Will – Trouble
Will
Trouble
Will tried to catch up to Malin several times, but she maintained a deliberate distance from him, her shoulders rigid beneath her frost-dusted travel cloak.
They had been hiking through the snow-covered pine forest for thirty minutes, and they still had almost an hour to go to reach the vanguard.
Their boots crunched through the crystalline crust that sparkled like diamond dust in the weak morning light.
Their first stop would be a small village only minutes away through the dense trees.
They received cautious looks from the caravans they passed on the busy trade route, a shorter path to meet their Army, according to Darik.
Will’s gaze darted around them, looking for danger.
If the Shadow Snake recommended the path, he assumed it was a trap.
They had just passed a small family with several young children bundled in thick furs, their faces pink-cheeked and curious.
His transporter instincts prickled. The jingling of harnesses and the low murmur of haggling voices carried through the crisp air.
Traveling through the mountain pass with so many people made it a prime opportunity for ambushes, even from simple robbers.
His senses were dull as tarnished silver when they should have been razor-sharp. His focus kept returning to Malin. Even worse, his lodestone magic, usually a comforting hum beneath his skin, remained silent. His magic was upset with him, too.
His world was crumbling, like the frozen earth beneath their feet. The morning mist clung to the undergrowth, wreathing the twisted roots in spectral white.
“Malin. Please just let me walk beside you so we can talk,” Will pleaded, his voice echoing slightly against the rocky terrain, bouncing between frost-covered boulders like a lost spirit.
“Jacien. Please let Will know that he can save his breath,” Malin said, her words sharp as icicles.
“I will not be speaking to him until we get back to the palace and my mother is safe. Maybe by then, I’ll be able to speak with him without feeling like crisping him to ash.
” Her fingers sparked with tiny flames that quickly extinguished in the cold air.
Jacien gave Will an apologetic glance, his amber eyes sympathetic beneath furrowed brows. “I’m not a relay, but I feel like he got your message.”
Maybe the cocky Elf wasn’t so bad.
A sick, heavy tension twisted his gut. He couldn’t see the soul-bond tattoo on his back, but the hollow absence of it radiated through his bones.
Her emotions no longer bled into his mind.
The magic tying them together was dying, and he fully expected to follow suit without her.
The guilt gnawed at him. The blame rested entirely on his shoulders, yet he was completely lost on how to repair the fracture.
She stubbornly refused the one thing he needed to heal, and now, she was shutting him out completely.
Dark clouds gathered overhead, heavy with the promise of more snow. Khelek’s hand moved instinctively to his weapon. His long fingers curled around the jeweled pommel, prompting Will to scan the jagged rocks looming above them like the teeth of some ancient beast.
Nar called out, his voice slicing through the tension, “Ambush.”
Before the echo of Nar’s warning faded against the canyon walls, the snow-dusted tree line fractured.
Figures detached themselves from the shadows of the pines and dropped from the jagged rocks above, moving with terrifying, coordinated, lethal intent.
Will’s blades were in his hands before his conscious mind could process the danger, the familiar weight of the steel grounding him in a way his silent lodestone magic refused.
He lunged forward, crossing the distance to Malin in three massive strides.
He didn’t care how furious she was with him right now.
His only instinct was to protect her, throwing himself at her flank to build a physical wall between his wife and the tree line.
But as he pivoted with his twin blades drawn, the grim reality of the ambush hit him.
They were surrounded. There was no safe direction, and absolutely no way to put her behind him.
A nightmare tide of rusted iron, tattered furs, and blood-red cloth poured onto the trade route.
The Bleed. Those undead monsters were back. How did they find them?
A frantic pulse pounded in Will’s ears. His transporter instincts immediately took over, forcing his mind to do the frantic, brutal math of survival.
The undead dropped from the massive boulders blocking the pass ahead. They swarmed closer, their boots crunching loudly through the diamond-crusted snow as they pushed them into an inescapable ring. Every single escape route was severed.
Ten. Twenty.
Will tracked their jerky movements through the thickening snowfall, his eyes darting across the closing perimeter.
Thirty. Forty.
Forty undead against six well-trained killers. The monsters wore haphazard, heavy armor smeared with the dried crimson of old kills, which mixed sickeningly with the sluggish, foul blood oozing from their rotting pores.
“Circle up!” Aldrik’s command boomed over the howling wind, the General’s voice absolute and unyielding.
Will pivoted immediately, shifting his weight outward to form the defensive ring.
Jacien materialized at Malin’s opposite side with his silver blade already drawn, moving with that fluid, predatory grace Will absolutely despised.
But Will didn’t have the luxury of jealousy today. They were vastly outnumbered.
Suddenly, the freezing wind and the cold dread in Will’s gut were blasted away by a searing wave of furnace heat. The temperature in the pass violently spiked as Malin, Aldrik, and Nar all ignited their magic.
Malin stepped forward to complete the circle, her rigid posture flowing into a flawless combat stance. Roaring, golden-orange flames ignited in her hands. They hissed violently in the freezing wind, turning the falling snow into steam long before it could touch her skin.
“Hold the line,” Will growled, his hazel eyes locked onto the dead as they raised their rusted weapons.
The marital freeze was postponed.
The fire had arrived.
The horde crashed into them like a wave of rotting iron. Malin struck first.
Pushing off the ground, she levitated several feet above the danger.
She didn’t just throw fire. She unleashed an absolute supernova of heat. A blinding, roaring torrent of flame erupted from her palms and slammed into the front lines.
The gag-inducing stench of burning hair and flash-fried flesh hit instantly.
The monsters caught in the blast didn’t even scream. They melted, their heavy armor glowing white-hot as they collapsed into the boiling snow.
But there were too many, as more seemed to pour from nowhere. They stepped over the smoldering ash of their comrades.
Will met the next wave with cold, brutal efficiency.
His lodestone magic might have been avoiding him, but his muscles remembered every drill, every war, every desperate fight for survival.
He ducked under a jagged cleaver aimed at his neck, spinning to drive his blade through the gap in the attacker’s rusty breastplate.
The creature didn’t flinch. It kept coming, blood oozing over Will’s cross guard.
Right. Will’s jaw locked. No pain.
He wrenched the blade free and swept it upward in a brutal arc, severing the mercenary’s head from its shoulders.
The body crumpled. Will stepped back, anchoring his shoulder against Malin’s back as she threw another wall of fire into the pines.
He became her shield, deflecting hooked spears and severing limbs to keep the undead from crossing into her devastating range.
To their right, Jacien was a silver blur of lethal precision, his Elven blade moving faster than Will’s eye could track, systematically dismantling the undead piece by piece.
Nar and Khelek held the rear, a towering wall of muscle and roaring steel, crushing skulls and shattering bone, accentuated by their flames and ice magics.
Every strike of Aldrik’s was calculated, every parry perfect. He held off five of the monsters at once, using his flames to torch those he couldn’t immediately strike with his blades.
For a frantic, blood-soaked minute, Will thought they were going to hold the circle. The snow was black with ash and thick with severed limbs.
Then, the line broke.
A massive brute of a mercenary, missing its lower jaw and wielding a heavy, rusted halberd, absorbed two arrows from Nar to the chest without slowing down.
It barreled past Khelek’s sweeping strike and lunged directly for Malin’s blind spot while her hands were raised to incinerate another in the rocks.
“Malin!” Will roared, desperately trying to pivot, but he was pinned down by the crossing blades of two undead foot soldiers.
He wasn’t fast enough.
But Aldrik was.
The General abandoned his defensive stance, throwing himself across the gap. He intercepted the brute’s charge, driving his sword deep into the monster’s throat. But the momentum of the undead giant was too much. The halberd came down in a vicious, sweeping arc.
The sickening crunch of rusted iron tearing through steel and bone echoed over the roar of the fire.
The air stalled in Will’s lungs. The rusted hook of the halberd buried itself deep into Aldrik’s side, punching through the armor just below his ribs and tearing upward.
Aldrik let out a sharp, breathless grunt. He twisted, using his momentum to rip his sword sideways, decapitating the brute, before his knees buckled. The General collapsed into the blood-stained snow.
“No!” Malin screamed.