Chapter 32: The Mountain
The first Hestia had cornered them against a jagged slab of rock and Mark planted his feet directly between the beast and the fighters at his back, gauntlets flaring bright as its massive paw crashed against his raised arms.
The impact drove him back a full step, boots grinding grooves into the churned earth, but he held... that was the whole point of him, the entire reason [Bastion’s Oath] had chosen to bind itself to someone like Mark in the first place. Not the fastest.... Not the flashiest. Just the guy who didn’t move when moving meant someone behind him got hurt.
"Still standing fucker!" he bellowed, more for his own people’s benefit than the creature’s, absorbing an impact that would have flattened anyone without the skill humming beneath his skin. "Callum, eyes!"
"On It!" Callum’s light flared blinding bright, aimed square at the creature’s uninjured eye, and the Hestia flinched back with a furious snarl, giving Bertram the few moment opening he needed.
"HA!" Bertram’s machete carved a deep gash along the beast’s flank, dark blood hissing where it met the smoldering fur and the Hestia reeled, momentarily off-balance.
"Lora! I need you!!"
She was already moving, speed skill flaring, a blur of motion darting in low and fast to bury her dagger in the joint behind the creature’s foreleg before vanishing back out of range just moments before its retaliating swipe could catch her.
"That’s four hits in under a minute," Mark called out, grinning despite the strain still visible in his stance. "We’re actually winning this thing!"
"Don’t jinx it!" Callum shouted back as he ran past. Though there was real hope threading through the panic in his voice now.
The fight had a rhythm to it that Mark had learned to build over weeks of drills back at the fortress.
Position himself as the wall the beast couldn’t move past, let Callum’s light blind and disorient, let Bertram and Lora punish every opening the blindness created.
It wasn’t elegant....
It wasn’t the seamless, instinctive partnership Lucas and Eleanor seemed to have found on the other side of the battlefield. But it worked, hit by hit, and Mark had never needed elegance. He’d built an entire fortress on being the guy who simply refused to move, refused to stand then even when the odds were against him...
A young fighter near the back of their formation barely more than a boy, spear trembling visibly in his grip froze as the Hestia’s head swung toward him mid-turn, jaws parting.
"Shit!" Mark was already moving, wedging his own body into the gap before the beast could commit to the strike, gauntlets raised, taking the brunt of a blow meant for someone half his size. "Eyes on me. Not the beast. ME."
The boy’s gaze snapped to him, wide and terrified, spear hand shaking so badly the weapon nearly slipped free.
"I can’t—" the boy’s voice cracked entirely. "I can’t do this, I’m going to die, I’m going to—"
"You’re not going to die." Mark said it flat, absolute, the same tone he had used in ordering a supply run or settling a dispute back home... not comforting exactly, just certain, the kind of certainty that left no room for the boy’s own fear to argue with it.
"You know why? Because I’m standing right here, and I don’t plan on letting anything through this position. Not today."
"But—"
"No buts. Look at me." Mark held his gaze, steady even as the Hestia recovered its footing behind him and prepared to lunge again.
"You’ve survived worse than this already. You survived the wall breaking at Colt’s old camp. You survived the horde. This is just another Tuesday, You’ve got this."
Something in the boy’s expression shifted. It wasn’t fearlessnes, not even close, but steadier, the trembling in his spear hand easing bit by bit as he sucked in a breath and planted his feet properly for the first time since the fight had started.
"Okay," Kai said, voice still thin but no longer cracking. "Okay.... I’ve got this."
"Damn right you do." Mark clapped him once on the shoulder, and turned back to the fight with a grin that felt more confident than he actually was.
He’d learned this much leading a fortress full of terrified strangers: Sometimes the fight itself mattered less than making one person believe, for just long enough, that they were capable of standing in it.
The boy didn’t need a lecture on courage. He needed someone bigger and louder and more certain than his own fear, standing close enough that the fear had somewhere else to go.
"Now get behind me and wait for your opening!"
The Hestia lunged again, and this time the boy didn’t freeze. He darted forward the instant Mark’s gauntlets caught the creature’s paw, driving his spear into an exposed joint with a cry that was more determination than fear and the beast shrieked as the blade found it’s place in an open wound.
"That’s it!" Mark roared, delighted despite the strain in his arms. "That’s my boy! Bertram, follow up!"
Bertram’s machete found the same joint a single moment later, widening the wound, and the creature staggered, favoring the leg the boy had just crippled.
"We’re actually doing this," Callum said, disbelieving, light flaring bright again as the beast reeled. "We’re actually winning."
"Told you," Mark said, though privately he’d been just as uncertain as any of them until this exact moment. "We’re the second-best team on this battlefield, and that’s only because Lucas and Elle are cheating with whatever weird chemistry they’ve got going on over there." He said jabbing a thumb at their direction...
"Focus, Mark," Bertram said, barely holding in a chuckle..
"I AM focused! I’m always—"
"ROOOAARRR!!!!"
The Hestia they were fighting suddenly went rigid.
Its head snapped up, ears or whatever passed for ears on something built like this —turning toward the distant sound of a roar carrying across the battlefield from where Lucas and Eleanor’s fight raged.
It was a different pitch entirely from anything the creature in front of them had made, sharper, louder and clearly not a cry of pain.
Mark’s stomach dropped.
"That’s not good," he said, watching their own Hestia’s stance shift, its wounded, staggering posture straightening with sudden, unnatural purpose.
"That is not good," he repeated, "Not good at all..."
The beast turned fully away from them, ignoring the fresh wound in its leg entirely, attention locked now toward the sound of its counterpart’s call.
"Uh," the boy said, spear still raised, voice climbing back toward panic. "Why is it looking at them?"
Mark didn’t have an answer, and the lack of one sat cold in his chest. Two Hestia weren’t supposed to coordinate like this...weren’t supposed to call to each other mid-fight... weren’t supposed to abandon a nearly-won battle the instant its counterpart signaled something.
Whatever that roar had actually meant, it clearly mattered more to the creature than its own survival.
"Bertram, keep it occupied if you can," Mark said, already moving, gauntlets still flaring.
"Lora, with me. Callum, get the others back if this thing’s about to bolt, I don’t want anyone caught in its path."
"Where are you going?" Bertram called after him, machete still raised against the creature that was steadily disengaging from their fight entirely.
Mark ignored him and ran towards Lucas and Eleanor as heavy footsteps echoes behind him, drawing closeer...
"This is not good..."
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