Broken Lands

Sophia heard a wail from behind her, where the civilians were. She couldn’t take her attention off the beaver, but it sounded low pitched enough that it probably wasn’t one of the children. Perhaps the adults understood the threat better than the kids did?

A thump followed the wail. Sophia thought it sounded like flesh hitting wood, perhaps like someone smacked the gate, but she didn’t turn to look.

The beaver charged towards the group. Sophia was grateful that it wasn’t one of the fiery ones; this seemed to be an ordinary beaver. It clearly wasn’t, but it also didn’t seem to have any way to affect them at a distance.

A distortion in the air showed where Revina slammed air into the beaver’s side as it ran forward. That had to be her Buffet spell. It did what it implied and knocked the beaver a step or two sideways. It slowed as it regained its balance, which let Dav and Sophia take the initiative from it as it recovered. Sophia’s knife plunged into the beaver’s chest as Dav smacked its skull and cracked it in two. Either wound was probably fatal; together, they meant the beaver wasn’t a threat.

The scrape of claws on stone was the first sign that Sophia was wrong. That beaver might not be a threat, but it wasn’t the only beaver they’d attracted. She risked a glance behind her and saw that the civilians were still bunched up inside the gate; less than half of them were on the other side. She yanked her knife out of the beaver’s corpse and hurriedly reestablished the Imbue Blade on her knife.

Dav would have to do without, but his weapon was better than hers. It only made sense; his was supposed to be his primary weapon, while hers was a backup she rarely needed. She couldn’t wait until she actually had combat-usable spells again.

Three beavers hurried into the area in front of the gate. Two were the same size as the one they’d just killed, but one was larger and had flaming sparks drifting off its hide as it moved.

“The small ones are Enraged Beavers,” Cliff spoke in the back of Sophia’s head. “They’re faster and stronger than normal beavers but have no ability to make choices; they will always charge directly at the closest non-beaver. They can, to an extent, be controlled by other Flame Beavers, but only until they see an enemy.”

Cliff must have Collected the Enraged Beaver they’d killed. That was fast. It was definitely useful that he could tell her what he’d learned as they went, too. That was almost as good as the news that the smaller beavers would fight dumbly.

Air swirled around the large fiery beaver. It didn’t knock it off balance as far as it had the smaller beaver, both because it was larger and because it wasn’t charging at full speed towards them. Sophia frowned. In many ways, Revina had the right idea. They needed to separate the enemies to make this easier. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the way to achieve the goal. They’d have to stagger the small ones out and hope the large one didn’t charge when the small ones did. “Revina! Knock one of the small ones over when they charge!”

Sophia picked one and launched her Imbued blade at it right as it saw them and charged straight at Dav. As she’d requested, Revina threw a Buffet at the other one. She must have caught it at exactly the right time, because it actually tipped onto its side and had to take a moment to recover.

Dav met the first Enraged Beaver’s charge with the point of his sword. It skidded off the beaver’s shield but left a nasty gash along the beaver’s muzzle, then skipped past the neck and penetrated into the beaver’s back. A wound like that wasn’t going to kill instantly, but it might well make the beaver bleed out fairly quickly. More importantly, it meant Dav had penetrated the shield; somehow, that must have counted as two separate hits when it bounced sideways then impacted the beaver’s shoulder.

The injury didn’t stop the beaver. It turned its head to bite Dav’s arm and slashed out with its claws; Sophia knew which she was more worried about and it wasn’t the claws. They didn’t hurt him at all; anything that got through Dav’s shield simply skidded off his armor. The bite, on the other hand, managed to close around Dav’s sword arm. Sophia didn’t think it had fully penetrated the shield either, but Dav’s immediate profanity said that breaking the shield wasn’t necessary to make an attack like that dangerous in its own way.

Sophia twisted and slashed the beaver’s neck. One down, two to go.

She turned back towards the other beavers just in time to see another gust of wind press against the second small beaver, but it had far less effect this time. Before she could do anything else, a marble-sized flaming ball impacted on her armor from the direction of the large beaver. It left a tiny scorched mark; Sophia suspected that her shield took the majority of the heat away. She’d have to check later, but she suspected the scorching was essentially cosmetic.

If she had more time, she might have checked how much shield it took to block what she hoped was a firebolt spell, but as it was she barely managed to get her knife in position to hit the incoming beaver’s teeth as it charged her. The beaver’s shield prevented her knife from penetrating the beaver’s body, but it didn’t stop it from entering the beaver’s mouth. There was a worrisome metallic twing noise as the beaver bit down on the knife, but Sophia knew she could replace a knife if she had to.

The impact didn’t stop the beaver’s momentum and Sophia’s turns left her a little off balance. She fell backwards onto her back as the beaver barrelled into her. This one seemed intent on its bite, as its claws hit only air, but Sophia knew that wouldn’t last. She shoved her left arm between her body and the beaver, then convulsively flung it to the side as she pulled her knife out of its mouth.

The beaver didn’t try to resist and landed on its back next to Sophia, only to receive Dav’s sword through its skull a moment later. Huh. Apparently getting it to bite her knife did a number on the beaver’s shield. Hitting the inside of its throat probably didn’t hurt either.

The impact of a second marble-sized ball of fire on her leg made Sophia realize the fight wasn’t over. She wasn’t down long, but she couldn’t afford to stay down. She climbed to her feet and saw a long distance battle happening between the fiery beaver and Revina; wind Slices peppered the beaver as it threw small balls of fire at all three of them. Sophia was glad it wasn’t focusing on any one of them, but that didn’t mean she could afford to let it continue. It hadn’t shifted its attention to the civilians that still weren’t all through the gate, but it could at any time.

There was no point in wishing that she had a good ranged option. Imbue Blade was too slow. She glanced over at Dav. “You circle left and I’ll circle right?”

Dav nodded and they both set off at a run around the cleared area, trying to divide the beaver’s attention. Against a smarter monster, it might not have worked, but the beaver was already splitting its attention. It kept up its pattern, but it was slowed by the extra turning to hit them all and its aim seemed to be far worse against moving targets that weren’t running directly at it.

Sophia deliberately stayed a little slower than Dav. She might or might not have been able to keep up, but she didn’t even try; she didn’t trust her knife, which meant her best option was to serve as a distraction. She managed to push an Imbue Blade into the knife as she ran; hopefully, that would mean it wouldn’t break further if she used it. It would certainly let her cut, as long as the blade lasted.

By the time Dav got to the beaver, it had a number of small slashes from Revina’s slices. None were large or debilitating, but they must have depleted its shield because Dav was able to skewer the beaver without being deflected. Unfortunately, the beaver did manage to twist partly out of the way, so all he hit was the beaver’s arm.

It was enough. The arm Dav hit was the one it was using to direct the flaming marbles.

Sophia was two steps out when the beaver decided it had indeed had enough and went up in literal flames. Sophia stumbled to a halt, amazed at the heat it gave off.

Dav coughed once and retreated. His hand and face were far more purple than normal; Sophia suspected it was like a bad sunburn, except that his blood glowed purple instead of a normal red.

The flaming pillar that was once a beaver stepped forward, waving its arms to both sides. It was easy to avoid. The beaver clearly had no way to sense anything in that form.

Sophia expected it to change back quickly; it seemed like a good escape Skill but not one you’d want to maintain. In a way, she was right: the Ability didn’t last long. When it ended, however, there was no longer a beaver left. Instead, there was a charred and blackened pile of former beaver.

Dav took its head off anyway. It was charred most of the way through the neck but not completely.

When Sophia turned back to the gate, only Revina stood on the inside with them. Sophia badly wanted a short rest after the intense fight, but now wasn’t the time. “Let’s go outside; I want to know if we need to escort them to the Road. I don’t want to abandon them after we pulled them out of a safe place.”

Dav slid his sword into his scabbard and followed her without saying anything. Sophia gave him a worried look, but he caught her eye and gave a slight shake of his head accompanied by an understated smile. She took that as him saying he wasn’t badly hurt.

Unexpectedly, the civilians weren’t just waiting outside the gate and they also hadn’t run into the forest. Instead, they were at the edge of the forest, trying to … open a cellar? That was Sophia’s first impression, and it was a pretty strange one. She put her knife away and rubbed her eyes.

Yes, they were indeed trying to open a door that had the button edge a few inches above ground level and the top edge about four inches higher than the bottom. It seemed to be stuck.

When Sophia got there, she saw that it wasn’t just stuck; it was badly scorched. In fact, she was amazed the wood was still intact with as blackened as it was. The reason it wouldn’t open was that the metal hasp that secured the latch had actually partially melted. It didn’t take much thought to figure out when that happened. “Is this another safe room?”

If it was, she didn’t think it was particularly safe.

“No, it’s the tunnel to the Road,” a younger woman holding a baby as she watched, clearly worried, told Sophia.

Sophia blinked at that. She supposed it made sense; if there was a reason to be off the Road yet you wanted to be able to get to it quickly in an emergency, a tunnel was a good thing to have. “Why isn’t it inside the village?”

The young woman gave her an incredulous look. “Would you want a tunnel into monster-infested woods that came out inside your town?”

Well, when you put it like that, Sophia supposed she’d asked a dumb question after all.