"Look sharp, the show's about to start."
At that moment, the first of the schumils bounded into the clearing. With them passing strung out in a line about 80 meters ahead of us, illuminated by the last of the sun, they couldn't have been better targets.
Yunyun took full advantage of it.
"FIREBALL!" she howled, and a burst of flame smashed the front of their group, downing several and sending the others skidding to a halt to avoid the flames. Again, she blasted a spell, at the rear of the column this time, and the rearmost schumils did the same, the ones in the middle pinned in by their companions for a few crucial seconds as all of them milled and thrashed.
"WIND BLADE!" she chanted again, and again, the razor-sharp crescents scything through the group in sprays, dropping them in twos and threes each time with them bunched up so much.
I let out a low, impressed whistle. Rin was one of the better mages in town, it was true, but this was another level entirely. Each of those fireballs had been twice the size of anything I'd seen cast by anyone else, the blades were equally a cut above.
Once Yunyun had her fun, I helped her down from her perch and the four of us went to confirm things.
"You could've let a few get through," Darkness pouted as she strode over to join us, strapping her armor on as she went. And what should greet us at the scene of the carnage but:
"Bunnies. We spent hours setting traps for, stalking, and finally luring into a slaughter, bunnies." I groaned with disbelief. "I feel dirty."
Schumils don't live around our village, they're probably not dangerous enough, but you kids will read about them in the beastiaries later on. In short though, they are child sized and long eared, with impressive buck teeth growing down from the front of their snouts, usually bluish black, with big fluffy paws and would look absolutely adorable hopping along if it weren't for the razor sharp horn growing out of the middle of their foreheads, because apparently everything in this world has to have a pointy end somewhere.
"Tell that to the farmers that don't have a harvest this year thanks to them," Chris reminded me grimly, the others nodding agreement "I'm showing a few stragglers heading this way, let's get back in position, no reason not to get all of the bonus."
So, of course, we did. And on they came, every few minutes from different directions a small group would arrive, see the devastation, freeze, and then promptly be added to the butcher's bill.
And on, and on.
After nearly an hour of this even I was getting suspicious, not to mention we were getting very low on daylight. Chris seemed to think the next group would be the last, so while Yunyun got ready to do her thing, the rest of us made sure we had everything and generally got as ready as we could without making noise.
That, of course, was when things started to go wrong.
"Ah…problem." I stiffened at the worried tone in Chris' non sequitur. "I'm getting a LOT of presences on Sense Foe in this last group." I shook my head at her look, I didn't feel anything on Warn yet, but I probably didn't have as much range as she did at my level either.
"How many?" Darkness asked hopefully.
"A LOT." Chris replied curtly, "We need to go. Right now."
Wordlessly, we grabbed our packs and made for Ehrenfest at the double, leaving the traps behind. With any luck at all we really weren't spotted yet, but the smell from that many ex-schumils was going to attract them regardless.
Sure enough, about 30 minutes later the distant 'CRUMP' of one of Chris' presents sounded behind us, followed by what for all the world sounded like a higher pitched wolf howl.
"I was hoping for more of a head start, but here we go…" Chris muttered "Darkness, grab Yunyun. We're picking up the pace. Subaru, we'll fall back a little and watch our back trail to see where they're going, try to steer away from them as best we can. They shouldn't be much faster than us off the trails in dense woods like this."
"I-I can keep up!" the wizard insisted, and to be fair she didn't look that much more out of breath than the rest of us. Darkness, of course, looked disappointed not to have a handicap weighing her down, but the sparkle in her eyes I could just make out in the dimming light made it clear she was having the time of her life either way.
"Ok, but we're going to need to push it. If you start having trouble, don't wait to say something." Chris warned, and we stepped up from a brisk trot to a steady run. The town was only a few miles away in a straight line, in good light we could've made the trip in less than two hours. On the twisty game trail we were using at twilight we'd be lucky to make it to the walls before midnight even with the borderline reckless pace we were setting for now. Once the light faded out, we'd have to practically feel our way or guarantee someone broke an ankle.
If anything, I might've been having the most trouble of anyone. I was able to keep up strength training between borrowing my dad's weights and some bodyweight routines, but I certainly hadn't done much distance running over the past year I had spent shut in my room before coming here, and I was still getting my endurance back while regretting every minute of it.
The light continued to dim, and we stepped our pace down accordingly until we were moving at a slow walk. Glad as I would have been for the break, the growing tightness around Chris' lovely eyes as my heart slowed to normal ruined most of it.
"Here," she said while holding out a hand "I have Darkvision, just put your feet where I do."
And there went my heart rate again.
She wiggled her hand impatiently as I hesitated over my very first handholding, and with a blush I desperately hoped she couldn't see, I took it.
A stroll holding hands with an angel in the woods. I'd read about this in more books than I care to remember, and now I could finally experience a dream of youth!
In pitch dark, while running for our lives from a horde of misleadingly cute monsters. Not for the first time, I wondered if I was a serial puppy kicker or something equally heinous in my past life.
Surprisingly, Yunyun was leading Darkness the same way ahead of us. I hadn't thought wizards had access to the Darkvision skill, but it let us pick up the pace again a little so who was I to question?
Finally, the event I'd been dreading finally happened, and Warn pinged its first contact.
"They've spotted us," I whispered to our fearless leader, and she nodded silently as another howl sounded behind us.
"Yunyun." Chris whispered, then had me point in the direction of our stalker. The wizard conjured up several wind blades and let fly, sending them on a narrow arc centered where I pointed. One found its mark, the tingle from Warn snapping off like a thrown switch.
"Got him," I whispered. "Nice job."
A brief flare in her eye glow was her only acknowledgement, then she hurried back to where Darkness waited before leading us down the next branch in the path.
Detouring into a mostly dry creek bed near the game trail we'd been following, Chris took out a ball of wire, then spoke a soft command. A thicket of twisted, barbed strands anchored itself around several trees on each side of a narrow cut between two hills, blocking our trail behind us. Not the best trap, but it would force our pursuers to detour and take the long way around at least.
"This way," she signaled, and led us down the stream bed, making sure to stay in the ankle deep water, even hopping over stones that rose above it enough to stay dry.
I followed, hand still in hers, my hands as clammy and cold as the water soaking my boots after the night we'd had so far.
I heard a splash and a moan in front of us, hurrying a few steps we found Darkness had slipped and fallen in, soaking herself to the skin. She'd managed not to pull Yunyun in with her at least, clambering back to her feet streaming water from inside her armor.
"T-this play is ok too…" she muttered just softly enough I could pretend not to hear it, and Yunyun took her hand again, leading her a bit more slowly.
—-
We'd been on the move for hours now, and if anything saved us over that time it was that they really were rabbits.
They were incredible over a short distance but had no endurance at all. Every time they gained a horrifying amount of ground, they had to stop and rest for a time that let us gain back some of our lead. Not as much as we lost, but as the moon rose to its peak it found us in the outer fringe of the forest outside Ehrenfest, where generations of clearing for firewood had thinned out all but the largest and oldest trees reserved for lumber, and let us pick up the pace between the moonlight filtering through the canopy and clearer footing.
Behind us, I was getting continuous signals from Warn, even having Yunyun occasionally pop the leading members of the horde spotting us and changing direction to throw them off wasn't working anymore.
"Light the flares!" Chris barked as we approached the treeline, and both she and I sent crimson bolts skyward, three each for an urgent warning. Hopefully the lookout in the temple steeple wasn't asleep. There wouldn't be many mages in a Watch this town's size, maybe a dozen who knew Intermediate magic, but getting behind a decent wall would be more than enough at this point. I was wringing wet and panting like a dog in summer, the others weren't any better, and even Yunyun's amazing mana pool was approaching its shallow end.
Ahead of us stretched around 400 meters of open-ish ground. Vegetable plots, fruit orchards, and other crops too low growing to provide cover to invaders and valuable or perishable enough to be worth cultivating where transport to market would be easiest. Cutting across the harvested fields we hopped fences and skidded through gates we blasted open ahead of us as we pelted towards the eastern road into town.
To the city guard's credit, they had torches lit at the gates and there were shadows of men visible on top of the gatehouse bustling around as we broke into the clear on the road itself. What I longed to see, however, were streaks of fireballs or hear the shriek of a wind blade passing over my head, or at least some arrows, but that didn't seem to be happening.
I looked behind me, and immediately felt my legs turn to water. It was hard to tell in the woods where we were lucky to see a few meters in any direction, even straight up, so all Warn or Sense Foe could tell us was that there were a lot of angry schumils behind us. Here, even in the poor light from the watch fires, I could see yellowish glowing eyes reflecting back at us as far as I dared to look, packed in from ditch to ditch starting maybe 100 meters behind us. If I hadn't felt bone dry from the night's game of tag I'd probably have wet myself on the spot.
We were about 50 meters from the still shut gates now, and shouting greeted us from the top of the wall, the postern gate set beside the main one still firmly shut.
"HALT! HALT, ERIS DAMN YOUR EYES!" a leather lunged watchman bellowed.
"LIKE HELL!" I screamed right back, "Open up or we'll do it for you!"
Darkness looked all set to turn herself into a living battering ram to make that happen, and Yunyun had a wind blade ready to try and cut the crossbar once there was a gap to slip one through.
And then, among all the shouting and raving as an unstoppable horde barreled towards a hopefully immovable object with us poor squishy mortals trapped between them, an irresistible force made its appearance.
The formerly pitch blackness above us lit up in an array of sigils stacked atop each other, glowing nearly daylight bright and bringing the whole area into sharp focus. All of us stopped dead in our tracks for a moment in sheer shock, then Yunyun screamed "RUN! RUN!" even as the circles began to compress and descend, a whirlwind kicking up as air rushed in to fill the void they left behind.
Darkness swept everyone into a bear hug at the run and hurled the whole package of us off the road and into the ditch alongside. I slammed into the bottom with 150 kilos of girls and gear landing on my back with a splash of mud and kamis know what.
Even as I tried not to black out, through my closed eyelids I could still see the eldrich glow, before a giant's hand slammed me right down into the muck at the bottom.
The first sensation to come back to me was heat, like I was soaking in a sauna at a bathhouse back home, even down to the steam I could feel wafting around me.
Smell came back next, followed by taste. Both telling me that no sauna I'd ever been in was classy enough to have a mud bath, and none of those probably had mud that reeked this badly of algae and pond scum.
I cracked my eyes next, and I do mean cracked. A thick layer of mud had dried across me like I'd gone through an oven, bits and pieces flaked off my eyelashes and eyelids as I tried to blink them open, finding myself curled in what I dimly remembered from health class was the recovery position, cracked clay pressed against my nose.
My ears reminded me they existed next, with a ringing that drowned out anything else. I took inventory carefully, gingerly flexing here and there. I discovered what had to be the bruising from hell on my ribs with a pained gasp, but nothing felt broken, so I tried sitting up.
That must have alerted someone I was awake, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and found Yunyun sitting with her back to the side of the ditch, a cup of water beside her and a damp cloth working at her face. Her mouth worked soundlessly; at my look of incomprehension, she tapped her ears. I nodded agreement, and she patted her hand on the ground in a 'stay still' gesture, then got up and wobbled over to poke her head over the edge and gave a big wave. A few moments later a sharp featured man in about half of a priest's robes clambered awkwardly down. He placed a hand on my head and with more soundless mouth movements and with a high-pitched keening the world came back to me with a roar of sound, leaving me clutching my head with the hand that wasn't steadying me.
"Done. Can you hear me?" my new best friend asked sternly once things felt like they were adjusted again, and I didn't feel like I was in the middle of a metal concert.
"Yeah…yeah. Thanks, your eminence." I agreed shakily.
"Fool. Even if I were a bishop I'd hardly be out healing other fools in the middle of the night, never mind a cardinal." He corrected me sternly. "Your other companions are inside the gate, begone with you."
After thanking him again, I clambered back up onto the road. Judging by the steam still rising from the crater in the roadway I hadn't been out long at least. Yunyun appeared beside me, and we entered the city.
On the other side, we found a very singed Darkness, missing about half her ponytail and bearing a hell of a sunburn judging by the recently healed skin visible through the hole where the back of her under shirt used to be, with a guardsman's face clamped in her gauntleted fist and suspended midair while she menaced him with the other one.
Chris was only half heartedly trying to talk her friend into putting him down, and I couldn't quite make out the one-sided conversation between the two, but something Darkness said made the blood drain from the man's face like a valve opened. She turned him loose to flee at top speed as we approached.
"Take Eris' name in vain, will he? And leave countrymen to be eaten outside the gates? See if I don't…" Chris muttered balefully, watching him scuttle off. Giving her silvery locks a shake, she turned to us. "You look a lot better, both of you. Ferdy does good work even if his bedside manner isn't the best."
"Guess so, I feel fine too. Even got rid of the cracked ribs I'm pretty sure I had," I agreed, causing Darkness to flinch. "What was that? I've never even heard of a spell that can hit that hard."
"Detonation magic might, if you put enough points and secondary skills on it." Chris mused, "Explosion definitely would, but there's only a handful of people who know it and I doubt any live here." she shrugged as Yunyun stifled a coughing fit. With all the dust in the air I couldn't blame her. "Either way, we're innocent bystanders since whoever cast it isn't in our party and we certainly didn't request it, so the giant crater in the road isn't our problem."
"If you say so," I agreed readily. "I don't know about you three but I'm about to pass out again, and I'm happy enough to be alive to splurge for an actual room!"
There was a commotion further up the street, turning to look curiously I saw a small, red clad figure posing dramatically, while pointing right at us and proclaiming to all and sundry "BEHOLD, MY RIVAL! IT IS I MEGUMIN! SLAYER OF THE FOUL HORDE, AND SAVIOR OF THE DOOMED!"
At this new development, Chris hung her head and snarled some phrases I certainly can't repeat here, before storming off to try and shut the little maniac up.
And that was how I met the Crimson Terror.
