Four Moments

he blood-soaked clearing was lost; Jaeshu knew it before any of them said so.

The first swarm had given them room to move, room for the dwarf to swing, and enough space for the rogue to disappear from one fight and reappear inside another. But this was different. Every step they yielded gave the new creatures another step to take, and there were too many coming through the trees to win any of it back. Mottled goblins pressed behind Rust goblins in battered armor. Crimson goblins threaded through whatever gaps opened between them. Shadow hounds moved low beneath it all, black shapes searching for exposed legs while the heavier bodies forced the three defenders inward.

“This is futile,” Jaeshu shouted. “Cave!”

His hand disappeared beneath his cloak. Av’elyth heard the small rip of paper and knew what he had before Karneth did.

“Down!”

The ranger threw the packet at the ground. It burst between them and the advancing swarm with a hard pop. Gray smoke rolled outward at once, swallowing legs, torsos, then faces as the front ranks stumbled blindly into one another. A shadow hound lunged through the cloud and found Karneth’s axe waiting for it. The dwarf knocked the animal sideways and ran. Av’elyth was already moving with them. They surrendered another yard, then another. They passed through the ivy and turned together inside the mouth, where the stone narrowed enough that numbers might finally cease being an advantage.

Jaeshu drew his shorter sword again. Karneth planted himself to his left. Av’elyth settled at his right, both daggers raised. Smoke churned beyond the cave mouth, carrying coughs, snarls, and the scrape of metal against stone.

Then the first Mottled came through, and the cave entrance changed the fight immediately.

Outside, they had been three bodies surrounded by dozens. Here the stone compressed everything into a strip barely wide enough for two attackers at once. Karneth shortened his swings and turned the limitation into brutality, chopping into forearms and shoulders, using the flat of one axe to knock a weapon aside so the other could finish the work. Jaeshu fought closer than he preferred, his longer blade catching what came high while the shorter stabbed through whatever opened beneath it.

For several breaths, the line held. Then a Rust forced its way forward behind a battered iron shield and crashed into Karneth hard enough to drive the dwarf half a step backward. Karneth hammered one axe against the rim, once, twice, unable to find flesh behind it. Something struck the shield from the rear, adding another body’s weight, and his boots scraped over stone.

Karneth grunted. “Might’ve been somethin’ to that archer’s shield idea!”

The Rust shoved again. The dwarf snarled, hooked one axe over the shield’s upper edge, then drove the other beneath it. The creature disappeared backward with a cry, dragged down into those behind it, but another Mottled was already filling the space. The cave gave them one front to defend, but it did not make that front easy.

Av’elyth became the difference. She stopped defending a place of her own and began fighting whatever the other two could not reach. When Jaeshu committed both blades to a Crimson and a Mottled slipped toward his exposed side, Av’elyth intercepted it. When Karneth’s wounded leg buckled beneath a heavy strike and his guard dropped for a fraction of a second, she crossed behind him and took a shallow cut along her ribs that had been meant for his back. Neither man had time to thank her.

A blade grazed her shoulder. A hound’s teeth caught leather at her calf and tore through far enough to draw blood before Jaeshu drove his shorter sword through its neck. Av’elyth kicked free and immediately stepped into the opening he had left.

At first the wounds seemed to do nothing except stain her. Then pain began stripping away the distance she kept between herself and everyone else. A Mottled nicked the back of her hand and she drove her dagger into its throat with a viciousness that had nothing elegant about it. Each new wound cost her a little more control. Anger surfaced first. Fear showed once and disappeared so quickly Jaeshu might have imagined it.

A blade came for Jaeshu before he could answer. Av’elyth knocked it aside, and the edge caught her forearm instead.

“Val’kith,” she hissed, baring her teeth. Then she killed the creature and shoved its body into the others.

The three continued backing into the cave, a foot at a time. The hanging ivy was behind the goblins now. Daylight still reached the three defenders, but less of it. Their packs, blankets, waterskins, and whatever else they had abandoned near the entrance lay between them and the enemy. Jaeshu saw a Mottled step directly onto one of the bundles as it advanced. Another kicked a waterskin aside. A shadow hound scrambled over Karneth’s bedroll, claws tearing through the fabric as though it had always belonged to the ground.

They were no longer defending the cave mouth. They were being pushed into the cave.

Jaeshu caught a descending sword with both blades and nearly went to one knee. Karneth buried an axe in the attacker, but the effort left his wounded leg trembling. Av’elyth stepped into another opening before either man could close it. Outside, more pressed toward them.

Av’elyth looked past the attackers and into the clearing. A shadow hound stepped into the center of it, larger than the others, its black shoulders driving between Mottled and Rust alike. A mounted goblin crouched low across its back, knees locked against the animal’s ribs, one hand buried in the coarse fur at its neck. Feathers had been tied into its hair, whipping behind it as the hound accelerated.

Av’elyth watched the rider lower itself against the animal’s back.

It was not charging the cave. It was aiming over it.

Karneth and Jaeshu were locked shoulder to shoulder in the mouth, too occupied with the bodies in front of them to see what was coming. The hound gathered beneath itself as it ran, hindquarters dropping, forelegs reaching farther with every stride. If it cleared them, there would be an enemy behind the line, and the cave would belong to the swarm.

Av’elyth looked at the wall. Jaeshu saw her foot turn.

“What are you doing?”

She did not answer. The rider galloped faster.

Av’elyth planted one boot against the rough stone and ran. One stride up the wall. A second. Then she kicked away from it.

Karneth looked up just in time to see black leather pass over his head. “What in all the hells—Av’elyth!”

She cleared the dwarf, the ranger, and the packed front rank of goblins in one long twisting arc, black leather flashing overhead.

From the rear of the swarm, the mounted hound leapt.

The rogue turned her shoulder in midair to slip past the collision and flipped both daggers into a reversed grip. Sailing past the pair of creatures at arm’s length, one blade punched into the goblin rider’s shoulder; the other carved deep along the hound’s flank. The goblin tore backward from its mount, disappearing into the swarm below, and the hound slammed snout-first into the dirt.

Av’elyth rolled across the clearing and came up behind the creatures pressing toward the cave. For half a heartbeat, nothing understood what had happened.

Then Av’elyth drove a dagger into the nearest Crimson. It screamed.

The clearing turned toward her.

Shadow hounds wheeled first. Mottled goblins pressing toward the cave jerked around at the sudden violence behind them. One Rust tried to keep advancing, found the bodies at its back moving in the opposite direction, and was shoved sideways in the confusion. The mass packed against Jaeshu and Karneth split.

The pressure vanished so quickly Karneth nearly stumbled forward. Jaeshu drew a full breath for what felt like the first time in long minutes, then attacked.

His longer sword finally stopped merely catching blows and started delivering them. He stepped outside a Mottled’s guard, cut once, turned the shorter blade into the next creature’s stomach, then drove forward. Karneth understood immediately. One axe buried itself in the neck of the Rust that had been tormenting him. The second smashed into the Mottled beside it.

They were finally taking ground instead of merely surrendering it, and every creature still standing in the clearing was moving toward Av’elyth.

The rider she had knocked free rose among them, one side of its face bloodied from the fall, feathers hanging crooked now. One shoulder sagged beneath the wound she had given it. It pointed toward her with the other hand and screamed something the rest understood.

More turned. She could have tried to cut back toward the cave, but she did not. Returning would only have brought them with her. Instead she pressed on, farther into the clearing, pulling half the swarm away from Karneth and Jaeshu.

One dagger found a throat. The second went under an arm. She ducked a club, turned beneath a sword, drove her heel into the knee of a Crimson and killed it before it finished falling. The rider came at her once and she forced it back with a slash across the hand, but that opening cost her another cut along the shoulder.

A Mottled caught her across the back. Av’elyth spun and opened its face. A hound raked her thigh as she twisted from its jaws, and she stabbed downward until it stopped moving. A Rust clipped her shoulder. Another blade opened the opposite arm.

None of the wounds were enough, but they accumulated quietly. A line of blood beneath her ribs. Another along her hip. A dark patch spreading behind one shoulder. Her left foot landed a little more carefully. Her right-hand dagger came back a fraction slower after each strike. She stopped turning fully when she could avoid it because something in her side punished the motion.

Still she moved farther from the cave. There was no path back now. Av’elyth stopped looking for one.

A high voice cracked down from the trees.

“WATCH YOUR HEADS!”

Jaeshu dropped immediately. Karneth did not understand until the first arrow passed through the space his head had occupied. Av’elyth heard the whistle and threw herself low, palms caked with the black blood of her enemies.

The clearing erupted in gray-fletched shafts.

One Mottled snapped backward with an arrow through its eye. A second shaft struck a shadow hound through the neck in mid-lunge and carried it sideways. Three more came so quickly Karneth could not tell whether he had heard separate bowstrings. A Crimson spun and collapsed. A Rust raised its shield against the canopy and exposed its side to Jaeshu.

“Stay low!” Lunara shouted.

High in the branches, the young archer moved from limb to limb with her bow already bent. She had chosen the only part of the battlefield the swarm could not easily reach, and from there she made herself everyone’s problem. Arrows fell wherever the line began to fail. When creatures turned toward Av’elyth, Lunara thinned them. When they surged toward the cave, she cut holes in the pressure there.

Karneth looked up once and bellowed a mighty laugh. “Ha! How do ya like Bahlara artillery, filth!”

“Hold fast!” Lunara called. Another arrow left her bow. “The others are coming!”

That changed nothing immediately. Av’elyth was still bleeding in the clearing. Jaeshu and Karneth were still wounded. The enemy was still everywhere. But the collapse stopped.

For several minutes, the battle settled into a brutal balance. Lunara could not kill fast enough to end it, but she could keep either side from being buried. Jaeshu and Karneth regained the cave mouth and no more. Av’elyth remained isolated beyond the main press, using the room she had bought herself to keep moving even as her body began refusing pieces of what she asked from it.

They were no longer losing, but they were not winning either.

And Av’elyth was running out of blood.

Then light flared into the clearing.

Navian came through the trees with his shield already raised. White radiance spilled along its rim and across the sword in his other hand, bright enough that the nearest Mottled recoiled. Gaz appeared beside him a heartbeat later, staff glowing violet beneath the trees. Oesora followed close behind, already searching the battlefield for whoever needed her most.

The paladin took in the cave, the creatures between them, and the two wounded figures still holding the entrance.

“Gaz. Oesora needs a path.”

The wizard followed his brother’s eyes and understood.

Gaz slid to a stop, planted one foot, lowered his staff, and drew a slow circle through the air. Flame curled around the crystal at its tip, violet at the center, tightening as the scholar turned the staff again and again until the fire wound itself into a spinning sphere no larger than his fist.

Then he thrust forward, and the sphere left the staff and grew.

It tore through the swarm like a burning wheel, widening as it went, dragging smoke and sparks into a spiraling wake. A Mottled vanished from its path in flame. A shadow hound tried to cross behind it and was thrown sideways by the heat. Creatures scattered as the spinning fire bored a straight corridor through the battlefield and broke apart against the stone below the cave.

For an instant, an open road existed.

Navian lifted his shield. “Oesora. With me.”

The priestess ran.

Navian moved beside her, half a stride ahead, shield angled across them both. A Crimson darted into the opening and struck for Oesora. Its blade crashed against the shield and skidded away in a burst of white Light. Navian answered with his sword without slowing. Another creature came from the opposite side, but Lunara’s arrow reached it first.

They crossed the clearing together.

Karneth saw them coming and laughed once, breathless and disbelieving. “Where’s breakfast?”

Navian reached the cave, turned, and planted his shield across the entrance. “Still thinking about food. Good sign.”

Gaz took position beside him. Lunara remained overhead. The three fresh fighters absorbed the front almost immediately, and for the first time Jaeshu and Karneth were allowed to step backward without something following them.

Oesora caught both by the arms and pulled them deeper into the cave. “Sit.”

“I can—” Jaeshu began.

“Sit.”

He sat. Karneth made it two steps before his injured leg made the decision for him.

Oesora dropped between them, both hands already alight. She pressed one palm against Jaeshu’s side and the other to Karneth’s thigh, dividing her attention between wounds that had both been ignored far too long.

Jaeshu sucked in a breath as warmth spread through him. Karneth stared toward the entrance. Oesora followed his eyes, counting without meaning to.

Navian. Gaz. Lunara above. Jaeshu. Karneth...

Her hands stopped.

“Where’s Av’elyth?”

Karneth’s face changed and he pointed out.

“Ran up the wall and jumped straight over our heads like a damn rabbit.”

Oesora stared at him. “What?”

“Broke the line to give us breathin’ room.” He swallowed, looking back toward the clearing. “Haven’t seen her since.”

Oesora turned. At first she could not find the rogue. There were too many bodies moving between the cave and the trees, too much smoke, too many flashes of steel and magic. Then a gap opened behind a Rust, and she saw black leather.

Av’elyth was still standing.

Barely.

The elf moved as though some invisible weight had been tied to every limb. One dagger hung lower than the other. Blood covered her from shoulder to thigh, so much now that Oesora could no longer tell which wound had produced which stain. Av’elyth ducked a sword and nearly failed to rise from the motion.

Then another came.

Av’elyth turned too slowly. The blade drove beneath her ribs, and her scream crossed the clearing.

It was not controlled. It was not swallowed behind clenched teeth. The sound tore itself out of her, sharp enough that even the goblin holding the weapon seemed startled by it.

She stared down at the steel in her side. The Mottled wrenched it free, and something in her face changed.

She whirled.

For one instant, the battle disappeared from her entirely. No cave. No line. No swarm. Only the creature that had hurt her standing within arm’s reach.

The goblin hesitated.

Av’elyth seized a fistful of its tunic and cracked its face with a punch. No dagger, no elegance, no style. Just the fist of a furious elf.

The blow snapped the creature’s head sideways and sent it stumbling backward into the bodies behind it. Av’elyth remained standing long enough to glare after it, shoulders shaking, one hand still curled into a fist as though rage alone might hold her upright.

Then her knees gave out.

Oesora saw her fall.

“Navian!”

The paladin turned. The priestess pointed. Navian followed her hand.

Av’elyth was down.

He moved.

“Nav, wait!” Gaz shouted.

Navian’s white shield vanished from the cave mouth with him, and everything changed at once. A Rust crashed into the space he had abandoned. Gaz caught the first strike against the shaft of his staff hard enough to jar both arms. Lunara changed targets halfway through a draw and buried an arrow in the Rust’s shoulder instead of its eye.

“Navian!” she screamed. “Get back here!”

He was already gone.

Oesora felt Karneth move beneath her hand. “No.”

The dwarf stood, seeing Gaz alone. “I’m not finished.”

“Then neither am I,” Jaeshu said.

“You are both bleeding!”

Karneth banged his axes together and spat blood. “Aye, so is everyone, girl.”

They left her Light and returned to the cave mouth. The difference was immediate. Jaeshu could fight, but not with the speed he had before. Karneth could stand, but every hard step threatened to fold his leg beneath him. They filled the place Navian had abandoned because no one else could.

Outside, the paladin drove toward Av’elyth.

A shadow hound sprang from his left. Navian caught it on the shield and threw it aside. A Crimson slashed at the gap beneath his arm and scored his armor before Navian turned and struck it down. He did not slow. Av’elyth had fallen onto one hand and was somehow still trying to rise.

Navian reached her as another creature closed. His sword burned brighter as one swing cleared the space beside her. He stepped into the brief circle of safety he had created, sheathed the sword, and bent.

Av’elyth felt his arms beneath her. Her eyes opened. For a moment she looked confused. Then she recognized him.

“You... stupid fool...”

Navian looked at the wound in her side, blood pouring from it. “I know.”

Av’elyth’s eyes narrowed as though she still had an argument left. Then they closed, and the weight of her changed in his arms.

Navian looked once toward the cave. Gaz was being driven backward. Jaeshu and Karneth were fighting again when neither should have been standing. Lunara’s arrows were falling faster now, compensating for the place his shield should have been.

He looked back down at Av’elyth and ran.

At the cave, Gaz gave ground. The scholar blocked one strike with the staff, ducked another, and released a burst of violet force at such close range that it threw both the creature and himself backward. Lunara dropped from the trees to the stone beside him because there was no longer enough room to shoot safely from above. One arrow left her bow from scarcely six feet away. Jaeshu killed something at her shoulder. Karneth stopped another from reaching Gaz.

The wizard looked at the three of them, then at Navian, still far out in the clearing with Av’elyth, then at the creatures continuing to press forward. His expression went still.

“I require four moments.”

Lunara stared at him. “What?”

“Four moments.”

Karneth hacked an axe into a Mottled and ripped it free. “The hells does that mean?!”

Gaz backed deeper into the cave. “Four moments...”

The dwarf looked ready to argue.

Jaeshu did not. “Go.”

Gaz turned his staff upright, and the three of them closed ranks in front of him.

The wizard retreated until his back nearly touched the darker stone behind them, planted the end of the staff against the ground, and closed his eyes. For several heartbeats, nothing happened.

Then the crystal began to hum.

Jaeshu heard it before he felt it, a low vibration beneath the clash of weapons. Gaz’s hands tightened around the staff. Emerald light gathered inside the crystal in threads so thin they looked like cracks forming within it.

Outside, Navian was still too far away.

“Little faster, Gaz!” Lunara shouted without looking back.

Her brother gave no sign he had heard her.

The next rush hit.

Jaeshu caught the first blade and nearly lost his longer sword. His wounded side failed him when he twisted, and he had to use the shorter weapon simply to force the attacker away. Karneth stepped into the gap, took a strike across one axe, and almost collapsed when his bad leg absorbed the impact.

Lunara fired between them. The arrow entered a Crimson’s mouth. She reached back. Her fingers closed around another shaft, then another.

Then nothing.

Lunara searched the empty quiver once more as though an arrow might have appeared through stubbornness alone.

“Okay...”

A Mottled rushed her.

The young archer caught her bow in both hands and swung it across the creature’s face. The weapon made for a miserable club. The impact jarred her arms and turned the goblin’s head, but it turned it enough for Jaeshu to drive a blade through its side.

Karneth blocked high, but another Rust slammed into him. His boots slid backward.

“Ranger!” he barked. “Any more of those smoke things?”

Jaeshu reached beneath his cloak, but his hand found cloth and nothing else. For the briefest instant his expression went blank, then hardened.

“Fucking Antonio...”

The hum behind them deepened. Dust sifted from the cave ceiling.

Jaeshu stabbed low. Karneth swung. Lunara used the bow again, badly and without elegance, striking at hands and faces whenever something came too close. The polished archer who had owned the trees minutes earlier was gone. There was only a young woman with an empty quiver and a piece of wood she refused to surrender.

They were no longer trying to reclaim anything. They were only buying seconds.

A Rust drove Karneth backward until his heel struck Gaz’s boot.

“Ye better be doin’ somethin’ bloody magnificent back there, wizard!”

Gaz’s eyes remained closed.

Navian reached the edge of the clearing. He looked at Av’elyth in his arms, then at Gaz. The wizard was no longer fighting.

Navian understood immediately.

He shifted Av’elyth over one shoulder, locking her against him with one arm so he could bring the shield forward with the other, and ran harder. A Mottled stepped into his path and he hit it with the shield, never breaking stride.

At the cave, Jaeshu’s shorter sword slipped from his blood-wet hand and clattered across the stone. Karneth took another step backward. There was nowhere left to give.

Lunara glanced over her shoulder. Gaz stood absolutely still. Green light had spread from the crystal into the veins of the staff. The air around him rippled. His robes stirred despite the cave having no wind. Sweat ran from his brow.

Lunara looked back at the creatures in front of her. “Say when, Gaz!”

The scholar did not move.

Navian saw the cave mouth. He saw Jaeshu and Karneth failing. He saw Lunara swinging a bow like a stick because she had nothing left to shoot. He saw Gaz.

Then the wizard opened his eyes.

Navian knew: He had run out of time.

The paladin lowered his shoulder and sprinted the final yards. At the edge of the cave, he gathered himself for the jump and tightened his arm around Av’elyth.

“Sorry, Av'—”

He launched himself through the entrance.

The landing was ugly. Navian hit the stone behind Gaz shoulder-first and turned with the impact, trying to keep Av’elyth above him as momentum carried them into a hard roll. Her body jolted against his armor.

A broken sound escaped her. Navian flinched as though he had taken the wound himself.

Metal screamed across rock. He came up on one knee behind Gaz, dragged Av’elyth tight against him, and raised the shield over both of them.

“NOW!”

Lunara moved before the word finished. She sprang backward, caught fistfuls of Jaeshu’s and Karneth’s cloaks from behind, and threw every bit of her weight toward the cave floor.

Jaeshu understood as she hit him and dropped willingly. Karneth did not.

“What the—!”

His feet vanished beneath him, and all three crashed down behind Gaz.

The wizard lifted his staff.

For a fraction of a second, the clearing seemed to go silent. Not truly silent—the clash of steel and the cries of the swarm were simply swallowed beneath something larger.

The crystal at Gaz’s staff burned green at its center.

Then the spell broke loose.

A wall of emerald fire erupted from the cave. It did not travel like a bolt.

It unfolded.

The first wave burst outward from Gaz in a widening crescent, taller than a man and bright enough to erase every shadow in the cave. It struck the creatures packed at the entrance and took them bodily from the ground. Green flame roared through the Mottled behind them, through Rusts lifting shields that meant nothing against it, through Crimsons already turning to run.

Then came the force behind the flame.

The clearing thoomed and buckled beneath it.

Grass flattened in expanding circles. Loose stone ripped free and vanished into the roaring front. Shadow hounds were lifted and thrown through the air. Goblins disappeared inside sheets of green fire and struck earth only after the wave had passed beyond them.

Trees at the edge of the clearing bent away from the cave. Leaves tore free by the hundreds. The feathered rider appeared once through the blaze, then vanished into ash.

The fire swallowed everything.

Navian crouched behind his shield with Av’elyth beneath him. The wave struck the metal like a physical thing, white Light flaring over its face as heat and force rolled around the edges. He lowered the shield farther and spread himself over Av’elyth as much as his armor allowed.

Beside him, Lunara flattened herself across Jaeshu and Karneth where she had dragged them down. The dwarf swore into the stone. Jaeshu pulled his hood down to the ground and covered his head with both arms.

Gaz stood at the center of it, his robes snapping behind him. Both hands locked around the staff while the force poured through it, widening until the whole clearing seemed caught inside one enormous breath of fire.

Then the wave passed. The roar fled into the trees. The light shimmered, then died.

Nothing answered it.

For several seconds, no one moved.

Navian kept the shield raised until his arm began to shake. Then he lifted his head above its rim.

Smoke covered the clearing. Bones and bodies lay everywhere—Mottled, Rusts, Crimsons, shadow hounds. Some had been thrown against trees or stone. Others lay where the wave had overtaken them, armor blackened, weapons scattered through scorched grass. Small fires flickered and died along the ground. Torn leaves drifted slowly through the smoke.

Nothing stood.

Karneth raised his head. Jaeshu rolled onto his back. Lunara pushed herself to one knee.

Gaz looked out over the clearing he had emptied. His staff slipped from his hands, and the scholar crumpled to the ground beside it.

“Gaz!”

Lunara crawled toward him. Gaz lifted one hand weakly before she reached him.

“I suppose three moments will do,” he managed, and his arm fell again.

No one laughed. For a while there was only breathing. Karneth’s came rough and uneven. Jaeshu lay with one forearm across his eyes, chest rising hard beneath it. Lunara sat beside Gaz, staring at nothing. Navian could hear his own breath echoing inside his armor.

Then Av’elyth made no sound at all.

He looked down.

The paladin lowered his shield and rolled her carefully onto her back. Blood covered almost everything beneath her, darkening the stone and slicking his gauntlets.

Her leathers were black enough that some of it disappeared into them, but not all. Red-black stains spread beneath her ribs and shoulder, along her arm, across Navian’s hands. Her hair was stuck to one side of her face. Against all of it, her skin looked almost colorless, whiter than Navian had ever seen it.

“Oesora!”

The priestess was already there.

She dropped beside Av’elyth so quickly her knees struck stone. Her hands moved from wound to wound, pressing, lifting, finding another before she had finished understanding the last. The discipline she had carried through the battle finally broke.

“No. No, no—”

“Oesora.”

“She’s lost too much.”

Navian looked at her. Oesora looked back.

For one terrible moment, neither needed the rest explained. She could close what was open, but she could not return what the ground had already taken.

Behind them, Jaeshu tried to stand and failed. He made it far enough to reach the wall before sliding down it, his swords dropping beside him. Karneth took two limping steps after him, sat heavily, then let himself fall back against the stone.

Neither tried again.

Navian looked down at Av’elyth. Her chest moved, barely.

“Can you...?”

Oesora did not answer.

Light appeared between her hands. She pressed both palms against Av’elyth’s ribs and closed her eyes, gold spilling between her fingers.

Lunara hooked both hands beneath Gaz’s arms and dragged him farther into the cave. The wizard made a weak noise of protest. She propped him carefully against the wall, retrieved his staff from where it had fallen, and laid it beside him before sitting heavily at his side.

Navian left Av’elyth to Oesora only when he was certain there was nothing his hands could do there. He moved first to Jaeshu, then Karneth, tightening cloth over wounds that had opened again and checking what Oesora had managed to mend before they had abandoned her healing to replace him at the entrance.

Neither man had enough strength left to complain.

Eventually, there was nothing anyone could do quickly. The cave became quiet behind the rustling of ivy.

Not peaceful. Just quiet.

Seven people lay or sat within a few yards of one another, listening to their breathing slow. Oesora’s Light pulsed softly against the stone. Gaz remained conscious mostly through stubbornness, his head resting against the wall. Lunara sat beside him with the ruined bow across her lap. Karneth stared at the ceiling. Jaeshu watched the entrance. Navian sat between the wounded men and Av’elyth.

Outside, golden smoke drifted through shafts of afternoon light. No creature moved in the clearing. No howl came from the trees. No horn answered from beyond them. Nothing gathered for another charge.

For the first time since the fight had begun, there was no one left to hold back. The clearing belonged to them now, silent and full of the dead.

They had finally won a battle. Though it did not feel like it.

Not in the least.