Shrieks-loudly is familiar with how battlefields can change in an instant. And such is the case here. The enemy Herbalist is shrieking with fear as roots grow over her feet and start twining their way up her body. Her guards are doing their best to free her of the steady growth, but the roots are attacking them at the same time. The few times they succeed in severing one of the wooden tendrils, their efforts are quickly undone as the construction sprouts more a moment later.

  However, Grower’s focus on the Herbalist has other effects, these less positive for his side. The enemy Plant-Shapers face little opposition, and their efforts are allowing the enemy Warriors to overcome the effects of the shaking ground. The enemy Wood-Shaper seems to have joined them as the wooden shields are no longer flashing between shapes. Instead, the small stumps which the Plant-Shapers are building soon form railings which the Warriors can grasp.

  Shrieks-loudly’s Warriors continue to throw their projectiles, but the enemy Warriors are more able to avoid them or move out of the way of the canisters of choking gas. Some of them are even starting to return fire as they are able to steady their footing. More than one of the defenders is struck by a stone when they neglected to hide behind the wall quickly enough.

  No deaths, not yet, but it’s only so long before a lucky blow will crack someone’s skull or knock them off the ‘battlements’ to break their necks.

  “Beware of return projectiles!” Shrieks-loudly warns out loud and then again through the Bond network. Then he turns his attention to the greater battle. Earth-Shapers, change strategy, he orders.

  Almost immediately after, the ground stops shaking. The enemy Warriors are almost wrong-footed by the sudden change, but they adapt easily enough. They start running towards the gates, taking a moment every so often to throw spears or stones at the defenders. Most of them clatter against the wall but it’s enough to keep the defenders’ heads down.

  Carefully peering over the wooden posts himself, Shrieks-loudly sees the fire of anger in their eyes at how they have already lost a good portion of their number without taking down a single one of their targets. Behind them, they leave the bodies of at least twenty of their brothers – alive or dead, Shrieks-loudly can’t say for sure. But without the Herbalist to give them healing potions, those who were struck remain injured and out of the fight.

  Don’t kill her! Herbalist cries and Shrieks-loudly looks to see why. The enemy Herbalist is almost entirely entombed in what looks like a tree made of roots. Only her snout remains, poking out of a hole in the trunk.

  I wasn’t going to, Grower replies with an indignant flash of orange. She can breathe. She’ll stay there until the end of the battle.

  At his side, Herbalist relaxes a little.

  Good.

  The enemy Warriors cry out as they run into a suddenly raised bank of spikes. At least five are taken out of the battle in an instant as they fall to the ground, disemboweled. Several others are noticeably injured and limping even if they remain on their feet. The rest manage to avoid the trap and find ways through the earthen spears. Slowly, they are whittled down. Shrieks finds himself eager to see what they think of the reinforced wooden gates – if they get close enough.

  The whistle of objects flying through the air alerts him and he ducks down again, pulling Herbalist with him since she had stood up. She sends him a flash of orange indignation at the rough treatment, but when projectiles fly overhead, it transforms into the blue of gratitude.

  Since the Warriors are now closer to the wall, several of their projectiles land in the area behind the battlements. Cries ring out and Shrieks-loudly peers over the edge of the battlements to see that their own Healers are already making their way through the crowd to treat the injured.

  “I should go there too,” Herbalist informs him, already moving towards the edge of the battlements. Shrieks-loudly helps her to swing down carefully, then moves to check on what the enemies are doing.

  At his angle, he can’t see their actions very well – they’re crouched around the gates. Abruptly, he ducks behind the wall again as he hears the whistle of something flying through the air once more. Yet this time, it sounds slightly different, though he cannot put his claw on how.

  Then there is another sound which he has only heard recently for the first time. It’s what Tamer called an ‘explosion’. And after a shocked beat of silence, it’s followed by shrieks of pain.

  Shrieks-loudly quickly snaps his head around to look at the scene. Somehow, one of these ‘explosions’ has happened right in the middle of the village – and right in the middle of the fighters massing to defend their gates.

  The point of impact is bloody – there’s a body that Shrieks-loudly can’t identify, not even as Evolved or Unevolved. A whistling noise and a glowing green after-image are the only signs before another explosion turns allies into fragments of meat before his very eyes.

  Green shards fly in all directions, absolutely shredding whatever they come into contact with. The explosion looks just like what happened when Tamer was testing feeding mana into Energy Hearts and one of them had been damaged. Fortunately, no one was killed then, but Tamer had to regrow his arm – and that was with his sturdy armour protecting it.

  After those two, the next few land hard and fast. For the first time since he became the lead Warrior, Shrieks-loudly doesn’t know what to do. Too many of his people are being killed or injured as the hides worn by the Unevolved aren’t nearly strong enough to withstand these attacks even if the armoured Warriors seem to be weathering them easily enough. Worse, Shrieks-loudly’s instincts are screaming to defend his Pathwalkers – the Healers are putting themselves into danger by pushing through the crowd to heal those injured by the shards.

  The fighters are becoming panicked – those who are held only by the Bond start resisting their party leaders’ attempts to keep them in place and Shrieks-loudly is suddenly assailed by messages from party leaders about losing control of their parties.

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  Meanwhile, an Unevolved leaps to grab the next flying Energy Heart, perhaps hoping that if it doesn’t hit the ground, it won’t crack and explode. To no avail – the Energy Heart explodes all the same, the Unevolved becoming an almost unrecognisable mass of blood and bone that thumps to the ground in multiple pieces. But his sacrifice has meant that minimal shards have hurt those around.

  Seeing his actions, Shrieks-loudly watches in agonised regret as another two Unevolved leap for the next Energy Hearts, this time full-knowing that they will be sacrificing themselves. But Shrieks-loudly would have done the same – they were both next to the Healers and their sacrifice meant that the precious Pathwalkers are left unharmed.

  Their strategy has fallen apart – even the cyclone that Wind-whisperer had created looks as if it is at the point of going out of control. The Earth-Shapers have stopped controlling the earth and so the rest of the enemy Warriors have made it to the gates unimpeded.

  Worse, the actions of the enemy Warriors outside become clear when a new explosion rings out. This one is loud enough to make Shrieks-loudly temporarily deaf and even rock the battlements on which he stands. He almost falls as the wooden platform violently shakes, but he manages to stay stable by crouching and digging his claws into the woven roots that form it.

  Looking down, he sees that Warriors are squeezing through a hole which they have blasted underneath the gates. The local Warriors are in such a disarray that they haven’t even noticed – they’re too busy paying attention to the sky and their brothers.

  “They’re coming through the gates!” Shrieks-loudly cries, but his voice goes unheard in the din. Mentally cursing himself to the ancestors, he repeats his words in their Bond network.

  He even reaches out for Tamer in desperation, and then curses silently when he realises that his leader is too occupied in battles of his own to come and help. They are on their own. They will win this. They have to.

  The closest Warriors to the gates turn and lunge for their enemies, but they are too late. In the time it took for them to respond, five Warriors have squeezed through and while three of them fend off the attacks, the other two lift the log of wood from where it’s barring the gates and shove them open.

  On the other side, the enemy Warriors and Pathwalkers pour into the village.

  Form up! Enemies attacking! Shrieks-loudly orders his brothers and they do him credit as they rally. As the overall party leader, Shrieks-loudly adds the weight of his will to those whose parties are still struggling to escape, to break free. One by one, he brings them into line, and soon their two forces are clashing at the entrance to the village.

  Moving around the battlements to get a better view of the gate area, Shrieks-loudly suddenly sees the glint of an Energy Heart in the hands of a Pathwalker. The glow within it grows brighter as she concentrates. Shrieks-loudly calls out a warning as she throws the object, a gust of air from the Pathwalker standing next to her directing it away from their own fighters and to a clump of Warriors behind the front lines.

  Then another gust of wind catches it, this one more of a gale than a breeze, and sends it right back at the enemy Warriors. Shrieks-loudly sees the Pathwalkers’ eyes widen. The Air-Shaper throws up her hands and manages to deflect the Energy Heart just above them. It hits the inside of the wall and explodes, raining shards down on those below.

  Despite his instincts, Shrieks-loudly can’t help but hope that the shards have removed this problem from him. But as he sees the two Pathwalkers stand up – injured and bloody, but alive – he realises that he was too optimistic.

  He’s torn between his duty to the village, and his duty to the People. A Pathwalker is valuable beyond all others.A village can be saved if only its Pathwalkers survive, so should all others die in protection of them, it is only right. But yet this Pathwalker is threatening those he holds most dear, those whose protection is his main responsibility.

  For a moment he clashes his jaws together in tortuous indecision. But as he sees the Pathwalker withdraw another Energy Heart from a large wooden box which the Warrior in front of her carries, he realises what he must do.

  With a cry that is as much despair as anger, he runs over the battlements, using his Enhanced Speed to cover the ground in as little time as possible. Leaping into the gap which the gate creates, he plunges to the ground.

  The Pathwalker manages to avoid his strike as he falls – he wasn’t stealthy in his approach – but she’s not able to avoid his follow up blow. With Enhanced Blow increasing the strength with which his strike lands, the Pathwalker stands no chance.

  His claws tear through her throat, her delicate scales parting easily. For a moment it feels like the rest of the battle doesn’t exist. All that he can see are the surprised and accusing eyes of the Pathwalker he’s just killed.

  She’s still alive, but not for long – without a healing potion, she will drown in her own blood and die soon. She seems to know it too.

  She’s young; Shrieks-loudly doesn’t recognise her. Perhaps that is a mercy – that he has not mated with her, has not sired eggs on her, only to rip out her throat. But all Shrieks can feel is a desperate grief that it is at his claws that a Pathwalker has perished. Claws which are sworn to protect them from harm.

  In shame, he turns away from her.

  There’s movement in his peripheral vision. In a battle, his instincts are heightened and his reactions have far more to do with the battles he has survived previously than his rational thought. Another blow rips through the young Pathwalker’s throat and her head topples from her neck as her spine is severed.

  Her body falls.

  Shrieks-loudly will never know if she was moving to attack or not.

  It’s with a grief that is violent enough to be anger that he turns to Air-shaper. He recognises her. They have mated once or twice, though are not preferred partners. And yet, it is like they see each other for the first time. She watches him with a fear in her eyes that he has never seen there before.

  Abruptly, he feels unclean, sullied. Like he could bathe himself in the river, but the stain of the Pathwalker’s blood will still be on his soul when he goes to meet his ancestors.

  “Surrender,” he says in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own. The clicks are too languorous; the grunts are too deep. “Surrender so I don’t have to kill you.” He would beg if he could, but there’s a numbness creeping inside him which he cannot overcome.

  Her eyes widen.

  “I surrender!” she says quickly, putting out her hands in a pleading gesture which tears at Shriek-loudly’s soul. Numbly, he pulls out a dart from a pouch at his waist, laced with mana-inhibitor – most of the Warriors have some of these.

  Air-shaper flinches as she feels the prick of the dart, and then stumbles as the mana-inhibitor takes rapid effect.

  They win the battle. Shrieks-loudly thinks that Air-shaper helps with that – her encouragement to surrender makes the final Warriors of the battle do so, along with those of her sisters who survive. Not all do. One of the enemy Plant-Shapers is taken down by accident by a strike meant for the Warrior next to her.

  Shrieks-loudly is the only Warrior to have attacked a Pathwalker with the intention to kill her.

  They may have won the battle, but Shrieks-loudly knows that he’s lost something. And he fears he will never get it back.

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