‘It is time,’ I bellowed through the portal relays, my voice echoing around the city. ‘Those of you still here, those of you still cowering in fear, awaiting the day that you are dragged out of your homes, turned into one of those monsters… it is time. We rise as one, all of us, together, and we fight our way out. I can’t pretend it won’t be dangerous—it is—but the alternative is to stay. And if you stay, you die—that is a certainty.

  ‘We have seen what the Players are capable of. We have seen one burn Plainside to the ground. We saw one strip the Tundras of resources to bolster their war machine. We’ve seen one unleashed the very same corruption across the Armada as you’ve suffered here. It is time to shed our illusions that Players are heroes, that they are noble and honourable, and it is time to embrace those qualities ourselves. Be the heroes you want others to be. Rise up now, and survive this night.’

  I could hear soldiers running outside, charging for what they thought was the source of my bellows, but of course they were wrong. Each of them thought my voice came from one of those portal relays dotted around the city, and none of them realised that I was standing in the very building they were here to guard.

  A hand clasped me gently on the shoulder. ‘She’s done,’ Val said, nodding over to the smoldering crates. At that very same moment, Zoi was gesturing the fire down with her hands, as though extracting its innate mana from the room. She extinguished the last of the flames seconds later.

  ‘Time to go,’ I said, and with the flick of my wrist I opened a portal back atop the very same rooftop. The snow had picked up once more, but the white dusting wasn’t enough to awake the unconscious citizen of Tradum. Arzak crouched over the man, who was propped up against the chimney, slapping him gently around the face.

  ‘Poison, we think,’ Corminar said, as we arrived at their side. ‘Val, perhaps you can…’

  My wife stepped forward, placing her hands on the man’s pale face for a minute, before shaking her head. ‘It’s beyond me, but he’ll wake up in time.’

  ‘Mm,’ Arzak said, nodding, before grabbing the unconscious man and slinging him over her shoulder. ‘Then I carry.’

  ‘You said there was a plan?’ Zoi asked me. ‘For getting us out of here?’

  ‘For getting the survivors out of here,’ I corrected her. I strode over to the side of the rooftop, looking down to the snow-dusted street below. Already the remaining citizens of Tradum were poking their heads out of the buildings, weighing up their attempt at escape. ‘We can get out no problem. But for everyone else, it’s a numbers game. The soldiers can’t catch all of them, but we know they’re going to catch some.’

  Down below, a soldier shouted and pointed as they spotted a young teenage pair slip out from a building. Several of her fellow soldiers in gold began to rain down on the innocents’ positions.

  ‘Our job,’ I continued, ‘is to make sure they catch as few as possible.’

  I opened portals beneath the enemy, a portal to a soldier. Half of them fell through, finding themselves suddenly in the sky high, high above the frosty city. The other half instinctively grabbed at the rims of the portals, or darted to avoid them entirely.

  ‘Oh, I don’t like this at all,’ the tiefling replied.

  I opened a portal each for Lore and Arzak to step through, down to the street level. As Val, Corminar, Zoi and I followed, Lore dispatched one of the remaining soldiers instantly. Arzak took a second to place the unconscious local down on the thin layer of snow before attacking another soldier with her dual blades, her swipes near as fast as I’d ever seen before; we’d all come to truly despise those involved with the malae.

  Corminar clipped the last of the soldiers with an arrow, but it glanced off the enemy’s shoulder plate. A second later, the soldier raised a throwing knife, aiming at the elven ranger.

  A panicked Zoi raised her hands to blast the soldier with her flames, but… only a whisper of fire spouted forth from her hands. ‘I…’

  As the throwing knife spun through the air, I flicked a portal open just in front of Corminar, in the nick of time. My aim was off slightly; the knife didn’t make it through the portal but instead clipped the edge, sending it spinning ineffectively into the snow.

  I opened a portal and dropped Lore on the last of the soldiers, and moments later I felt more experience point notifications pop up. I ignored them for now. We had a job to do.

  ‘You two,’ I said, spinning to where the teenagers had been a moment earlier. ‘Get—’ But they were gone already, having fled in the chaos of the brief fight. Good for them.

  Arzak picked up the unconscious man from the ground once more, and we headed north, creeping at first before I remembered myself. The more attention we drew, the more others would escape. That was why we were here. That was what true heroes did.

  The tiefling shifted forwards, to join me and Arzak at the front of the pack. She visibly swallowed before speaking. ‘I’ve never used my fire magicks on a living being before,’ Zoi explained, referring to her ineffective spell from a few minutes earlier. ‘The malae… they were the first.’ She didn’t say the next bit, but I knew it was there. She didn’t like how it felt to burn things. No, that wasn’t it at all; she didn’t like how much she liked to burn things. That was always the allure of fire magicks, and always its curse.

  ‘They would deserve it,’ Arzak grumbled back at her as she wrenched her blade free of the enemy’s chest. ‘But understand what you mean.’

  Zoi nodded back at the orc, and smiled, though Arzak was too busy concentrating on the task at hand to notice. ‘Thank you,’ the tiefling said, and squeezed Arzak’s shoulder gently. This, the orc noticed—as evidence by the flushed cheeks—but still she kept her eyes scanning our surroundings.

  We dispatched another handful of soldiers as we made our way north. These soldiers weren’t in their usual squads, and were more fragmented than they should have been—separated amongst the chaos of more and more locals beginning to flee their homes.

  A mother clutching a young child yelped as she turned a corner to see us, but a kind smile from Val—directed at the child, I noticed, not the mother—calmed her. The mother joins our party as we wound through the streets, and I couldn’t decide whether she was safer with us—and the attention we were drawing—or without out—and outside of our protection.

  As we continued through the streets, our combined footsteps softened by the settling snow, more joined us. A lone older woman emerged from a house as we past it. A family burst forth from the cellar access door of an ancient-looking tavern. A gaggle of children—no parent in sight—emerged from a dark alley, having apparently already made the decision to flee, but much happier doing so at the sight of protectors.

  It came to the point where we had enough people following us that I decided we were better off going unseen by enemies, rather than drawing them to us. We had people under our protection now, and our duty to them was to see them out of the city alive.

  And so I led our contingent off the main streets and down back road, and alleyways. Corminar and Val scouted ahead using my portals, keeping us clear of trouble, but that didn’t mean we were perfect. A soldier stumbled upon us, as surprised by the sight of us as we were of him, and he was able to fire an arrow before we could take him down. It was one of the locals, the older woman, who took the arrow to the gut, but Val’s Healing magicks and Corminar’s potions were enough to save her before the blood loss became too great. Lore took to carrying the weakened woman, and it wasn’t long before she was completely distracted from her semi-healed wound by Lore’s solid, carved chest.

  As we turned down another alleyway, we stumbled across across another. A huge figure, barely visible in the dim light of the snowstorm, but distinctive enough in appearance that Val and I recognised him. Reginald.

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  I saw Zoi open her mouth to shriek at the sight before us, but Val saw it too. My wife clasped her hand over the tiefling’s mouth before she could give away our position to the hordes of soldiers. ‘I know him,’ Val said, as reassuringly as possible. ‘I know him.’

  ‘You know this—’ Arzak started, and before the orc could call Reginald a bear, I interrupted.

  ‘This human man is called Reginald,’ I said. Lore and Corminar looked at me like I’d finally lost it, but I ignored them for now. ‘Reginald, meet Arzak, Zoi, Lore and Corminar.’ I pointed at each of them in turn.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Val asked. ‘This is no place for a…’ She trailed off as she searched for the right ending to that particular sentence. ‘This is no place for a bard.’

  In answer, the bear stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Val, squeezing her tight in another of his overly eager hugs. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Corminar twitch, ready to strike if this was an attack on his friend. ‘It is so, so good to see you, my friend,’ Reginald said. ‘Twice in one fortnight, what a treat! If only it were not under such dire circumstances.’

  Lore shifted his hold on the woman he was still carrying to free up one arm, which he thrust forward to shake the bear’s hand. ‘Any friend of Val’s…’ he started.

  ‘...is a friend of mine!’ Reginald finished.

  Lore smiled; he’d met someone on his wavelength. It was a shame, in retrospect, that this person was actually an animal. ‘Lore,’ he said.

  ‘Reginald.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Reginald?’ Val repeated, brushing herself down because her coat was now covered in fur.

  I grew conscious of the crowd behind us, keeping their distance from the bear, stepping closer only as it became clear that it wasn’t about to attack us. Still, we couldn’t wait around here for long. ‘Val, I think…’

  ‘I heard the rumours, and I came to rescue people, as heroes of legend do. Of course, I didn’t know heroes of legend would already be here.’

  Lore pointed to himself in surprise, then bashfully batted the compliment away.

  There was an opportunity here, I realised. ‘Reginald, how is your stealth?’

  ‘I am as stealthy as I am brawny,’ the bard replied. ‘Especially if I use my—’

  ‘Good,’ I said, cutting to the chase. ‘Get everyone out of here. Keep to the backroads. Stay out of sight.’

  The bear’s face dropped. I didn’t realise a bear’s face could drop, but it did. ‘But Styk, my friend, there are perhaps three hundreds soldiers still in Tradum. We—’

  ‘We will draw them to the south. We’ll clear a path.’ I turned to the citizens under our protection. ‘Go. Go with him. He’ll keep you safe.’ Before anyone could argue this point, I opened a portal at my side, and turned back to Reginald. ‘Good luck,’ I told him, ignoring the part of my brain shouting that I was trusting a hundred lives to a bear, and then I stepped through the portal.

  Back on the rooftops, I waited for the team to join me before letting the portal close once more. Arzak and Lore had shed their loads, and through the portal I could see that the unconscious man was now draped over Reginald’s shoulder. When the portal was gone, my gaze lingered on Zoi. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t go with him.’

  ‘I figured my chances were better with you.’

  ‘Let’s hope not, for their sakes.’ I opened another portal to put us on a rooftop to the south, putting space between us and Reginald’s group, before activating my Portal Relay ability once more. This time, I made no effort to hide my location. ‘Alright, Arit,’ I shouted, my voice echoing around the city. ‘You want a fight? Let’s have one. City centre, in about, oh, let’s say… now.’

  We were in the central square moments later, assisted by portals, and we beat Arit there. If he was even coming. In fact, the only sign of trouble that I could see were two looming silhouettes plodding slowly down one of the adjoining streets. I recognised one of them by their flaming sword and shield, neither of which were sheathed any more.

  Only when they were well in sight, even through the snowstorm, did they come to a halt. ‘Slayers?’ the one with the flaming sword growled.

  ‘That’s right,’ Val replied.

  The enemy nodded. ‘Very well. Let us have our battle.’

  ‘I think we can handle a couple of knights of the realm,’ Corminar scoffed.

  A portal opened up behind them. Not one of mine. And through it stepped Arit, the Player worldbender, as well as maybe two dozen more of Amira’s soldiers.

  ‘And what about now, Lieutenant Cladenor?’ Arit replied.

  Though this was what we’d wanted, Corminar’s smirk faded.