Ellen and I marched alongside the dwindled herd for another ten miles. Ten miles of running, fighting, defending, dying. I have no shame in the admission that even in the embrace of the Black hand I was exhausted beyond words. That dull fire in the back of my consciousness now grew to a raging fire that even the Divine might of Iona couldn’t fully keep at bay.

  Every muscle and bone in my body railed against me for continuing to move. My every twitch was a betrayal against my future self. To compensate, Iona dug her phantasmal hand into my neck further and further. The nails of her hand pierced into my soul and injected a calm ice that smothered my inner self like a snake injects venom. Even with all of her aid, immense relief filled me when Ellen and I’s names were called alongside another ten aranae to rest.

  One more step, one more step, one more step…

  I repeated the line to myself over and over as I forced my body to move faster and catch up with the wagon tending the injured. Exhaustion was all-encompassing. Not just the bone-deep weariness of physical exhaustion. This gnawed at my soul, a soul rubbed raw from fighting for my life day after day after day. A soul that knew no rest, its dreams constantly interrupted by the sound of artillery and the mournful wails of the dying.

  To get onto the wagon, I had to wade through the beleaguered crowd of people who’d just gotten off. Some of them I recognized from guarding the gate. I’d watched about three quarters of them get hauled through the gate to the wagons in stretchers, often with wounds that looked fatal. In their places, these women left unconscious [Healers] resting on the blood-soaked linens of their patients.

  The rest riding in the wagon should have been bliss, a much-needed opportunity to give my body the barest of breaks before I forced it to move once more. The wagons lacked any kind of roof, however, and forced me to take up the job of the warriors who’d left. Spells and arrows landed near enough and infrequently enough near the wagon that I rarely had to intervene. Yet, it was enough of a threat that I could never take my eyes off the fighting and untense.

  In what felt like a betrayal at the time, Iona must have decided we were far enough away from mortal peril that she loosened her grip on my neck. The retreat of her cooling influence meant the pain, exhaustion, and anxiety that built over the retreat could breathe again. Like a flame stoked back from embers, they blazed through me like a wildfire.

  Pain burnt bright in my back, shoulders, knees, ribs, ankle and drove the air from my lungs like a punch to the stomach. And it was only then that I could comprehend just how injured Ellen and I were. Agony flooded me in a constant sharp ache as muscles and ligaments protested their abuse. The worst of it radiated from just above my hip like an acid bur. A jagged gouge cut through the flesh of my hip where my armor was previously compromised and blood seeped down into my pant leg in a slow stream.

  My breath rattled in my ears as I watched the wound. Aware again, I could feel something around the edges of the cut eating away at me. Some kind of curse of malignant skill worsened the wound even now. Even that did not change my duty or what needed to be done and compared to the wildfire within me right now, it was a manageable pain.

  Even with all of my pain, Ellen had it the worst out of the two of us. A myriad of small cuts coated everywhere her armor didn’t cover, though none looked serious enough to cripple. She seemed like she could manage, though she was pale and in the beginning stages of blood loss. Part of me wanted to rush over and perform field triage, but I knew we would be healed soon enough, so I made a check of my armor to ensure nothing was further ruined.

  Aching fingers reached up to scratch the back of my neck and I hissed when I prodded a bruise by mistake. Gently, I traced the outline of the bruise and noticed that a couple of chain links in my veil were missing or damaged. The injury wasn’t a mystery to me, and I had the vague memory of a sword hacked against the side of my neck. The impact knocked me sideways and saved my life from an opportunistic lance thrust that would have punched a hole in my windpipe. My armor spared me the dishonor of having my head removed.

  “Nora, where did you end up keeping those potions I gave you?” Maggie asked from her seat further into the wagon.

  “My pack, side pouch.” Nora slurred on her own blood-soaked sheets, almost asleep.

  Without comment, Maggie took Nora’s pack from her storage ring and rummaged in the side pouches before she pulled a healing potion from one. The red liquid sloshed about in the vial, bubbles rose and popped in a constant stream within.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Which one of you wants the potion? The other’ll get whatever Nora can cajole from the slackers.”

  Ellen glanced at me like she might offer up the potion.

  I averted my eyes from her as memories of a boy in the forest, unending growths of tumors, limbs, bone spears, teeth, and maws sprouted from his still screaming corpse, flashed past my vision.

  “Give it to Ellen, I’ll be fine.”

  Ellen beamed a weary smile at me and guilt flashed hot in my stomach, though the remnants of Iona’s grip keeping me conscious robbed the emotion of any actual strength. I didn’t want to watch as she downed the vial and almost turned away. I forced myself to watch, however, ready to attack in case the healing potion ran out of wounds to heal.

  I hadn’t known it when I first experienced the effects of overhealth. The [Paladins] wanting an example hadn’t shared until after it was finished, but if you were careful, you could injure a person and give the potion something to focus on. The method had a high failure rate and, more often than not, you wound up killing the person. Still, it was the only method I knew of that could at least ease the effects of overhealth.

  Thankfully, Ellen was injured enough and her body was hardy enough to handle the potion. Her many cuts visibly scabbed over and went through their entire life cycle in the span of ten seconds before they fell off to reveal pristine pink skin.

  Still focused on Ellen, I only saw Nora rise out of the corner of my eye. Exhaustion weighed down on her every movement like an anchor around her neck, but she dragged herself to where the [Healers] passed out. One at a time, she violently shook the women awake. Some jumped up and looked ready for violence, their hands scrabbled for weapons they weren’t wearing or began the first runic gestures of a spell. Each time that happened, Maggie, still focused on Ellen as the vestiges of the potion’s strength exhausted itself, flared her aura and the women settled.

  When all had risen enough to shake the final remnants of sleep from their eyes, thirteen heads on six bodies turned almost identical looks of fury on Nora. The only one with three heads looked about to speak before Nora cut her off, expression robbed of all politeness.

  “Heal. Him.” She said, finger pointed at me.

  I can’t say why the women didn’t hesitate to send the three-headed woman over to see me, but I am confident it had a lot to do with the Tier 4, who cast a baleful look over my shoulder at them. Impatient to be done with this and asleep once more, the woman limped across the wagon bed. Two of her eight legs had dents, and the carapace creaked with every step to me and without preamble she cast a spell.

  As I felt the wounds minor and major recede from my body, I focused on the wound on my hip. It wasn’t closing as fast as the rest of the cuts around it, but it was closing. The [Healers] direct touch outweighed a lingering skill.

  Like every other time I’d received healing out here, it was hard for me not to compare it to the spells the Order of New Growth worked. In the forest, all of our healing spells did was speed up the natural healing of the body to insane levels. That was why [Apprentice Healers] often left scars; they just did not have the fine control required to avoid them. Here, however, the spell felt as if my wounds were removed. Not healed, removed. Cut and bruised flesh reverted to its natural state with no indicator the harm ever occurred.

  We rested in the back of that wagon after Ellen and I for another two hours, during which the aranae warriors we’d swapped places with suffered minimal casualties, only losing four of their number to injury or death. Their charges, however, succumbed to exhaustion. One moment they ran alongside their herd, chased forward by the whips of their laborers. The next moment, their massive bodies slid across the rough stone floor as their hearts exploded.

  ~~~***~~~

  The arrow in my forearm was only a minor annoyance as I shielded Ellen from another volley of arrows and spears. The pain that tried to flood through my arm was robbed from me, too weak to contest Iona’s grasp as it fed the Howling Winds. Arrows knocked uselessly against the front of my shield for a moment more. Some pierced deep enough that their barbed tips jutted through the wood. Once the dull thuds came to an end, I peered over the rim of my shield to check where the [Lanklatt Cavalry] were and the position of the main horde.

  The goblins matched our pace for the last hour, during which I time I’d had to watch as supply carts drove through the horde to pass out water and food. Those goblins I could see at the front looked fresh, ready to run for miles, while everyone around me looked ready to keel over. All of us were tired, even the animals puffed for breath.

  It would be child’s play for them to close the last five hundred meters and simply end us, but they never did. Instead, they continued to harass. Three more hours of retreat and another ten dead moles saw Gunilla return to the back of the convoy. My new favorite things were her returns because it meant neither arrow, spell, or cavalry would bother us. The goblins unwilling to risk the wrath of someone so many Tiers above them.

  Gunilla said something in the aranae language, not to the warriors but to the laborers running behind what little remained of their herd. Although I’d learned a little during my weeks among them, I wasn’t the best at reading aranae body language, but even I could tell that the laborers received whatever Gunilla said with deepest solemnity.

  Once Gunilla returned to her place at the front, the laborers spun silk as they ran beside the few moles that lived. More flexible than I’d thought, their rear most legs came up to their spinnerets and in gentle, insistent motions pulled silk from their thoraxes.

  Unfortunately for myself and every creature in the vicinity, the silk smelled absolutely rancid. It was similar to animal urine, the pungent kind used to mark territory rather than relive. The laborers all raced to be ahead of the moles, who slowed without the prodding of the whips, and tossed their silk behind them. Dozens of strands wove a chaotic pattern in front of, and sometimes on, the moles which raced behind us.

  To this day I have no idea what instinct took hold of the moles in that instant, but as soon as the silk landed anywhere near an animal it stopped, turned on a coin, and sprinted as fast as it weakened state would allow towards the goblins.

  Caught off guard by the sudden shift in the massive prey animals, those at the front lines went down in waves as hundreds of pounds of frightened, exhausted mole trampled over them and further into their lines.

  Our burden gone, the wagon train picked up speed, the pace of the retreat no longer set by a herd of near-death farm animals at the rear.