Book II: Chapter 12 – The Killing Lane

Light Barrier flares in front of us.

Gold-white force snaps into place just as another hooked spear strikes for my chest, the point screeching across the shield instead of punching through me.

Enora steps in beside Perri a heartbeat later, hat brim askew, the Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir humming sharp in her grip.

She seals us in with a Wall of Bones. Pale ribs and cracked spines tear up through the snow behind us, locking together in a jagged barricade.

For one breath, we have walls.

Then the ice goblins hit both of them.

Claws scrape across the light. Teeth gnash against the barrier. Hooked spears punch into the bone wall, wrenching and twisting, trying to tear gaps through the dead. The sound is horrifying, a shrieking mix of splintering bone, screaming shield-light, and little blue-pale bodies laughing as they try to chew their way in.

But even that is not as bad as the sound that cuts through it.

Kit screams.

My blood goes cold.

She is still out there.

With Raka.

I press against the Light Barrier, trying to see Kit, but the bond and HUD tell me more than my eyes can through the crush of goblin bodies.

[Warning - Kitta: Health - Low]

The bond is much worse.

I feel the jagged tear of a gash opening along Kit’s ribs.

Perri feels it too, and the sustained barrier shudders.

Then I see her.

An ice goblin has Kit hooked, the spear buried and twisted as it tries to drag her down into the snow.

I growl in anger, “Sanguis!”

Ed boils up from the snow in black smoke, bone, and thorn-vine, coiling around the blue-skinned creature in a sudden Rose’s Embrace.

The goblin shrieks as bone and briar crush tight.

Kit rips herself free of the hooked spear, blood dripping hot across the white snow.

Ed buys her the moment she needs.

Clutching her ribs, Kit Echo Steps behind Raka, reappearing in the blood-churned snow just as Raka is forced another half step back beneath the crush. Frostreaver rises and falls in brutal silver-white arcs, Savage cleaving through blue flesh, hooked spears, and gnashing teeth, but the goblins keep coming. They barely seem to care how many of them die as long as enough of them reach her.

The goblin trapped in Rose’s Embrace is still cackling when two more flank Ed.

Ice knives flash.

They hack into him with frantic, gleeful little shrieks, stabbing bone, biting through thorn-vine, tearing into him like starving animals.

Ed’s head turns toward me.

For a single awful instant, I swear I see regret in the dying light of his eye sockets.

Then they rip him apart.

Perri and I watch in stunned horror as bones, black vine, and scattered rose petals burst across the snow. The mangled goblin spills free of the ruined embrace and immediately joins the others, shrieking and clawing its way back into the slaughter.

[Summons: Ed - Destroyed]

Enora’s voice shakes over my shoulder as she stares at the remains too.

“Vincent… he is a Tier 1 summon. He will not last here.”

Behind us, the sound comes in ugly little bursts as hooked spears punch through the Wall of Bones, wrenching ribs apart, snapping spines, tearing holes wide enough for yellow eyes and blue fingers to shove through.

I see Perri’s eyes go wide as she takes in all of it.

Kit’s blood in the snow. Raka buried under the swarm. Ed scattered in pieces across the white. My shoulder torn open where cold teeth bit through flesh.

The terror rolling through the bond finally finds her.

For one breath, I think it will break her.

Her ears flatten beneath her hood. Her hands tighten around her staff until her knuckles go pale. Her whole body trembles hard enough that the light in front of us wavers with her.

“Perri,” I say, forcing my voice steady.

She does not look at me.

Perri makes a small sound. Something wounded and furious and too gentle to know what to do with either.

“No,” she whispers.

The Light Barrier flares.

A goblin clawing through the bones shrieks as gold-white force slams it backward.

“No,” Perri says again, louder this time.

The word is shaking.

So is she.

But the light is not.

It gathers around her hands first, soft and gold-white, spilling over her fingers and up the length of her staff. Then it catches along her chest beneath the cloak, warm enough to turn the snowflakes around her into glittering sparks. Her ears glow beneath the hood, trembling, luminous, and impossibly bright against the dark pines.

My HUD flashes.

[Heartlight Aura]

Perri steps forward, just one step.

The warmth hits the bond like the first breath beside a hearth after freezing rain.

The panic in the bond doesn’t vanish.

It steadies.

The pain in my shoulder remains sharp and real, but it no longer owns my next breath. The cold around my ribs loosens. The terror rumbling through the bond softens into something we can stand inside without drowning.

My eyes narrow as the battlefield comes into focus.

“Then give me a summon that bites back, Enora.” 

Enora’s hat brim comes up, her purple eyes reflecting the light of the skull cradled in her arms.

The Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir radiates shattered light as the voices within it rise to a crescendo.

Summon Bone Swarm.

The ice goblins clawing at the broken wall behind us and those pressing beyond the shield stumble backward in the snow as the Creepies burst from the ground. 

They are half the size of the goblins.

But there are dozens of them.

Bone jaws snap. Claws scrape. Little skeletal bodies pour over the ice goblins in a relentless frenzy, outnumbering them six to one.

For the first time since the ambush started, the goblins’ maniacal cackling falters.

Enora goes still in concentration, cold witchlight burning around her as the skull’s shattered radiance sharpens the spell into something wider, meaner, and far less merciful.

The Creepies drag the first goblin down behind us, reducing it to black ichor across the churned snow.

…and then another.

Raka feels the shift.

Heartlight Aura warms through the bond, steadying the fury already burning inside her.

Her snarl deepens.

Lunar Bulwark hardens across Starburst, the white shield-line catching the next wave with a sound like a door slamming shut.

Perri lifts one trembling hand toward Kit.

Healing Word.

The spell rides the Heartlight Aura, warmer and brighter than before, threading through the bond until it reaches Kit behind Raka’s shield.

Kit feels it too. Heartlight and healing magic seal the worst of the wound along her ribs. Her breath catches through the bond, pain still jagged, but her focus snaps clean again.

My intent ripples clearly between the two of them, my words following a heartbeat later.

“Raka, hold that line. Kit, kill anything that tries to get around the edge. We’re coming to you.”

Raka plants her feet as Lunar Bulwark extends to its full size.

Kit Echo Steps from edge to edge, daggers lit with Soulfire, cutting away every grubby limb that dares to reach around Raka’s shield.

Two goblins fall away from the bulwark, smoking from wounds deeper than flesh.

I glance back at Perri.

She is still glowing with warmth and impossible resolve.

She nods.

Stormcast rises in my hand.

The Light Barrier drops.

A flicker later, upcast Arc Lightning ignites over the swarm of Creepies in front of us, charring the first goblin it hits, already half-drowned beneath snapping bone jaws.

The bolt arcs sideways into another goblin’s head.

It explodes from the arcane discharge.

The lightning twists again, crossing the distance to strike a third goblin just as it thinks it is making progress against Raka’s bulwark.

Its leg becomes a smoldering stump of shattered bone.

Heartlight settles through us as we take control of this fight.

Kit, Raka, and Perri already feel the shape of the plan.  For Enora, I say it cleanly.

“We’re driving them between us.” 

The gleeful edge in Enora’s eyes rises by a fraction.

The Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir shrieks in trembling harmony, its fractured light igniting into prismatic, crystal-bent colors.

Then Phantom Fire pours across the snow between the Creepies and Raka’s bulwark.

A killing lane.

The fire spreads low and hungry, pale witchlight licking through the churned snow without touching the Creepies as they swarm and drag and bite. The ice goblins stumble backward from bone jaws only to find ghostly flame curling around their legs, climbing their spears, catching in their open mouths when they shriek.

For half a breath, I think Enora is casting again.

Then I see her hand.

A slight turn of her wrist. A tilt of two fingers. The fire bends. The Creepies answer. The skull’s voices rise and fall around her like an orchestra made of dead things.

She is not casting anymore.

She is controlling.

Witchlight Conductor.

Clawed bone, witchfire, and lightning tear through the middle ground in a brutal dance, reducing ice goblins to chewed, smoldering corpses scattered across the snow. 

Raka drops the Bulwark.

For half a heartbeat, the ice goblins freeze in sudden surprise.

Then they surge forward, desperate to escape the shredding fire and clawed bone behind them.

Instead, they meet Savage.

Raka strikes with Frostreaver, cleaving the first goblin in half. The axe freezes its black ichor as it spills across the snow, turning the spray into glittering shards before the body even finishes falling.

Her follow-up swing takes an arm from another goblin and a leg from a third.

Neither maimed creature reaches the ground alive.

Kit appears between them in a violet-white flash.

Soulfire Veilstrike.

Her daggers cross once.

Both goblins die instantly, their wounds smoking with soulfire as their bodies collapse at Raka’s feet.

A terrible shriek rips across the battlefield.

For half a heartbeat, all of us freeze, looking for some new unseen horror in the pines.

Then two goblins on the outskirts claw at their ears. Their yellow eyes bulge. The color drains from their blue-pale faces a moment before both collapse dead into the snow.

Barrowcry.

My head snaps toward the sound.

The blood-and-ichor-covered Dark Paladin bursts from the deadfall treeline, parting a path through the snow like a juggernaut. His armor is scored, his weapon dripping, and his eyes burn with grim satisfaction as he drives straight into the flank.

The bloody rogue follows in his wake, low and quick.

The pair of fighters come after them, battered but still swinging, using the path he opens like they have done this a hundred times before.

Then a black cloud crackling with violet energy expands on our side of the battlefield.

Nightcarver emerges first, impaling a straggling goblin through the chest and lifting it off its feet.

A heartbeat later, Bliss steps out of the Jauntgate, both hands wrapped around the massive violet blade.

She rips Nightcarver free with a grin sharp enough to cut glass.

“Still alive, Vincent?” she calls.

The last goblin dies somewhere between Raka’s axe, Kit’s daggers, and the haunted slaughterhouse Enora has made of the middle ground.

Then the fight ends all at once.

Kit drops low, one hand clamping against her ribs as the pain finally catches up with her.

Raka’s stance sags, Frostreaver suddenly looking very heavy in her hand.

The Heartlight Aura fades as Perri drops to her knees in the snow.

I feel all three of them through the bond.

Drained.

Shaking.

But alive.

Beside me, Phantom Fire gutters out. The Creepies collapse into loose bone and ash, their little bodies crumbling back into the churned snow as the spell holding them together finally breaks.

Enora staggers as the Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir goes quiet in her arms. I catch her before she falls, and she leans against me, breathing hard beneath the shadow of her hat.

Bliss twists Nightcarver once, and the massive violet blade folds back into black cloud and nowhere.

Only then does she turn, taking in the field of smoking bodies, shattered bones, scattered rose petals, and glittering loot coins half-buried in bloodied snow.

She looks exhausted too.

Blood on her cheek. Ichor across her leathers. Adrenaline still burning bright enough to keep her smirk alive.

Her eyes meet mine.

“Welcome to the Timberline,” Bliss says. “Fun, right?”

(Purchased miniatures for the party from Jujubit.  I love them.)