Chapter 15: Change of Plans
Lucas kept to the shadows between the tents as he walked the perimeter, moving slow enough to look like idle restlessness and making sure not to attract attention to himself.
The reinforced wall was huge— stakes driven into the earth, canvas and scavenged metal lashed between them.
Guards were posted at intervals that thinned out considerably the further he got from the central tent.
He watched the gaps as he found them... a stretch where two guards had drifted into conversation and stopped watching the treeline, a low point in the barricade near an edge where the terrain sloped just enough to make climbing simple.
’There,’ he thought, marking the spot in his mind. ’That’s where we go tonight.’
He was turning back toward the supply tent, satisfied, when something caught his eyes...
Lucas ducked low behind a supply crate as two figures staggered into view through a gap in the barricade.
Guards. Or what was left of them.
One had an arm hanging wrong, bone visible through a gash that had soaked his entire sleevewith blood.
The other was worse — dragging a leg that didn’t want to hold weight anymore, one hand pressed hard against a wound in his side that clearly wasn’t going to stop bleeding anytime soon. Both of them moved with the particular single-minded desperation of people who’d already watched something happen to the rest of their group and didn’t dare look back to confirm it.
Lucas didn’t move. He didn’t breathe, following them at a careful distance as they staggered toward the central tent, close enough to hear, far enough to stay unseen.
"Colt—" the first guard gasped, nearly collapsing at the tent flap before another startled guard caught him. "Get Colt. Now—"
It didn’t take long. Colt emerged fast—none of his usual calmness in it, crouching immediately beside the worse-wounded of the two.
"What happened. Where’s the rest of the patrol?"
"Dead." The word came out flat, shell-shocked. "All of them. We were three miles out, scouting like you asked, and they just—" He grimaced through a fresh wave of pain as someone pressed a cloth hard against his side. "They came out of nowhere. Not one or two. Dozens.
Bora, dozens of them. Avallion mixed in, more than I’ve ever seen grouped together."
"How many," Colt said, his voice gone very quiet.
"I don’t know.... I don’t know, we didn’t stop to count, we just ran." The guard’s breathing hitched. "They’re not scattered. They’re moving together. Same direction. They’re coming... coming here."
Colt’s face didn’t change, not visibly, but something in the stillness of it told Lucas everything he needed to know.
"How far out."
"An hour.... Maybe less." The guard’s hand closed weakly around Colt’s sleeve. "They’re coming for the camp. I don’t know why, I don’t know what’s driving them, but they’re coming here."
Lucas didn’t wait to hear anything else....
He was already moving, ducking back through the gap between tents in a sprint, mind racing through the same cold calculation the guard’s words had dropped into his chest. ’a horde, moving together, an hour out’ he thought, and underneath it, the memory of every single Bora and Avalion he’d already bled and died against, one at a time, each of them enough to end him on their own.
’Dozens. All at once. Against a camp that thinks canvas and sharpened stakes counts as a wall.’
He found Iris, Bertram and Callum exactly where he’d left them, still gathered in the shade near the supply tent, still mid-conversation about tonight’s escape plan that had, in the space of two minutes, become entirely irrelevant.
"We have a problem," Lucas said, breathless, and all three of them were on their feet before he’d even finished the sentence.
"What kind of problem," Iris asked, already reaching for her bow.
"A big, messy problem." Lucas dragged in a breath, forcing the words out in order even as panic clawed at the his thoughts. "Patrol just came back. Most of them dead. There’s a horde headed this way.. Bora, Avallion, more of both than anyone’s ever seen grouped together."
Bertram’s face went pale. "A horde," he said. "Headed here"
"That’s what the guard said."
"How is that even possible," Callum said, voice trembling. "They don’t group like that, do they? We’ve only ever seen them alone."
"I don’t know...I don’t care.. right now, we need to—"
The system chimed before he could finish.
[Ding!]
[Warning: Beast Horde detected.]
[Multiple Bora Class entities detected.]
[Multiple Avalion Class entities detected]
[Objective: Survive.]
The notification bloomed across every visible surface of the camp at once, and Lucas watched the effect ripple outward right before his eyes: conversations dying, faces turning toward the treeline, the particular quality of silence that came just before dozens of people all together knew how much danger they were actually in.
Then, from beyond the perimeter, the sound reached them.
Not one growl. Not even two. A rolling, overlapping wall of snarls and shrieks and the heavy, grinding thunder of dozens of armored bodies and the thundering sounds of flapping wings moving as one, closing the last of the distance between the treeline and the camp’s reinforced but painfully thin wall.
"Positions!" Colt’s voice roared across the clearing, guards already scrambling toward the perimeter, weapons drawn, the entire camp lurching into motion all at once. "Everyone capable of fighting, to the wall, now!"
The treeline beyond the barricade began to move.
Shapes broke in a wave — low, grey, armored bodies rolling and uncoiling across the ground in numbers Lucas couldn’t begin to count, and above them, larger silhouettes unfolding wings against the sky, too many joints, closing the distance at a speed that made his stomach drop hard.
[Objective updated: Defend the Faction Zone.]
[Survival probability: 21%]
Lucas stared at the number for a brief moment before the wave hit the wall.
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