Chapter 46 – “Run! Get out of there now!”
The next few days are all work.
We push deeper into Bushman Forest a little at a time, clean and careful, bringing down Bushmen packs and the occasional Elder without ever letting the line break. The farther in we go, the quieter the forest gets. Fewer scouts. More thorn. More weight in the air.
But we’re ready for that now.
Raka holds like an unbreakable wall. Kit cuts openings before I finish calling them. Perri reads the field instead of panicking, her barriers landing where they matter and her fire only falling when it counts. Even Ed has settled into our rhythm, haunting the edges and ruining anything that peels too wide.
We all feel it.
Another week, maybe less, and most of us will hit twenty.
Then it will be time.
That’s the plan.
So when we angle toward the ruins again, it isn’t to fight.
It’s reconnaissance.
I want Perri to see the ground. I want the lanes, choke points, fallback routes, and Elder pressure angles mapped out before we commit.
Nothing left to chance.
We approach low and clean through the trees, past broken walls and half-collapsed arches swallowed by thorn and root. Perri slows beside me, her grip tightening on the staff.
“You good?” I ask.
She nods once. “Yeah. I just remember how you said it happened.”
“So do I.”
The bond hums low and tight between us as the ruins rise ahead through the trees.
“Let’s get a clean look,” I murmur. “Walls, lanes, layers, numbers. Stay sharp.”
At first, it all just feels wrong.
The ruins are too alive.
Not just with Bushmen movement. With people.
A flash of steel between broken walls. A burst of light too sharp and clean to be wild magic. Someone shouting from deeper in the courtyard. Then the unmistakable crack of thorn-volley striking stone instead of flesh.
I stop so fast the rest of the line tightens with me.
“Down,” I hiss.
We drop low behind a split run of root and fallen masonry, just enough cover to break the shape of us without losing the view.
And there they are.
Another adventuring party is already inside.
Then I hear her.
The Briar Witch’s cackle rolls across the ruined courtyard, high and jagged and far too pleased with itself, and every hair on my arms rises at once.
The Witty Bard is easy to spot first, red hair catching the bad light as she backpedals with her lute long gone and a short blade out instead, trying to keep distance she does not have. Cutting Words bite into the Bushmen while Words of Inspiration pour from her lips in equal measure, like she is following a script only she can still hear.
The Bright-eyed Priest is a little star of radiance, hands raised as Threads of Light twist out to each of her party members at once, mass-healing and burning mana fast. In between, Wards of Brilliance flare around them with the frantic rhythm of someone who knows she is losing ground and is trying very hard not to know it all at once.
The Burly Warrior, Ox-kin and enormous, is trying to hold the center with brute force alone. Hammer of Wrath knocks even Elder Bushmen sideways when it lands, and Beastly Ferocity lets him take hits that would tear flesh from most men.
The Haggling Fighter looks exactly like a man who has spent his whole adventuring life calculating margins. Fluid in motion. Efficient in style. A true battlemaster. Cleaving Blade and Riposte cut thorned tendrils and punish Bushmen for overextending.
Except he is fighting three of them at once.
Deeper than the others, I catch black robes and a wide-brimmed hat moving through broken stone and briar-shadow, staff up, gouts of purple-teal Phantom Fire pouring into Thorncast Bushmen in the rear. She is shielding her allies from the worst of it, chain-summoning Walls of Bones that keep getting shredded under the onslaught of Thorn Volleys.
Bushmen are falling.
But is it enough?
The Briar Witch comes together wrong. First a crown of living thorns. Then a drift of black-green vines twisting themselves into the shape of a woman the world never meant to finish. Her face almost holds, almost convinces, until it turns too far and the illusion peels apart. She glides through the ruined courtyard like something grown there in secret, while the two Elders batter the center and leave her untouched at the heart of the slaughter, directing it all with dreadful ease.
Her voice cracks nerves and saps hope as she cackles one dreadful word.
“Regrowth.”
“She’s already in it,” Kit breathes.
No one answers.
For a heartbeat, disbelief steals the words from all of us.
We do not need to say it.
We can see it too clearly.
They are losing.
“Too spread out,” I mutter, already reading the shape of it. “They’re trying to hold five separate fires at once.”
The Bright-eyed Priest screams something I cannot make out over the distance and the noise, then throws Wards of Brilliance too wide, too thin. One of the Elders smashes through them like they were fog. The Burly Warrior catches the hit meant for her, and even Beastly Ferocity only barely keeps him upright before thorned limbs bury him deep enough to make my stomach go cold. Even then, he is still trying to hold the line.
“They have to collapse,” I snap, more to myself than anyone else. “Focus the Witch. If they don’t get to her, she just keeps using Regrowth.”
The Witty Bard lunges in to drag the channeling Bright-eyed Priest clear, takes a lash across the side for it, and still keeps going. Deeper in the ruin, the black mage shouts something sharp and desperate, no more fire now, only Wall of Bones buying seconds she does not have. The Haggling Fighter turns one Bushman with a clean Riposte, then nearly vanishes under the next two because no one is in position to finish what he opened.
They are not bad.
That might be the worst part.
Maybe they came in underleveled.
Maybe no level would have made this strategy enough.
Kit’s voice cuts through the bond, tight and low and already moving toward decision.
“We have to help them!”
The answer swells out of me before I can soften it.
“Agreed.”
Raka is already rising beside me, Starburst half-lifted. Perri’s breath catches hard enough that I feel it through the bond like a shiver.
Another scream tears across the ruins. The Briar Witch lifts one long hand, and the briars laced through the courtyard answer her, writhing up through cracked stone like veins surfacing under skin before whipping toward the Witty Bard.
“Go,” Raka growls.
We break from cover together and sprint the last stretch toward the ruin.
“Run!” I shout at the party inside, my voice cracking across stone and thorn. “Get out of there now!”
I am already calling the lane in my head as we move. Raka left center. Kit peel high. Perri behind my shoulder. Ed wide to the flank. If we hit fast and hard enough, we can still make this ugly enough to matter. We can still buy them the space to fall back. We can still turn this into something survivable.
Then I hit something that is not there.
Hard.
The impact jars all the way up through Stormcast and into my shoulder. Beside me, Raka slams into the same invisible plane hard enough to make Starburst ring like struck metal. Kit skids sideways through leaf mold and catches herself in a crouch, one hand braced against empty air, eyes wide and furious. Perri stops short with a choked sound, staff half-lifted.
Nothing in front of us.
Nothing visible.
Just a wall we can see through like clear glass and feel like stone.
And on the other side of it, screams. Raw. Desperate.
The HUD slams into my sight.
[Briar Witch Boss Zone: Occupied]
[Please remain queued]
For one heartbeat, all I can do is stare at the text.
Then Raka hits the barrier again, Savage burning through the swing.
It does not move.
Kit is already sliding along its edge, one hand gliding over empty air, searching for seams that are not there. Even Echo Step only skips her farther down the same invisible wall. Perri’s face has gone white. She tries to cast Light Barrier beyond it, but the spell collapses against the barrier before it can form. Even Ed stops at the line and lifts one clawed hand to it, thorns tightening in silent refusal.
Inside the ruins, the Witty Bard goes down to one knee.
And the Briar Witch turns, smiling like she already knows exactly how this ends.
“No,” I whisper.
The Briar Witch drifts past the Burly Warrior unimpeded.
I can barely see him anymore beneath the avalanche of thorn and vine that is the two Elder Bushmen, their hooked limbs and root-thick arms pinning him down as they wrench his hammer free and cast it spinning across the stones. He still fights even then, great shoulders straining under the weight, Beastly Ferocity and the healer’s clinging Threads of Light buying him seconds no one should have left to spend.
But the Witch does not even look at him.
Her attention is on the healer.
The Witty Bard sees it too.
She throws herself in front of the Bright-eyed Priest as the girl channels, light pouring off her in bright, desperate streams that paint the ruin gold-white and make her look like she is trying to burn the night itself back. The Bard’s voice lashes out, Cutting Words biting at the tendrils and thorn-limbs snapping toward them, each sharp, vicious phrase landing with more force than steel ought to have any right to carry.
For a moment, it works.
The vines hesitate. A lash recoils. One thorned limb jerks wide as if the insult itself found bone.
Then the Briar Witch laughs.
High. Delighted. Cruel.
“Sing louder, little bird. The roots are listening.”
And then words stop being enough.
The tendrils come in low first, then high, then all at once. Thorned vines snake around the Witty Bard’s arms, her waist, her throat, wrapping her tight in a living knot of briar and spite. She strains against them, red hair wild, blade still in one hand. For one awful heartbeat, it looks like she has one last smart remark ready, one final filthy joke to spit in the Witch’s face before the end.
Then a vine slides across her mouth and tightens.
The line dies there.
She jerks once. Hard.
Twice.
Then goes rigid.
Then limp.
The Briar Witch flicks one hand, and the vines hurl her aside like she weighs nothing at all.
She hits the broken stones in a red-haired tangle and does not move again.
A broken songbird.
Kit gasps.
Raka growls.
Perri squeezes her eyes shut for one terrible heartbeat, and I slam a fist against the barrier hard enough to hurt and not hard enough to matter.
Inside the ruins, the Burly Warrior roars through blood and thorns as the Briar Witch glides closer to the Bright-eyed Priest, vine-claws twitching open and shut around her like she is deciding where to start.
She never gets the chance.
The Haggling Fighter comes in low and fast, all economy and desperation, tumbling through broken stone and thorn-shadow with just enough control left to make it dangerous. Cleaving Blade bites deep across the Witch’s reaching hand, nearly taking it off at the wrist. Black-green sap spatters the stones. The Briar Witch recoils with a shriek of pure hatred, and for the first time since we got here, the Haggling Fighter actually creates space.
He is breathing hard now. Bloody. Pale. Somehow still standing after chewing his way through three Bushmen of his own just to get there.
Then the Witch draws back.
Her smile returns.
“Regrowth.”
All the color drains out of his face.
Mine too.
I lose sight of him almost immediately as the remaining Bushmen crash back in, all thorns and weight and fury, with the Briar Witch drifting behind them like the promise of something worse. But I can still hear him.
Not shouting.
Not bravado.
Just one man trying to negotiate with the end of his own story.
“That’s not...”
A clash of steel. A wet sound. A grunt.
“I just need one more second...”
Then, smaller, almost disbelieving:
“It’s not fair.”
The words tear something open in me.
When the Bushmen finally break off, it is only because there is nothing left for them to prove. They surge back toward the center instead, piling onto the already overwhelmed Burly Warrior in a mass of root-thick limbs and thorn-lashed bodies.
And there, on the blood-slick stone where he made his stand, the Briar Witch drifts over what is left of the Haggling Fighter.
Like a merchant closing the books.
The black mage in the rear is cut off from everything.
Thorncasters ring her position while she huddles inside collapsing domes of her own Wall of Bones, each one rising in a jagged burst of ivory and ruin only to get shredded apart under the next hail of thorns. She is crying now. Screaming too. Not because she is weak.
Because she is alone.
Three standard Bushmen and the two Elders have swallowed the center. Somewhere under that mass of root-thick limbs and thorn-wrapped bodies, the Burly Warrior is still alive. I know because I can hear him. Roars of rage, huge and defiant at first, then pinched thinner and thinner into something animal, wounded, and in pain. Beastly Ferocity is working against him now, dragging the last seconds out into suffering that should have ended already.
The Briar Witch does not hurry.
She drifts back toward the Bright-eyed Priest, who still stands where she was, unmoving, hands raised, Threads of Light still pouring into the place where the Burly Warrior is being buried alive. At this point, that spell is the only thing keeping him from dying outright.
The Witch smiles.
Vines snake around the halfling healer’s arms, her waist, her throat.
She does not stop.
Even then, she keeps channeling. Burning brighter. Pouring everything she has left into him as if refusal alone could become salvation. She will not die with even a sliver of mana unspent.
For one impossible, terrible second, it almost looks holy.
Then the light gutters.
The healer collapses first, spent hollow by mana burn, her body folding in on itself a breath before the Briar Witch’s vines tighten and snap her like a twig.
The Burly Warrior finds his end a moment later.
Not cleanly.
Not gloriously.
Just overwhelmed at last, dragged under by weight, thorns, and too many things trying to kill him at once.
Kit is on her knees, crying.
Raka’s head is bowed, one hand clenched so hard around the rim of Starburst I can hear the leather creak.
Perri has turned away completely, face buried against her sleeve as if not seeing it might hold her together for one more second.
Me?
I cannot look away.
My eyes are locked on the black mage.
She is alone now.
Thorncasters circling. Standard Bushmen pressing in. The two Elders looming behind them like executioners. And the Briar Witch, drifting closer with that same patient certainty all of us feel settling into our bones.
This is the end.
The last Wall of Bones rises around her in a collapsing rush of ivory and ruin, more desperate than strong, more reflex than hope. It shudders under the next hail of thorns. Cracks. Starts to come apart.
And through that falling white wreckage, her eyes find mine.
She sees me.
Not the whole party. Not the line. Me.
She is not screaming anymore.
Not fighting the way she was a breath ago.
Just standing there beneath that collapsing waterfall of bones with the look of someone who already knows she is about to die and has nothing left to offer the world except one impossible, silent plea.
Please.
The word never leaves her mouth.
It doesn’t have to.
I feel it anyway.
Not through the bond. Not through magic. Just in the way she stands there beneath the collapsing white ruin of her last Wall of Bones, black robes torn, wide-brimmed hat half gone, one hand still lifted like she is trying to remember how to keep fighting when the fight has already decided otherwise.
Everything in me goes cold.
No.
No, not like this.
My hand tightens on Stormcast so hard it hurts. The barrier is still there. The system text is still burning in my sight. Raka is breathing like she wants to tear the world open with her teeth. Kit is on her knees. Perri is turned away.
And the black mage is about to die.
Then something catches.
A stupid little detail.
A thread.
I know her name.
The thought hits so hard I almost say it aloud by accident.
Not the Black Mage.
Not that girl from the bar.
Not the one in the hat.
Enora.
My eyes flick to the HUD again, mind racing past grief, past rage, straight into the shape of a rule.
Party.
The system still recognizes party structure.
It has to.
Not bond. Not harem. Not any of that.
Just party.
“Wait,” I breathe.
Kit looks up first. “What?”
“I know her name.”
The words come out sharper now. Hotter. Faster.
Raka’s head snaps toward me. Perri turns back with tears still bright on her face. Even Ed stills.
The Briar Witch raises one hand.
The thorncasters close in.
The black mage’s last bone wall caves inward in a white crash.
I do not let myself think.
“Enora.”
The HUD flares so hard it almost whites out my vision.
[Target Identified: Enora]
[Party Invite Available]
My heart slams once.
Then I send it.
[Party Invite Sent]
Inside the ruins, Enora jerks like she feels it.
Her eyes widen.
The prompt blooms in front of her, pale and impossible in the storm of thorns and ruin.
The Briar Witch sees the shift too. Her smile twitches.
For one fractured heartbeat, everything hangs there.
The Briar Witch advancing.
The thorns closing.
Enora staring at the prompt like it just dropped out of another world.
Raka whispers, “Come on.”
Kit is already on her feet, hands clenched. “Take it.”
Perri’s voice breaks. “Please...”
Inside the boss zone, Enora lifts one shaking hand toward the light only she can see.
The HUD flickers.
[Party Invite: Pending…]
And the Briar Witch lunges.