Conrad was just realizing quite a few things just now; like the fact that the thrall-pack had raised quite a bit of dust on their chase of him, thick and tall enough to blind them all of their surroundings. Or the fact that he had underestimated just how strong that tree-squirrel Mila had made really was.

  The thing dropped on the larger one's head like an anvil, and without taking so much as a second to recover from the impact, it began clawing and thrashing and just plain maiming. It's hind legs kicked at the creature's ears, mutilating them before they angled inwards to claw at the inner part of it. As this happened, its smaller fore legs went to town with the things eyes, plucking them out just as its sunk its 'teeth' (Really more like extensions of its wooden skull) down on the bridge of the large one's snout, drawing so much of that curdled-up blood of its that some began flowing out its nostrils, despite its semi-solid state.

  Hearing, sight and smell, all taken out just like that.

  It seemed like feeling no pain came with its fair bits of drawbacks for these thralls, because the larger one didn't truly react until the worst of the damage had already been done, thrashing its head around like a wild bronco trying to dismount its rider.

  But the little guy was resilient. Using the hollowed-out holes of the thing's ears like stirrups and its empty socket as bridles, Christopher Robin kept himself right were he was, drawing even more blood with each of its mount's thrashes.

  That, however, proved its undoing, because it wasn't long until the wolf's entire face had been so mutilated, so gored up, that there simply wasn't anything for the little guy to hold onto. The larger one thrashed its head just once more, in the direction where the other three were, and Christopher Robin was sent flying.

  Then, without so much as yelping at the ruinaition of its face, which was now more exposed skull than anything else, the larger one turned on that same direction it had just sent the mini-dryad, and ran with the steady, sure footing of one who hadn't lost its three most important senses.

  In a way, it hadn't really. A new way to perceive the world had taken the reigns long before Christopher Robin had come along, and that was its life-sense: the mystical form of perception that allowed the undead to track all sources of life force around them, the one thing that their foul magic craved.

  This was how centuries-old wights, whose nerves and sensory organs had rotten off long ago, could somewhat guide themselves around, towards the most intense life energy they could find. Thralls, despite their greater intelligence compared to their soulless kin, were just the same, instinctively going for the biggest, closest 'meal, they could perceive when left to their own devices, only being smarter about it.

  Which begged the question: What the hell was the large one doing? Conrad, especially when actively drawing from his Blue Aura, had a superhuman amount of life force within himself, and he was within slashing distance of the thralls. He ought to be the only thing they could perceive right now, so just what the hell was the larger one after? Christopher Robin? He doubted it. The tiny dryad might have been surprisingly lethal when given the chance, but Conrad was sure it didn't have a greater amount of raw life energy than he had, which was all thralls cared about.

  No, it was something else. Christopher Robin wasn't it, but he had made the thrall change its target.

  And then it hit him: that Christopher Robin had been created and controlled by Mila's fae powers, and that those powers were rotted on her body, on her life force. If Mila had actively guided, and most likely empowered, Christopher Robin into that manouvre, then whatever link that existed between them must have been engorged with the life forces of both her and the spirits withing the squirrel's frame.

  A fat, luminous trail to the thrall's life-sense. A trail leading straight to...

  He had to fight against his every battle-drilled instinct to pull his eyes away from the remaining two thralls, but he managed, and the sight he was rewarded with was that of Mila and Alexis waving their arms at the thrall charging at them, only to then turn on their feet and run back to the canyon.

  "No..." whispered Conrad, his blood freezing in his veins. The fright made him default to his instinct again, and his head snapped back at the two remaining thralls, who seemed paralyzed with confusion. The larger one had been their alfa, Conrad knew, both in life and undeath, and they defaulted to it. To her, their mother. Whatever instinct they had retained in their current state remembered that, and now that their alfa was gone, it seemed like they struggled to decide on what to do next. Follow her? Or go for the large prey that's just before us?

  It was like that tale of the donkey placed between two equally good ponds, only to die of thirst.

  And as long as Conrad didn't move or try to draw on his power, they might just stay like that, or even go with the 'follow mom, option, ridding Conrad of having to fight them.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Because it would be Mila and Alexis (Where the hell even was Maxell?) the ones who would have to deal with that, on top of the alfa. Two on one, even against that thing, they had chances to succeed, but if Tweedledee and Tweedledum here joined the fray?

  They would die. Die horribly.

  Conrad knew he was a coward at heart. Ever since he met that man, and heard his terrible truths and his plan, he knew he was a coward. But when his head filled with images of Mila and Alexis being torn to shreds, screaming and crying...

  Conrad was a self-preserving coward, but it seemed like even he had his limits.

  A thought was enough to let his Blue Aura envelop him, drawing both thralls's attention. Then, pressing the pommel of his saber against his stomach like a battle knife's, he dropped all his weight on his uninjured foot, pivoting forward as a dark blue lightning toward the thrall on his left.

  The curved mithril blade of his sword passed below the thing's chin, embedding itself at the point were neck met chest and plungging its entire length into the thing's body, impaling its necrotic core in one fell swoop. It was when Conrad felt the thing's rigid snout hit his shoulder that he knew what to do next.

  There was no way in hell he was yanking the sword out before the snoutless one caught him, so he didn't even try. Instead, he throw his weight to his left, falling on his side and, grabbing the back of the dying thrall's head with one hand while the other kept its grip on his saber's hilt, he pulled the thing down on himself, to cover as much of his body as he could.

  Not even a second later, he felt a weight being dropped atop his meat shield, and heard the crunching of meat being torn apart. The snoutless one had seemingly, on its crazed hunger for the light of life, decided to just try and tear through the corpse of what had been its sibling.

  Conrad tried to yank his sword from the thing's corpse, but the angle was awkward and he couldn't extert the force for it. Godmanit, what now? Could he try to hit it barehanded? A bolt of pain rose from his broken toes as if to answer that question, answer it with a big 'no'. The things were far too tough, and no attack save for something hitting their cores would help killing them.

  He gritted his teeth, holding up the carcass that was currently saving his life. It wouldn't last long before it broke, and that went for both the corpse and Conrad's lift. He was running out of options, so he finally decided to go with his one idea. He pulled one of his arms back, which made holding up the carcass even harder, and coated it Blue Aura from shoulder to fist. Once that thing finally bit through its brother's corspse, Conrad'd throw the strongest punch he could straight for its maw. With some luck he would stun it long enough to hopefully retrieve his sword.

  Failing that, he would at least soften the thing up for someother to take care of.

  The arm he was holding the corpse with began trembling under the weight, and the other one began vibrating due to the energy contained in it. Feeling cold sweat run down his brow, Conrad took one deep breath, perhaps the last one on his life, Conrad prepared himself for the worst.

  But the worst never came, and neither did the thrall's teeth.

  What did come was a certain dilapidated van at full speed, horn blazing, and poised for a very special undead. When it ran over the beast, Conrad only felt a weight being released from his arm, and only saw a shadow wash over him for a fraction of a second.

  After the two or three breaths it took him to process just what had just happened, Conrad pushed the thrall's frame off him, and followed the tire tracks on the dirt with his sight. On the distance, some twenty or so yards away, lay the van with its left side facing Conrad, exposing Maxell's face through the driver's window.

  Between Conrad and the van, sprawled up on the dirt between the two trails the van had left, lay the snoutless thrall. And the bastar wasn't done for just yet. Its legs were all broken, each paw pointed at a different direction, but the head was still moving, its jaws snapping at the air randomly, and the sickly green mass of energy within its belly pulsated with unlife.

  "Son of a bitch," Conrad lamented. With a groan of effort, he pulled the thrall's corpse to his left, finally giving himself the angle to yank out his sword. The gunk of the thing's entrail ran off the glimmering blade like water off oiled leather, and by the time he pulled himself onto a seating position, he was holding a pristine, new-looking saber.

  With a tired sigh, Conrad slang the blade over his shoulder, pointing at the thing with his free hand to measure the distance, and, with a quick burst of Blue Aura, threw the sword like a javelin, straight for the thing's stomach.

  It went through the air with a hiss, and stabbed into the necrotic core like the wolf's flesh wasn't even there. The thing thrashed around a little, smoke emanating thinly from its wound, and then it fell limp.

  It was then that the van roared back to life, cruising in an arc to stop right besides Conrad, casting some very appreciated shadow on him.

  "Holy hell!" Maxell exclaimed as he jumped out the vehicle. "Are you okay, man? Oh my God that was hardcore!"

  "Maxell."

  "Did you see that shit, dude?! I ran over that thing! Christ on a stick, man, I nearly hit you...wait...did I hit you?!"

  "No, you did not, Max. Now could we-?"

  "That was all of them, right? I mean, it had to-"

  "Maxell!" Conrad screamed, startling the novice undead-slayer. "Mila and Alexis! The biggest wolf! Into the fucking canyon, remember?!"

  Something weird happened to Maxell then: the panic and nervousness present on his face seemed to grow explosively, only to then drop back to nothing, leaving cool determination behind. It was as though his brain had reached its capacity for fear and adrenaline, and decided to just loop back to zero.

  "What do we do?" Maxell then asked, all but demanding the instruction.

  Conrad gestured at the snouless one's body with his head. "Go fetch my sword," Then, he gestured at the van. "But first let help me into the van. Then, we go for the girls-auurgh!"

  Maxell took a deep, Pneuma-activating breath, and lifted Conrad with one arm as he opened the van's sliding door with the other. Then he put Conrad into the vehicle and went for his sword. Not even ten seconds later he returned, tossing the glimmering blade on the blond sworsman's lap and hopping onto the driver's seat.

  "Hold on," he warned Conrad before he hit the pedal, speeding the van towards the canyon that conected the town with the outside world.

  Toward Mila and Alexis.