He knew one thing for damn sure: whoever had the balls to hit this convoy was playing for keeps. In the swirling bedlam, Willem felt adrift, a leaf in a hurricane. But "Brother Blackwood"?
Ice-cool, sharp as a razor, sniffing out survival like it was second nature. The guy was a born captain. Sticking to him wasn't just smart—it was the only play.
Elias ghosted through the underbrush, senses jacked to eleven. He flicked a glance back, eyebrow quirking. Willem, the stubborn ox, was still dogging his heels. Tougher than he looked, that one.
Elias could've shaken him easy, but his Foresight Branch was burning overtime—zigzagging around phantom threats, invisible snares that let the relentless tagalong close the gap.
The real meat grinder thrummed back on the road. Here, the woods held their breath. Elias shrugged off the extra baggage. Willem's brute-stamina grind, all muscle and no mystic edge, would crater soon enough.
But Elias braked first.
Sprawled by a soldier's corpse—face pulped to hamburger—lay a Shadowcaster Bow, quiver bristling like a porcupine. Legendary Archer gear.
Jackpot, Elias mused. Worth a king's ransom—dwarfs the grain. If his Elven haul was dust, this'd be one hell of a runner-up prize.
A quick sweep of the shadows, then he shouldered the bow and bolts. Game on.
Forest fires clawed higher, devouring the haze. From his canopy perch, Black Cloud dropped to earth like a thunderbolt.
Three giant eagles wheeled in, dumping their grabs: snatched carriages, thudding to the loam. He prowled them, gut twisting. One gutted shell, the other two stuffed with random junk. Zero aspirants. Not a whiff of prize heads.
Idiot birds—snatching the first shiny they spotted.
"Fools!" he thundered. But a sharper dread clawed deeper. Why no iron cages? He had a sick hunch he knew the punchline.
"Alert the reserves," he barked at a minion. "Extraction prep." He'd stashed a slice of his muscle for just this—backstop if The Rat Hag or her ilk flipped. Now? It'd buy his getaway.
"Chief!" a scout rasped, materializing from the smoke.
As heat scorched the fog to wisps, two shadows plummeted from the overcast, boots kissing dirt beside bald Roric Marsh. Corvus, eyes like storm fronts.
"Why pull your Sky-Thralls?" Marsh snarled.
"So they can play piñata?" Corvus fired back, face a snarl of barely-leashed rage. "Those cages weigh a ton! Dropped thirty of my flock for squat! Your precious Fiends had zero clue—they're feeding us to the grinder!"
"Damn it all!" Marsh spat. "I'm done. We bail."
"Damn right," Corvus growled, slapping a crumpled scrap into his palm. "Run-for-your-life time."
"What's this rot?"
"Wire from my eyes-and-ears. Twilight Queen's toast. Earth Mother hunted her down. Gutted her two days back."
"The Earth Mother... offed the Queen?" Marsh gawked at the note, brain shorting. The Guild boss's gall was apocalypse-level ballsy.
"Two days," Corvus echoed, venom dripping. "One hour's heads-up, and we'd be ghosts already. Bounty's vapor. No payout, no point."
"Payout?" Marsh's rumble built to thunder. "Your birds, my mist, that rat plague... Guild's got our scent now! And this blaze—half my kin's ash! I ain't ghosting till I carve those lying Fiends a new smile!"
He blurred into the green, Corvus a dark echo at his flank. Straight for Black Cloud's nest.
Black Cloud was mid-rally—retreat vectors snapping into place—when they ghosted in. "Brothers?" Surprise cracked his growl. He'd been a heartbeat from vanishing himself, but now? Cornered.
"Brother Black," Corvus said, voice flat as a grave, "your wife's meat."
Black Cloud's reality fractured. "What?"
"Kaelus. Snuffed her."
Grief hit like a gut-punch—stunned, raw. Corvus pounced. His hand warped to talons, needle-sharp, plunging chest-deep into sternum.
Black Cloud's roar split the air—pain-fury cocktail. Peripheral caught Marsh's sneer, cruel as sin. Instinct overrode agony: he exploded in a kick-storm, hammers of wind forcing Corvus to vault clear.
Corvus twisted out vicious, snapping a rib, ripping flesh in a wet tear.
Simultaneous: Marsh's maw yawned frog-wide. A white, gluey fog-jet spewed, swallowing Black Cloud. THUMP—like mallet on haunch. The vapor belched him out, tumbling. A crimson tongue, gore-slick, snapped back into hiding.
Marsh wheeled on the quaking underling, coiling muscle-tight, then uncoiled like a spring-trap. The minion's frantic swings? Laughable. Impact hurled him into bark with a wet snap.
Marsh lunged at the downed Black Cloud. But the Fiend was up, eyes blazing feral gold. Leaves vortexed 'round him, dark spite crackling from claws. Bloodied, but unbowed—last stand primed.
Corvus stooped from on high. Marsh surged from the dirt.
Crouched in a rotted-out trunk, Elias and Willem held breath like thieves.
They'd trailed the hijacked carriage here, only to clock Black Cloud's guard-pack. Hole-up, wait-and-watch... straight into a coup.
Mage-Tier titans, leagues beyond those town-serpent chumps. One errant blast? Vaporized. Soldier rags? Useless camouflage.
Elias's brain revved overtime. Exit strategy—now.
As the duo converged like wolves on stag, the sky bled crimson.
A staff hurtled down—grotesque, insect-carved behemoth. It whistled air, CLANG-parried Corvus's dive, then cratered earth, barricading Marsh's charge.