Chapter 68. We Won the First Round, and It Cost Us Three People Who Were Already Gone

Chapter 68: 68. We Won the First Round, and It Cost Us Three People Who Were Already Gone

His hand came down, and the horns began to blow.

HOOOOOOONKKKKKKKKKKKKK~!

I want to be honest about how I felt at that moment, because I think it matters... I was actually terrified of what would happen next.

I was also exhausted and still sick and so thoroughly out of ideas that my brain had gone into a strange, floating quiet.

The number was in the corner of my vision, and I couldn’t stop looking at it.

[Lust Energy: 45/100]

[Passive Decay: doubled.]

[Condition: Injured.]

I don’t even have the mood to have sex with anyone at this point because of how exhausted I am right now. Having sex with Millie and Elsbeth at this time is just... not a good idea.

My hands were shaking. Not a lot, but enough that I had to hide them in the shadow of the parapet, and I could feel the faint, constant tremor all the way up to my elbows.

I’d tried to ignore it for two days, but now... It was getting harder.

The first wave came across the snow like a tide.

They were the Chosen, hundreds of them, in gleaming gold plate, marching at a steady, graceful pace with their blades held loosely at their sides.

Every one of them was smiling. Their faces were calm and warm and happy, as if they were walking to a festival.

Some were humming.

A young woman in the front row was swinging her sword in small, absent circles, like a child skipping rope.

Behind them, in long gray cloaks, the chain-mages raised their staffs. Glowing links of light poured out of the snow and rolled toward the wall in rippling waves, hissing as they climbed the stone.

And through the middle of it all, dragged forward on thick iron chains by teams of grim-faced handlers, came three huge, hunched shapes with bristling blue crystals along their spines.

"True Beasts," Velora said quietly, at my side. "Three of them..."

"Are we ready?" I asked.

And yes! It was a stupid question. But I asked it anyway to see if they are motivated.

"No," she said. "But we are here."

That’s not even a motivation that I want to hear.

...

We had divided the keep the night before, over maps and cold tea.

Velora and nine Nightclaw riders held the great gate, with Elsbeth and the Warmother on the wall above and me, for some reason, in the middle of it all.

Sylvara had taken the tallest tower, where she could weave her veil against the chain mages.

Bryn, Sigrun, and Eira waited with a group of Hearth Guard in the cellars near the tunnel, with the trap I’d designed set to spring.

And down in the Moon Shrine, behind the great stone door, Millie stood with Bonette and a ring of the Warmother’s best fighters.

I put my hand on Gate Junior and tried to pull on the heat I’d felt in the canyon, that bright... terrible surge of the Limiter.

Ding!

[Insufficient Lust Energy. Limiter Release unavailable below 50.]

I wanted to throw the window out of the kitchen. But instead... I swallowed it, clenched my jaw, and drew my sword.

’Fuck it! I’ll do it my own way!’

Across the courtyard, I caught a flash of violet. Sylvara, high on her tower, had turned her head.

For a moment, our eyes met across the distance. Then she raised her staff and began to move, shifting her position along the tower wall until she stood directly above the stretch of parapet where I was waiting.

She didn’t say a word. She just changed where she was standing so that if I fell, she would be close enough to catch me.

I swear, if I’d had the energy... I would have cried.

The first True Beast hit the gate at a dead run.

BAM!

The whole wall shuddered. Dust sifted from the stones.

The heavy oak doors bowed inward with a groan like a dying animal, and the bar across them cracked. I felt it in my teeth.

Chain-mages’ links of light slashed through the air above us, snagging on the battlements and dragging men off their feet.

Arrows hissed down from the walls. Somewhere behind me, a woman screamed.

"Hold the door!" Velora shouted.

Two of the Nightclaw riders threw their shoulders against it. A third wedged a spear in the crack.

The beast hit it again, and a plank flew inward and nearly took my head off.

That was when Sigrun’s voice rose over the chaos.

She had been waiting on the wall with her bow drawn, and I saw her face go slack as she stared down at the beast.

It was a great, shaggy wolf the size of a house, half its fur matted and gray, with a ridge of crystal glowing blue along its back. Chunks of a silver-and-gray tabard still hung from its shoulder.

"Hkalla," she whispered.

I’d met Hjalla. I’d held her hand.

She’d been a stocky, middle-aged woman with a warm smile, one of the Oathglass, and she had called me Master and offered me a staff.

I had not been able to save her. I had not been able to save any of the people who had smiled at me that day.

No... That wasn’t right.

Hjalla wasn’t in the cave. Hjalla was in front of me, ten feet away, hammering at the gate with the full weight of her body.

I looked closer at the tabard, and my stomach dropped. It wasn’t Hjalla.

It was another one, someone I’d never met. Someone Sigrun had known.

"Her name was Brida," Sigrun said.

Her voice was perfectly steady, and tears were running down her face. "We trained together... She gave me my first bow."

She drew the string back to her ear.

"I am sorry, old friend," she said.

The arrow flew, a single clean silver streak, and punched through the nape of the beast’s neck exactly where the biggest crystal sat. It shattered with a high, thin chime.

The great shaggy shape staggered, shuddered, and went down in a heap against the gate, and the whole wall trembled again as it fell.

Sigrun lowered her bow. She did not make a sound.

She just stood there, very still, with her shoulders shaking.

A second beast came up behind the first, and Eira, on the wall, went rigid.

I saw the exact moment she recognized it. Her mouth opened.

Her hands, which had been drawing back a bowstring, went slack. She whispered a name I didn’t catch, and the arrow slid out of her fingers and clattered on the stone.

"Eira!" someone shouted.

She didn’t move. The beast reared up against the wall, its claws raking at the battlements, and a chunk of stone the size of a barrel crumbled and fell toward her.

I don’t remember jumping. But... I remember the heat of the beast’s breath, the stink of ice and old blood, and a sudden shocking weight as a claw the size of a shovel came down across my shoulder.

I had thrown myself between Eira and the falling stone, and Bulwark Instinct had flared up around me like a thin, trembling shell.

It held, but fucking barely.

I felt it bend and flex and crack at the edges, and a bolt of pain went through my chest.

’Come on,’ I thought. ’Come on, you useless thing...! HOOOLLLDDDDD!!!’

It held for about two seconds. Then it started to give.

A flash of white and silver went across my vision, and the pressure vanished.

Velora had vaulted onto the beast’s shoulder from the rampart, a blur of white coat and gold braid, and her katana flashed once.

The crystal at the base of the skull split cleanly in two. The beast gave one long, shuddering breath and slumped, and I dropped to my knees in a spatter of cold blood, wheezing.

"Idiot," Velora said, breathing hard, from somewhere above me.

But there was no heat in it.

The third beast never reached the gate. I looked up in time to see the Warmother standing on the battlements with her white cloak streaming behind her, one arm drawn back.

A spear of pure ice, as long as a man, flashed out of her hand and punched through the third creature’s skull. And then it fell without a sound.

It was over in less than five minutes. We had killed three of our own.

I stayed on my knees, in the cold blood, staring at the nearest corpse. It was a huge, hunched thing of fur and crystal and broken armor, and it still had a tabard hanging from one shoulder.

I reached out with a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking and closed its eyes.

I did it to all three, but... it took a while.

I didn’t say a word, and I didn’t make a joke.