in time.
Kailani set the creature ablaze, and Hunter rushed to drag Ridan back to our group. We were surrounded. There were too many Darklings and way more Knight Ghouls than we’d expected. We were outnumbered and outgunned, as the Darklings threw energy pulses at our Reapers and occasionally knocked them down.
“Trev, this isn’t what we planned for!” I hissed, finding the Aeternae just as he cut off a ghoul’s head. He looked at me, his expression blank with fear. He hadn’t seen this coming, either.
“I swear to you, Nethissis, I don’t know what’s going on here,” he said. “My scouts said—”
“Your scouts lied!” Soul shot back. Two Darklings jumped him and almost got his scythe, but Kelara swooped in and decapitated them both with one swift move. “Thanks, beautiful,” Soul said to her, and Kelara gave him a wink.
“I don’t understand,” Trev murmured but didn’t stop fighting.
We were slowly being forced closer together as the Darklings and the Knight Ghouls formed a wide circle around us, which gradually tightened along with their offense. It was only a matter of time before they started taking us down. The First Tenners would kill as many of them as they could, but the rest of us were basically sitting ducks.
“They knew we were coming,” I breathed and defended myself from another Darkling. Seeley chopped his head off and pulled me closer to his side.
Rose and Caleb fired the last of their pulverizer shots, then picked up the nearest scythes dropped by dead Darklings and started fighting the enemy off with Reaper blades. We were running out of options fast as the circle continued to tighten around us.
“They planned for this!” Trev growled and tore a Darkling’s head off, blood spurting and covering him in glistening crimson.
We’d come to Dieffen prepared for a raid, and we’d found ourselves sinking into a hot pile of blood and death. The Reapers would likely survive and regroup, but the rest of our group was dead meat unless we figured out a way to turn the tide on these SOBs. The Darklings were winning. They’d prepared for this moment, and they’d effectively lured us to Dieffen by killing all the townspeople. This reeked of higher-level orders.
One of the Whips was behind it. I just knew it. I had every intention of walking out of this place, but I wasn’t sure I’d be so lucky. Not anymore. Especially not once Seeley found himself unable to teleport any of us out of here.
“We’re trapped,” he said. “They’ve got something in place to stop us from teleporting.”
Glancing behind us, I saw a Darkling standing outside the town limit and smirking at us. He’d just finished drawing a line into the dirt—I remembered the circles that Reapers drew to keep other people in. The Darkling had made one for the whole of Dieffen, which meant we couldn’t even retreat.
We were screwed, all right, and the Darklings were hell-bent on screwing us even further.
Nethissis
“What the hell do we do?” I asked, constantly fending off Darklings and Knight Ghouls. We’d walked right into a trap, and we needed a way to either defeat them or get out of here before they handed our asses to us.
“We must break that circle,” Night said, pointing to the town entrance.
Violence exploded all around me. Rose and Caleb moved to protect Ridan, and Kailani worked some of her healing magic to help him recover faster. The ghoul had done quite the number on him, and we needed the dragon now more than ever.
Kailani gasped, discovering a wound on his side. “He got cut with a scythe.” It must’ve happened earlier in the melee, and it left us without his fire—at least for the time being.
Hunter turned into a wolf and took on some of the ghouls, biting and tearing through their undead flesh before they shimmered away into their subtle forms and reappeared elsewhere. Soul and Kelara made a good team, taking down any Darkling that came their way. Our ghouls were scattered and overwhelmed, but I managed to spot Rudolph swerving left and right, vanishing and reappearing as he bit into as many of his foes as possible.
Widow moved like a flash of lightning, zigzagging through the swelling crowd as he cut Darklings down. But even with our combined powers and strengths, it wasn’t enough. The Darklings had prepared for this. They’d summoned more forces and concentrated their troops in Dieffen. They’d stayed hidden until we came in, giving them the opportunity to seal us within the