THE BLADES.
The moment she fell, it was like something else slipped and broke inside him. He was a machine with a wrench in its gears, metallic teeth not catching, something slipping out of order, a piston grinding helplessly into silence. A splutter and a stop, and that bright clarity of synchronicity ebbed away: Rictor no longer moved in a coordinated heartbeat with Balder Lorz. Instead, bleeding and wounded, he moved to cover the mage.
The corpses were not clever – they had tried to target weak points in the knights' armour, but they were too slow to do it reliably. Instead, their swords and daggers had gone for Amos, and they had magicks summoned by intangible billowing ghosts and undead mages, each spell like a breaking wave against Rictor's body. Frost stinging at his fingertips, fire gnawing at his neck. The smell of burnt flesh. Their group had thrown themselves headfirst into this madness. Which was reckless, perhaps, but they knew what they were doing (and this is what he told himself, again and again, while swearing over and over under his breath). Others could hold the field outside and prevent the undead from reaching the city, but in the meantime, the source had to be found and exterminated. The caves were a hollow winding labyrinth, a hungry maw swallowing up parties one by one. It had been reckless, but they had to do it—
And they had succeeded, it seemed. The tidal wave of rotting corpses in this passageway seemed to have slowed. Ric listened, craning to hear, and though the ground trembled beneath them (what was that?), no more enemies seemed forthcoming. All he could hear was their own heavy breathing and the rustle of Luscini's papers. That tight web of anxiety in his gut only unclenched slightly once he saw that their Kaplan was still standing, their fixed point and anchor teetering on his feet.
He took position above the scholar, like a loyal hound stationed before its master. Almalexia and Rictor could tear each other apart, could gibe and mock and tease with words calculated to flay, to draw stubborn laughter from insult – but Faram forbid anyone lay an actual hand on her. He was realising this now. He realised it the moment his boot stepped away from his brothers' sides, skidding in dirt and rocks and blood.
The knight ejected spent shells with a swift click, the metal hissing, empty bullets like firebrands against his fingertips. The new ones slid in easily, ready to be unloaded in another skeleton's ribcage if they dared come near.
But the cave was quiet: blood-soaked and silent, their party limping on a knife's edge of anticipation, simply waiting for the other shoe to drop. And Ric dropped to one knee, a hand reaching for her shoulder, her hand, brushing a matted lock of hair from her cheek.
“Lex,” he said. (Not ‘Lliryn’. Not here, not now. Rictor shed the military surnames like melting water, and he could have cursed himself for that lapse.) He looked back over his shoulder, body twisting in his armour. “Father. Are they gone?”