Arcane Exfil

The problem with apocalypses was their tendency to layer. And to Ethan, the Vampire Lord’s descent was just that – one more layer in an already overcrowded tactical landscape, one more variable to contend with.

Survival meant prioritizing threats. And while the menacing final boss taking swings at Mack was a hell of a variable to ignore, Ethan didn’t have that luxury. The Nevskors lunging for his throat took precedence.

The monsters dashed forward with a fluidity that carried a persistent wrongness no amount of adaptation or study seemed to normalize. Years of asymmetric warfare, weeks in Tenria, and his mind continued to categorize their movement as fundamentally aberrant. Completely fucked. Unholy. Demonic. Par for the course.

He’d still never get used to it. Miles, though – Miles moved like he’d already internalized this new reality, treating the larger Nevskor’s attack with the casual competence of a native-born Slayer Elite. He dashed straight at the Nevskor, dropping low and skimming under it on a wave of dirt – like he’d been born an earthbender.

The smaller Nevskor came after Ethan. He raised a defensive platform, timing it just right so the demon slammed into solid earth while he dropped off the back. Not exactly an elegant display of his abilities, but it worked. The creature recovered fast though, circling around the platform and forcing him to keep moving. One shot from his rifle and the thing disappeared back down into the earth.

By this point, Cole’s team had already disappeared behind the chaos of gunfire and magic.

Miles opened fire, clipping the larger Nevskor’s leg. He freed one hand and keyed his comms. “Mercer, we’re cut off! Engaging Nevskors!”

“Copy,” Cole responded, his voice tight over the gunfire. “Clear your end. Regroup fast.”

The next attack came with little warning. A subtle whistle was all the advance notice they got – like a shell streaking past, but far lighter. Arrows. The goblins must’ve caught up.

Not that it’d do much; the goblins had the foresight to spread out. Two pairs of the archers fell – better than nothing, but not enough.

The larger Nevskor continued going after Miles, dragging its wounded leg but still moving fast enough to kill. He pulled the same trick as before, but this time on the demon. As soon as the creature committed its weight to its front legs, a sheet of earth shifted forward. Smooth as the joints may be, they weren’t designed for a cheerleader split.

Plates separated at the hip joint – clean shot. The full force of a Vicer round slammed into the gap, eliciting a shriek that grated against his ears like a fork on a plate.

The ground rumbled again and Ethan caught an orange blur in his peripheral. He pivoted just in time, the second Nevskor's strike missing by inches. It kept him moving, forcing his focus between archers readying their next volley and the beast trying to pin him down.

Another wall of earth came up, barely solidified before arrows splintered against it. Then the Nevskor hit – went through it like a living wrecking ball. He dodged it, but to what end? It was all a numbers game; it didn’t matter how many times he avoided a hit if the enemy only needed to connect once.

“The runes,” he called out to Miles. “Thirty back.”

Miles dropped one of the archers in the distance, cycling his bolt as he sidestepped another Nevskor attack. “Negative. They’re baseline goblins ain’t they? Fuckin’ blitz ‘em.”

It was a good point. Between the crude bows and the goblins’ weak physiology, their barriers would almost certainly hold. Ethan willed more mana into his legs, deflecting a wave of arrows with barrier magic. “Copy that. Let’s blitz ‘em, then.”

The larger Nevskor charged again as they advanced. Miles shifted the earth into a curved slope under its good leg – a nasty little trick that forced the demon’s weight onto its injured side. The creature stumbled; compensating its balance with the wounded leg threw off its whole attack sequence and sent it crashing into a tree.

Simultaneously, the smaller one attempted to flank. Ethan liquefied the ground beneath its next step. Any other predator would’ve gotten trapped, but the thing’s tail slammed down at precisely the right angle, using the solid ground behind it as a pivot point. Physics still worked, even as the creature perverted them – using the counterforce to throw itself sideways. Impressive, but its moment didn’t last long. Ethan already had the thing in his sights.

He opened fire, catching the Nevskor right above its head. It wasn’t fatal, but it at least forced a burrow.

Ethan continued his sprint, coming up just behind Miles as the first line of swordsmen neared.

Miles hit them like a force of nature. The first goblin didn’t stand a chance – it caught an ice shard right through its throat. He had already pivoted toward the next two swordsmen on the right before the first body hit the ground, earth spikes rising once he got within a few meters of them. It was efficient, to say the least.

But what really got to Ethan was how he rolled out of it: energy high, movements almost relaxed, like they were mopping civvies on airsoft night.

Too bad the Nevskors were the furthest thing from that. The larger one recovered faster than any normal creature should, already orienting on their position. They’d thought they’d bought themselves some breathing room with that trick earlier – temporary incapacitation that turned out to last no more than a few seconds.

And now more arrows had filled the air. Great.

Ethan raised another barrier against incoming arrows, veering left. He bashed through a swordsman with a pillar of rock, sending the body flying like a ragdoll. The pair of archers behind the swordsman tried to reposition, but he closed the distance in mere seconds and rained shards of rock upon them. Their sorry excuses for armor offered minimal resistance to evisceration and they fell to the ground in a mess of purple.

He immediately pivoted and opened fire, the bullet grazing a scythe-like appendage. No fucking effect. He cycled the bolt and raised a series of curved ramps, mimicking Miles’ spell. The Nevskor weaved through them, opting for shorter strides. Its chilling intelligence might’ve saved it from fucking up its injured leg further than it needed to, but each dodge cost it momentum, which bought them precious seconds.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Miles picked up on the setup. As the creature committed to a lunge, he raised a diagonal pillar of stone that struck its side. The force of the impact knocked the Nevskor off the ground, subjecting it to the whims of gravity. And that meant it’d land in a predictable trajectory.

Ethan liquified the ground ahead of its landing. Its armor was too tough to penetrate and the joints were too small to hit consistently, but if they could just entrap it, they’d be able to hit it with a powerful concussive blast – turn the insides into mush. He readied fire, but the creature disappeared into the earth.

Damn. He let the fire dissipate, returning his attention to the goblins.

The last two swordsmen rushed Miles – completely futile. The first caught a small fireball square in the chest, immolated in an instant. The second managed two steps before a spinning blade of ice decapitated it. The goblins behind them fell all the same, even if their method of execution differed. His moves had a sort of artistry that seemed almost inappropriate for what this was, like this was some kind of streaming content – all flash, no fear. Like he was recreating his favorite anime fight scene.

Though if he was comparing this to entertainment, Cole’s group was definitely getting the better scene.

The cacophony was relentless. Rifle fire mixed with the crashes of falling trees, and if it weren’t for their Celdornian hearing protection, they’d have gone deaf three explosions ago. The ‘audience’ over there had a Vampire Lord for a director, and he sure as hell wasn’t taking any notes on subtlety.

Ethan picked off two more archers trying to fall back, standard rock projectiles doing the job. It was just a matter of time before they completely wiped out the goblins.

The rest were archers – close to twenty of them, if he’d been keeping count accurately. With the loss of the swordsmen zoning out, the enemy had shifted tactics, abandoning their coordinated volleys. Pairs of goblins cycled shots while others repositioned deeper into the forest, as if a basketball court’s worth of distance would buy them salvation.

It was almost impossible to make out the details of Miles’ face through the ENVG-B and amidst the chaotic conditions, but somehow… he could imagine him grinning, enjoying the carnage.

Perhaps the odd absence of the Nevskors and the dwindling threat posed by the goblins played some role in that. The temporary reprieve meant they could work clean, execute with precision. And that’s when they were at their best – when the mission parameters simplified into pure counterforce application. No different than range day, just with live targets.

Of course, that was just the half of it. The blessing of simplicity aside, they all enjoyed a curbstomp every once in a while, where fights became less about survival and more about domination. Perfect for putting on a show.

Ethan wanted to disapprove of Miles’ catharsis – should have disapproved. But at this point, he suspected even Cole would let this slide. If exorcising his demons meant slaughtering the ones in front of them, who was he to judge? Hell, maybe he had the right idea, using blade and sorcery as therapy.

Lord knew how much he was struggling; better to indulge in a bit of distraction than let the weight of two worlds crush him. Better to immerse himself in the moment than count the days since he’d last heard his little Freya’s voice – the days since he’d last felt Lizzie’s touch, her warmth.

Temporary reprieve or not, he couldn’t dwell on those thoughts. He shot another goblin, running another headcount. Sixteen targets left, maybe seventeen if he’d missed one in the chaos.

The goblins still maintained their mechanical, mindless fighting retreat. He caved another’s skull in with a baseball-sized rock, and still they hadn’t shown any lapse in conduct. Even as Miles sliced up a pair with his cutlass, the enemy expressed not an ounce of hesitation or self-preservation.

That was the thing about fighting demons, apparently. They never broke, never lost heart. Though, thinking about it, they probably never had hearts to break – just organs that pumped until they didn’t. Made things simpler, in a way.

No need to wonder if they had families back home, if they’d been drafted against their will, if they’d have been friends in another life. The demons were nothing more than purpose-built killing machines executing their programming until they stopped functioning – targets to eliminate. And each one dead meant another moment he didn’t have to think about home.

Why, it might honestly be even better than that. These weren’t men, weren’t even misguided souls. These creatures were demons. Perhaps not quite the spiritually invasive demons of Scripture, but hostile to life nonetheless. They were beasts of flesh and blood, tearing through all that was good, scouring the land with evil.

And if God gave mankind dominion over the beasts of the world, then what was this if not fulfilling the command to subdue it? Maybe it was even righteous. Or maybe it just needed to be done – not a holy war, but a clean war. Better than a distraction – purpose.

Ethan executed yet another pair of goblins with his earth magic.

Still no sign of the Nevskors as they whittled the enemy’s numbers down to five. Either they’d fallen back to support the main engagement, or they’d paused to recover their strength.

“Can’t lie – Mack sure had the right of it.” Miles called out, vaulting over a fallen trunk. His blade flashed, opening another goblin from collar to hip.

An orange outline flickered to Ethan’s left – one of the last few goblins. He sent a rock flying, fast as a pro pitch. The thing crumpled. “What do you mean?”

Miles drew his revolver. Three taps, and the last three goblins fell with tennis ball-sized holes in their torsos. He turned to Ethan with a grin. “Who knew Iisekai could be this fun?”

The words hit Ethan like shrapnel. ‘Fun’, as if this was some kind of game, some adventure they’d chosen. Purpose was one thing; it kept him going. But this wasn’t a path he’d ever take willingly, not over his family.

Something in his expression must’ve changed because Miles’ grin faltered. “Shit, man, I didn’t mean –”

“I know.” Ethan kept his voice flat. He sighed and pulled a mana potion from his vest, grimacing at the taste. Berry did jack shit to mask the bitterness. “Let’s just regroup.”

“Yeah, reckon the party ain’t windin’ down just yet.” Miles replenished his mana as well.

Ethan stowed his empty vial back in his vest and reloaded his weapon. Right as he was about to tell Cole that they were coming over, the ground rumbled again.

They darted backwards together as the Nevskors returned, erupting from below. But the tremors didn’t stop – the ground continued to shake even as they landed, even as both creatures had surfaced.

Ethan compressed his legs for another jump, but it was already too late. The tremors culminated into a monster eruption, nearly twice the size of the others – the missing Nevskor. Why it didn’t participate in the fight earlier was a mystery, but that didn’t matter. It was here now, and it seemed dead set on making up for lost time.

Miles was still airborne from the first dodge, hanging there in that perfect, awful moment – clear of the claws, but locked into his trajectory. The Nevskor’s tail whipped around, impact inevitable.

A barrier sputtered into existence – solid, if he were defending against the goblins. Not enough for this monstrosity of a Nevskor. Earth surged up, a wall inches high and climbing fast, but the problem was obvious: it wouldn’t make it to the tail’s height in time.

Miles knew it too. Even as he continued to raise the earth, he threw everything he had into the surrounding air, back and boots flashing orange-white. A desperate attempt to push himself off-course, like an astronaut throwing a wrench in open space, hoping for just enough recoil to shift direction.

It wouldn’t be enough.

Ethan slammed his will into his own barrier, reinforcing the feeble construct, but the damn thing was barely holding together across the distance.

“GARRETT!”