The end of the increasingly dusty gravel path and the start of the open farmland was only a few buildings away. The group didn't have an alternative escape route. The farmland surrounded the village on all sides, and two endermen were already in pursuit. The pack wouldn't stay this small for long though - they could already hear the sounds of teleportation near and far.
Astro was in the front line, sprinting with magically reinforced pace and endurance. An endermen appeared in the path ahead with a spear, then teleported away as one of Warnado's ethereal arrows shot by. He appeared on a roof, again ahead of them and ready to hurl his spear, but Astro reached out and clenched his fist before him, shattering his throat. He didn't stop running.
And the entire group adopted the same attitude, never slowing, only sparing a distracted slash or a stray shot designed to startle more than harm. But Warnado knew this wouldn't last long. Soon, one of them would stumble and the whole group would have to either stand and fight or lose another member.
An enderman, skin burning with sunlight appeared in the air before Tyron, falling into his charge. Talons ready, it would pierce his skin and tackle him to the ground. Or so it thought. Tyron formed a blade of ice around his forearm and decapitated it, grunting indifferently. The corpse tumbled toward Warnado, who only just managed to leap over it. He knew it, the slip was coming. He nocked a luminous arrow, pulling it as taut as he could so the shot would fly as fast as possible and stand a hope of hitting one of them.
And that was when the first slip came.
A figure in a cloak was dropped in the middle of the group, flanked by two armoured endermen who disappeared immediately. It was scaled but scrawny. Clearly an enderman but it looked like it had skipped arm day… and leg day… all days. It was emaciated. Warnado raised his bow, but he wasn't quick enough. The scrawny one shot beams of light from their palms, which surrounded Fristad and trapped him in a transparent crystalline ward. The arrow flew but it only grazed his arm. The ward was maintained.
Kay looked back and slowed up, but Tyron and Jen continued undaunted. Amanda shot a glance back and Warnado called to her to keep going. He shot Kay a similar warning look and turned back around to free the retired dreamweaver.
Steve, however, had been bringing up the rear and saved him the trouble. He charged at the emaciated creature of the end and swung, only drawing the faintest trickle of blood before it vanished. The crystalline ward around Fristad faded. Steve reached his hand toward Fristad and pulled him up, and the two of them resumed the retreat. Warnado blinked and then began to sprint too, looking around for Amanda in front of him. She was still going, firing bolts ahead at any scaled creature that appeared before them.
"Well that's just racist," he snarked internally, wondering if he hadn't overestimated the severity of the slip-up.
They were just passing the last buildings of the village entering the vast open fields of wheat and parched weeds stretching out for several miles until hitting a sharply ascending line of trees. It was going to be open country until they hit the trees.
Then the first shell landed. A small hut, barely a bungalow, was ripped open in an explosion of purple flame and shattered wood. Tyron and Jen were sent flying forward, ahead of the group. Already a host of endermen was materialising around them, some carrying human mercenaries with them. Warnado and the others rushed forward, ready to relieve their friends.
Then, five heavily-armed endermen materialized directly in their path, cleaving their ranks in two. The sorcerer and spear-wielder which previously pursued the group were now reinforced by three relatively towering and massive endermen with heavy armor. And three others, sleek and lean and shiny cut off the option of retreating, talons sharp and fangs bared. One of them rolled their shoulders and cracked their neck with a sound that reverberated loudly through their robust frame and stared down at Warnado and the others with contempt.
Amanda squeezed the trigger and a bolt exploded out of her crossbow, just about to connect with the eye of the sorcerer before he vanished. Warnado and Astro followed suit with their own ranged attacks, but they were flickering among them within seconds. Steve successfully got the attention of two of the rear-guard members and Astro the sorcerer, but the other five endermen were at liberty to fight whomever they chose. The group didn't make it easy for them, often forcing the endermen to warp away again before they could even raise their weapons for an attack, but crucially they were making no ground, and Jen and Tyron were still surrounded.
Warnado spared a glance. Jennifer was a sight to behold. She was always in motion. She rolled between talons and blades, firing her bow at intervals of mere seconds and finding gaps in their ranks that seemed impossible to Warnado. Even with their teleportation they struggled to keep up with her, and found themselves herded into a crowd she could fill with arrows. However, with reinforcements arriving every second, the herd was growing more than it shrank, and soon enough there would be no gaps for her to duck through but the legs of her enemies. Worse yet, every evaded attack led her further and further away from the group.
Tyron was faring better by design, with a small pack of unarmoured endermen harassing him but not committing to an attack. They would appear close to Tyron, feinting a savage attack like a talon to his eye, and then vanishing or dancing away as soon as he swung Kir at them. It was obvious they were trying to keep him away from Jennifer. Or teeing him up for someone stronger.
Then, one of the giants who had attacked Steve and Jennifer, clad in diamond and carrying a huge warhammer appeared a stone's throw away from the green furry hero. A scrawny enderman was crouched on either side of him, pointing at Tyron and shouting orders. They then vanished and the giant began his charge. Tyron saw this, hacked the arm off one of his harassers and turned to face this new threat.
Warnado, understandably a little freaked out by this massive wall of steroids and death-making running in his general direction, fired two energy arrows at its torso that did nothing. Tyron, however, remained calm. Warnado couldn't see his face, but he must have been absolutely, unblinkingly unimpressed. He certainly didn't move any other muscles until the giant was airborne, the hammer raised above his head.
At that moment, Tyron stamped and a wall of earth rose to stop the blow. The haft of the weapon sank a foot into the wall and stopped. The giant began to wrench it free, but before he could succeed, Tyron punched the wall and sent it flying into his chest. His enemy, doubled over from the force of the blow and blinded with dust, backpedalled. Tyron flourished Kir, encased his other fist in an icy spike and moved in to capitalise.
Warnado's undivided attention was drawn back to his own group by a new development. Two of the heavily armored endermen vanished. One appeared behind Amanda. The other appeared, looked confused, then found Kay's sword slot into the gap between its chestplate and leggings.
"There's a taste of your medicine," Kay said with venom, laughing.
Warnado thought the one-liner was a little rote and didn't really apply. He'd just moved fast enough to confuse it. It wasn't like he'd actually teleported or anything. He concluded it was at best a C- one-liner but an otherwise positive development.
The struck enderman cried out in three different octaves, and turned around to face Kay. The other one, unbothered by its comrade's injury, swung down at Amanda. She only just dodged it, falling to the ground. Warnado, heart stopping, rushed forward. He reached out to Light-knows-where and summoned a throwing star. He threw it with all his might at the enderman's head, but it only clipped his temple. It looked grizzly at first, but then Warnado realised it ender-blood wasn't red and he'd just done the jam thing again. He grimaced and shook his hand, readying a flame spell to intervene, fearing it would end up as a weak shower of sparks.
To Warnado's relief, Amanda managed to take the opportunity to roll away and get back on her feet. She her crossbow steady at her assailant, whose focus was now split equally between Warnado and Amanda. Warnado threw a ball of energy at the enderman, who teleported a small distance away from Warnado to evade it. The enderman swung their sword toward Warnado, but then vanished halfway through their swing. Warnado tensed. He saw the enderman reappear behind Amanda, carrying the remainder of their swing into her side.
Warnado heard Amanda cry out in pain, and he felt fear and anger. He threw a ball of energy at the enderman, and the enderman's position only changed minimally. He threw more energy at them and they teleported again, by the same amount. Another energy shot just barely missed. Then, Amanda's crossbow arrow shot from another direction, and in the face of both projectiles the enderman teleported away.
Meanwhile, Kay was teleporting around in a struggle to get the upper hand with his equally mobile opponent. Warnado began to - Hold up. Teleporting. Warnado snapped his head back, heart thudding with something a little more than adrenaline. Kay, as the Dreamweaver had, warped from space to space. Warnado's mind shot straight toward that book that had caused Fristad so much trouble, and the strange intelligence that lurked within. Kay wasn't actually using it, was he?
Warnado shot his best "We are having a very serious talk after all this" look in Kay's direction, then readied himself for a new round of fighting. Kay tried to look apologetic, but failed as he successfully caught the enderman's neck with his sword.
Fristad of all people finally landed a heavy blow on the ender sorcerer, cutting his wrist and causing him to backpedal with a shriek of pain. Around the same moment, Tyron plunged his blue-veined sword into the giant's heart. However, the giant had kept fighting to the bitter end and the endermen harassing Tyron had finally committed to their attacks. As such, his injuries were bloody and obvious. His green fur was missing patches and his side cut just between where his ice-forged chestplate met his leg armor. However, he was able to raise another wall of earth and send it crashing into Jennifer's flock, scattering them and sending two sprawling. Kay had teleported over to help Steve fight off the rear-guard. However, even with these small victories, the fight was looking uncomfortably even.
Seizing the moment, Warnado shot a ball of energy at the wounded ender sorcerer, but it teleported away before the energy ball could reach it. Warnado turned around, and saw a nimble enderman with two swords approaching quickly. He anticipated the attack, but not the weapons. "Did one of the endermen switch out their weapons when I wasn't looking?" Warnado thought to himself. He pushed aside that thought and tried to imagine a weapon to counter them, and an ethereal chain with a spiked ball at each end appeared in his hands. Warnado frowned. He hoped for a more defensive weapon, but this one would have to do. He wasn't sure how long this fight would last, so he needed to conserve magic somehow, and conjuring another ethereal weapon mid-fight or throwing a bunch of magical energy at his aggressors wouldn't exactly help with that.
Warnado twirled the chain to build some momentum. He looked around and noticed that the ratio of endermen to non-endermen was a lot higher than it was before. Steve was still fighting the rearguard. Astro, liberated from the issue of the sorcerer, heard the boom of cannons and raised a magical shield to protect them from incoming shells. They struck the barrier and spread out in blossoms of flame and shrapnel. Amanda, noticing the emergence of a group of human mercenaries at the end of an alleyway, took up position and began to fire. Fristad was limping after his encounter with the sorcerer and Kay had warped in to protect him from one of the remaining heavily-armoured endermen. He disappeared for a few seconds, then reappeared behind the enderman with the enchanted crossbow he'd bought a few days ago. He had it pointed right at the back of his skull and squeezed the trigger.
Up the road, Tyron and Jennifer now cooperated directly and proved a fearsome pair. Jennifer had taken up position on top of a pile of crates. Tyron remained on the ground. His sentient blue sword sharp as ever, he chased them away from Jennifer's plinth and hounded the endermen into her line of fire. A sizeable scattering of ender-born corpses was piling up at their end, but they kept teleporting in to replenish their numbers.
The enderman with the twin swords was too far away to hit Warnado but wound up for an attack anyways. Warnado braced for the possibility of another teleport attack. The enderman swung but didn't teleport, much to the surprise of everyone involved.
Warnado noticed that the ground was now covered by an intricate weave of white lines and runes. Before he had time to speculate its origin, a glowing orb came flying in from outside his field of vision. The orb smashed through the torso of the enderman that Warnado had been fighting, leaving a cannonball-sized hole in its wake, and the enderman collapsed dead. More identical orbs followed, striking first an enderman who was poised to ambush Jennifer, and then swarming toward the others, who seemed unable to teleport away from the threat. Tyron got in one last sword swing at one of his opponents before one of the orbs passed through the enderman from the side, making it the last to fall.
Warnado needed time to absorb what just happened. He turned in the direction the orbs came from, he saw a figure floating just a bit off the ground. It didn't take much to realize that this figure was Shadow. Runes all over her body were glowing and she seemed to be in a state of intense focus.
She yelled: "Run for the trees! This was the last of them for now!"
Warnado snapped out of his daze and joined the others in a mad dash across the field. When their feet entered the shadows of the forest, they kept running.