The shockwave of the gate explosion had rolled through the surrounding streets like an invisible, crushing tidal wave, shattering windows, stripping shingles from roofs, and blowing the massive canvas structure of the triage tent completely off its moorings.
While Josh and Bhel charged headlong into the suffocating at grinder of the secondary barricade, Perberos detached himself from his friends' mad dash. He beca a ghost, slipping through the choking, alkaline dust and the panicked throngs of fleeing militian. Every instinct ingrained in him from woodland combat scread at him to find high ground, to establish a firing line, to support his friends from a distance.
He ignored those instincts entirely. His mind was narrowed to a single, terrifying focal point: Carcan.
He sprinted through the smog in the air, leaping over fallen debris and the occasional shattered corpse of a town guard. The deep, guttural roar of the kobold horde pouring through the breached gate echoed off the stone walls behind him, a constant, horrifying reminder of the apocalyptic clock ticking down on the town. But a secondary, far more chaotic noise was rising from the triage tent and surrounding buildings.
It was the sound of a slaughter.
Perberos' boots skidded slightly on the blood-slicked stones as he broke through the wall of dust in the air, and his heart plumted into his stomach.
The triage centre was gone. The glowing magical spheres that had illuminated the area were either smashed or rolling uselessly in the gutters. The massive white canvas tent had collapsed inward, trapping dozens beneath its heavy folds, while other sections had been completely ripped away by the blast, exposing the rows of the maid and dying to the open air.
And the kobolds had found them.
The packs of regular kobolds that Josh had seen getting past the secondary wall had congregated here, drawn by the overwhelming scent of fresh blood and the promise of defenceless prey. The reptilian fiends were swarming the ruined dical area.
It was a scene of absolute, unmitigated horror.
The sick and injured were fighting back with a desperate, pathetic ferocity. A man missing his left leg was propped against an overturned cot, swinging a heavy wooden crutch at a kobold’s head. A woman with bandages wrapping her entire torso was desperately trying to hold back two of the snivelling beasts with a broken spear shaft. But they were exhausted, bleeding, and entirely outmatched by the sheer frenzy of the monsters.
Perberos didn't shout. He didn't issue a battle cry. He simply inhaled a long, controlled breath and drew his bowstring.
He stepped out of the shadows and beca an engine of quiet, absolute death.
Thwip.
The first arrow crossed the thirty-yard distance in a microsecond, punching perfectly through the eye socket of a kobold that was about to bring a rusted hatchet down on the one-legged man. The creature dropped instantly, dead before it even registered the impact.
Thwip. Thwip.
Perberos moved with a terrifying, liquid grace. He didn't run into the lee; he glided along the periter, his hands a blur as he continuously drew and loosed. He was cutting through them like a hot knife through butter. To the base-level kobolds, the level twenty-three elven ranger was a god of war. His arrows ignored their crude leather armour, finding the vulnerable gaps in their scales with mathematical precision.
A kobold leaped onto the chest of an unconscious guardsman, raising a jagged dagger. Thunk. An arrow pinned its arm to its own throat.
Three of the beasts turned, hissing, their yellow eyes locking onto the lone archer dropping their kin. They charged him, running on all fours, their claws clicking frantically on the cobblestones.
Perberos didn't even blink. He didn't retreat. He simply adjusted his firing rhythm.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
Three arrows, fired so rapidly they sounded like a single cord snapping. The three charging kobolds tumbled end over end, their montum carrying their dead bodies to slide to a halt re feet from Perberos’ boots. Each one had a black-fletched shaft buried dead centre in its forehead.
"Carcan!" Perberos yelled, his voice finally breaking his stoic silence as he waded deeper into the carnage, his bow continuously singing its lethal song. "Carcan, where are you?!"
There was no answer, only the screaming of the dying, weapons clashing, and the snarling of the horde.
He moved past an overturned cart of dical supplies, stepping over the body of a dwarf whose throat had been torn out. He scanned the chaos, his elven vision piercing the gloom and the settling dust. He was looking for silver-white robes, for pale skin, for the familiar, comforting glow of divine magic.
Through a gap in the collapsed canvas of the tent, he saw a flash of white.
About forty yards away, half-buried under the splintered remains of a wooden support beam, lay a figure in distinctive, blood-stained white robes. The figure was face down, motionless, her pale blonde hair splayed across the muddy cobblestones. A pool of dark blood was slowly expanding from beneath her torso.
Perberos’s breath hitched. The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe. The steady, chanical rhythm of his archery faltered.
"No," he whispered, the word tasting like ash.
Panic, raw and unfiltered, finally breached the walls of his discipline. He dropped his guard entirely. He didn't bother shooting the two kobolds that hissed at him from his peripheral vision; he simply shoulder-charged past them, his eyes locked onto the motionless form in the white robes.
"Carcan!" he scread, his voice cracking with a terrifying desperation.
He slid to his knees beside the body, the rough stone tearing at his trousers. His hands, which seconds ago had been dispensing flawless, mathematical death, were trembling violently as he reached out. He grabbed the shoulder of the blood-soaked robe and desperately, frantically, heaved the body over.
A pale, human face stared back at him, her eyes glassy and unseeing. She was a young woman, perhaps twenty, a junior initiate of the local temple. A crude kobold spear was snapped off in her chest.
She wasn't Carcan.
Perberos fell back onto his haunches, a massive, shuddering gasp of air tearing itself from his lungs. The relief was so intense it was physically painful, a dizzying wave of adrenaline that left black spots dancing in his vision. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, offering a silent, breathless prayer to whatever gods were still watching this dood town.
But the relief was fleeting. If that wasn't Carcan, where was she?
He grabbed his bow from the dirt and surged back to his feet. His focus had returned, but it was sharper now, honed to a razor's edge by the near-miss of the false alarm. He began to systematically clear the ruined tent, firing at point-blank range, driving broadhead arrows through the chests of kobolds as they rummaged through the dical supplies or tried to drag away the injured.
He kicked aside a heavy fold of the fallen canvas, revealing a small, relatively clear pocket near what used to be the rear entrance of the tent.
And there she was.
Carcan was lying on her side, half-propped against an overturned wooden table. Her robes were ruined, coated in the soot and blood of a hundred other people. A nasty gash on her forehead was bleeding sluggishly, matting her pale blonde hair, and her eyes were closed. She wasn't moving.
But Perberos could see the faint, steady rise and fall of her chest. She was alive. She had likely been knocked unconscious by the blunt force of the shockwave or the collapsing table.
Before Perberos could even call her na, a low, guttural hissing drew his attention.
Approaching Carcan from the shadows of the alley behind the tent was a pack of six kobolds. These weren't the scrawny, emaciated runts that had been digging at the walls. These were larger, heavily scarred scavengers, drawn to the scent of a helpless, high-tier target. They were advancing slowly, their jagged blades raised, tasting the air with their forked tongues.
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The leader of the pack, a brute missing half an ear, raised its rusted cleaver, its eyes fixed on Carcan's exposed neck.
Sothing inside Perberos snapped.
The cold, calculating logic of the archer vanished. The bow, a weapon of precision and distance, suddenly felt entirely inadequate for the sheer, suffocating rage that boiled over in his blood. He didn't want to shoot them from afar. He wanted them to feel it. He wanted to tear them apart with his bare hands for daring to look at his sister.
Perberos didn't nock an arrow. He hurled his beautiful, curved yew bow to the side.
In a single, fluid motion, his hands dropped to his belt, his fingers wrapping around the leather-wrapped hilts of his fighting daggers. He drew them with a sharp, tallic shhhk that cut through the ambient noise of the slaughter.
He didn't glide this ti. He exploded.
Perberos triggered his movent skill, closing the twenty-yard gap in a blur of motion. He didn't utter a sound as he hit the pack of kobolds; he was a silent, localised hurricane of flashing steel and pure, unadulterated fury.
The leader with the missing ear didn't even have ti to swing its cleaver. Perberos slamd into it, driving his left dagger upward under its ribcage, piercing its heart, while simultaneously bringing his right dagger across its throat in a brutal, decapitating slash. Black blood sprayed across his face, hot and foul, but he didn't blink.
He ripped the blades free as the body fell, spinning into the middle of the remaining five monsters.
The elegance of his usual fighting style was gone. This was butchery. He parried a spear thrust with his forearm brace, stepped inside the guard, and buried his dagger to the hilt in the creature's eye socket. Another kobold leaped at his back; Perberos simply dropped his weight, letting the creature sail over him, and gutted it mid-air with a vicious upward swipe.
He moved with a manic, terrifying speed, a whirlwind of death fuelled by absolute desperation. He didn't just want to kill them; he wanted to eradicate them. He slashed, he stabbed, he tore. In less than ten seconds, the six heavily scarred scavengers were reduced to a pile of dismbered, bleeding at on the cobblestones.
Perberos stood over the carnage, his chest heaving, his black hair matted with dark blood. His daggers dripped steadily onto the stones. He was trembling, the sheer intensity of the adrenaline crash making his limbs feel light and uncoordinated.
He quickly sheathed his daggers and dropped to his knees beside Carcan.
"Carcan," he whispered, his voice trembling. He reached out, his bloody hands gently cupping her face. He smoothed the hair away from the nasty gash on her forehead. "Carcan, please. Wake up."
He didn't wait for a response. The area was still swarming with enemies. He slung his bow and then slid one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, lifting her effortlessly against his dark leather armour. She was incredibly light, her body limp and unresponsive.
Perberos turned his back on the ruined triage tent, stepping over the butchered remains of the kobold pack. He needed cover. He needed a defensible position away from the main flood of monsters.
He sprinted towards a two-story inn that had been a common drinking hole for adventurers exiting the dungeon… or for those needing Dutch courage before entering. The door hung open, dark and empty inside, many of the chairs and tables removed to be used in the makeshift dical area.
He ducked into the alcove, gently lowering Carcan onto a pile of relatively clean straw that had blown in from the stables. He knelt beside her, pulling a small canteen of clean water from his belt. He uncorked it with his teeth and carefully poured a small stream over the bloody gash on her forehead, washing away the grit and soot.
The cool water did the trick.
Carcan groaned, her brow furrowing. Her head twitched to the side, and her golden eyes fluttered open, struggling to focus in the gloom of the ruined inn. She blinked several tis, her gaze finally locking onto Perberos' terrified, blood-spattered face.
"Ouch," she croaked, her voice dry as parchnt. She brought a trembling hand up to touch her forehead, wincing as her fingers found the laceration.
"Don't move," Perberos said, his voice thick with emotion. He grabbed her hand, pulling it gently away from the wound. He let out a shaky, shuddering breath, resting his forehead against hers for a brief second. "By the Gods, Carcan. I thought... when I saw the tent..."
"I'm fine, Per," she whispered, offering him a weak, tired smile. "Just... there was a bang, everything shook, and the support beam ca down. I didn't see it coming."
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. A faint, warm golden light began to emanate from the palm of her hand. She pressed her glowing hand to her own forehead. The healing magic was weak, a fraction of her usual power, a clear sign that her mana pool was still dangerously depleted, but it was enough to knit the skin back together and stop the bleeding.
She let her hand drop, looking marginally better. She tried to push herself up into a sitting position.
"Stop," Perberos ordered, his tone suddenly shifting from relieved to fiercely commanding. He placed a hand firmly on her shoulder, pushing her back down against the straw. "You are not moving. You are out of mana, you are physically exhausted, and the town has fallen."
Carcan frowned, the lingering fogginess of the concussion clearing rapidly. "Fallen? What do you an fallen? We were holding the wall."
"They blew the main gates," Perberos said grimly, his jaw tight. "A suicide squad with void-powder. The gatehouse is gone. The horde is pouring into the plaza. Josh, Bhel, and Brett are trying to hold a secondary barricade, but they are drowning in numbers. It's over, Carcan. The town is lost."
Carcan’s eyes widened, the horrific reality of the situation crashing down on her. "Josh and the others are at the barricade? Then we have to go back. They need ."
She shoved his hand away and forced herself into a sitting position, swaying slightly as a wave of dizziness hit her.
"No," Perberos said, stepping in front of her, blocking her path out of the alcove. His eyes were wide, wide with a fear she had never seen in him before. "No, you are not going back out there. Look at yourself! You don't have enough mana to cast a basic nd, let alone keep three fighters alive in a breach."
"I have bandages," Carcan snapped back, gesturing to the mundane dical pouch still strapped to her waist. "I have salves. I have my hands."
"It's not enough!" Perberos yelled, his voice echoing off the ruined stone walls. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his grip almost painful in its intensity. "Carcan, I saw you lying in that rubble. I saw a dead girl in your robes and I felt my heart stop beating. I am not letting you walk back into a at grinder so you can die holding a roll of bloody linen! We are leaving. We are taking the northern gate right now."
Carcan stared at him, stunned by the sheer, uncharacteristic outburst. Perberos was always the calm one. The silent, lethal watcher in the trees. To see him this unhinged, this desperate, was jarring.
But her shock quickly morphed into a fierce, burning stubbornness.
"Let go of , Perberos," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper.
He didn't let go. "Please. I can't lose you. We have done our part. We bled for this town. We owe them nothing more."
"We owe them everything," Carcan snarled, slapping his hands away from her shoulders with surprising force. She staggered to her feet, leaning against the stone wall for support, but glaring at him with a fiery intensity that matched Brett’s magic.
"Who is 'them'?" Perberos demanded, throwing his hands up in frustration. "The town guards? The militia who ran at the first sign of a breach?"
"Josh. Brett. Bhel," Carcan fired back, ticking the nas off on her fingers. "Did you forget already, Perberos? Josh didn't just stand behind a shield—he threw himself over , using his own body to tank a point-blank explosion so I wouldn't be crushed! Brett pushed his magic so far past his limits that he physically burned his own flesh just to keep that swarm away from us. And Bhel... after the nightmare he's lived through in the dark, he actually chose to trust us. He chose to fight back-to-back with elves."
Perberos flinched as if she had struck him. He looked away, his jaw working as he stared out into the smoke-filled street.
"They didn't abandon the wall," Carcan continued, her voice rising, thick with emotion. "They didn't run when the siege-breaker showed up. They stood their ground. And right now, they are standing in a broken gateway, fighting thousands of monsters so that people like could try and stitch this broken town back together."
She stepped forward, poking a slender finger hard into his chest piece.
"I am a healer," Carcan said, her voice ringing with absolute, unshakable conviction. "My party is bleeding. My party is fighting. And I am not going to run away and hide while they die."
Perberos stared at her. He saw the fire in her eyes, the set of her jaw. He knew that look. It was the sa look their mother had worn. It was a look that ant argunt was utterly, entirely futile. The stubbornness of a healer was a terrifying force of nature.
He closed his eyes, letting out a long, defeated sigh. The frantic panic that had consud him slowly bled away, replaced by the familiar, cold resignation of a soldier accepting a suicide mission.
"You have no mana," he stated simply, opening his eyes and eting her gaze.
"Then I'll use a sword," Carcan replied stubbornly, reaching down and picking up a discarded, rusted shortsword from the debris on the floor. It looked ridiculous in her hands, too heavy and entirely unsuited for her fra, but she gripped it with white knuckles.
Perberos looked at the sword, then at her ruined robes, and finally at the fierce determination on her face.
A tiny, fatalistic smile ghosted across his lips.
"If you swing that thing, you'll likely cut your own foot off," Perberos said softly.
He reached down and retrieved his beautiful, curved yew bow from where he had dropped it in the dirt. He brushed the soot from the polished wood, checking the tension of the string with a practised flick of his thumb. He checked his quiver. He had twenty arrows left.
"Stay behind ," Perberos ordered, his voice returning to its usual, cool, deadly cadence. "Don't try to heal anyone until we reach Josh. And if anything gets within ten feet of you, you drop to the ground. Understood?"
Carcan smiled, a genuine, relieved expression that made her look years younger despite the blood and the gri. She dropped the heavy shortsword with a clatter. "Understood."
Perberos turned towards the street, notching an arrow to the string. The roar of the battle at the gatehouse was louder now, a cacophony of shrieks and clashing steel that spoke of a line stretched to its absolute breaking point.
"Alright," Perberos said, stepping out of the shadows of the alcove and back into the apocalypse. "Let's go find our idiot friends."
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