Chapter 47 – Now we Fight
[Party Invite Accepted]
[Full Party Formed: 5 Members]
[Briar Witch Boss Battle: Reset]
The ruins lurch and the barrier drops.
Broken stone snaps back into old positions. Thorn-vines recoil, then surge again. The bodies vanish. The blood is gone. The Briar Witch shrieks like I’ve personally stolen something from her as the whole arena rewinds around her in a twisted rush of root, ruin, and system light.
And Enora is still deep in the boss zone.
Too far in.
Too far from us.
Too close to her.
The Briar Witch turns and makes for Enora at once, gliding low and fast over the cracked courtyard stones, all thorn and hunger and sudden purpose. She is not alone. Bushmen, Thorncasters, and the Elders all scramble as the board sets itself anew.
Enora is not ready.
We are not in position.
I do not have time to think.
I lock eyes with the Briar Witch and pour far too much mana into the stupidest spell in my kit.
Smoldering Gaze.
It hits.
The Briar Witch stops dead.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
Her whole body goes still in the middle of the charge, black-green thorns twitching, one clawed hand half-raised. Then, slowly, she turns her head and looks back at me with the single most offended expression I have ever seen on anything made of roots and hate.
For one impossible heartbeat, she looks confused. Her gaze flicks to Ed. Ed looks back at me like I have somehow made this situation tackier than it already was. Then her eyes return to mine, and something old and ugly moves behind them, recognition, outrage, maybe even betrayal. She looks between us like she cannot decide which part of this insult she hates more.
“Lorica Noctis.” Spectral armor ghosts tight over Kit as she moves, pale shimmer hugging leather and skin.
Kit’s voice cuts across the bond, half disbelief, half delight.
“Did you just smolder at the boss?”
“No time,” I snap. “Move.”
Raka is already charging for Enora. Perri sprints after her, staff up, Light Barrier gathering at the edges. Ed tears wide for the flank in a spray of petals and thorns. Kit vanishes into motion before I finish the call.
The Briar Witch’s stunned pause breaks.
Good.
So does ours.
Now we fight.
Enora is out of position.
So is the Briar Witch.
We charge.
The play is already moving through the bond before I finish thinking it. The girls catch the shape of it before the words ever leave me. Raka takes one look at the Elders and standard Bushmen trying to rebuild the line between us and Enora and knows exactly what I need.
“Raka,” I bark, Stormcast already up. “I need a hole. Get us through.”
A sharp hand signal is all Ed needs to know I want him hanging back for the second wave.
“Make some space!” Raka roars, and, “Fulgaris!”
Starburst answers in a burst of blinding white.
The whole front line flares. Elders and standard Bushmen alike jerk and stagger as the battlefield explodes with light. Raka hits them a heartbeat later like a siege ram, shield first, axe low, driving straight into the half-formed wall before it can harden.
I am right behind her, with Perri at my shoulder like a shadow.
Thunderwave rips out of me in a brutal concussion of force, blasting through the gap she makes and knocking the Elders apart before they can anchor. Thorn-limbs whip wide. Bark cracks. One standard Bushman goes tumbling sideways into broken stone. Another folds under Raka’s charge as we punch through the line.
Kit does not even bother staying with us.
She vanishes in the skipped-frame blur of Echo Step, already past the broken front and inside the ruin where the real problem is.
The Briar Witch sees Enora, sees the lane, and lunges, vine-claws extended.
She almost gets there.
Almost.
A Light Barrier slams into place between them in a flash of gold so bright it looks solid for one perfect second. The Witch crashes into it hard enough to rattle the courtyard, claws screeching across radiant force as Perri plants her staff and braces behind the cast.
But by then the Witch is overextended.
And unguarded.
Kit is already there.
She hits fast and hard, smoke-dark and precise, both daggers driving in as Veilstrike tears across the Briar Witch’s side in a burst of violet soulfire. The Witch howls, whipping around too late, black-green thorns lashing only empty air where Kit used to be.
For one brief, glorious heartbeat, we have her out of shape.
Then she fixes it.
The Briar Witch lifts one hand and hisses something wet and hateful.
Briar Flies.
The air fills at once. Her body dissolves into a black-green cloud of thorn-winged things and whips backward behind the Elders to regroup. They snap and sting and whirl in a living screen while she slips behind the line we just blasted apart, reclaiming the rear and turning the whole battlefield inside out.
Then the Thorncasters hit.
Their Thorn Volleys slam into Perri’s barrier from the wrong angle, right in our faces now that we have punched through the center. The gold wall caves under the second impact in a spray of broken light, holding no better than Enora’s Wall of Bones did.
In one ugly breath, the battlefield flips. The thorncasters are behind us, the Elders and standards already reforming in front, and the Witch is sliding back into cover behind them, screened and smiling.
Now we are the ones exposed in the middle of her courtyard.
Raka has the front. Perri and I are caught in the middle. Kit is already inside the line with Enora.
But we are together now.
With Enora.
Raka stares down two Elders and four standard Bushmen bearing in on her at once, and for one ugly second all I can see is what that kind of pressure just did to the Ox-kin.
It flashes through the bond between us. Not fear. Just the cold, clear understanding of what happens if that line gives way.
“Master?”
“Raka,” I fire back through the bond, fast and hard. “Burn mana, not health. Hold that line.”
The meaning lands instantly. Burn mana, not blood. Buy time. Live.
Raka surges forward with a snarl, shield rising as Starburst catches the light, and Lunar Bulwark flares beyond the shield in a hard white field just as the wave crashes into her. For one violent heartbeat it looks less like a skirmish and more like two titans colliding. Elder limbs hammer down. Thorn-whips lash. Standard Bushmen pile in around the flanks, all bark, hooked limbs, and brute pressure. The field catches all of it, bursting white with every impact while Raka digs in at the center and gives them nothing but inches.
It is working.
And burning through her mana fast.
Through the bond, I turn to Perri.
“Perri. I need your fire.”
Surprise flashes through her first. She was expecting a barrier call.
But she trusts me.
“With me, little rabbit.”
She nods once, firm and ready.
Then I turn to the one person in this fight who cannot hear me through the bond.
“Enora!”
She flinches like she is still halfway inside the last thirty seconds, eyes wide, staff tight in both hands, shock and grief and survival all fighting for space behind them.
“Enora!” I bark again over the din. “Survive today. Grieve later. We need you.”
That jolts her loose.
Not all the way. Not cleanly. But enough.
She drags in a breath and starts to bring up Wall of Bones, instinct pulling her toward defense.
“No bones,” I snap. “Burn everything behind us.”
Kit’s voice cuts across the bond at the same moment, sharp and ready.
“Where do you want me?”
“Hold,” I shoot back. “On my signal.”
Then I raise Stormcast, plant my feet, and let the whole ugly shape of the battlefield sharpen into one brutal answer.
The thorncasters are behind us now.
Too close. Far too close.
If we do not wipe out that rear pressure immediately, Raka dies buying time and we lose the courtyard all over again.
So we burn them.
In concert.
I upcast Arc Lightning and spear it through the rear line at the exact moment Perri brings down Sacred Flame and Enora unleashes Phantom Fire. The three casts hit together with brutal precision. Blue-white lightning rips through the nearest thorncaster and snaps sideways into the next in branching storm-cracks. Radiant fire crashes down in a pillar of judgment. Pale teal-and-purple flame floods across the stone, then surges upward in a living strike, eyes and faces twisting in it before it turns violent. For one blazing instant, the thorncasters are swallowed by storm, light, and hungry fire.
Burning thorncasters answer with Thorn Volley.
The exchange is brutal.
Black thorns rip back into us before our magic has even finished landing. I take the worst of it, twisting into the storm as Shield snaps up, the impact still hammering bark-sharp pain across my side and chest. Perri gasps through clenched teeth when one tears across her arm. Enora stumbles hard as another catches her at the hip, nearly knocking the cast apart.
But we hold.
They do not.
When the light clears, the thorncasters are down and burning, twisted in place beneath radiant fire, phantom flame, and the last crackling threads of stormlight.
For one heartbeat, the rear line is gone.
From behind the reforming Bushmen, the Briar Witch throws back her head and laughs.
Then she starts to channel.
“Regrow—”
I do not even have to say it. The bond surges, and they catch the shape of my intent before the word leaves me. When I roar, “Now!” Kit is already moving.
So is Ed.
He surges through the opening in a rush of petals, roots, and black-red roses, all the graveyard horror of him suddenly turning beautiful and monstrous at once. The vines lash out, not wild, but almost tender in the way they find her—coiling around the Briar Witch’s limbs, slipping around her waist, winding up her throat like a lover pulling close. For one terrible heartbeat, it looks almost like an embrace.
Then the thorns bite.
Rose’s Embrace catches hard, locking her in place mid-cast. The Briar Witch jerks in shock, the half-formed word dying in her throat as roses bloom against bark and living thorn, holding her open in a hiss of outrage.
And Kit is there a heartbeat later.
She skips through space with Echo Step, vanishing and reappearing already inside the hold, both daggers driving deep as Veilstrike erupts in violet-white soulfire. The flames rip through bark, vine, and writhing thorn while Ed’s roses keep the Witch pinned in that horrible mockery of a lover’s hug.
The Briar Witch screams.
Heart-wrenching and real, like history ripping open.
Betrayal. Rage. Something old and personal tearing through the monster’s skin.
The whole courtyard reacts. The burning thorncasters falter and collapse, unremade. The Elders hitch. Even the briars shiver in the stone.
And I know who that scream is for.
The Briar Witch thrashes inside Rose’s Embrace, and the hold turns ugly fast. Thorns punch deeper. Vines strain. Bone gives with a sound I feel in my teeth.
No.
“Rest.”
Ed comes apart before she can finish him, black-green smoke and grave-old thorns twisting down into the ground in a single crimson pulse of will.
Unsummoned.
The Briar Witch snaps free with a scream and lashes for Kit, claw and vine tearing through empty air where she used to be.
Echo Step.
Kit is already gone.
The Witch was loose again. Raka still had the crush. Perri was at my shoulder. Enora was behind me.
Then I feel it through the bond.
Master!
Raka.
Not fear.
Strain.
Lunar Bulwark was never meant to be held like this, not with pressure coming from every side at once. Standard Bushmen writhe around the edges of the field, testing for seams, while the two Elders keep hammering the front with the slow, crushing certainty of falling trees.
I see it.
The Elders are packed too tight. The standards are crowding Raka. The whole mass is stacked on top of itself, trying to grind her down by weight alone.
Same as the Ox-kin.
And right at the center of it, Raka is still holding.
Mana draining fast.
“Perri!”
She turns, sees the shape of it, and smiles.
Not because it is safe.
Because she already knows exactly what I need.
Gold flares at one side of the crush as Light Barrier snaps into place, bracing the edge of Raka’s hold and giving the pressure somewhere else to break.
I round on Enora.
“Burn everything!”
She hesitates for half a heartbeat, eyes catching on Raka buried inside that writhing knot of bark and thorn.
Then she sees it too.
Lunar Bulwark holding one side.
Light Barrier sealing the other.
A kill-box.
Smart girl.
She does not need the bond to understand the trap.
I drive Arc Lightning into the packed mass at the same instant Enora drowns it in Phantom Fire. Blue-white stormforce forks through bark and limb like wrath made visible, while pale flame runs over the stones like spectral water and rises up the trapped Bushmen as if the dead themselves have remembered how to hunger. For a single breath, faces shine inside the fire, ravenous and awake.
Then the whole knot flowers into ruin.
At the center of it all, Raka holds inside bulwark and barrier, the only calm point in a storm of lightning, spectral fire, shattered bark, and screaming thorns.
We hold it.
Burning.
Perri chains Light Barrier after Light Barrier with her jaw clenched against the strain while Lunar Bulwark shudders under the combined fury of lightning, phantom flame, and thorn-lash impact. We are burning Raka to keep the trap closed, and she knows it. I feel her answer through the bond before the thought fully forms.
“I can take it. Finish them.”
She can.
They cannot.
The standard Bushmen burn first, writhing, blackening, then collapsing into ruined bark and screaming embers. The Briar Witch lunges for the opening, but there is no opening. Not yet. She crashes against the edge of the kill-box and recoils, vine-wrapped body twitching with fury.
Then she really looks at us.
And for the first time since the reset, there is something in her face besides contempt.
Unraveling.
Even burning, the Elder Bushmen refuse to die. As we peel off, Regeneration is already crawling back through them, slowed by the fire, not stopped. At a sharp gesture from the Briar Witch, they split with ugly purpose.
Then Lunar Bulwark breaks.
The white field snaps out in a violent flicker, and the first Elder hammers into Raka before she can recover, all its weight and fury suddenly focused on her.
The field splits three ways at once: one Elder on Raka, one peeling for Perri, and the Witch straight at me and Enora.
Raka is staggering now, backpedaling, then half-crawling with Starburst up while the burning Elder keeps hammering into her through the flames, thorn-lashes and brute force chewing away what little footing she has left.
Enora drops to one knee behind me. Those last casts took a lot out of her. Two fights against the Briar Witch back-to-back are starting to show in the catch of her breath and the slight dip of her staff.
Not empty.
Not done.
I move to cover her.
The Briar Witch comes straight for us, with the hulking, burning Elder charging alongside her, both closing the distance in a blur of thorn and hunger.
Perri is still at my shoulder by instinct, my shadow even now, but I do not have the luxury of keeping her there.
“Perri,” I snap. “Peel off. Take the Elder with you.”
Her eyes go wide as she looks at the charging, burning mass of thorn and death, and for one heartbeat she looks exactly as young as she is.
Then she moves, springing off over the broken stone in quick, panicked bounds, fast as a startled hare and just as determined not to die.
Then Kit cuts through the bond, sharp and immediate, reading the whole board at once and seeing three of us in trouble.
Where?
“Raka!” I fire back.
A heartbeat later, Kit is gone in the skipped-frame blur of Echo Step, reappearing at Raka’s side and driving Veilstrike deep into the Elder’s burning flank. Violet soulfire erupts through bark and sap, and the hit buys Raka the one thing she needs most.
Time to stand.
I see the Briar Witch coming, but I cannot leave Perri alone with that monster.
“Sanguis.”
Ed bursts back into the fight in a spray of black-green smoke, old thorns, and black-red petals, Thornlash cracking into the burning Elder beside Perri and wrenching its focus sideways.
Good.
Because I am already out of time.
The Briar Witch is on me, cackling, vine-claws already reaching.
I throw up a hurried Shield and plant myself between her and Enora.
The impact hits like a battering ram. My barrier screams. I gasp as thorn and claw drive into it, force shuddering up my arms, and for one awful instant I know it is going to break.
Then bone slams in front of me.
A wall of twitching, flailing skeletal remains surges up out of the stone, jerking into place in a jagged rush to bolster the collapsing shield. The Briar Witch crashes into Wall of Bones instead, claws punching through grasping ribs and snapping spines that immediately try to knit themselves back into place.
Behind me, weak but steady, Enora says, “I’ve got you.”
I smirk despite the pain.
For a second there, I thought I was the one covering her.
The burning Elder hammers the ground with thorn-lashes and root-heavy blows, but Perri keeps skittering just outside the worst of it, bounding erratically while the Cloak of Radiance shimmers and bends the light around her. When it finally commits to a strike, Ed is there with Thornlash, wrenching its focus sideways. Perri uses the opening at once, dropping Sacred Flame hard enough to make the thing recoil.
Ed and Perri move like they already know the steps to this dance.
Across the field, I see Raka find her footing again.
Mad.
The second Kit buys her space, Rage tears loose in full. Raka surges forward and hammers Savage into the burning Elder hard enough to make the whole thing stagger, then stagger again straight back into Kit’s waiting blades. Veilstrike hits twice in a blur, violet soulfire ripping through bark and sap as the two of them bring the monster down together.
Both Elders are falling.
The Briar Witch howls and tears herself free of the twitching bones of the wall.
I see what is coming the instant she starts to channel.
“Enora! I need a moment!”
She blinks hard, already swaying from the strain, then drags in one ragged breath.
“I’ve got the creepies,” she says weakly. “But that’s the last of it.”
I have no idea what that means.
But I see the meaning in her eyes.
I trust her.
“Do it!”
The Briar Witch throws back her head, the sound less cackle now than desperation.
“Regro—”
Enora finishes first.
Under terrible strain, she thrusts her staff forward and forces the words out.
Bone Swarm.
Then she collapses with mana burn.
In an instant, I know why they’re called the Creepies.
They erupt from the ground like things thrown from a grave in a fit of spite, swarming over the Briar Witch by the dozen, all claws, teeth, and frantic gnashing hunger.
My attention is everywhere at once, eyes flicking across the battlefield and the HUD in the same breath.
Raka. Kit.
One Elder down.
Perri. Ed.
The other goes with it.
Then my HUD flares.
The Briar Witch bursts apart into Briar Flies, scattering to escape the Creepies in a black-green cloud of wings, thorns, and panic. My eyes snap across the mana bars.
Low.
All of them low.
But not empty.
Not all at once.
I pull from each of them through the bond, hard enough to bring them to the edge, nearly dropping them to their knees as I rip together one last upcast.
The swarm of flies drifts, whirls, and gathers farther back across the ruins.
Health bar critical.
Everything else falls away.
I track the cloud, the pull, the shape of her trying to become whole again, and hold until the exact instant it happens.
“Got you.”
Arc Lightning does not chain. It narrows. A single blue-white spear of stormforce rips across the courtyard, screaming through thorn, stone, and open air, and hits the Briar Witch the instant she becomes whole again. It punches straight through her chest in a burst of crackling light and burning ruin, leaving a smoldering hole clear through bark, vine, and whatever hateful thing is holding her together.
She jerks.
She screams.
Then the HUD flashes.
[Congratulations: Briar Witch Defeated]
For a second, I just stare at it, as if blinking might make it go away.
Around me, the courtyard is still burning.
And no one moves.