“Prince Varnath’s true target is something beneath the silverwood,” Drake said.

Valentia took a step away. “What is it?”

“A round stone with some gems in it. The tree wasn’t specific, but if Varnath wants it, we aren’t about to let him get it.” Drake breathed. “Also, the silverwood is done with kromians. At sunrise tomorrow, it’s going to raise a fog that kills everything in this forest.”

Olivia gasped loudly. “Even the manor?”

“Only those on the manor grounds or the clearing will be safe,” Drake said grimly. “Cresh and his zarovians should be fine, as should Darion and Raylan. We can’t get in touch with Viktoria, but I told her to head to the clearing after she splits the kromians.

“But Kel!” Olivia said fearfully.

“I know.” This was going to be a problem.

Valentia spoke next. “So if we can hold the kromians through the night, the army falls. After such a defeat, others may hesitate to attack us again.”

“That’s the bright side,” Drake said. “So how do we find Kel?”

“The vero?” Olivia asked.

Of course. “Great thinking, Oli.”

She practically bounced with excitement. “Thank you, lord!”

Drake looked to the forest and raised his voice. “As per our sacred pact, I ask a vero to emerge and present itself.”

Everyone waited patiently. Drake was on the verge of calling again when a single vero skittered out of the tree line. While the little forest critters had creeped him out when he first encountered them, they didn’t remind him so much of spiders any more. They were more like dogs with... more than four legs. Not the worst thing.

“As per our sacred pact, I ask you to find a feral and lead them to us wherever we may be in the forest. Please hurry.”

The vero spun and skittered off into the forest. With luck, that was all it would take. He didn’t know how the vero would actually tell whoever it found to follow, but he trusted it to find a way. Now, he had to move into position to take out the octopi tearing a path for the kromians. Stopping Prince Varnath remained his goal, but the column was on the way.

“Move out!” Drake ordered. “Time to fuck up some fish people!”

As he marched out of the clearing and into the thicket of silver trees and interlocking branches, the limbs bent to open a tunnel for him. The silverwood was guiding him, and he hoped it knew to guide him to the octopi first. This felt like the right way.

They heard the thunderous crashing long before they saw it. It sounded a bit like old trees creaking in the wind, but violent. There was constant snapping as well, likely the result of freakishly strong octopus arms snapping tree limbs apart as they cleared a path. Drake knew octopi back on Earth were quite intelligent, and had no idea if these giant ones were.

Even if they were simply trained beasts, they remained his enemy, and more importantly, they were tearing up his forest. They were also the reasons the silverwood wasn’t able to entirely halt the kromian advance. They had to go. Not long later, as the snapping and creaking grew loud, he spotted the first yellow outlines fifty paces away.

The kromians were walking in a tight formation. While he couldn’t see what they were holding, the position of their arms suggested spears. Spearmen, then. The fact their outlines remained yellow assured him they had no idea he was here.

Drake hissed quietly, raised his left hand to make a fist, and pumped it downward. As he crouched he heard no sound from behind him, but a glance back ensured him the four women behind him were close. All had dropped into a crouch as well.

“Kromians ahead,” he whispered. “Let me take the first swing. If they spot us, I’ll fall back. Oli, if I fall back, you burn. Everyone else, take down any who make it past the flames.”

Four firm nods greeted his orders. Drake turned back to the yellow outlines, some of which had already vanished. As he rose and crept forward once more, silent in his padded boots and invisible in his feathersteel armor, more outlines appeared. Dozens, then several dozen. They were also moving slowly, suggesting they were scouts flanking the main force.

He saw no huge outlines representing octopi. Those would be further in. Drake continued to creep forward as the mess of tangled silver limbs ahead opened silently before him. Soon, he was close enough to hear quiet talking and snapping limbs. The kromians in the lead were hacking away with axes, savaging his trees as they made slow progress.

He’d show them how to wield an axe.

Drake crouched, breathed, and stretched out with his right arm. As his will manifested, so did Chopzilla. The glow it made lit up the forest, which was his first clue that he might not be as stealthy as he hoped. The yellow outlines ahead all pivoted to face him, then visibly hurried over. When the first of them turned red, Drake leaned forward and swung.

He was shocked when Chopzilla expanded. Without even thinking about it, the axe grew to such a mammoth size it swept through the trees and the outlines more than twenty-five paces away. Horrific cries filled the trees as dozens of kromian outlines shattered and vanished.

The others, seeing their comrades drop dead from no apparent wound, began to scramble backward. Drake rose and marched forward, resolutely swinging Chopzilla back and forth like he was clearing smoke. Each swing dropped more kromians, and with the dozens of trees separating them and the darkness of night, even the glow didn’t give the kromians a shot.

They never saw what killed them. They only saw their fellows fall. It was only once Drake was out of outlines that he realized he must have easily slaughtered a hundred of them.

He crouched once more and closed his fist. Chopzilla vanished. As darkness resumed, Valentia crept up to his side.

“Do any remain?” she whispered.

“No.”

“Then you did well, lord.” Her voice was warm now. “Emily would be very proud of you.”

“Thanks.” Between his poisoning the lake a few days ago and his one-sided slaughter of a hundred kromians soldiers, he really was shockingly good at mass murder. Who knew?

It was tempting to feel guilty about this, but these kromians would die when the fog rose. This was war. They’d started it, and he remembered his mother’s words. He was going to protect this manor and everyone in it, and now, he had some octopi to kill.

Drake started forward again as his protectors fell in behind him. More sporadic yellow outlines appeared as he marched forward, more small groups of scouts. Drake called out Chopzilla and cut them down without mercy. Nothing could touch him in these woods.

As the crunch of wood grew deafening, dozens of yellow lines appeared ahead, and then dozens more. Hundreds. Drake halted and pumped his fist, then crouched. As he waited, the outlines multiplied, and one was as big as a whole tree. An octopus. It ripped into a tree.

His arm was tingling. While he knew he’d burnished Emily’s rarity, he was already feeling a little parched. He wasn’t sure if he burned blood when he killed a kromian or simply when he summoned Chopzilla, but if the blood loss was based on the number of enemies he soul chopped, sweeping his axe through the hundreds ahead could seriously injure him.

He turned to his people. “Oli.” His voice was a whisper in the trees. “Drink that burnish potion. You’re up.”

As he crept backward, Olivia retracted her hood. She reached to their waist and removed a small green bottle. She pulled out the stopper and chugged it like a champ.

It took a minute. When Olivia was done, she capped the bottle and attached it once more to her belt. Drake didn’t see how they needed the bottle anymore, but it was rude to litter. Given all the bodies Olivia was about to drop, they would definitely be littering.

“I feel it,” Olivia whispered drunkenly. “Gods, that feels amazing.”

His timid blond battle maid hurried ahead. She stood and settled her arms at her side, then bent them like a woman doing Tai Chi. As her palms moved forward, a line of living flame manifested in the air. It crackled with heat and noise that sent Drake scrambling back.

Olivia showed absolutely no fear. As she stepped forward, a wave of flame as tall as she was rose. Then she thrust out one arm, and the chain of fire rocketed into the trees. Drake saw yellow outlines turn and cluster as the fire approached, and then the screaming began.

Drake had never seen napalm in action, but he’d read the accounts of those who’d encountered it on the battlefield. The shrieking. The smell. The terror. Olivia had no sooner released one wave when she summoned another and launched it. The results were horrific.

As the waves of flame rocketed into the trees, hundreds of kromian outlines fell in waves, but they didn’t die. They thrashed and rolled about as they were charred alive, a horrific visual image to go with the screams. Drake knew, without question, that what he was seeing today would give him nightmares.

But he wasn’t about to ask Olivia to stop.

As Olivia advanced through the rapidly opening tunnel tossing walls of flame at the panicking and burning kromian army, a single octopus responded. The sound of it barreling through the trees was almost as terrifying as the horrified screams. While it shrieked and blubbered as it encountered walls of living flame, it powered through.

There were no living kromians in range. Only the octopus, and it was pissed. Drake could see, from its outline, that it was charging them with the speed of an angry Grizzly bear.

“Step back!” Drake shouted.

As Olivia fell back and extinguished her line of flame, a massive shape visibly roiled from the woods. It was not so much moving as bouncing, barreling between trees like an out-of-control pinball, constantly propelled by its multiple arms. Even chainfire wouldn’t cook it, at least not before it rolled over Olivia and ripped her limb from limb.

Drake wasn’t about to let that happen. He spread his arm out to his size and summoned Chopzilla. As the yellow glow of the axe lit up the woods, the bulbous mass thundered toward him with speed that would have terrified a less prepared man.

One chop was all it took.

The quivering, roiling mass shrieked as his spectral battle axe split its soul in two. Its loss of life did nothing to halt its moment, and Drake only realized at the last second, based on its outline, where it was heading. “Look out!”

He grabbed Olivia’s arm and yanked her out of the way as the flailing mass bounced by paces away. He glanced back at his people, terrified someone had been caught by the impact, and spotted three more blue outlines prone on the ground. Everyone had dived safely to the side, and in the distance, the dead octopi thundered to a stop.

“Right,” Drake said. “That did it.”

He looked to the trees again. The thrashing yellow outlines he’d seen earlier were gone now, which meant they’d all finished dying. Flames burned for as far as he could see, licking at the silver trees, but silverwood was fireproof. Kromians weren’t.

Even between Chopzilla and Olivia, they’d only killed a few hundred kromians so far. Drake would call that a good start. There were more out there, and they’d found the main column. It was time to make these fish people regret entering his woods.

Drake took the lead once more, sweeping the tree line ahead for more yellow outlines. “Stay close,” he ordered. “Oli? At my word, be ready to light ‘em up.”

“I’m ready, lord!” Olivia said fiercely.

At home in the manor, she was a timid mouse, but out here on the battlefield, she was an eighteen-year-old napalm thrower. With luck, her burnish potion would last for another hour. That was more than enough time to barbecue a thousand kromians.

Drake stopped dead as another outline appeared, but he immediately knew it wasn’t a kromian. It was yellow, since it hadn’t spotted him yet, but this outline obviously had a tail. “Silent Pack on approach!” he said quietly. “Don’t shoot.”

He crouched down and waited as the yellow outline moved unerringly toward his position. He heard nothing and knew, without Emily’s rend soul rarity, he would have seen nothing. Ferals really were shockingly silent in the forest, and no more visible than shadows.

As the feral approached, Drake stood and waved. “Thanks for meeting us.”

The feral paused, then rose as well. As a shadowed figure stepped from the woods and her outline turned from yellow to blue, he recognized her as Sidori, Sachi’s little sister. She was the only female feral with a missing ear.

Sidori looked more than a bit annoyed that he’d spotted her. She motioned to the vero with her. “This tree child insisted you wanted to speak with me.”

“That’s right,” Drake said. “I just spoke to the silverwood.”

Sidori’s ears flattened against her head. “You speak with the very trees?”

“I do. I did. At dawn, the silverwood will raise a fog that will cloak the forest and kill everything in the woods. The only safe spots are the clearing with the elder silverwood or the manor. Make sure Kel and everyone in the pack knows, and make sure you’re clear by sunrise.”

“You truly are a master of poison and deceit,” Sidori whispered.

“This is the silverwood, not me,” Drake said more defensively than he expected. “And these fish fuckers have it coming.” Though... did he really believe that?

Prince Varnath deserved to die. His generals and those who’d supported his genocidal conquest plans deserved to die. But there were hundreds of kromians in this army, and if they were anything like soldiers in his world, they were just people following orders they barely understood after they signed up to defend their homeland.

If Drake had the option, he wouldn’t simply kill all of them.

But he didn’t, so he would.