Valan recovered from the attack remarkably quickly, shaking off the obvious pain as he pulled Everyn onto the dock swiftly with little time to care that he was moments away from pulling her arm out of its socket.

  Though Everyn didn’t care. She would have time to make him feel bad for it later. For now only one thing mattered.

  As she quickly righted herself, pulling off her crossbow to join the fray, she found the scene before her was somehow worse than she anticipated.

  Ryala had been forced from her shadowy invisibility and was in the process of casting a Dome of Isolation around their tiny battlefield to keep their attacker from calling in reinforcements.

  Though Everyn knew that act was a waste of time the moment she realized what was attacking them.

  It wasn’t a Fae soldier that came from the upper city but something arguably worse in a number of ways.

  Standing before them was one of the Fae’s undead monstrosities, a Faedemon.

  While not as magically powerful, thankfully for Valan, they were significantly harder to kill. At this close a range, with the element of surprise, killing a Fae would be far more simple.

  Each beam of searing light that Sterling threw at the monster might as well have been sharp stones.

  The creature didn’t even bother to dodge, instead taking the hits with as much annoyance as though they were the stings of bothersome insects. The wounds sealed as quickly as they graced its skin, liking tiny starburst scars that faded with nearly as much haste as the wounds.

  However this did buy time for Ryala to finish her spell. It would keep out physical communication and block most human magical communication. But at her casting level, especially in the short time she had to prepare, would do nothing against the psychic bond between Faedemon and master.

  Which meant if this thing decided to call home, they would have moments before they were overrun with threats their tiny party wouldn’t have a shadow of a hope of surviving.

  “Forget it!” Everyn shouted amid the chaos. “Valan! Take the crates! Run all of you! Run!”

  In one fluid motion, Everyn slid her protective sheaths under her sleeves up and slammed her wrists together. The tiny vials strapped to them shattered, showering her forearms in tiny stinging shards. The wounds were not enough to cut deeply but enough to bleed; exactly as was required.

  She flicked her wrists back, streaking the spare bolts strapped to her thighs in her mixture of her own blood and her carefully formulated concoction.

  Her own blood within the concoction made her immune to what was coming next, but the others weren’t.

  And more importantly, It wasn’t.

  Sterling’s eyes met hers as she loaded the lightly sizzling bolt into her crossbow. His voice came through their Mage Stones, “You heard her! Run! River 04, Valley 19 , and Evergreen 241. Steel on 45.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The escape route codes were heard by the group with little acknowledgement.

  Valan glanced at her briefly as he tossed one crate onto each shoulder. Everyn winced as she heard something crack within the ingredient crate, but she didn’t let it skew her aim. If they lost one ingredient, to save the rest, it was worth it.

  The moment her three teammates were at the minimum safe distance she squeezed the trigger.

  The Faedemon’s attention focused on her as the bolt sailed through the air and wedged itself between the sand covered road pavers, dripping slowly drying alchemical ooze on the street below.

  It’s attention barely shifted to the bolt as a look of bland amusement filled his dark eyes, “Go on. Try again.” He turned his body to face her, mocking her as he gave her a bigger target to aim for. “If you’re going to make a futile attempt on a Faedemon's life, try not to miss."

  “I didn’t miss," Everyn replied as she loaded a second bolt.

  The Faedemon looked as though he was about to reply with more cruel mockery but he didn’t get a chance as the second bolt was freed from the crossbow and similarly zipped past the Fademon, but this one did strike its target, just barely grazing the side of the first crossbow. The friction ignited the now-dry concoction.

  With a vibrant flash of white light, the near empty street filled with thick purple smoke.

  Everyn could hear the Demon begin to choke on her perfectly formulated toxic haze. Though she wished she did, she couldn’t find any joy in the sound. This wouldn’t kill it.

  This Demon wore black. It was an elder Faedemon, created a good while before the war, decades at least, possibly centuries.

  This smog would, at best, render it unconscious, but it would recover quickly from the Sparkdrain.

  If she was fortunate she’d have a few seconds before it recovered enough to regain consciousness. If she were very lucky this one wouldn’t have given itself a Mistsight Runebind but, realistically, she knew that was a pipedream.

  Unlike humans, Faedemons had little care about what Binds were placed on their skin, lashed to their Spark. They had more than enough power to sustain them, especially the elders.

  Everyn braced herself, mentally feeling for her Runebind. Its careful sigils strapped to the very essence of her magical capability, drawing her power even when inactive.

  She didn’t need to do this, but it gave her some comfort. Like a lifeline to her power. She was the fastest, even before the Bind. This just made her far more nimble. And she would need that edge to make her getaway the second this Demon went down.

  She just hoped she’d distracted it long enough to give the others a good head start.

  Ears piqued, she listened for the sound indicating it was safe.

  The coughing stopped, but the sound of a body hitting stone didn’t come. A thousand thoughts swam through her mind.

  Did it run from me? It was an elder, it wouldn’t have run from such a low threat.

  Did it go after the others? She would have heard it.

  Had it somehow become immune to the smoke? Not possible.

  Each feasible answer was quickly discounted as apprehension rose.

  Where is it?

  But that’s when she felt it.

  A deep prickling at the base of her skull. The tiny wisps of curly hair raising with a primal instinct.

  A tiny rabbit sensing a predator, her Runebind activated and she took off through the smoke barely giving the feeling a chance to become a full thought.

  The threat was no longer safe within the haze.

  Something grasped her hood, snagging the curls beneath it, ripping out strands of hair out of her skull, yanking her head back for a mere moment as she fled through the smog into the dark of night.