Chapter 170: Escape the Skarn
Chapter 170: Escape the Skarn
"Does Veyrhold send patrols along this route?" he asked.
"Yes," Liora said. "But not constantly. The ash tide shifted last night. They may not come until evening."
"Evening is not helpful."
The scraping grew louder.
Rohan moved quickly. He tore loose two long strips of cloth from the spilled bundles, then wrapped one tightly around Bryan’s side to slow the bleeding. The man groaned but did not wake. Rohan used the second strip to bind his broken arm against his chest as best he could.
It was ugly work.
He was not a doctor. His understanding of first aid came mostly from school, common sense, and the unpleasant amount of injuries he had already seen since awakening. But bleeding less was better than bleeding more, and immobilised was better than flopping around while being dragged.
"Liora," he said. "Can these things track blood?"
"Yes."
"Scent?"
"Yes."
"Vibration?"
"In ash, yes."
Rohan stared at the ground.
The basin was full of ash.
"Naturally."
He looked at his hands.
An idea formed.
He didn’t like it, which probably meant it had a chance of working.
Rohan crouched and pressed both palms into the ash. Molten Assimilation responded sluggishly at first, then strengthened as he focused. The ash around his fingers shifted, darkening slightly as it took on his influence. He couldn’t control it like a limb. That was far beyond him. But he could disturb it. He could pull at its properties, thicken it, make it cling, make it carry his presence more strongly.
The skarn sensed through ash.
Then he would ruin the ash for them.
Rohan dragged his hands outward in a wide arc, pushing his assimilation into the surface layer. The ash clumped in places and thinned in others. More importantly, it began to smell different. He couldn’t explain how he knew that, but he did. The bitter metallic dryness sharpened, mixing with the scent of his blood, sweat, and heat.
A false trail.
A messy one. Maybe too messy. But if the skarn relied on ash traces, they might follow the strongest disturbance.
He crawled several metres toward the far side of the basin and repeated the process, smearing blood from his wounded arm across the ash and then burying it under a thin layer of disturbed grey-black powder. His stomach twisted at the sight, but he kept going until he had created a chaotic path leading away from the gap he intended to use.
Liora watched him with open disbelief.
"What are you doing?"
"Lying to monsters."
"With ash?"
"Trying to."
"That is not how ash works."
"Today has been very educational for everyone."
The first new skarn appeared between two slabs on the far side of the basin.
This one was larger.
Not by much, but enough that Rohan immediately noticed. Its back was ridged with black stone plates, and the ember glow inside its mouth burned steadier than the others. Behind it, more limbs scraped through the shadows.
Rohan didn’t wait.
He hauled Bryan up by the back of his coat and nearly collapsed under the man’s weight. Bryan was not huge, but unconscious people had an awful way of becoming heavier than physics should allow. Rohan managed to sling one of the man’s arms over his shoulder, then gestured sharply at Liora.
"Move to the gap. Now."
Liora clenched her jaw and hopped toward the exit, using the cart wreckage and slabs for support. Each movement clearly hurt, but she did not waste breath complaining. Rohan half-dragged Bryan after her, every step sending pain through his bitten forearm and scraped back.
Behind them, the larger skarn lowered its head to the ash.
It followed the false trail.
For two precious seconds, Rohan felt like a genius.
Then one of the smaller shapes behind it turned toward him instead.
"Greedy of me to expect all of them to be stupid," he muttered.
The smaller skarn shrieked.
The larger one snapped its head up.
"Run!"
Liora squeezed through the gap first, falling hard onto the other side with a cry she barely managed to smother. Rohan shoved Bryan after her as carefully as urgency allowed, which was not very carefully at all. The unconscious man hit the ash outside the basin with a groan.
The skarn charged.
Rohan turned sideways and forced himself through the gap, but Bryan’s coat snagged on a jagged edge. For one awful heartbeat, they were stuck.
Claws scraped behind him.
Rohan yanked hard enough to tear the coat.
He and Bryan tumbled out of the gap as a skarn slammed into the stones behind them, its forelimb stabbing through the narrow opening where Rohan’s leg had been a moment earlier. Liora, face pale and furious, slashed at the limb with her hooked blade. The creature recoiled, hissing.
Rohan grabbed the nearest loose slab chip and wedged it into the gap.
It wouldn’t hold long.
"Which way?" he asked.
Liora pointed east with a shaking hand.
"There’s a marker line past the ridge. If we reach it, the ground is safer."
"Safer from skarn?"
"Safer from the ash pockets."
He lifted Bryan again, this time dragging him by both armpits. It was faster than trying to carry him, though it left an obvious trail through the ash. Liora hopped beside them, occasionally using the spear as support when Rohan could spare it for half a second. The sounds behind them multiplied as the skarn clawed at the gap and searched for another way through the ridge.
The marked route felt impossibly far.
Rohan’s arms burned. His back stung from the cinder blast. His wounded forearm throbbed in time with his pulse. Molten Assimilation was still working, but the balance had shifted. He was spending more than he gained now, especially while forcing the ash to obey crude intentions it clearly had no interest in understanding.
Still, he kept moving.
The ridge fell away behind them in jagged sections. Ahead, the terrain opened into a sloping field of scattered slabs, with the settlement walls visible again beyond a haze of drifting ash. They looked closer now. Close enough that Rohan could make out movement along the top of the wall.
People.
Actual people.
One of the pole-mounted silver objects flashed.
A bell-like sound rang across the plain.
Liora sucked in a breath.
"They’ve seen us."
"Good?"
"Maybe."
"Why maybe?"
Before she could answer, a skarn burst from the ridge behind them.
Then another.
The larger one came last, forcing itself between two leaning slabs with enough strength to crack one of them at the base. Its ember-mouth opened, and heat shimmered inside the slit.
The wall bell rang again.
This time, an answering horn sounded from the settlement.
Rohan glanced toward Veyrhold and saw several figures gathering near a gate. Too far to help immediately. Too far to stop the skarn from reaching them first.
He lowered Bryan to the ground as gently as he could under the circumstances.
Liora grabbed his sleeve.
"What are you doing?"
"Buying time."
"You’ll die."
"Not part of the plan."
"That’s not a plan!"
Rohan looked at her. But he didn’t give her an answer.
He pulled free and stepped between the injured humans and the approaching skarn.
The smaller creatures spread out again, but the larger one came straight forward, head low, ember glow intensifying. It had learned from the basin. It did not rush blindly over the stone. It stayed in the ash where it was fastest, claws cutting shallow lines through the grey drifts.
Rohan could not outrun them while dragging Bryan.
He could not beat them all in a fair fight either.
So he needed the fight to be unfair.
His gaze flicked to the sky.
A silver flash strengthened between the violet clouds.
Rohan remembered the trembling ash.
’The sky doing weird things makes the ground do weird things.’
He waited.
Every instinct screamed at him to move, to dodge, to attack first. Instead, he stood his ground and pressed Molten Assimilation down through his feet, into the thin layer of ash coating the stone beneath him. His skill answered reluctantly, warmth moving through his legs and into the ground.
The skarn charged.
The silver light brightened.
The ash trembled.
Rohan shoved his influence outward at the exact moment the larger skarn crossed the trembling patch.
He did not control the field. He did not command the ash like a mage in a story. What he did was much rougher and far less elegant. He amplified what was already happening, adding his own borrowed ash-nature to the vibration, making the powder cling, shift, and collapse under the skarn’s feet.
The larger creature stumbled.
Only for an instant.
That was enough.
Rohan sprinted forward and thrust Hestia’s spear into its open mouth.
The weapon punched through the air.
Pain flared across his palms as the shaft grew hot. The larger skarn’s momentum drove it onto the spear, forcing Rohan backward. His boots scraped over stone. His shoulders screamed. The creature’s mouth clamped down on the shaft, and heat surged along the weapon toward his hands.