The declaration nearly froze his blood solid. His thoughts went muddled like they did after far too many drinks and his joints locked in place. It was as if those few words alone had brought down the entirety of his being. It took Ash nearly a solid few seconds before his mind rebooted and he could ask the question that had come first and foremost to him. 

“Is Calixxa okay?” 

Myr’s nod of the head saw relief flood through him, though he remained weary still. “As far as I can tell, yeah. She’s keepin’ away from them, hidin’ in one of my storage rooms. Likely heard the noise those damned things are makin’.” 

She turned to face him. “She’ll be safe for a while. They ain’t broken in. Yet.” 

“What are they?” 

“Bharghests from what I can tell.” she said with a scowl. “Somethin’s wrong here, kid. Beasties like ‘em ain’t supposed to be anywhere near this neck of the woods. The fact that they are means that we’re lookin’ at a far bigger problem than we’re prepared to deal with.” 

“Why? Monsters roam.” 

“Doesn’t matter. The goblins do good work in keepin’ their lands free of anything too strong to leave alone, and these things feature in that list, kid. I’ve never seen anythin’ slip through their net and wander into these lands in all the Compassion-only-knows-how-many damned years I’ve spent here. No, this ain’t somethin’ we can just brush off. Something’s really, really wrong.” 

Her words made him think of what Calixxa had said to him all those days ago. She was ill fated. Dangerous. He’d hoped that it’d just been nothing more than the cruelty of her former tribe with little stock in its meaning, but that hope was starting to sputter out ever so slightly. 

Still, it didn’t change his goal nor his intentions. 

“We still have to go in and kill them.” 

Myr scoffed. “Easier said than done. Bharghests are tier two at their weakest, an’ pack leaders are nearly always tier three. They even have tier four alphas every now an’ then. We’re lucky that there’s only five of ‘em and only one of ‘em feels like a danger to me. We have a chance at drivin’ ‘em off, but it’ll get messy. Real messy.” 

“I’ll take that risk.” 

Myr turned to look at him, a severe look in her eyes. “If it were me alone, I’d run, kid. Ain’t nothin’ valuable enough in that burrow for me to risk my life over. But, I’m guessin’ that ain’t a choice you’re willin’ to make, huh.” 

Ash didn’t even bother answering. The woman knew well what his answer was. 

He wouldn’t abandon a child to monsters... not again. Those nightmares had haunted him for long enough. Still, that didn’t mean that he needed to drag her along to certain danger. 

“You don’t need to come.” he said after a moment. “I mean, I’d like it if you did but... rescuing Calixxa is my job. You don’t need to risk yourself.” And he meant it. She had no dog in this fight and had already said as much. 

Myr snorted and jabbed him on the shoulder. “You ain’t no hero, kid, so stop pretendin’ as much. You go in there alone and you die, an’ I ain’t invested this much time an’ effort into you to see you kiss death without payin’ me back.” 

Her words were gruff and she refused to make eye contact with him as she spoke, but he readily sensed the meaning that she so fiercely tried to hide from him nonetheless. A weak smile crossed his lips at the sight of her, even despite their impending situation. Softie, he thought gratefully as they started to move ahead. 

“Just stay behind me. We’ll figure somethin’ out once we get a right proper look at ‘em.” 

Ash nodded as the smile faded from his lips and he readied himself for what was to come. The two set off at a far slower speed than Ash would have preferred but maintaining their element of surprise was crucial. 

“Bharghests are beasties of stealth an’ speed.” Myr explained as they moved. “Most of ‘em have agility an’ perception nexii as a rule. That means that they’ll likely have abilities that’ll let ‘em move ‘round real quick, an’ something that’ll let ‘em sense us comin’ if we’re careless. Our only advantage here is that they ain’t got much firepower up their sleeves, an’ they got no way of mitigatin’ any damage that we send their way. Your fire’ll help too. Bharghests are usually aligned to shadow an’ sometimes wind, an’ they hate nothin’ more than they hate fire.” 

“So, we sneak up to them and I burn them alive as quick as I can.” he restated. 

“That’s the gist of it, yeah.” 

He could do that. Heck, that was his whole damn philosophy when it came to magic. He’d go in there palms blazing until every damn one of the vermin were extinguished or sent running for the hills. Nothing less would suffice. 

The journey back was a tense one, and soon enough the air started to fill with monstrous howls and roars. Ash mustered his mana forth and primed a Fire Bolt for release. Eventually, they neared the edge of the clearing that the burrow as in and pressed themselves close to a thicket of bushes for cover. From around its edges, Ash spied the reason for his worries. 

The monsters were large, about halfway between a horse and a dog, and covered in thick black fur. Their body most resembled that of a large canine with a lithe frame and long, powerful legs. Their paws seemed almost hand-like in the way they splayed out, revealing webbed skin beneath each finger. 

Their heads, however, were a different story. Ash felt fear and disgust rise within him in equal measure as he took in their grotesque, almost human features. It was as if some demented soul had cut off a goblin’s head, disfigured it with bestial features and stuck it on a wolf’s body. Their human-like eyes ranged between shades of yellow to a sickly green, their nose was a peach-ish pink and wide-set on their snouts much like that of a bat, and their maws were bared open to reveal four overly long incisors and a set of smaller razor-sharp fangs that promised a painful end to anyone unfortunate enough to meet their touch. 

There were five of them in the clearing, and their banshee-like howls echoed all around him as they furiously pawed at the earth that Myr had used to seal the entrance to the burrow. By the looks of it, they’d been at work for a long while. A sizable hole had already been dug by the things. Cracks ebbed out from the damage, the sight of which made his spell-laden hand twitch. 

He was no earth mage but it was obvious even to him that they didn’t have long left before the monsters broke through. The scowl on Myr’s face seemed to concur. 

“Do I start blasting?” he asked as he quietly took aim. 

“Not yet. I’ll go take position across from us. Hittin’ ‘em from two sides at once’ll work better.” 

“Are you gonna use that sand-pit spell?” 

"If I can get in the middle of ‘em, sure. But I doubt it’ll be that easy.” 

Ash nodded and Myr wasted no time in slinking away, a command to wait for her signal before he loosed his spells. She hadn’t told him what said signal would be, but knowing Myr, he knew that it would be obvious enough. 

And as expected, it was. 

A scant few seconds later, two pillars of stone jabbed up from the earth and stabbed into the sides of two of the monsters. They yelped in pain as they were shoved off to the side but the attack hadn’t actually managed to down them, he realized with an annoyed grimace. Their hides were tougher than he’d hoped. 

‘Let’s see how they do with fire, then.’ 

The monsters lived up to their reputation for speed and gathered as a pack in the middle of the clearing in flashes of shadow. Ash idly wondered whether they’d just teleported, but shoved the thought away and focused on his own part. Twin Fire Bolts erupted from his hands and streaked towards the unaware monstrosities, carried on the wings of his hope that at least one of them would be downed by the strike. 

Hope, as it turned out, was a flimsy thing in the midst of battle. 

Both of the bharghests he’d targeted managed to detect his spell at the last moment, their perception nexii obviously at play once they’d realized that they were being targeted from behind. One of the monsters managed to dodge in a flash of shadow that left his Fire Bolt to punch harmlessly into a tree at the other side of the clearing. The second, fortunately, proved slower. It was one of those that had been struck by Myr’s Earthen Shield, and though it didn’t look injured, the strike had obviously done its work in weakening it enough for his Fire Bolt to strike true. 

Fire bloomed on its flank and the creature yowled, a banshee-like shriek that cut off as shadow enveloped it and it popped back into view a few meters away, its fur still ablaze with his fire. 

All five monsters were focused on him them, and though he remained behind the cover of the bush, he knew well that they saw him nonetheless. Three of them howled and broke off from the pack. They charged towards him at a blinding speed that left him scrambling to react. Fortunately, Myr proved experienced enough to predict their charge. Earthen Shield’s rose into the paths of each of the monsters. 

One of the beasts proved too slow to reach at the speeds it was going and slammed head-fest into the barrier and burst through in an explosion that left dust and debris billowing out around it. 

The creature crashed into the earth in a heap, bruised and dazed. 

The other two managed to avoid the Earthen Shields in their way and raced ahead with the promise of death dripping from their open maws. Ash had mere seconds to react, but Myr’s spellcasting had given him that precious time. 

He cast Thunderous Wave immediately. Light and lightning beheld the clearing, and though he feared that Myr may have been blinded by the spell, he was sure that none suffered more than the unfortunate bharghests that were a scant few feet away from the source of the explosion. 

He directed the explosive force of the spell away from himself, and the two monstrosities were not only scorched and electrocuted by the lightning that coursed around him but knocked away for good measure. They barreled into the earth, piteous cries echoing out in their wake. 

Ash took a bloody pleasure in their pain, but his moment of victory was snuffed out by the presence he sensed appear right beside him. An open maw emerged through the plume of shadow and the bharghest latched onto his raised arm with vicious ferocity. Ash swore as he and the beast both were sent crashing into the earth in a heap, its mouth grinding against his leather bracers in an attempt to tear at the skin beneath. Its claws weren’t still in the meanwhile, and Ash grimaced as the creature’s frantic thrashing allowed it to draw blood where his armor was thinnest. 

He hadn’t the time to worry about the extent of his wounds though. Panic bubbled in his gut and stole the strength from his limbs but he swallowed it down, weeks of facing monsters and Myr’s training rising to stifle his fear and focus his mind on what needed to be done. His free arm whipped up and a fist slammed into the side of the creature’s head with the full power granted to him by his might attribute, knocking it to the side in a heap. 

It flopped onto the ground, dazed for a moment before it shook itself and rose back to its feet. Its recovery was quick, but Ash was quicker still. He mounted the creature and bore his palm over its open, snapping mouth. The Fire Bolt released at point blank range and however tough the monster’s fur may have been, it was nowhere tough enough to bear with the devastating impact of the spell that tore into its open mouth and all but melted its throat and innards in a burst of heat and flame. 

Ash gagged as the smell of burning flesh and sizzling fur took the air, and shifted off the dead monster’s corpse uneasily. He scarcely had a moment to take a breath before he heard Myr’s cry echo across the clearing. 

“Watch out!” she screamed. 

Ash didn’t turn to look. His instincts gripped the wheel and tossed him to the side a moment before two furred beasts crashed through where he’d been, trailing wisps of shadow following in their wake. Ash rolled once and leapt again to his feet, only to have the wind knocked from his body as the bharghest barreled onto him, its maw aimed for his throat. He grunted as its weight pressed down on him and it snapped for his neck, and it was only a last second shift of his arm that managed to barely keep it away. 

He scowled and prepared to use his free arm to do to the damnable thing the same maneuver that he’d used against the last when a second pair of jaws clamped down on his forearm. He glanced to the second bharghest and screamed as it managed to tear through his armor and wound his arm. 

“Fuck off!” he roared as he mustered his mana and cast Burning Hands over both his hands. The sudden bloom of heat and flame mere inches from their heads scared both the beasts off him, granting him a second of reprieve to act. His fist swung out and smashed against the head of the bharghest that had been right on him, and the monster yelped as his flame caught on its fur. He supplied more mana to the fire and it surged brighter and spread across its face. 

Ash lashed out with a kick that sent it sprawling away and moved to shift back onto his feet, but found his footing knocked out from underneath him when the remaining unharmed bhargest swiped at his head with its wicked sharp claws. Ash cried out as a line of crimson bloomed on his cheek and he was sent reeling onto his back. His face stung and his eyes watered with pain which only served to blind him to the beast’s next move. 

But he didn’t need to move to know what it’d do next. He acted without thinking, mustering his rapidly diminishing reserves of mana to summon another Thunderous Wave. He felt a presence loom almost lethally close to his face before the spell bloomed into view. The explosion of lightning struck the lunging creature full-on, lashing deep burns all across its face and flank before it was sent flying back to crash into a tree. Ash directed the resulting knock-back of the spell to fling himself backwards in an effort to gain some distance between him and the beasts.