Three wolves charged simultaneously from different angles. Kaisen intercepted the first easily enough with the clash of steel on claw that sent sparks flying into the night. His sword caught the beast mid-leap, redirecting its momentum while slashing across its flank. Blood sprayed dark across white ash, turning the ground crimson red but the wound barely slowed it.
Rem engaged the second wolf when it came for her, her sword met snapping jaws with the edge of her blade. The impact jarred her arms but she held firm, pushing back while looking for an opening. The wolf was fast—faster than she'd anticipated for a creature to ever move. It circled rapidly, testing her defenses with quick feints and powerful strikes.
Marcus's arrow took the third wolf through the eye before it reached them, the creature dropping mid-charge with its shaft buried deep in skull. A clean kill
"Two down!" he called while already nocking another arrow.
The amalgamations moved then—shambling forward with wrongful movements that made them hard to predict. One launched itself at Marcus with its arms extending impossibly far, clawed hands reaching for his throat. He dropped the bow and drew a knife from his belt in just one single smooth motion, stabbing upward into the creature's exposed chest. Black blood fountained over his hand but the amalgamation didn't seem to notice, continuing to grapple despite the wound.
Elise's ice magic manifested as razor-sharp glaciers that erupted from the ground, impaling two wolves that had tried flanking her position. The beasts howled as cold spread through their bodies, freezing internal organs and stopping their advance. But three more immediately took their place, forcing her to divide her attention.
Rem found an opening in her opponent's pattern, when it lunged for her leg. She pivoted, bringing her sword down in a brutal overhead strike that connected with the wolf's spine. Mutilate activated automatically, flesh and bone exploding outward in shower of gore that painted the nearby ash red-black. The wolf collapsed without even a final whimper, dead before it hit the ground.
But four more beasts already rushed to replace it.
"There's too many!" Kaisen shouted while engaging three wolves simultaneously, sword flashing in a defensive pattern that barely kept fangs from his throat. Blood ran down his arm from a vicious slash he'd taken, steam rising where fire bearing claws had scored flesh.
An amalgamation grabbed Rem from behind—she hadn't even seen it approach through the chaos. Long arms wrapped around her torso with strength that drove air from lungs, crushing her against its malformed chest that felt both too soft and too hard simultaneously. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't even scream as darkness crept into her vision.
Marcus's knife took the creature in the throat, severing whatever passed for vital arteries. It released her with gurgling sound, collapsing backward. "Pay attention!" he snapped while helping her up.
"I'm trying!" Rem gasped while searching desperately for her dropped sword.
"We can't hold here!" Elise's voice carried out. She'd erected ice barriers on three sides but cracks already showed as spider webs from repeated impacts. "They'll overwhelm us in minutes!"
"The wagon!" Kaisen suggested while killing another wolf, his own Mutilate ability tearing through its wounded shoulder with devastating effect. "Get to high ground!"
"No," Elise countered, mind clearly racing through options. "I'll make us an opening. Everyone get ready to run."
"Run where?!" Marcus demanded while shooting another arrow through an amalgamation's head.
"Anywhere but here!" Elise closed her eyes, mana gathering in quantities that made the air itself feel heavy. "Get on the wagon! Now!"
Understanding dawned—she was going to spend everything she had left to give them an escape window. Rem mentally dismissed her sword into the inventory while Marcus grabbed his bow and Kaisen finished his current opponent with brutal efficiency.
All three sprinted for the wagon while Elise stood perfectly still with hands spread wide, ice crystallizing in the air around her in a visible patterns.
"GO!" she screamed as a massive wall of ice erupted from the ground between them and the pack—thirty feet wide and fifteen feet tall, solid barrier that cut them off completely from the beasts. Rem heard impacts immediately as creatures slammed into the other side, howls of frustrated rage and the ominous sound of cracks forming.
They threw themselves onto the wagon in desperate heap, Marcus and Kaisen hauling Rem up behind them while Elise vaulted into the driver's seat. The horse was already panicking, eyes rolling white while it sensed the predators surrounding them.
"Hold on to something!" Elise shouted before cracking the reins hard enough to leave marks on the animal's back.
The horse bolted like its tail was on fire—which, given their circumstances, might become literal reality soon. The wagon careened forward, bouncing violently over the uneven ground while behind them the ice wall shattered with sound like breaking glass amplified a hundred times.
Rem clung to wagon edge while trees whipped past on both sides, white ash spraying everywhere in their wake. On the roof with her, Marcus already had his bow ready despite the unstable platform, while Kaisen gripped his sword with both hands and watched their back trail with grim determination.
The pack followed them.
She could hear them—paws pounding on ground, multiple sources, maintaining pace easily with the horse. They weren't even trying to hide their pursuit, making their presence known through constant howling that echoed between trees.
"Three coming up fast on the left!" Marcus called before loosing an arrow that caught the lead wolf in shoulder. It stumbled but kept coming, joined by two more that emerged from different angles.
The first wolf leaped at the wagon, claws scraping wood as it tried to climb aboard. Kaisen met it with his sword, blade shearing through skull with assistance from wagon's momentum. Blood and brain matter splattered across them all before the corpse tumbled away into darkness.
"They're faster than the horse!" Rem shouted over the chaos while watching more shapes keeping pace through the trees. "We can't outrun them!"
"We don't have to outrun them!" Elise yelled from the driver's seat. "Just need to reach the plains! Open ground will give them no way to surround us!"
"That's two days travel!" Marcus snapped while shooting another wolf, this one falling with arrow through its throat. "We won't last two hours at this rate!"
An amalgamation appeared on the right side, using its wrong-jointed limbs to sprint alongside the wagon with speed that shouldn't be possible. It leaped, grabbing the wagon's edge with two long arms, started pulling itself up. Its face was nightmare made flesh—human features melted and stretched over a pig-like skull, mouth full of fangs that gnashed as it hauled itself higher.
Rem struck down with her sword, severing its fingers that still gripped wagon even after being cut free. The amalgamation fell away screaming, but two more already moved to replace it.
"Behind us!" Kaisen warned while pointing back down their trail.
Rem looked and felt her heart stop. The pack was regrouping—all remaining beasts converging into a single mass maybe fifty yards back. And at their center, clearly visible even in moonlight, moved something that made the two-core creatures look like puppies by comparison.
Lightning crackled across its fur in visible arcs.
The three-core Adult had joined the hunt.
"Fuck," Rem breathed while watching the electric wolf accelerate, leaving even the rest of the pack behind in its incredible burst of speed. "FUCK! It's coming!"
"Where?!" Marcus demanded while spinning to aim.
"Straight up the middle! It's—"
The lightning wolf hit the wagon like a thunderbolt given physical form.
Electricity exploded outward from the point of impact, wood splintering under impossible force while lightning coursed through every metal component. Rem felt it in her bones, her teeth, her eyes—everything hurt everywhere all at once. She screamed but couldn't hear her own voice over the thunder.
The horse took the brunt of it, its big size making it perfect lightning rod. It shrieked once—high and agonized—before collapsing mid-gallop, already dead before its body hit the ground. The smell of cooked meat filled the air immediately, skin blackened and cracked, steam rising from the ruined corpse.
With the horse gone, the wagon lost all forward momentum in instant. It tipped violently sideways, throwing everyone in different directions. Rem felt herself flying, the entire world spinning in a nauseating blur of white and black at impossible angles. She hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs, rolled several times through ash that coated her from head to toe.
Pain exploded across her entire back—white-hot agony that made her earlier injuries from the forest bandits feel like papercuts. The lightning had traveled through the wagon's metal fittings, through her leather armor into her skin directly. She could smell herself burning, her skin cracking and blistering, the taste of copper overwhelmed her due to the blood pooling in her mouth
"No no no no," she whimpered while trying to move, trying to get up. Her back wouldn't cooperate, every attempted movement sending fresh waves of agony through her entire body. "Please no..."
Through watering eyes she saw the lightning incarnate stalking toward her, electricity still arcing between its fangs. It moved with confidence and pride, taking its time to savor the moment before the kill.
Twenty feet away.
Fifteen.
Ten.
A roar split the night—not from the wolf but from Kaisen. Rem managed to turn her head enough to see him charging the three-core alpha with his sword raised and an expression twisted into something between rage and terror. He'd been thrown clear of the wagon, but landed on his feet somehow
"GET AWAY FROM HER!"
The wolf turned to face this new challenger, lips pulling back to reveal fangs that crackled with electricity. For a moment they just stared at each other—monster and man, predator and prey. Then both moved simultaneously.
What followed was the most intense combat Rem had ever witnessed.
Kaisen struck first, sword coming in fast toward the wolf's head. The beast dodged with fluid grace despite its size, countering with a claw swipe that forced Kaisen to spin away. They circled each other for maybe three seconds, both looking for openings
The wolf lunged, jaws snapping for Kaisen's throat. He brought his sword up in a defensive guard that redirected the bite toward his shoulder instead—still got hit, still bleeding, but it was not fatal. His counter strike caught the wolf across its snout, opening a gash that sprayed blood dark as oil.
First blood to the human.
They broke apart, circling each other again. The wolf's eyes narrowed with what looked like respect or possibly just recalculation. It had expected easy kill and instead found a competent warrior. Time to get serious.
The second exchange was faster. The wolf attacked with a combination of claws, fangs, and electrified headbutt that sent Kaisen rolling backward, each hit burnt his skin. He came up swinging, blade catching the beast's shoulder with a solid hit.
The wound gave Mutilate something to work with.
Kaisen pressed his advantage, striking the shoulder wound again with a brutal downward slash. The skill activated with its gluttony—flesh and muscle literally exploding outward in a shower of gore that painted nearby trees red. All she saw was red
The wolf howled in pain, its entire left leg compromised by the massive damage.
But it wasn't done.
Lightning gathered around the beast in visible corona, building to its peak that made the hair on Rem's arms stand up even from twenty feet away. It released everything in an blast that caught Kaisen before he could fully dodge. Electricity coursed through his body, throwing him backward to crash against tree hard enough to crack the bark.
He slid down slowly, smoke escaping his charred body, his eyes opened with a new found fury
The wolf limped toward him, favoring its ruined shoulder . Both combatants were injured now, slowed, bleeding. Question was which would fall first.
Kaisen forced himself upright using the tree for support, sword still gripped in his hand despite obvious pain. "Not yet," he gasped. "Not... done..."
They came together again in flurry of steel and lightning. Kaisen caught a claw across his ribs—deep cut that bled freely. He retaliated with a slash across the wolf's face that took out one of its eyes. The beast bit down on his sword arm, fangs puncturing through the skin. He headbutted it despite the electricity, breaking its grip.
On and on they fought, both deteriorating, both refusing to quit. The wolf landed hits that would have killed a normal person. Kaisen dealt damage that would have felled a normal beast. Neither was normal, neither would yield.
Finally Kaisen saw his opening. The wolf overextended on a lunge, He stepped inside its guard and drove his sword up under its jaw, through the roof of its mouth, into its brain.
The lightning wolf seized once, electricity coursing through the blade into Kaisen who screamed but held firm. Then it went limp, dead weight sliding off his sword to collapse in boneless heap.
Kaisen stood over the corpse for maybe five seconds before his legs gave out, dropping to his knees beside the dead alpha. Burns covered his arms and chest, blood leaked from multiple wounds, he was gasping like he'd run a marathon.
But he was alive. Had somehow killed a three-core alpha in single combat.
Rem tried to say something—congratulations, thank you, anything—but her ruined back chose that moment to remind her it existed. She whimpered instead, face pressed into ash while her body refused to obey commands to move.
Boot steps approached from a different direction. Marcus, somehow also having survived the crash relatively intact. He took one look at Rem's back and hissed through his teeth.
"Don't move," he ordered while dropping to his knees beside her. "Your back is... just don't move."
She heard him rummaging through the pouches, liquid sloshing in bottles and silent curses. Then agony beyond anything she'd experienced before as he poured something directly onto her burned flesh.
Rem screamed into the ash, body convulsing despite his warning to stay still. It felt like he'd poured acid instead of healing potion, like her entire back was being flayed alive, nerve was simultaneously on fire and frozen.
Then numbness. Blessed, beautiful numbness as the potion did its work. Not complete healing—she could still feel the damaged tissue, the smell her own cooked flesh—but enough that the pain became manageable. Enough that she could move without blacking out.
"Can you stand?" Marcus asked while helping her up. His hands were gentle despite the situation, supporting her weight when her legs wanted to give out.
"Barely," Rem admitted while leaning heavily on him. Her sword was somewhere nearby, half-buried in ash. She reclaimed it with trembling hands.
Elise emerged from the wagon wreckage, blood running down her face from a cut above her eye but otherwise mobile. She took in the scene—Kaisen kneeling beside the dead alpha, Rem barely standing with Marcus's support and the remains of the horse.
"Where are the rest?" she asked while scanning the forest.
"Coming," Rem said, because she could hear them. The rest of the pack approaching, drawn by the sounds of combat and smell of blood. Six two-core beasts at minimum, possibly more she'd lost count of. "And there's still one more alpha."
"One more?" Kaisen asked weakly from where he knelt.
"Fire," Rem confirmed while watching the darkness between trees. "A three-core flame wolf. Bigger than the lightning one. Stronger."
The temperature began to rise. Not gradually—all at once, like someone had thrown open a furnace door. Trees started to smoke where their white bark faced the approaching heat source. The ash on the ground began to glow faintly, individual particles igniting.
Then it emerged.
The fire alpha was massive—easily twice the size of the lightning wolf Kaisen had just killed. Its entire body was wreathed in flame, not just smoldering but actively burning with fire that seemed to come from inside its flesh. Each step left pawprints of molten earth that glowed red in its wake. Eyes that were nothing but white-hot cores stared at them with intelligence that made Rem's blood run cold.
And behind it came six two-core wolves, five amalgamations. The rest of the pack, ready to finish what their alpha started.
"We can't fight that," Marcus said flatly. "It's not possible."
"We don't have a choice," Elise replied, though her voice shook. She was out of mana, her ice magic depleted from creating the barrier earlier. Against fire-element beasts with no mana, she was just a woman with a knife.
Kaisen forced himself to stand, using his sword as a crutch. "Then we die fighting."
It started moving faster, walking becoming trotting becoming full sprint. The ground behind it erupted into flame from heat alone. The air shimmered. Rem could feel her eyebrows starting to singe even from thirty feet away.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Marcus raised his bow with one arrow left, shot it directly at the alpha's head. The arrow caught fire mid-flight, burned to ash before it traveled ten feet. Useless.
Ten feet.
Elise threw her knife in desperation. It melted before reaching its target, molten metal droplets hissing where they hit the ground.
Five feet.
The alpha's jaws opened wide, revealing furnace-like throat where orange-white flame churned and built. It was going to breath fire directly into Rem's face, was going to cook her alive from the inside out.
She couldn't move, couldn't dodge, couldn't do anything except watch death approach.
The fire alpha leaped, jaws wide, flame gathering.
And Rem knew with absolute certainty that she was about to burn.