"Drop it!" Valeria screamed.
Lady Lysandra stood on the porch of the farmhouse, her face twisted in a snarl of exertion and resentment. She thrust her hands downward.
"If we die," the Necromancer hissed, "I am haunting you first."
The grey, necrotic dome that covered Oakhaven flickered. For a heartbeat, it held, resisting the command, and then it dissolved like smoke in a gale.
The reaction from the World Tree was instant.
Freed from the dampening shroud of Death Mana, the silver sapling in the center of the yard pulsed. A wave of pure, concentrated Life Energy exploded outward, illuminating the valley in a blinding white flash.
To the refugees stumbling down the road, it was a lighthouse of hope.
To the swarm of Mana-Phages descending from the pass, it was a dinner bell ringing in a silent room.
The wave of static on the horizon didn't just move; it lunged. The air shimmered as the Phages abandoned their slow drift and surged toward the sudden spike of mana.
"Gate!" Valeria ordered.
Thorne and the Bear beastmen hauled the heavy timber gates open.
"Kael! Forward unit! Retrieve the targets! Do not engage the main swarm!" She said to her Tiger.
Kael didn't need to be told twice. He was already sprinting out into the snow, his golden armor reflecting the light of the tree. Flanking him were Silas and Caspian.
"No magic!" Ignis shouted from the wall, where he stood with a rack of alchemical flasks. "Do not cast anything, not even the simplest innate magic! If you light a spark, they will swarm you!"
Kael roared - a physical sound, not a magical one - and hit the snow.
The refugees were fifty yards away. There were six of them. A Lynx mother carrying a cub, two elderly Badgers, and two younger Fox beastmen supporting them. They were exhausted, their fur matted with ice, their eyes wide with the terror of the hunted. A ray of hope lit up in their eyes as they saw the powerful trio of Tiger, Wolf and Shark coming towards them, thinking there was finally some hope for their rescue.
"Run!" Kael bellowed, waving them toward the open gate. "Don't look back!"
The Lynx mother saw the seven-foot Tiger in golden armor and nearly collapsed from relief. She pushed her legs harder, stumbling toward him.
But the Phages were faster.
The "static" washed over a grove of pine trees to the left of the road. The trees didn't burn. They simply turned grey and crumbled into dust, their life force sucked out in a nanosecond.
From the dust, shapes emerged.
A pack of Timber Wolves had been caught in the grove. The Phages had infested them. The wolves were no longer animals. Their fur was gone, replaced by shifting grey geometric patterns. Their eyes were black voids. They didn't run; they glitched forward, teleporting short distances as they tore through reality.
Valeria bit her lip as she saw the status of the incoming invaders, feeling nervous, especially since she couldn't see Kael, Silas or Caspian too clearly in the distance.
[Target: Phage-Host (Wolf).][Type: Construct.][Weakness: Physical Trauma only.]
"Incoming!" Silas warned.
Three Glitch-Wolves lunged for the lagging Badger elders.
"Not today!" Kael shouted.
He slammed into the lead wolf with his shield. He didn't use his [Metal Manipulation] to harden it; he relied on the cold, heavy steel of the Guild alloy.
CRUNCH.
The wolf didn't bleed. It shattered like dry clay. A puff of grey dust exploded from the impact, and a high-pitched whine - the Phage entity itself - dissipated into the air, starved of a host.
"Physical hits!" Kael yelled. "Smash them!"
Silas was a blur of steel. He didn't use his shadow-step. He used pure agility, his twin swords decapitating a second wolf. Caspian, wielding his heavy trident, skewered the third and tossed it into a snowbank.
"Move!" Kael grabbed the elderly Badger by the scruff of his coat and hurled him toward the gate. "Get inside!"
The refugees scrambled past the defensive line, weeping and gasping.
"They are all inside!" Lucian called from the sky. "Pull back!"
Kael turned to retreat.
But the ground beneath him rumbled.
The main wave of the swarm had reached the road. It wasn't possessing wolves anymore. It had found something bigger buried in the ice.
A massive hand, composed of grey ice and stone, erupted from the permafrost.
[Target: Phage-Host (Ancient Earth Elemental).][Threat Level: A-Rank.][Mana Density: Extreme.]
A hulking giant of rock and ice pulled itself free. It stood twenty feet tall. It didn't have a face, just a swirling vortex of void energy where a head should be. It sensed Kael's potent beast core. It turned toward him.
It raised a fist the size of a carriage.
"Kael!" Valeria screamed from the gate.
Kael braced himself. He couldn't outrun it. He had to tank the hit.
But he couldn't use his magical reinforcement. If he flared his aura to harden his skin, the Phage would drain him instantly. He had to take a giant's punch with nothing but steel and bone.
"Shields up!" Kael gritted his teeth, crouching behind his tower shield.
The fist came down.
BOOM.
The impact created a crater in the road. Kael was driven into the ground up to his knees. His shield buckled. His arm bone snapped with a sickening crack.
But he held.
The Giant raised its fist for a second strike. Kael couldn't move; he was pinned.
"Ignis!" Valeria shouted. "Alchemy!"
Ignis, standing on the wall, didn't cast a fireball. He loaded a heavy glass sphere into a ballista.
"Chew on this," Ignis snarled.
He fired.
The sphere sailed over Kael's head and struck the Giant in the chest.
It wasn't explosive. It was [Liquid Nitrogen].
The glass shattered, releasing a cloud of super-cooled gas. The Giant, already made of ice and rock, flash-froze. The grey void energy swirling in its chest slowed down as the molecular bonds of its host body became absolute zero.
"Now, Lysandra!" Valeria commanded.
The Necromancer stepped out from the shadows of the gate. She looked bored, but her eyes were sharp.
"Bone Wall," she commanded.
From the snow around the frozen giant, twenty skeletal warriors erupted. They didn't attack. They simply piled onto the Giant, burying it in a mound of empty, mana-less calcium.
The Phage entity inside the Giant shrieked. It tried to drain the skeletons, but there was nothing to drain. No life. No mana. Just dry bone.
Confused and blocked, the entity stalled.
"Kael! Move!"
Silas and Caspian grabbed Kael's shoulders and yanked him out of the crater. They dragged him back toward the gate.
They crossed the threshold.
"Close it!" Valeria yelled.
Thorne slammed the gates shut. The heavy timber bar dropped into place.
"Lysandra! The Shield! Now!"
Lysandra raised her trembling hands.
"Shield of the Grave... deny the light..."
The grey mist erupted from her again. It surged upward, reforming the dome.
Outside, the Phage swarm slammed against the wood of the gate. The timber hissed as it began to turn to dust.
But then, the dome clicked shut.
The Life Mana of the World Tree was masked.
To the swarm outside, the beacon vanished. The "food" was gone.
The scratching at the gate stopped. The high-pitched whine faded as the swarm, confused, drifted away, moving south toward the next source of magic.
Inside the courtyard, the silence was deafening.
Kael collapsed onto a pile of hay, clutching his left arm. His golden armor was dented and frosted with ice. His face was a mask of pale, sweating stoicism.
"Healer!" Valeria shouted, running to him.
"Don't use magic," Ignis warned, jumping down from the wall. "The dome is up, but it's thin. A healing spell might spike enough energy to attract them back."
Valeria skidded to a halt beside Kael. "I have splints. I have bandages."
Kael grunted, trying to stand, but his legs wobbled. "It's fine. I heal fast. Just get the refugees."
"You are not fine," Valeria said, seeing the unnatural angle of his forearm. "Caspian, get him inside. To the living room. Now."
Across the yard, the refugees were huddled near the farmhouse. The Lynx mother was weeping, clutching her cub. The Badgers were shaking hands with Thorne.
"They are safe," Silas said, walking over. He wiped grey dust from his swords. "But they are shaken. They say the mountains are gone. Just... gone. Eaten by the grey."
Valeria looked at Lysandra. The Necromancer was sitting on a barrel, looking exhausted. Her skin was grey.
"That was close," Lysandra muttered. "Too close. If you pull a stunt like that again, Duchess, I will let the Void eat you."
"We saved six lives," Valeria said.
"And you almost cost us fifty," Lysandra countered. "This isn't a skirmish, child. This is an extinction event. You cannot save everyone."
Valeria looked at the refugees. Then she looked at the silver sapling, now dim and dormant under the necrotic shield.
"Maybe not," Valeria said. "But I'm going to try."
She turned to Thorne.
"Get them inside the barn. Warm food. Blankets. Quarantine them until we know they aren't carrying any... hitchhikers."
She turned back to the house, where Caspian was helping Kael through the door.
"Hold on, Kael," she whispered. "I have something for pain."