The Curse of Arcadia

Some time later, Kaelid was standing in a white plain, looking out at the treeline.

"You sure they live in this forest?" he asked, a little nervous.

Tatsuya looked at him with a devilish smile. "Of course. Don't worry — they're definitely here." His expression sobered a beat later. "I'll scout ahead before we move."

He turned to Aria. "Mind tagging along?"

She nodded. "Lead the way."

Tatsuya took point, Aria trailing behind, and within minutes Kaelid couldn't make either of them out through the trees anymore. The wait that followed was its own kind of torture — not knowing was worse than almost anything he could think of. An hour in, he gave up standing still and started warming his body up with idle sword swings. A second hour passed before he finally spotted their silhouettes returning.

Mostly fine, both of them, if a little worse for wear.

"So? Find them?" Kaelid asked, unable to wait any longer.

Tatsuya let out a short laugh. "Yep. Definitely in that forest. Took about an hour, but we found where they're hiding."

His expression turned grim a moment later, and Kaelid noticed the snow beneath him was already turning red.

"You get hurt?"

Tatsuya looked down at the blood pooling under his own boots like he'd only just noticed it himself. "Ah. Yeah. Ran into a little trouble after we found them."

He glanced at Aria, who didn't make anyone wait for it. She recounted the scouting trip — the countless felled trees marking a clearing the ogres had claimed as their own, a river running along one edge of it.

Once she finished, Tatsuya smiled and walked closer to Ana, who rolled her eyes, already knowing exactly what he was about to ask.

"Ana... think you could heal me real quick?"

She sighed, and Kaelid was fairly sure he caught a small "tsk" under her breath. "Show me."

Tatsuya bared his chest — a deep but non-fatal wound along the left side — and his right leg looked like something had taken a bite out of it. Ana was clearly unimpressed.

"You know I can't heal wounds this bad quickly. Best I can do is close them. They'll probably reopen once we're actually fighting."

Tatsuya chuckled. "That's fine. You can just patch me up again after."

Kaelid couldn't help but laugh. This guy's actually pretty funny.

Ana didn't look amused in the slightest while she worked.

Once his wounds were closed, the party started moving, guards up, heading into the snowy forest proper. Eric led with Tatsuya, Kaelid and Ana behind them, Aria bringing up the rear.

Kaelid felt the air shift the second he crossed the treeline, and he didn't like it one bit. It felt like walking willingly into the jaws of something enormous, patient, and about to close its mouth.

Just two Fractured monsters. No big deal, right?

He repeated it to himself, trying to slow a heart that didn't seem interested in listening.

They found more signs of an earlier battle as they went deeper — blood soaked into the snow, trees splintered and toppled, nothing left behind to identify whatever had done it. Tension climbed with every step after that, until Tatsuya safely led them into the ogre clearing itself.

Looking at his party, Kaelid's eyes landed on Aria.

"What do you think about opening the fight?"

She gave him a deadpan look. "Tough crowd. Anyway — about that [Absolute Zero] enchant."

He smirked. "I want you to blow one of those ogres' heads off."

"You know that won't be a sneak attack, right? December pulls in the surrounding cold before I can fire. They'll notice the shift in the air before I land a clean hit."

He didn't answer right away, weighing it, before her voice cut back in.

"Fine. I'll trust you and hope it works out."

The forest went silent again — the same unnatural quiet Kaelid had felt since they'd entered. This huge-ass forest and there isn't a single sound in it. Before he could dwell on it further, Aria's bow began drawing in snow, air, and moisture, all of it swirling and condensing around December into a flawless shard of ice.

An ogre noticed the shift immediately, roaring and lunging toward the gathering cold. A moment later, all Kaelid saw was blood splattering across white snow and a three-meter ogre screaming in agony — Aria's arrow had punched clean through its neck.

It dropped to one knee, shrieking, alerting a second ogre further off. Kaelid and Tatsuya didn't waste the opening — they rushed past Eric and the downed ogre, leaving the rest of the party to finish it, and closed on the fresh one standing like a giant ahead of them.

The ogre slammed its club into the ground with a cracking boom, the shockwave knocking Tatsuya off his feet onto an already-injured leg, snow flying thick enough to blind. Kaelid held his ground, Mercy braced heavy in a defensive stance.

The club connected anyway. It sent Mercy — and Kaelid with her — flying toward the river, the wind knocked clean out of him before he even hit the ground.

He scrambled up, spotted his sword a few feet off, and barely dodged the ogre's follow-up charge, diving for Mercy and re-equipping her just in time. Tatsuya rejoined him a moment later, blood-soaked and grinning like he was enjoying himself far too much for the situation.

This guy might actually be insane, Kaelid thought, worse for wear himself after taking hit after hit with no room to recover.

The two of them held their ground as the ogre wound up another sweeping strike — until a bone arrow buried itself in its eye socket first, courtesy of Aria, driving the beast into a fresh, mindless rage. It landed cuts on both of them as they scored their own hits back, the fight grinding on with no clean end in sight.

It caught Tatsuya's leg wrong on the next exchange — not a clean hit, just enough to buckle the knee he'd already favored since the scouting trip, and for one long half-second he was down on one leg with the ogre's fist already rising above him.

Kaelid didn't think. He was already moving, driving Mercy up into the underside of the ogre's raised arm hard enough to throw its aim wide, the fist crashing into the snow inches from Tatsuya's head instead of through it.

"Get up," Kaelid snapped, hauling him upright by the collar without much ceremony. "Owe me one."

"Add it to the list." Tatsuya was grinning even through the pain, already resetting his stance.

This guy's going to get himself killed smiling about it, Kaelid thought, no real heat behind it — mostly just tired, mostly just relieved his blade had made it there in time.

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Then the ogre ripped its club free and hurled it — straight at Aria.

She froze, arrow loosed too late to stop it, watching death close the distance at a speed she couldn't outrun.

I wonder if this is how the monsters I kill feel, she thought, almost calm about it now that there wasn't anything left to do.

She stood there waiting for her death. She fired an arrow at the speeding club, but it didn't do enough to stop the weapon completely.

A loud crack of impact. She opened her eyes to find Eric's massive frame planted in front of her, shield raised, having taken the blow head-on. His boots dug deep furrows into the snow from the force, but he held.

Thank god Eric made it in time, Kaelid thought, relief flooding through him even mid-fight. I don't even want to think about losing her.

The ogre was flagging badly now, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Kaelid let himself believe, for one arrogant second, that it was nearly over — right before it lunged with both hands wide, trying to catch one of them in its grip.

Fucking hell. Is this what I get for getting cocky.

He ducked under the grasp, slid through its legs, and drove his blade into the back of its exposed knee. It buckled, howling, and Tatsuya didn't waste the opening — an arrow from Aria punched clean through its reaching hand a heartbeat before Tatsuya's blade finished the job, taking its head clean off.

Two ogres down.

Four cores, Kaelid thought, grinning despite everything. Four freaking Fractured cores. We're finally gonna pay off our debt.

He didn't get to enjoy the thought.

The ground shook — not from anything nearby, but from something arriving, violent and sudden. Before he could shout a warning, Eric was airborne, caught fully off guard, shield still slung uselessly on his back — pieces of his armor shattering off him mid-flight as he sailed across the clearing and crashed into the river in the distance.

Standing where Eric had been a second before was a third ogre — bigger, more vicious-looking than the first two combined.

Shit. This is not good.

Kaelid moved without thinking, dashing at the new threat before it could turn on anyone closer. "Eric! Someone needs to go help him!"

Aria was already turning before the words finished leaving his mouth, December half-raised toward the treeline where Eric had vanished.

Aria didn't want to leave. She wanted to fight side by side with her comrades. But she knew Kaelid's thinking was correct, unless they wanted to abandon Eric — and she would rather die than do something so pathetic.

It's logical. We're all spent after fighting two ogres already. If we left Eric to die, no one would blame us. It's just how this world is... but that doesn't mean I need to follow the world's rules. Eric saved my life. That's all the motivation I need to face death and come out on top. Neither I nor any of my party members will die today. That's a promise.

She cast one last glance at the two ogre corpses steaming in the snow, fired one final arrow, and sprinted from the clearing, leaving her comrades behind.

Kaelid couldn't believe what he saw. Before Aria fully cleared the clearing, her arrow sank into the new ogre's flesh and did nothing at all — the monster didn't even budge, the shaft sitting atop its hide like a small stray branch.

Not good.

Our tank's in the river and our archer's gone after him. Ana's still with us, but there's only so much her magic can do against something this size. I don't love our odds right now.

Tatsuya flanked the ogre and landed a clean hit across its back — a paper cut against something this size. This one was different from the last two. Tougher. Unwilling to go down easy.

Which means this won't be quick. See? This is exactly why I don't believe in any fucking gods. Useless bastards!

The ogre came at them again, faster than something that size had any right to move, dropping its shoulder and driving straight into Tatsuya like a boulder rolling downhill. He got an arm up. It did nothing. He was airborne a heartbeat later, spinning once before crashing through a snowbank and skidding to a stop against a half-buried log.

"Tatsuya!"

No answer, and no time to wait for one. The ogre rounded on Kaelid next, small dumb eyes fixed on the only upright human left in the clearing.

Great. Just great. Now it's just me.

A low wall of packed earth punched up at the last second, catching the ogre's follow-through and buying Kaelid the half-second he needed to roll clear. Ana's work, not that he had time to thank her for it. She couldn't hurt the thing, not really, not with what she had left — but she could buy time, and right now time was the only currency any of them had.

He backpedaled, boots slipping in churned-up snow, Mercy held loose in his grip. He came up out of a desperate roll already moving, closing the distance instead of running from it — the one thing the ogre wouldn't expect. Mercy flashed, opening a shallow line across the back of its calf, buckling the leg for half a second. He was already gone before it could turn on him, sliding clear.

Hit and run. Hit and run. I can't trade with this thing, not alone.

He ducked under a swing that could've taken his head off, drove Mercy up into the meat of its inner thigh, twisted the blade, and ripped it free. The ogre roared, low and animal, its club coming down where he'd been a half-second before.

He was three steps clear by the time Tatsuya finally stirred, dragging himself upright against the log, sword still in hand despite everything.

This is my last chance, Tatsuya thought, blood loss finally catching up with him. I don't know how much more I can lose before I'm out of time. No better options left. This has to work.

He forced himself back into the fight just as the ogre lunged for Kaelid with both hands wide, trying to catch him outright.

Kaelid ducked under one arm — too slow to clear the other. It caught him mid-turn, closing around him before he could pull free, and lifted him bodily off the ground.

Pain swallowed everything a half-second later when it slammed him back down.

Tatsuya's face went grim at the sight, and something in him hardened past exhaustion into pure, focused fury. He drove himself forward, blade angled low, and struck the same right knee he'd already opened once — cleanly severing the leg this time.

The ogre didn't fall gracefully. It listed sideways like a felled tree, the whole clearing shaking when it finally hit the snow.

It wasn't dead yet. It thrashed, dragging itself forward through sheer stubborn fury, blood pouring black and steaming into the white ground.

"Finish it!" Ana's voice cracked through the clearing, another wall already rising to shield Kaelid's unmoving body, bigger spikes than before tearing into the ogre's flank.

She can't keep this up much longer.

Tatsuya didn't need telling twice. With one leg already gone and the wall keeping it from Kaelid, the finishing blow came almost too easy after everything before it. He drove Moonlight up through the base of its throat, twisting as he'd learned, and the thrashing finally, mercifully stopped.

Silence again. Steam rising off two corpses in the snow, and now, several feet away, an unmoving third figure.

"Kaelid!"

Tatsuya reached him first, sliding to his knees, hands hovering, unsure where it was even safe to touch. Ana was right behind him, pale from whatever the walls had cost her, dropping down without hesitation despite her own exhaustion.

"Move," she said, and Tatsuya moved.

Her hands went to the clasps at the base of the demonic helmet, working them loose despite Tatsuya's sharp glance.

"Ana, is that—"

"I need to see him. I can't tell anything through solid steel."

The helmet came away — his face slack, pale, a thin trail of blood at the corner of his mouth. She leaned in close, cheek nearly brushing his lips, and held still.

There. Faint, but there — warm breath against her skin, slow but steady.

"He's breathing," she said, the tightness in her own chest finally loosening. "He's breathing."

Tatsuya let out a breath of his own, one he'd clearly been holding since the clearing.

Ana got to work properly, checking for anything wrong beyond what she'd already sensed through the armor. A spot low on his ribs was already darkening.

"How bad?" Tatsuya asked, quieter now.

"Bad enough I can't fully close it. I can stop it from getting worse. That's all I've got left in me right now."

She's running on fumes too.

Tatsuya glanced toward the river, toward wherever Aria and Eric had disappeared to. "Then we need to move him somewhere safer, and we need them back. Now."

As if summoned, a voice cut through the trees.

"Guys!? Where—" Aria stumbled into the clearing, soaked, Eric limping heavily beside her with one arm slung over her shoulders, both of them freezing at the sight in front of them. Two dead ogres. A third, freshly killed, missing a leg. And Kaelid, unmoving in the snow with Ana hunched over him.

Aria's face went white. "What happened?!"

"Later," Ana said, already lifting Kaelid without waiting for help. "Right now we need to move — find somewhere safe to make camp. I'll explain everything once he's stable."

Aria looked like she wanted to argue, but one glance at Kaelid killed whatever protest she'd been building. She nodded instead, question still burning behind her eyes.