Gesine’s expression is a mix of shock, amazement, and horror, but when she sees me watching her, my stomach lurching at what I animated, she urges, “Again!”
I catch and tear apart two more saplings before they smarten up and move out of reach. I let my octopus dissolve quietly into the pond.
“Romeria!” Gesine shouts, pointing toward another corner where a sapling has hopped over the weakened fire line.
He cuts down a brave mortal with a single sweep of his sword before charging for the next. His path is clear. He’s coming for us.
My rage surges. I hit him with a blast of air that sends him flying into the firepit, his horrendous screams making me shudder, but I refocus as another sapling crosses the line.
And another.
They’ve officially breached the camp. We can’t fight them all off.
“Zander!” I shriek.
He’s charging for a sapling when I call him. His head snaps toward me, and upon seeing the situation, he abandons his chase and races in, Elisaf in close pursuit.
All over the grass, legionaries lie motionless, paralyzed by silver cord. Even Abarrane has succumbed. But within the camp’s boundaries, saplings stream in from all sides.
“I have to free them. I’m the only one who can.” They need Gesine up here, fighting.
“Be careful. And remember, the longer they are bound, the longer it will take them to recuperate.” She drops the shield and begins blasting again as I scramble down.
Pan struggles to drag Fearghal out of harm’s way, the bulky man groaning in pain.
I lend my strength, and together we tuck him under a wagon. “Hang in there, and Gesine will fix it for you.”
“Aye. Not the way I pictured goin’.”
“Pan, I need your help. Come with me now.”
Together we leap over the dwindling fire border, now merely a charred line with glowing embers. Sprinting from one legionary to the next, we yank away the merth cords.
One by one, the legionaries stir with gasps before fumbling for their swords and staggering to their feet.
Pan frees Abarrane before I can, and when I reach her, she’s up and seething.
“They’re in the camp!” I point toward it. “Zander is there.”
With an enraged battle cry, she charges toward them.
“Have you seen Jarek?”
Pan shakes his head, and I curse.
He must have fallen where he met that line of saplings. I squint, but it’s too far away and I can’t see anything.
“What do I do with these?” Pan holds up a bunch of merth cords.
“Burn them in the pit and then go hide under a wagon! Do not get yourself killed!” I don’t wait, rushing off in the direction of Ianca’s burial site, my pulse hammering as I stumble and veer around rocks and blueberry bushes.
Three bodies lie facedown in the grass, but none are Jarek, their hair a signature stark white.
I keep moving farther away from camp, the darkness swallowing me whole, wishing I had Gesine’s floating orb. But I have my own light source, I remember. I call on my affinity and ignite a bush, followed by another, and another. They create a path forward, leading me along a trail of sapling corpses.
Finally, I spot Jarek twenty feet away, lying next to a sapling, his double-edged sword buried in the sapling’s chest.
A silver cord is wrapped around Jarek’s neck. It looks like the sapling made a last-ditch effort to subdue him as the warrior cleaved into him.