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    A few took the news of their imminent departure from Loft a little harder than others.


    Amira towered over Lana when she returned to the wagon. "What’s this about us leaving?"


    "It wasn’t my decision," Lana said. "We’re going to find the Eldians and join forces."


    "No!" Amira said, almost shouting. It sounded a lot like a command. "Vinden. We have to liberate our land."


    Lana shook her head sadly. "We will, I promise. It will just have to wait a little longer. A strike against the rhinn anywhere else will be a strike against them here, too."


    She tried taking Amira’s hand, but the taller woman pulled it away.


    "I’m not leaving Loft," Amira said. "Our fight is here. You said so yourself.”


    "Once we find the Eldian resistance, we’ll decide where to strike together, as one. This is the only way we’ll win."


    "You’re wrong," Amira said, shaking her head. She stalked off into a crowd of onlookers. The look of disappointment and anger on the woman’s face tied Lana’s stomach into knots. She knew Wade was right. Deep down, she knew. That did not make the decision to abandon their homeland any easier.


    "What are you looking at?" she asked the silent crowd. "Get moving."


    Amira was not the only one who refused to leave Loft. People began to disappear as they headed away from their capital. A few at first, then more as the days passed. By two days later, a good fifth of their army had bled away. Wade gave speeches to rally the troops, waving his sword about. It wasn’t the rusted one he’d found in an earlier village. He’d exchanged it for a rhinn weapon and incorporated it into his routine, talking about disarming the rhinn invaders and using their own weapons against them.


    Most Loftians understood the reasoning in Wade’s decision, Lana included. She just wished Amira had as well. The nights grew colder without her near.


    After changing course, gateways began to appear. Lana braced for an attack each time, but the rhinn weren''t interested in fighting. Instead, robed rhinn stood silently, watching them with impassive eyes. Most of them were marked with a tattoo on their forehead and their eyes shined with an eerie shade of purple.


    Lana killed one with a dagger, and that gateway dissipated into nothing within the span of two quick breaths. However, others soon took its place. It got on her nerves, but there was no helping it. More experienced woodsmen prowled alongside the main convoy to try to catch the rhinn travelers with arrows, but they never managed it.


    One day, a few scouts reported seeing the robed rhinn with fully purple eyes. Lana did not know what it meant, but she felt a chill of foreboding pass through her.


    That night, creatures out of a nightmare struck.


    Lana was busy erecting her tent when she heard the screams. They’d camped out in a series of large clearings. Torches burned along the perimeter and watchmen were posted to keep an eye on the forest for rhinn ambushes. This time, it wasn’t rhinn.


    She followed the screams. When she arrived, it took her a moment to process what she was seeing. Her first thought was that a tree was moving on its own. Lana blinked, confused. Then another limb shuffled forth, and she saw that they weren’t trees but the tree-like limbs of a monstrously huge beast.


    A head emerged. It looked like the trunk of a massive tree, except for the gaping mouth. Moss, vines, and grass grew along its body, and she thought she saw a squirrel scramble along its back when it leaned down on its forelegs to forever silence the terrified watchman.


    Another scream sounded from one of the other clearings and Lana swore. More appeared in the forest. They moved ponderously, like an inevitable force of twisted nature.


    She ran quickly to the nearest attack. Fire blasted up at the creature, and it caught flame like a dried husk in the middle of summer. The fire spread like a wave along the entirety of its body. As it flailed, nearby trees sparked into flame and soon a fire blazed all around them.


    Even as it burned, the enormous beast didn’t stop.


    Tre blasted it in the face with fireballs as it continued its unhurried pace through the camp, trampling those before it.


    Lana watched with dismay as every attack failed to fell the beast. She didn''t know how her powers could defeat it, not a monster of this size.


    One of Tre''s attacks landed inside the beast’s mouth and exploded from within. Tre let out a yelp of victory when the creature''s head blew apart, killing it instantly. It froze before tipping over and crashing into the ground, crushing those desperately striking at its legs.


    "Well done, Tre," Lana said. Tre was bent over at the waist, panting. "Can you continue?"


    A fire burned, engulfing the forest, and the flames from the creature were licking at the grass and underbrush, threatening to spread further.


    "Do you think I should?" Tre asked. The young pyromancer was right. It was one thing to have to fight these monsters and another to be killed by the fire they started.


    "I don’t see that we have much of a choice."


    When Lana and Tre hurried to the next monster, Lana found Wade directing a group of men and women wearing the guild seal of the aeromancers around their necks. "What are you doing?" she asked, looking up at the monster and its slow but unyielding destruction of their camp.


    "Good, you’re here," Wade said. "Join the others. We’re going to push the thing over."


    He turned to Tre. "Good work with that one," he said, nodding to the smoldering remains of the monster the boy felled. "If this doesn’t work, get ready to burn this thing to ash."


    Tre swallowed hard. He was still shaky from exhaustion. "I’ll try."


    "Good lad."


    Wade turned to the crowd and shouted. "Axes ready?"


    The men and women cheered for him. Lana couldn’t believe her ears. Even in a dire situation like this, her friend, who would constantly get them into trouble in their youth, could inspire hope and bravery. Wade was a natural born leader, whether he knew it or not.


    She joined the other aeromancers. Lana couldn’t do much to help, but she’d push with all she had.


    A man sporting an impressive gut walked up to her, nodding at Wade. "You know that bastard?"


    "Wade?" Lana asked. "Sure. You?"


    "Worked on a merchant ship with the kid when we were attacked by those rhinn bastards. Never thought I’d see his ugly mug again, with him flying away and everything. Thought he’d crash into the sea.”


    "He is a strange one," Lana agreed.


    "Get ready!" Wade yelled to the aeromancers.


    "But he’s changed a lot, don’t you think?" she asked the older man.


    "Time will tell," the man said. Lana was about to ask him for his name, but he disappeared among the others. The monster took another long step forward.


    "Now!" Wade shouted, pointing his sword up at the creature.


    Wind whipped at Lana’s hair, and she focused her source to create a blast of wind with all the might she could muster. Beside the other aeromancers, her gust was like a toy hammer next to a sledgehammer, but she did her part. Together, they pushed.


    Wade ran up to the group and joined in. "Keep pushing!"


    The enormous tree-like creature teetered but refused to fall. Using wind in this manner was like lifting a boulder over one''s head. Most aeromancers did not possess this capability, but instead redirected already present currents. It was like tipping a boulder on a ledge until it tumbled free on its own. Creating wind from nothing was draining.


    The creature stood there, on the brink of falling. Sweating and almost out of energy, Lana created as many daggers as she could and threw them one after another at the top of the creature’s back, using the already flowing currents of wind to direct the weapons. Each one hit, but as far as she could tell, they did little good.


    Loftian archers joined in and fired.


    "Should I do something?" Tre asked.


    "Wait," Wade said through gritted teeth.


    More and more archers joined in, and arrows struck the monster like a heavy rain. Still, it wasn’t enough. In the end, it turned out that they didn’t have to make the creature fall over. Standing on one of its legs was more than its limb could handle and it splintered, crumbling under its own weight. The monster roared as it tumbled to the ground.


    "Lumberjacks!" Wade screamed.


    Hundreds of men and women rushed forward, axes in hand. They closed the distance and started chopping at the monster’s neck.


    Loftian lumberjacks hacked into it, swinging again and again over a large area as the monster flailed its one remaining leg. A few men were swept away, crushed by the force of the blow and dead before they hit the ground. No one ran. They kept their focus, chopping away at the beast.


    Lana was close enough to see a thick amber liquid dribble from the monster’s body. Was that its blood? More and more of the sap-like substance dribbled out, then shot out in a gush. It drenched the lumberjacks, who continued their gruesome work with grim determination. Finally, the creature sagged to the ground, its body limp.


    People cheered all around them. A few aeromancers had lost consciousness and Lana felt her own mind drifting.


    "We have to move the camp," Wade said, as he appeared next to her.


    She blinked. "What?"


    "The fire. We can’t put that out."


    "Right," she said, looking over at the clearing.


    "Sorry," Tre whispered.


    "It’s not your fault, Tre. You did good," Wade said. "But we can’t stay here."


    Something as catastrophic as an attack by giant tree monsters and a raging forest fire wasn’t enough to shake the Loftian villagers’ sense of order. Some of the dead were retrieved to be buried, but those crushed by the falling creatures were left to rest where they lay. Soon, the entire convoy was back on the road, walking or riding in silence.


    People were somber, but in a determined way, Lana thought. They were used to hardship.


    Wade spent the whole night moving back and forth between different groups, thanking them for their help. He played up their victory. Together, they’d slain two humongous monsters. That meant they could take on anything. The rhinn stood no chance, he told them, and their recruits seemed to walk with their backs a little straighter.


    Lana leaned back in the wagon, content to close her eyes for a moment and enjoy having lived through yet another attack by these strange monsters. Was it just her imagination, or were they becoming more frequent?This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    She didn’t know how many Loftians were lost that night, and perhaps she would never know, but one thing was certain, they could not continue like this. People were dying in droves. If this kept happening, Wade would not be able to keep this army together much longer, no matter how many speeches he weaved together. Lana needed to get stronger. With that in mind, she set to practicing rather than letting exhaustion drag her into a blissful sleep.


    The next morning, the rhinn attacked. Lana groaned when she spotted the first gateway opening. Once again, she’d almost spent her entire source right before a battle. Couldn’t these invaders give her a moment to rest?


    This time, Tre was ready. Fire blasted at the gateway before even a single rhinn soldier had a chance to emerge. The air filled with their enemies'' screams. She saw that Tre''s face was twisted in disgust. As she ran to intercept soldiers spilling out of a second gateway, she wondered if the pyromancer was disgusted by the rhinn or himself.


    Amira’s words echoed in her mind. The boy should not be fighting.


    Whether or not Tre was mentally up the task, they had little choice. They needed him and his power.


    Lana closed in on a rhinn soldier carrying a sword, dodged under his high side-swing, and conjured a long dagger out of white light. With it, she struck the side of his chest, punching through his thin, black leather armor. The rhinn went down screaming, but she’d already moved onto the next.


    Fire erupted from her right and Lana threw herself forward to avoid being burned to a crisp. She rose, ready to scold Tre, but then saw it wasn’t him. A man in his middle years stood nearby, wearing the intricate red robes of a full pyromancer. He looked soft, with his belly bulging under his robes, and his eyes were wide with fear.


    Lana threw one of her metal daggers at him and he yelped, blasting it with fire hot and forceful enough to melt it. The rhinn surrounding her had vanished, burned away by their supposed ally’s fiery attack. The pyromancer looked like he wanted to vomit, but he still raised his hands. Tre stepped in front of her and unleashed a storm of fire, meeting the pyromancer’s. For a few long heartbeats, Lana didn’t know if they would burn away, but it soon became apparent that the boy was the stronger.


    "Tremalian!" the other pyromancer shouted in recognition, but it was too late. The other pyromancer''s scream cut off suddenly.


    Tre’s shoulders heaved, and he got down on one knee to brace himself.


    "Thank you," Lana said.


    She wanted to ask Tre about the pyromancer, but more rhinn appeared. She easily dispatched the rhinn carrying spears, but those who wielded swords proved to be more of a challenge.


    The Loftians held their own against the attack. Even through the aeromancers were exhausted, they fought without hesitation.


    Arrows turned a second traitorous pyromancer into a pin cushion before he could as much as think of the word fire, but a third burned a whole swath of Loftians before she could be dealt with. Lana soared through the air, landing on the woman and driving a dagger right into her face. At a distance she’d thought the woman to be Mia, the pyromancer who burned down her childhood home, but it turned out to be some other old lady. A dead old lady.


    The rhinn retreated after the death of their third pyromancer, but no gateways appeared to return them home and they were easily defeated. Though far more rhinn soldiers lost their lives in battle than the Loftians, the deaths of her people left a sour taste in her mouth. There seemed to be an infinite number of rhinn and each Loftian life stung more than the one lost before it.


    They needed to find the Eldians soon, or the Loftians would eventually be whittled down, like a cliff-face scoured by the unrelenting tide. Lana would not let her people be ground into nothing but dust and memories.


    Tired and dreary, the Loftians marched on in the shadow of the mountain range separating Loft from Eldsprak. They would soon be at the border.


    Lana was napping in a wagon when the second attack came. This time, the rhinn poured out of gateways from two separate directions.


    "Tre," Lana hissed, waking the boy who’d slept by her side.


    He sat up and groaned when he saw the attackers. "Can’t they let us be?"


    "I think they mean to end it once and for all this time. There’s so many of them," Lana said, scanning the rushing rhinn.


    Lana leapt out of the wagon, drawing on her source and manifesting her daggers. Lana threw them again and again into the crowd of attackers without mercy. Tre burned wide swathes of rushing rhinn, killing them instantly. No flames were blasted at him in response. The rhinn were not accompanied by their own pyromancers. A small comfort.


    Lana spotted a group of taller than average rhinn striding out of a gateway, each of them with a sword in hand and the uniform she’d come to recognize as the one worn by gateway warriors. Four of them. Four. How was she supposed to beat four when she had struggled against only one of them before?


    Still, she charged with grim determination. She landed beside the group, throwing conjured daggers from a short range. As she expected, gateways opened, though none of her daggers were redirected in her direction. Instead, the daggers flew into a nearby crowd of Loftians. With a gasp, Lana dissolved her daggers before they made contact.


    "You bastards!" she spat, leaping through the air with a dagger in each hand. To her, the rhinn all looked the same, and would all die in the same manner as their brethren. By her hand.


    One of the gateway warriors opened a gateway in front of her, using it to eject her in a different area. Right before she hurtled through it, she threw a dagger with as much force as she could muster, adding a gust of wind behind it. She directed the attack to one of the rhinn on her right. The opponent stood much too close to react and was killed before he realized her trick.


    She flew out the gateway to land a few strides from the gateway warriors. Lana saw more gateways opening along the northern flank near the mountain. Rhinn poured out, and she groaned when she recognized the gateway warrior she fought before, in the town they liberated.


    Her enemies didn’t let up, hacking at her with their swords. Desperately, she used wind to push them aside. She blocked a blow with a rod made from solid white light. The man''s superior strength drove her to her knees, but the rod held.


    She glanced toward the new arrivals. They quickly closed the distance. How was she supposed to deal with all these people by herself?


    She couldn''t find Wade but felt powerful gusts of wind rise around her. Lightning struck from a clear blue sky, hurtling into the rhinn lines and leaving behind charred corpses. Fire erupted from within the Loftian ranks.


    Lana had no choice but to focus on close quarters combat. The three remaining rhinn were skilled, but nothing compared to the one charging at her. He opened a gateway and jumped into it. She was too busy parrying her attackers to see where he emerged.


    Three swords came at her at once. Lana threw up a shield created out of source, stopping the blows. The weight of the blades knocked her to the ground. Lana’s shield shattered into motes of light, and they raised their arms to strike again. She created a piece of armor on her shoulder as one of the blades came down on it. It bounced off. The second attack failed as well.


    The third rhinn thrust at her heart. Lana resisted the urge to close her eyes. If she were to die, she wanted to see it happen. The opponent grinned like a maniac, sure he was just about to deliver a killing blow, but then a small gateway opened up right in front of Lana''s chest and the blade point drove home through it, exiting right into the striker’s face, and plunging into his skull with a crunch that made her wince.


    Lana crawled back, jabbing a dagger into the leg of one of the two remaining attackers. The rhinn she hit screamed and clutched at his wound.


    To her amazement, her old opponent was demolishing her final opponent.


    She stood, bleeding from a new wound in her leg she hadn''t even noticed. "What are you doing fighting your friends?”


    "They are not my friends, little human."


    “What is happening?” she asked, looking around. She hadn''t noticed, but the rhinn coming from the north weren’t striking at the Loftians. They were flanking the other rhinn army!


    "There have been some new developments among the rhinn," the arrogant gateway warrior said, pointing at a red cloth wrapped around his upper right arm. "I’ll explain later. For now, those wearing this will fight alongside you. My name is Thys."


    "Lana," she replied cautiously. She was brimming over with questions, but, as she took in the chaos around her, they needed to wait.


    Lana and Thys ran side-by-side toward the melee. It wasn''t easy keeping up with the much taller rhinn man, especially as exhausted and wounded as she was. Her leg ached, and her shoulder pained her. Hopefully, the stitches in her old wound hadn’t torn.


    She turned to him as they ran. "Can''t you just open a gateway?"


    He glanced at her, then looked back ahead. "Gateway? Oh, you mean waypoint. Doesn’t work like that. I’ll explain later," his lips quirked, "if you’re good."


    They were about halfway to the others when she saw him nodding to himself. "This is close enough. Get ready."


    "Where are you sending us?" Lana asked.


    "I''m sending you to your people. Tell them not to kill those wearing red armbands."


    A gateway opened up in front of her before she could reply, and Lana stumbled through, landing in a small opening among the Loftians.


    Wade pulled her to her feet. "Where did you come from?"


    "Looks like we have allies," she replied, brushing herself off.


    Wade nodded and pointed at they their northern flank, where rhinn were attacking rhinn. "I can see that. Your doing?"


    "No," Lana said, creating white daggers over and over again to send them into the rhinn lines. "One of them saved me."


    "Saved?" Wade asked, lifting his hand up in a casual gesture, and a bolt of lightning struck down from the sky, hitting a cluster of enemy soldiers.


    "The man I fought in the city. The one who beat me."


    "Someone beat you?" Wade asked incredulously. "I have to meet him."


    "Just don''t kill the rhinn wearing the red band around their arms.”


    Wade turned to a man standing at his right. "Did you get that?"


    The man nodded.


    "Spread the news. Redirect focus on our western flank. Get ready to push."


    With their new allies, the Loftians were in clear favor of taking the day. They were still outnumbered, but with the flanking rhinn, Wade and the other aeromancers, Tre, and Lana, not to mention the brutally efficient Loftian archers, the tide was slowly turning in their favor.


    Reinforcements arrived. A flash of red fabric made her think they were friendly, but that hope quickly died. Pyromancers. Ten of them, along with more than a hundred rhinn soldiers.


    The sky trembled as Wade summoned lightning to strike at the new arrivals, but a gateway opened, wide enough to catch the strike. The bolt of lightning was redirected to the mountain top and struck with enough force to crack the stone itself with a snap so loud they heard it across the field and over the din of battle.


    "Fire at the pyromancers!" Wade shouted. Men ran to deliver the new orders to the archery division. It mostly consisted of hunters and those trained by them for the last couple of days and weeks. You didn’t need much practice to fire of an arrow into a crowd of enemy soldiers, but hitting solitary targets at a distance was something else entirely.


    Lana didn''t see Thys anywhere, but their new allies had noticed the arrivals as well. They turned to try to protect their flank with shields crafted from both wood and metal. It would not be enough, not against a pyromancer’s flame.


    She didn’t know if she could do any better, but she had to try. The first flurry of fireballs flew in a synchronized attack and balls of fire the size of a grown man’s head streaked through the air. Several of the burning heaps hurtled into the enemy rhinn positions. The pyromancers cared little for casualties from their own ranks.


    The fire whined and sizzled in the air.


    Lana watched Tre set his jaw, intensely focused on blowing the balls of fire apart with his own before they could reach the Loftians.


    Lana conjured a wall of light, solid as rock. She tried making it as thick as possible, but it only covered herself and a few others. She tried stretching it next, using her will and most of her remaining source. It grew to block most of the Loftians and even a few of the allied rhinn, but it was pathetically thin like a sheath of parchment.


    Wade shot her a doubtful glance but said nothing. Keeping the wall up took everything Lana had, but she was determined. The collective attacks of the enemy pyromancers struck and exploded against it, shattering the white construct completely. It stopped the initial explosions, but that was all. Fire rained down on the troops across the entirety of the battlefield.


    Lana''s pant leg caught on fire, and she swiped at it. She cast about in her mind for a solution to the pyromancers, but she could find none. She nearly blacked out from exhaustion. "Wade," she said. "Can you do something?"


    Her childhood friend''s face was red and flushed from the heat of the fires. He blinked at her, his eyes unfocused with exhaustion. His thin jacket lay on the ground, smoldering. Part of his shirt was burned away, exposing his damaged skin beneath.


    He shook his head. "I don''t have much left, and you saw what they did to my last bolt."


    The fighting continued around them, if half-heartedly. The enemy glanced over their own shoulders nervously at the pyromancers. Their lines looked more afraid of the pyromancers than of the Loftians, and Lana didn''t blame them considering what happened. The pyromancers killed as much of their own as they had of the Loftians and their allies.


    Thys appeared by Lana''s side. "I can open a gateway near them. Do you have anyone who can fight by my side?"


    "I’ll go," she said, shaking the exhaustion loose from her body.


    He frowned as he took in her bedraggled appearance. In that moment, she didn''t inspire much confidence.


    "Are you sure?" he asked.


    She saw genuine concern in his eyes, and, for some reason, that irked her. "I’ll go," she repeated, resolutely.


    "Go ahead," Wade said.


    Lana spotted some movement out of the corner of her eye. A dark blur made its way over the landscape, then jumped onto the rhinn soldiers, moving above them at incredible speed. It was coming right at them without anyone seeming to notice.


    Thys narrowed his eyes. "What is that?"


    "We better get going," Wade said, looking nervously between the pyromancers and the new arrival.


    The gateway warrior started opening a gateway, exerting himself, from the sweat streaking down his face. He grunted from the effort. Didn’t their travelers move great distances all the time? It didn’t make sense.


    She didn’t have much time to ponder the question, because the dark blur streaked through the air as the gateway shimmered open, and disappeared through it.


    Thys stepped through after and into the field next to the pyromancers. Lana followed, and Wade kept close, waving for more soldiers to follow in their wake.


    Lana could only stare when she emerged on the other side. Instead of being blasted with fire, she saw the pyromancers lying on the ground, dead and dismembered. They’d been cut into pieces within the few breaths it took her to travel through the gateway. Even as they watched, the blur made short work of the accompanying rhinn soldiers as they fled back through the still open gateways.


    "Kax!" Lana yelled, and the blur froze.


    Those familiar movements, the two obsidian black swords he wielded, and the man''s short stature—it couldn''t be anyone else.


    Kax stopped and slowly turned. Even with the distance between them, Lana took an involuntary step back. Those eyes, they didn’t belong to her friend. And what were those streaks of black crawling up from beneath the scarf he wore around his neck? Kax charged away from the enemy and toward Lana, Wade, and Thys.


    Lana saw Thys’s drawn blade and then Kax’s eyes fixed on the tall gateway warrior. A knot formed in her gut.


    "Kax! Stop! He’s a friend!"


    A gateway opened up before him, created by Thys to redirect the attacker, but he hadn’t needed to bother.


    Kax stopped, all aggression bleeding away. His eyes focused on her, and he grinned. "Hey, Lana."