the bind.
Yistopher pointed to the rope pile, and I gathered up a thicker twist of threads. Once we were done, only the ghoul’s head poked out of the entanglement, a rope strapping down its forehead so it couldn’t chew through the binding.
“I don’t like this,” I repeated for the tenth time.
“As you’ve mentioned,” he said, inspecting cuts and scrapes along his arms from dealing with the ghoul’s claws as the ghoul screamed and writhed. “Can you imagine a spell to heal as quickly as this thing? There are too many benefits to ignore.”
“If we go help the others right now, I’ll stop complaining as much,” I said, backing out of the room to where my armour was.
“After I secure your knots,” he said, holding up an end of rope I had tucked under one of the loops. “Or lack of.”
I ignored him and skipped down the hall to where I had stashed my armour, passing the initial kill and stairs. The familiar acrid smell of rotting ghouls stung the back of my throat, replaced by mildew when I entered the old storage room.
I switched around my bangles to make way for the gauntlet, shuddering as it sucked away mana to spread up my arm again. The helmet quieted my surroundings, the steel cladding a comfort to the growing unrest outside and in the bastion.
“I got his legs.”
“Stop rushing me, I’m going up backwards!”
The two mages were more difficult to sense than hear as they stomped up the stairs. I rushed out of the storage room to meet them, darting out of the way before colliding with the back of a remnant knight.
“Mind out the way,” said an adjutant I vaguely remembered being beside Hauser. I stood to the side as they rounded to climb the next. Between them was someone I had no issue remembering. Hauser had his chainmail vest striped and the gambison below ripped over a freshly scabbed wound near his collar. The two rems carried him like a heavy sack between them, one set of hands under his arms and another on his ankles.
The captain was unconscious and pale. The knight I’d almost collided with looked down at me from the stairs as he carefully traversed them backwards, his mana reserves depleted. “They need more bodies down there.”
They moved out of sight, rounding the landing while grunting and complaining. They didn’t look much better than their injured captain, sweaty and worn, but their swords remained in their scabbards. I glanced through the double doors, the commotion drawing Yis away from his knot.
I pointed a finger down and raised a hand in farewell, turning to fly down the stairs before he could respond. After days of being kept as far away as possible, finding where the fighting was took two sets of stairs.
Leonarda’s squad had their backs to me, hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them as they slowly retreated into the starwell from the first-floor hallway. There was still a wall between me and the fighting, but the snarls and squeal of claws on metal made it obvious I was close.
“Behind you,” I said, placing a hand on the rearguard’s pauldron.
The knight glanced back while panting, her eyes darting across me. “What floor are we on? Is the next one clear?”
“Landing between first and second.”
“Step back!” Captain Leonarda called, and I retreated as the train of knights shifted in unison. Cavia came into view around the wall, holding his shield at an angle while ghouls squeezed into the gaps on each side, under and over.
A crossbow bolt disappeared into the head of a ghoul climbing over the shield. It fell back, replaced by another. The crossbow was passed back for the bolt to be replaced, and a loaded one was handed over in its place.
“Throwing!” Leonarda called, a spell lobbed over the shield. Wind burst through the staircase, ruffling hair and launching a ghoul upside down across the opening. Cavia was knocked back by the wave of ghouls shoved over by the blast. Leonarda sheathed his sword and dragged him up by the pauldrons.
Cavia put his shield between his body and the ghouls crawling over him to get to the captain. A mana bolt from Tometh, positioned behind Leonarda, hit the first climber between the eyes, the construct not penetrating far before the ghouls body ate into the mana. Regardless, the creature slumped onto the shield, pulled back into the horde by the ghouls clawing at something to climb up. I lost sight of them as I reached the landing leading back up to the second floor. A weak blast of flames lit the stairwell, and Cavia was dragged around the landing.
“Reaching second!” Oteli called. I could see them over the last step across the Map Room at the other set of stairs. No one from our group responded.
“Wait!” I called. “Still climbing.”
Tometh spun around while picking Cavia up with Leonarda and setting him on his feet.
“Step back!” Leonarda called, and I was back in the hallway after several repetitions. Across from me, Yistopher was with Captain Oteli as her squad crowded around the entrance, blocking ghouls from spilling into the floor and hitting us from behind. I didn’t go first up the next set of stairs, standing beside the entrance as Cavia struggled to step away from the ghouls.
I hadn’t had much time to practice with ice after Alp hit me with it in the field. Using lightning was too unpredictable, and too many people were in the way to throw around blasts of air. There was no time for stone and no plants, only wood. This was the worst position for my casting capabilities.
I held the wall and collapsed the wooden stairs below Cavia, the ghouls falling down and almost dragging his shield with them. He ripped it from their grip and stepped back into the entrance to the second floor while I broke the rest of the steps up. The ghouls’ feet fell through the cracks, but I had neither the time nor ability to break the stairs' foundations entirely.
Tometh and Leonarda leaned around Cavia’s shield; another torrent of flames cast to the side, and an air blast spell tossed over. The uncoordinated attack slapped the fire back at us, and I ducked around the wall, worried an eyebrow may have been singed.
“Ready to climb!” Leonarda called to Oteli. The rest of his squad was already up the next staircase, and Tometh grabbed the back of my chainmail to pull me behind him as we joined them.
“Moving, now,” Oteli called. My view of them through the pair of double doors, past the tied-down ghoul, was obstructed.
Cavia stepped back, the pile of ghouls pressing against him falling into the hallway as he joined us in the stairwell. My heart raced. We’d been pushed back too quickly, and only two sets remained between us and the unsealed third floor.
Before the ghouls could recover, I squeezed past Tometh, escaped Leonarda’s grasp, and ducked under Cavia’s shield. Their shouts were muffled by my helmet and drowned out by the ghouls’ outrage as they thrashed in a heap while more climbed over.
I backed down the hallway, forming claws from a bangle. Cavia tried to come back down but was blocked and shoved up the stairs. I poured mana into my gauntlet, flinging it out as blades before it amassed to draw all the ghouls' ire. The sharpened points slashed across the ghouls stuffed into the hall, the paint on the wall stripped off by the edges of my blades.
Steel solidified around my fingers, and I repeatedly raked over the charging ghouls with more blades. The ghouls were split, surging up the stairs and stumbling through my attacks towards me. When a more powerful ghoul ran through, soaking up my blades, I struck it with a gust to send it back into the tide.
I backed into a wall, landing one more spell before turning the corner. I retreated to the edge of the bastion, counting the kills as ghouls fell, trampled by their kin.
Sunlight streamed into the next hallway from the outer windows. I was happy to escape the dim interior and be next to an easy escape, even more so to drag away the attention of at least some of the ghouls pursuing the knights.
