Elena screamed when a stream of aquamarine light solidified into a 6-foot-tall skeleton right in front of her. Terror washed over her, the blood inside her veins seemingly frozen as her eyes met the unfeeling orbs of the Ossari. A shimmering black blade came slashing toward her neck, and she slammed her eyes shut, waiting for the void of death to wash over her once more.

  She felt nothing, but a loud crash like a car slamming into a tree filled her ears. A small hand clasped tight around the hem of her robe, and she felt her body being effortlessly hoisted into the air. She tried going deadweight to slip out of the grasp. It had always worked on her brother, and it was the best option her body could come up with on instinct alone.

  “Elena! Open your damn eyes and climb on!” Hannah shouted.

  Complying, she saw the ground below flying by as the muscular legs of a deer carried them away from the skeleton. Seeing Hannah struggling to hold her aloft, Elena reached out to drape a leg over Buttercup’s back. Fur tickled her skin as she finally clambered into place, holding onto Hannah’s back for dear life.

  “Oh my god! Oh my god! Thank you!” Elena panted.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Hannah replied, pulling an arrow from her quiver and launching it towards an Ossari archer.

  Elena could feel her entire body shaking, but nothing seemed to help. She tried slowing down her breathing, but the bucking of the deer beneath her kept knocking the wind from her chest. She tried humming her favorite song, but couldn’t remember the tune. All memory, all thought, was erased by the chaos of war surrounding them.

  Another crash filled her ears as Buttercup’s soft fur went hard as stone. An Ossari swordsman was flung into the air, thrown by glistening antlers of marbled white, green, and gold.

  “Good job, baby,” Hannah muttered, holding her bowstring against her cheek while she lined up her next shot. The arrow glistened with infused essence, and Elena was shocked to watch it pierce right through the skull of an archer who’d tried flanking their army.

  An eruption of red mist appearing beside them made her heart lurch. “Gary! Gary’s inside the wall!”

  “Where?” Hannah barked, turning to face where Elena pointed.

  “The blood mist!” Elena stuttered.

  “That’s not blood. Harvey’s getting distracted trying to heal instead of doing his own job. I already told him I’ve got things handled down here,” Hannah sighed.

  Looking up, she saw Harvey filling a glass orb with red liquid before tossing it into the crowd of Veilstriders. Seeing the mist come from him was a relief, but she still scanned the battlefield for the man deranged enough to force her to call him father. She had wept that first night in the hotel. Sat in the shower for hours, letting her tears be carried away by the stream. To think, the man who saved her from certain death when she was lost and alone in the woods could become such a monster. At first, she’d felt indebted to him, but now all she felt was fear.

  Arrow after arrow left Hannah’s quiver as Elena watched the carnage all around them. Veilstriders died every second. Swords covered in teal flames cutting through necks. Arrows impaling hearts. Ice spears flying through the air to carve holes in whatever they landed in. Elena yelped as an arrow whistled towards her own head, but a flash of light from Buttercup’s antlers knocked the wicked point away just before it reached her eye.

  “Put your hand on my quiver and start channeling essence into it,” Hannah commanded. “I’m running out of arrows.”

  Elena froze, her mind not quite registering the words cutting through the noise of battle.

  “Now!” Hannah yelled. It was enough to shock Elena awake, and she grasped the leather tube with both hands. Letting go of Hannah’s back almost sent her tumbling into the mud, and it took all she had not to let go of the quiver.

  “One hand!” Hannah shrieked.

  Death gripping the cheerleader once more, Elena began channeling her essence into the quiver. The leather greedily accepted it, steadily transforming raw power into simple arrows that occasionally popped into existence before her very eyes. Suddenly, the simple quiver had become the most interesting thing she’d ever seen, and she forced her eyes to stare at the arrows while drowning out the rest of the world around them.

  Focus. Don’t think about anything else. Your only job is to keep making arrows.

  “There are health potions in the slipsack tied to my right hip. If you see someone who needs healing, feel free to toss them one,” Hannah instructed.

  Your two jobs are making arrows and throwing potions.

  Awkwardly feeling around Hannah’s waist, she eventually found the slipsack. The image of a large space filled with potions, animal parts, food, water jugs, and other supplies appeared in her mind, and she quickly located a small hill of ruby red vials. It took almost everything she had to peel her eyes away from the quiver, but she forced herself to look back at the battlefield. She’d chosen to fight, even after Harvey had begged her not to, and she couldn’t turn back now.

  A potion in hand, she searched for a Veilstrider in need. The problem was that most died before they ever had a chance to heal their wounds. Most of their strongest fighters were still at the wall, raining death and destruction down on the army being blasted away by Harvey’s lightning arrays. The countless duels taking place inside the walls were extremely one-sided, with the Ossari mostly going on a rampage while a few competent fighters like Hannah did their best to take them down.

  One middle-aged woman clutched at the side of her neck, trying to stem the bleeding from an arrow lodged in her flesh. Just as Hannah tried signalling for her to catch the potion, a second arrow shot from her mouth. The light left her eyes as she collapsed forward, faceplanting in the mud as a tear burst from Elena’s eye. One after another, she watched Veilstriders die. A few managed to band together and swarm one of the skeletal warriors, but it often cost the lives of two to finish one.

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  “Help. Please,” a young man croaked, crawling on the ground between two corpses.

  “Here!” Elena sobbed, throwing a health potion a foot in front of him. Reaching for the vial, he slipped in the mud. She could see ragged breaths moving through his body, but the potion barely eluded his grasp.

  “No! It’s right there! Just grab it!” she sobbed.

  He didn’t move.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” Hannah yelped as Elena slid down Buttercup’s side. Elena didn’t respond, kneeling beside the boy’s head and straining to flip him onto his back. Neither her Class nor her Profession gave any Strength, and she hadn’t invested a single Free Point in the stat since she vowed to stop hunting. Back then, the thought of killing dogs for power seemed so cruel. Now, she wished she’d slaughtered them all. Harvey had told her from the beginning that war would come no matter what, but instead of preparing herself, she’d dug her head in the sand.

  “Come on!” she groaned. The teenager was lean and muscular, and she would’ve struggled to move him even without people’s bodies naturally getting heavier as they leveled up. Nobody seemed to notice since it wasn’t like they had any scales around, but all the Strength and Endurance people were gaining had to go somewhere.

  “Elena! We have to move!” Hannah shouted, reaching down to grab her robe again.

  “No! He’s still alive! Help me!” she replied.

  Hannah hesitated for a moment before jumping down and easily flipping the man onto his back. His chest heaved as his breathing faltered, and Elena uncorked the muddy potion and poured it into his mouth. The F Grade concoction repaired his body in moments, and his eyes fluttered open to stare at the two women.

  “Are you… angels?” he asked.

  “Shut up,” Hannah scoffed, grabbing Elena and throwing her back onto Buttercup.

  The deer sprinted away as soon as Hannah hit the saddle, a skill activating to magically glue her to the buck’s back.

  “Don’t do anything like that again, you hear me?” Hannah commanded.

  “What?” Elena replied. “You told me to look for people who need healing?”

  “Yeah, and toss them a potion! Not drop down and feed it to them!”

  “But he was dying?”

  “Everyone’s dying! Don’t you see that! I could’ve killed another Ossari in the time we wasted healing one man. Our goal is to save as many people as we can while taking down every bastard that makes it over this wall. We can’t lose focus unless Harvey or Julian needs our help.”

  “Wh–why?” Elena stuttered.

  “Because they’re my friends, just like you, and I’m not planning on losing any today! Now focus up!” Hannah commanded.

  Elena’s eyes snapped back to the quiver, which had dwindled down to just a handful of arrows. She’d never seen Hannah like this, but it made sense for someone constantly facing life-or-death struggles to start to think like her. Elena saw a life she could save. Hannah saw an arrow that could save even more by ending another.

  A snap to her left brought her eyes to one of the watchtowers. The top was covered in ice, and the logs holding it aloft were fracturing one by one. The entire structure began to tilt towards the wall she’d spent so much time inscribing. Screams filled the air as the first fell, then more towers began to follow. Soon, the log wall was bowing outward like a dam about to break. She watched Harvey trying to beat back the army, but soon he, too, fell to the ground as even more ice glommed onto her wall.

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  The ground at the base of the structure erupted, dirt flying into the air as the entire barrier came crashing down. A final thunderclap echoed as the lightning arrays discharged the force from hitting the ground, sounding like the bell announcing the end of round 1 in a boxing match. Both armies took a moment to size eachother up, looking eye to eye for the first time.

  “Shit,” Hannah swore as crystal covered the arrow already drawn in her bowstring. Taking aim at a group of three Ossari clumped together, she released her explosive payload. At the same time, an explosion of teal fire blasting into the army rang in the start of round 2. The Undead army charged towards the disorganized line of Veilstriders, who responded with a dazzling array of skills and strikes. Elena tried to discern who had the upper hand after the opening salvo, but was too distracted by the flames dissipating a few hundred feet ahead to tell.

  Those closest to the blast were nothing more than desiccated husks, but she could still hear the cries of the people who’d only been grazed by the flame.

  “That stuff sucks the life out of you. They need potions,” Hannah explained as Buttercup sprinted towards them.

  Another explosion boomed behind them as Elena desperately tossed potions to anyone still moving. Her eyes frantically scanned the crowd, but she froze when a third fireball entered her sight. High above them, atop the hotel, the dragon had become living artillery, decimating their army. The ghastly fire seemed not to bother the Ossari at all, having no life for the flames to consume.

  “Run!” Elena begged, tugging on Hannah’s arm.

  “What?” Hannah asked.

  Elena forcefully grabbed her head and turned it upward. Without a word, Buttercup began sprinting away, but the fireball was moving too fast. Her eyes slammed shut once more, but death never came. Looking up, she saw Harvey soaring above them, a massive spectral shield absorbing the flames that would’ve taken her life.

  “Oh, thank god,” Hannah gasped.

  Elena thanked her lucky stars that he’d saved her once again. If she hadn’t owed her life to Harvey before, there was no questioning it now.

  “I’m gonna need some help!” he screamed, his voice nearly drowned out by the screams of the dying below. Elena thought he wanted someone to catch him, but was stunned to see him continue flying up towards the dragon.

  “He’s going to try and fight that thing?” she stammered.

  “Not by himself!” Hannah replied. Her crystal arrow turned from blue to a deep purple, vibrating like a hunting dog waiting to be let off the leash. Elena could feel that the arrow alone contained more energy than every last drop of essence in her entire body, a testament to the power of Hannah’s high-level and momentum-based skillset. The arrow keened when it was finally released, her bowstring cracking like a gunshot as the arrow seemingly teleported into the dragon’s shoulder. An earsplitting explosion rocked the air, the shockwave sending brick and debris raining down to the ground alongside a massive severed wing.

  Hannah didn’t even spare the arrow a glance as she returned to firing at the incoming army. Speechless, Elena returned to her task of conjuring more arrows. She was starting to run low on essence, so she found a potion inside Hannah’s slipsack and tipped it into her mouth.

  Time blurred together as her brain struggled to comprehend the last minutes of her life, and she only awoke when another deafening crack of thunder came from high above. Looking up, she saw Harvey momentarily suspended in the air, a massive hammer sending lightning bolts into the back of a jawless dragon. Like a god of thunder, he delivered his judgement until the whole building imploded. Floors collapsed one after another, each burying the skeletal drake in more and more rubble.

  Every sense in her body was numb. She barely noticed when Harvey began falling himself, only waking from her stupor when she saw him fighting to slow down before going out of sight behind the inner wall. Panic threatened to consume her once more until she finally saw him push through the gate.

  He walked with a slight limp, his army battered and broken with three deep gashes carved into his side. He never looked her way, but she saw hatred in his eyes just as he started running into battle.

  What is he? She thought, only for her mind to fully blank out once more. Gary, with a single arm and a savage smile, was running straight towards him.