Thick streams of water began to seep out of the ground at Caedmon’s feet until they formed a dozen globes of liquid that were large enough to completely encase an adult man. Floating above the group, the foremost sphere hardened into a hefty ball of ice that quickly flew through the air and crashed onto a part of the path that one of the oncoming attackers was about to pass by. Caedmon’s spell was avoided with ease, at which point he froze the rest of the globes and launched them forward at the same time.

A hooded, middle-aged man suddenly blinked into existence a ways down the pathway, crushed beneath one of the icy spheres before the large projectile cracked and fell apart into several pieces. Seeing the blood that had spattered around the corpse, Anice almost fainted.

Her father wasn’t a fighter, however, so it could already be considered lucky that he was able to kill one of their unseen enemies. Mr. Albeck, on the other hand, was more versed in the use of offensive magics and decisively converted his shield into a whirlwind of sharpened ice scales that quickly engulfed the path ahead like a storm of razorblades. The spell conversion successfully drew blood from all of those that approached—the closest being about fifteen paces away—and, although not managing to inflict any significant injuries, it disrupted whatever spell or enchantment their attackers were relying on to obscure themselves from sight.

In the midst of the confusion, the horses reared violently and neighed in fright before dashing off in random directions, leaving Anice and her friends more exposed.

Another arrow suddenly flew from behind the cover of a distant treetop and pierced Mr. Albeck’s abdomen with such strength that it punched directly through his body and sailed on for another hundred paces or so before silently falling onto a patch of roadside grass. Judging by the magic that Anice had briefly sensed on it, the projectile had been reinforced in some way.

“Jin!”

Caedmon immediately seized control of his friend’s spellwork, maintaining the flurry of scales so as to hamper the movements of those that were now approaching them with well-timed steps.

Seeing that Caedmon’s spell would only delay their attackers for a couple of seconds at most, Mr. Albeck coughed up a large amount of blood while roaring out with his dying breath. At his behest, a fifteen-pace stretch of the pathway undulated as if the earth itself were shivering from the cold, before abruptly parting to create a large pit with a depth akin to the height of two men. Most of the approaching assailants fell into the hole, only one managing to leap free from its confines before the walls of earth on either side smashed inward and crushed those trapped within.

Seeing the scene before her as if time had slowed, Anice screamed as the hooded man sprinted through the icy winds, leapt skywards and then landed atop her father with no small amount of force. The second he fell into their midst, he plunged a dagger into the area just beneath Caedmon’s collarbone, her father wrestling with him with all his strength after casting a worried look in her direction.

Anice had never been so scared in all her life. She wanted nothing more than to help her father, to cast a quick spell and burn the attacker to death for daring to harm those that she loved. But she couldn’t. It was virtually impossible to work one’s magics with an unstable mind, which was why the vast majority of people that came into their inner energies weren’t suited to become arcanites.

Crying, she subconsciously hugged Stason’s arm in a fit of fear.

Injured as he was, the stable master picked up the arrowhead part of the broken shaft that had harmed him and scrambled forward to stab it into the hooded man’s left eye as Caedmon struggled to hold down his wrists in order to prevent the dagger from harming him further. His attacker was far stronger, however, and managed to stab him two more times before Stason fell upon him in fury, plunging his makeshift weapon into the attacker’s head over and over again while letting out pained, primal grunts.

Caedmon immediately attempted to heal his most grievous injury—the one beneath his collar bone—as Mr. Albeck fell to his knees and then slumped over with unseeing eyes. The man's body was limp and lifeless with a bloody hole at its centre that continued to soak his heavy white robes in crimson during the moments that followed his death.

Several screams at her back turned Anice’s attention towards her friends, who unbeknownst to her had also been attacked during the commotion. Two hooded men had crept into their midst, their bodies obscured by dark leathers and their faces covered in thick wraps of black cloth. Surprise filled their eyes as they wrestled with Zech and Jaden respectively, the two boys displaying more strength than the men had anticipated as light, barely-perceptible hazes of swordsman’s aura covered all four of their bodies.

“Let go of him!” Lily didn’t hesitate to leap onto the back of her fiancé’s attacker. “Let go!” she yelled over and over as she clawed at the man’s eyes with her fingernails, her sisters too scared to move while Lessa tried and failed to muster her magics in a desperate attempt to help her friends.

Unfazed by Lily’s intervention, the man on top of Jaden snapped his head backward to bash her face in with bone-crunching strength. She immediately fell from his back and hit her head on a large rock that was lying a couple of paces behind him, going still after contact.

Another arrow came flying over from the same treetop as before, and it would have killed Anice if Stason hadn’t stumbled in front of it while simultaneously pushing her to the side. It went directly through his neck, killing him instantly.

Emely was screaming in fright, yelling “Help!” in futility as her friends struggled for their lives on the desolate pathway that had been such a regular part of Anice’s childhood.

Dozens of crows suddenly emerged from hidden perches in some of the trees farther behind them, all converging on the same spot within the foliage where the hidden archer had set up their vantage point. A man abruptly fell to the ground while swatting at the birds with his bow. The moment he hit the grass, his neck parted as if slit by an invisible blade. Two other bodies were visible at the bases of other trees where they had discreetly been disposed of amidst the turmoil of the attack. Both men had been blinded by thin icicles—slick with blood where they still sat within their gored sockets—that had caused them to fall to the earth in a similar fashion to the man that had just been swarmed by the crows. Gaping lacerations were visible on their necks, thick blankets of blood covering their fronts.

Anice was too scared and dull of mind to give any thought to who had killed them. From the demon’s attack on the city to the sudden ambush on the serene pathway, everything that had taken place in the past half an hour was simply too surreal for her to process. Her father was still trying to heal himself, but his efforts seemed in vain.

Papa…

Dropping to her knees and crawling over to him, Anice hugged his arm and continued to cry. Caedmon’s eyes were also wet, his face pale and his expression one of a worried parent rather than that of a dying man.

Meanwhile, Helen cried out as soon as Lily was thrown back, the taller girl grabbing the rock that had stolen her friend’s consciousness and then smashing it into the back of the head of the man that Zech had just managed to pin down. When the assailant went still from shock for a brief moment, Zech snatched the rock from her grasp and then brought it down upon his forehead with a two-handed grip, letting loose a series of animalistic shouts as he struck the man again and again until all that remained of his face was a gory mound of bloody flesh and fractured bone. He immediately turned to help Jaden, though his assistance was unnecessary.

The larger boy’s eyes had gone red with rage the moment that Lily had been hurt. He ignored a stab wound to his left bicep as he finally flipped the man over, grabbed hold of his wrist and gave his arm a violent jerk that audibly snapped some bone or other. Freckled face flushed from both adrenaline and heavy exertion, he snatched up the fallen dagger that had just pierced his upper arm and mercilessly stabbed it into the back of the man’s neck, cleanly severing his spine. As soon as the threat had been dealt with, he cast aside the dagger and scrambled over to Lily, whose head was bleeding profusely where it had suffered blunt force trauma.

“No,” he said anxiously as he pulled her onto his lap and tried to wake her up. “Lessa—heal her! Quickly, use your mending spell!” He brushed a pretty braid from her pale face, cupping her cheeks with caring hands.

Lily’s nose had been broken by the man’s head-butt, with long streams of blood falling down her face as she lay there like a delicate flower whose petals had just been plucked.

Lessa’s expression was similar to someone that had just been slapped into a shocked state, and she simply looked around from Mr. Albeck’s body, to Stason’s, to the dying Caedmon, and then to her unmoving friend. All around them was blood and gore, death and unease.

“L—Lessa!” came Jaden’s angry yell, his voice cracking in desperation as he held Lily in his arms while Helen pressed a white rag against her injury, a piece of fabric that she’d torn from the hem of her dress.

Lessa abruptly came to her senses, dulled though they were, and hurried over to try and fail at casting a basic mending spell.

W—why is this happening? What did we ever do to anybody?

Crying into her father’s chest as his healing magics began to dim, Anice felt as if she had just plunged into the deepest recesses of hell. Although her father had managed to stem the bleeding of each of his injuries, the success was only superficial. The wounds were still bleeding internally, his strength visibly seeping away.

“Bring me…to your…friend,” he wheezed, his breaths growing more erratic as he struggled to sit up.