“We can’t stay here,” Rojas said. “They outnumber us.”
The boy nodded. “Someone other than me is gonna have to organize the retreat.”
For half a heartbeat, nobody answered.
The clearing around the prison dome was covered in noise—rifle cracks, powder smoke, women shouting names, children crying thin and sharp. The hole the boy had cut in the living roots had become a mouth vomiting people and fear into the open.
Elven arrows hissed through the brush in steady pairs and threes.
A Cheyenne man near the opening jerked as an arrow buried itself in his thigh. He bit down on a sound and kept dragging a limping woman through the gap anyway.
Rojas stepped up beside the boy, rifle in his hands, face smeared with soot and blood that wasn’t all his.
“I’ll do it,” Rojas said.
“Listen up!” he barked, in English first. “Women and little ones—middle! You hear me? Middle! If you’ve got a gun and you can stand, you’re on the outside! We move now!”
A few heads turned. A few stared like they didn’t understand the idea of moving away from a fight they’d waited days to begin. Rojas pointed hard, chopping the air.
“Cheyenne—shoot, then move!” he shouted, and then he switched into rough Spanish. “?Muévanse! ?No se queden como idiotas! Shoot and run, shoot and run!”
The tall Cheyenne leader—the one with flint eyes—stepped into the open. He had a caplock rifle in his hands now, the stock scarred, the barrel dark. He had powder smudged on his fingers. He said something in his own tongue—fast, clipped. Men answered. Then, in English that was thick and blunt, he said to Rojas, “We will follow you.”
Rojas met his gaze without flinching.
“Good,” Rojas snapped. “Walk fast and shoot straight.”
The boy grabbed two more rifles from the pile he’d been feeding into hands and shoved them toward the closest men who looked like they could still lift their arms.
“Caps,” he said, and tossed a pouch. “Powder. Don’t spill it.”
A Cheyenne youth caught the pouch with shaking fingers and nodded once.
Good.
The elf shield line in the brush was regrouping. The leaf-shaped shields rose, overlapping into a wall. Behind them, pale bows came up in a row—tall as a man, staves curving like living branches.
Rojas saw it too.
“Move!” he yelled again. “Now!”
The column started to form. It wasn’t neat or orderly. It was families pressed tight, old people dragged along, boys with knives and rifles stepping into flanks like they’d been born to guard. The boy stepped backward toward the edge of the clearing, eyes scanning for anything he could use. A dead elf lay near the root wall where the boy had shot the staff-wielder through the throat. The elf’s armor was leaf-plate and fine mail. Gold had pooled under its neck in a bright, wrong smear.
A bow lay beside it.
The boy had never held a bow in his life. Not once.
He crouched and snatched it up. It was lighter than it looked. The wood—if it was wood—felt warm, like it still remembered being alive. The string was something pale and slick, almost like sinew but too smooth. He grabbed the elf’s quiver too and slung it over his shoulder. The strap slid across his coat and caught on a tear, but it held. The first arrow he pulled out felt strange in his grip. The head was a long, narrow leaf of black metal that drank light.
He tried to nock it the way he’d seen Kiowa do.
His fingers fumbled. The notch didn’t catch. The arrow slipped and fell into the dirt.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
Another arrow hissed through the clearing and punched into the root wall by the dome opening. The living wood shuddered and lit faintly green along a vein. The boy picked the arrow back up, forced it onto the string, and drew.
The draw was heavy, like it wanted to twist his shoulder and pull him off line. His arm shook for a half-beat. No one his age would’ve been able to pull it back. His gaze found an elf face peeking over a shield edge—smooth cheek, bright eye, mouth curled. He let the string go. The arrow snapped away with a soft thrum that didn’t sound like any weapon he knew.
It hit the shield.
Not the elf.
The leaf-plate shield quivered. The arrow sank in a handspan and stuck there, humming. The elf’s mouth curved in amusement. The boy’s teeth clenched.
So that was the trick. Shields could take arrows. Fine. He pulled another arrow. Nocked it faster this time. Drew. Felt the bow’s pull settle into his back muscles instead of his arm. He tilted the point—not at the center of the shield, but at the edge where it overlapped another.
He let go.
The arrow slipped through that seam like it had been invited. It punched into the elf’s throat behind the shield line. Gold sprayed in a thin fan. The elf dropped the shield and fell backward out of sight. The boy’s breath steadied. He pulled again.
Behind him, Rojas was herding the column into motion, shoving men into positions with the heel of his hand and a voice sharp enough to cut rope.
“You two—rear! You—watch that side! If you reload, do it while you walk!”
The Cheyenne flanks were already firing. Rifle cracks popped in uneven rhythm. Smoke drifted low through the green air. Elves behind the shield wall took hits and fell with surprised expressions, as if bullets were an insult they simply could not accept.
The boy kept the bow low and walked backward, matching the retreat’s pace, arrow after arrow leaving his hand.
At first his shots were ugly—too high, too low, glancing off shield edges. But each draw taught his muscles. Each release taught his eyes. He found he didn’t need to aim like a rifle. He just needed to look and let his hands do the rest.
An elf tried to rise behind the shields with a staff—fingers already flexing, mouth moving. The boy put an arrow through the staff-elf’s wrist. The staff clattered. The elf screamed and dropped to one knee. A second arrow took it under the jaw. Gold spattered the shield faces around it, and the line wavered.
“Keep moving!” Rojas shouted, and the column did, spilling out of the clearing and into the tight lanes between root-grown houses.
The boy backed into those lanes last. The elf city was already coming alive with panic. Not the children now—those were gone, dragged away, hidden. These were warriors. More shields. More bows. Horn calls cutting through leaves with urgency.
He reached inward without meaning to, touching that familiar tethered space.
[Bestiary].
Five names sat there, bright and ready.
He hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat.
He’d used them to break the arena. He’d used them to carve a path through the city. They were his hammer in a world that wanted to smash him flat. But they were outnumbered. And the elves had one big advantage. Bows didn’t need reloading.
Their arrows just kept coming.
The boy inhaled once, hard, and made the decision. He reached for the bison first.
“Front,” he muttered, more to himself than to any ears. “Block the lane.”
The air tore.
The bison appeared between two root-built houses with a violent huff—a mountain of shag and horn and muscle crammed into a street meant for graceful elves. Its hooves hit and the ground shook. It snorted, head lowering.
Frankly, he hadn’t expected this to work at all as, last he knew, the Bison would’ve still been rampaging through the elven settlement, but it seemed that he could summon it to him through the [Bestiary] as long as it was still alive.
Useful.
Panic rippled through the retreating humans. Someone screamed as the bison’s horn passed too close.
“It’s ours!” the boy shouted. “Move around it!”
The Cheyenne leader barked orders in his own tongue and men surged past the bison’s flank, hands on children’s backs, pushing them forward. Behind them, the first wave of elf warriors rounded a bend. The bison charged. It hit the elf shield wall like a falling tree. Leaf-plate shattered. Bodies flew. Gold misted the air.
Elven arrows slammed into the bison’s hide—dozens, then more. The beast ran them down, hooves making meat and armor into pulp. But the arrows kept coming.
A staff-elf on a balcony-like root platform raised both hands and pulled. Roots in the street twitched and curled up like fingers. They wrapped the bison’s legs. The bison bellowed—deep, furious. It tore two roots free and kept moving, but the binding slowed it. Arrowheads sank deeper. More shafts quivered in its sides and neck. The boy felt each hit as a tug on the tether inside him. Like a fish hook pulling on a line.
He clenched his jaw and kept walking backward, bow snapping. He yanked the dire wolf out next.
“Run the side,” he rasped.
Black fur hit the ground and immediately launched into the brush, teeth bared. It became a blur in the undergrowth, ripping at elf ankles, pulling archers down off raised paths. The Reaper Lizard came after, low and fast, feathers flashing. It vanished beneath a shield line and came up with gold in its teeth. The spider climbed. It hit a wall of living wood and went up like water running uphill, web-lines snapping out, anchoring it. It began to stitch lanes shut—silk across paths, silk across railings, silk across faces. The plague toad landed with a wet slap and croaked. Green bile fanned out in a wide arc.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Leaf-shields smoked. An elf screamed as bile kissed a calf and the skin bubbled.
The boy watched the retreat flow past those beasts—like water slipping through a crack while a dam held back the flood.
Bodies. Noise. Smoke.
It worked.
For a minute.
Then the elves adjusted. They stopped trying to be elegant. They poured archers into every angle—balconies, rooftops, raised root bridges. They fired downward in disciplined waves. Arrows started to fall into the retreat like rain. The boy’s bow arm moved faster. He shot men off platforms. He shot archers in the throat. He shot hands that drew.
But there were too many.
And his people were not protected by leaf-armor or by shields. So he did the only thing he could.
He made his beasts take it.
“Hold!” he shouted, voice raw. “Hold them!”
The bison, tangled in roots and shafted with arrows, planted its hooves and became a wall of flesh. Arrows buried into it instead of into children’s backs.
The dire wolf leapt into a cluster of archers and took three arrows at once—one in the shoulder, one in the ribs, one through a hind leg. It still tore a throat out before it dropped. The Reaper Lizard took a spear through the side and bit the spear wielder’s hand off anyway. The spider climbed into a volley and its abdomen became a pincushion of shafts. It kept webbing. Kept climbing. Kept dragging elves off their perches until it finally shuddered and fell, legs curling. The plague toad—slow and huge—became a target. Elven arrows sank into its mottled skin in thick clusters. Staff magic lashed it with vines that tried to choke its throat. It spat bile one last time, a wide green sheet that melted a shield line into shrieking ruin, and then the toad’s one eye went dull.
The boy felt the links snap one by one, like someone cutting cords with a knife.
Each time, the System spoke in his head—cold, clean, indifferent.
Summoned beast defeated!
[Dire Wolf] returned to [Bestiary].
Recovery time: 24 hours.
Summoned beast defeated!
[Reaper Lizard] returned to [Bestiary].
Recovery time: 24 hours.
Summoned beast defeated!
[Giant Spider] returned to [Bestiary].
Recovery time: 24 hours.
Summoned beast defeated!
[Bison latifrons] returned to [Bestiary].
Recovery time: 24 hours.
Summoned beast defeated!
[Giant One-Eyed Plague Toad] returned to [Bestiary].
Recovery time: 24 hours.
Five tethers went slack. The sacrifice worked.
The retreat poured out of the tightest lanes and into thicker forest, where the root-houses thinned and the city’s edges turned into undergrowth and massive trunks. The elf pursuit slowed for a breath—shields regrouping, bodies stepping around dead beasts and melted wood, archers looking for clear shots again.
Rojas looked over his shoulder once, saw the smoke and the chaos and the fact that the boy was still there.
“Fall back!” Rojas shouted. “Now, kid!”
The boy didn’t answer. He planted his boots in the dirt of the path and loosed three arrows in a row. One took an elf in the eye. One took an elf in the throat. The third hit a shield edge and snapped, useless. He dropped the bow, drew the Colt, and fired twice at a staff-elf trying to lift its hands.
The staff-elf’s head burst. The vines on the ground went limp.
A pale ribbon of mist tore loose from the dead elf and snapped toward the boy.
Soul Consumed!
+2 Strength.
+2 Dexterity.
+2 Vitality.
+2 Magic.
And then, the boy ran. He sprinted down the path after the retreat, boots pounding, lungs burning, the forest swallowing the elf city behind him in layers of leaf and shadow.
Ahead, the column stretched like a wounded snake—front moving fast, middle struggling, rear snapping back to fire.
Rojas was somewhere up front, voice still carrying, dragging order out of panic by sheer stubbornness.
The Cheyenne leader moved along the flank like a wolf, pointing, barking short commands. Men obeyed. Women kept their heads down and their children close. The boy slid into the rear, bow back in his hands, quiver bouncing. An arrow hissed past his ear and buried itself in a trunk with a deep thunk.
The elves were out of the city now.
And they were angry.
Their pursuit came as many lines—archers threading between trees, shield men pushing up the center, staff-users trying to get close enough to root-bind feet.
The boy shot a staff-elf in the throat. Then another.
He learned fast: kill the ones with staffs first.
The vines were worse than arrows. Vines stopped you. Vines let arrows do the rest.
Rojas had been right again.
Keep moving.
They ran. The forest was not Texas scrub. It was not even a normal eastern thicket. The trunks were too wide. The ferns were as tall as a man’s waist. Roots rose from the ground like the backs of buried snakes. The air was wet and green and smelled like crushed plants and sweet rot. Under that canopy, sunlight became scattered coins. The boy ran until his legs felt like hot wire and his chest felt too small for his lungs.
Then the horn call came again—closer, different.
And then came thunder–hooves.
The boy’s head snapped toward the sound through the trees. Elves burst from the undergrowth on mounts that were not horses. Horned elk—tall, lean, long-legged things with hides like smoke-gray and antlers that curved forward like hooked knives. Their eyes were too bright. Their mouths frothed as they ran.
Elven riders crouched low on their backs, leaf-armor tight, bows already drawn or spears leveled.
Cavalry.
The boy’s stomach tightened.
On foot, they could fight. Against that speed, with women and children in the middle, they’d be run down.
Rojas saw it too.
“Front!” he bellowed. “Keep moving! Shooters—turn! Riders first!”
The Cheyenne didn’t need telling twice. Rifles snapped up. Caps clicked. Smoke puffed. A volley cracked through the forest like thunder. The first elk went down hard, legs folding. The elf rider flew, hit a trunk, and didn’t get up.
Another rider took a ball through the chest and toppled backward, gold spraying in a bright arc.
The elk under it kept running—then heard the next gunshot and lost its mind. It bellowed—a high, terrified sound—and veered off into the trees, riderless, crashing through brush like panic given hooves. More shots. More thunder.
The horned elk reared and skidded. Some spun in place, eyes white, antlers catching branches. One elk bolted straight into a tree and hit hard enough to crack bark.
The elves tried to hold them, tried to calm them, but the mounts didn’t understand guns. The booms were too sudden. The smoke too sharp. The smell of powder too wrong.
Within seconds, the cavalry charge shattered into chaos.
Elves tumbled off saddles. Elk scattered. Antlers tore into vines and branches. Riders screamed at their mounts in their strange tongue, voices high with anger and fear. The retreat kept running. Rojas didn’t waste the moment of reprieve.
“Go!” he shouted. “Go go go!”
The cavalry threat was gone—but not the elves. The riders who survived hit the ground running.
And the elves on foot were still coming, slipping between trunks with that same wrong grace, their bows never stopping. Arrows hissed. Men cried out. A Cheyenne woman stumbled when an arrow grazed her calf, and two men caught her and hauled her along without breaking pace. A boy tripped on a root, went down, and rolled. The boy reached down, grabbed his shirt, and yanked him back up hard enough to bruise.
“Feet,” the boy snarled. “Move your feet.”
The child did.
Behind them, elves shouted words in a tongue he did not know.
The boy stayed behind. Every time he turned to fire, he had to choose—shoot and slow, or run and live.
He did both, in ugly rhythm.
Run ten steps. Turn. Fire a single bullet or loose a single arrow. Run again. That was, until he ran out of bullets and, in the chaos, had no time to reload.
His fingers started to ache from the bowstring. A raw line formed where the string brushed his skin wrong.
He didn’t care. He put an arrow through an elf’s knee and watched it tumble. Another through a throat. A third took an elf in the eye and buried deep. The elf fell without a sound, gold leaking into the leaves. The ribbon of mist snapped toward the boy.
[The Hollow] pulled again, greedy.
Soul Consumed!
+2 Strength.
+2 Dexterity.
+2 Vitality.
+2 Magic.
More notifications from the System came after that, but he tuned out the rest.
The boy’s heart hammered harder. His limbs felt lighter, sharper, like the world had slowed a fraction and he’d sped up.
The forest began to thin—just a little. The air grew cooler. The ground sloped downward, and the sound came before he saw it. A river, deep and fast.
The trees broke, and the column spilled out onto a muddy bank where the water rushed dark and wide, moving with that steady strength. On the far side, the bank rose again into more trees. A way out.
Or a trap.
Rojas skidded to a stop near the edge, turned, and started shouting again—voice hoarse now, but still cutting through panic.
“Swim!” he yelled. “If you can swim—go! If you can’t—hold onto someone who can! Don’t bunch up!”
Men hesitated. Women clutched children. Old people stared at the water like it was a mouth.
Arrows started to hiss out of the trees again, closer now. An arrow struck the mud near a child’s foot and quivered. The child screamed. The boy stepped toward the water, bow in hand, lungs heaving. His first instinct was simple.
Get across.
Once he was on the far bank, he could keep shooting. He could keep running. He could live.
Live.
He took one step into the river.
Cold slammed into his boot. The current tugged at his ankle like a hand.
He was about to go in deeper—
And then he saw her.
A little Cheyenne girl, six or seven, hair cut blunt with two tiny braids in front. She stood at the bank with her mother’s hand locked around her wrist. Her face was pale with fear, eyes huge, mouth pressed tight. She looked too much like Lily had looked on the road—trying not to cry because crying didn’t help, trying to be brave because there was no other option.
The boy froze.
For a heartbeat he saw Lily’s face instead of the girl’s. Soot on her cheeks. Bandages on her hands. Trying to pretend she wasn’t shaking.
He turned his head and looked back at the trees.
The elves were coming. Shields between trunks. Bows raised. A line of pale faces with hungry smiles and bright eyes. The river would put the slow ones in the open. It would put children in the open. Women carrying babies. It would turn them into targets. The boy looked at the water again. Then at the girl. Then back at the trees.
His throat tightened.
He wanted to go. Badly.
He wanted to be gone and safe and breathing on the far bank.
But his feet didn’t move. He backed out of the water. Rojas saw him and opened his mouth like he was going to shout at him to cross. The boy shook his head once—hard.
“I’m staying,” the boy said.
Rojas’ face twisted.
“You’re insane,” Rojas snapped.
“Probably,” the boy said.
Tsen appeared at the boy’s side like a shadow with a heartbeat, bow in his hands now—one of the elf bows taken from a dead guard—eyes flat and ready. Doyat stepped in too, silent, two knives in his hands now like he’d been waiting for the moment to use his name. Tavo limped up, one hand pressed to his bandaged side, and spat into the mud.
“I stay,” Tavo said.
Nantan came with Kanii at his shoulder, both of them breathing hard, both of them looking back at the trees like men measuring distance to death. The Cheyenne leader looked from the boy to the river to the elves, and his mouth set into something hard. He barked a short order in Cheyenne. Two warriors stepped out of the column and joined them—rifles in hand, faces tight with anger and resolve.
The boy breathed in and reached into his [Inventory], and grabbed the eagle-feather necklace he’d received from Peta Nocona and draped it around his neck. It felt right to wear it now. His fingers closed around his bow.
He looked once at the river again—at the ones already wading in, at children held high, at Rojas shouting himself raw to keep it moving.
Then he faced the trees.
The first elf arrow hissed out of the brush and struck the mud between them and the riverbank, quivering like a warning. The boy nocked an arrow. His voice came out low.
“Hold them,” he said, to the men beside him. “Just long enough.”
And as the elven line slid forward through the trees, leaf-shields rising like a green tide, the boy planted his boots in the mud and drew the bowstring back until it sang.
