Chapter 42: 12.2 Overwatch

  The three of them watch the trail exit, crouched about thirty feet away as they watch torches and shadows grow closer. They all have weapons in hand and ready.

  “Wolf, don’t go into any of my portals,” Sarah says abruptly, looking back to meet his eyes. “Not unless I say so, ok?”

  Wolf nods as two archers step out of the trail. They are wearing a loose fitting, full-body, black garb with a black hood. They draw back arrows aimed at the three of them. Wolf’s eyes grow large as Jack begins to move and Sarah turns back to face them.

  The archers release their shots at Sarah.

  Jack hurls his axe and Sarah slices, opening a catcher’s mitt portal.

  The axe tumbles end over end, the arrows entering the portal as the axe comes through the back of it. An exit is overhead and redirects the arrows back at the archers. One archer takes an arrow in the abdomen, doubling over as the other is hit in the thigh.

  The archer looks down at his leg wound just before the axe clips him on the shoulder and spins like a saw. He reaches towards his arm’s memory as it sloughs away from the socket. He collapses back into a tree and his eyes follow the retreating axe as blood fountains out of the shoulder. His gaze is focused only long enough to see the axe pass towards the entrance portal, but it’s distant by the time it leaves the exit. It spins forward once again, burying the axe’s edge into the tree while making one side if his head fall open like a mailbox.

  Sarah looks back at Jack, giving him a nod. She dismisses the portal, then opens another. “Jack, take this.”

  Jack sees his axe through the portal, then crosses, coming out on the left side of the clearing. He grabs the handle and wrenches it free as two more fighters rush out of the trail with curved swords. Jack’s right hand pulls the axe head away while the other drives the haft forward and into the face of one attacker.

  The other fighter looks up and freaks out as his partner collapses from Jack’s attack. He looks back just as the axe is being yanked downward out of an overhead swing. The figure crumbles as more black garbs come out of the trail, one after the other.

  Sarah points forward and Wolf charges around from behind her. “You’ve got this, Wolf,” she says as he drags the sword behind him.

  A fighter turns back to the charging Wolf and when he sees the non-human features, his eyes grow wide with panic.

  Wolf plants his lead foot, skidding as the abrupt stop hastens his blade coming around in a home run swing. The fighter’s gaze is still wide as Wolf’s sword contacts his abdomen and separates the two halves of his body. The torso tumbles into a half cartwheel before hitting the ground.

  Wolf’s body turns with his attack, his blade arcing back towards the ground as he arrests the momentum. Another fighter rushes him with a weapon overhead. Wolf looks back and mule kicks him, then alters his back swing to come down in an overhead chop. The attacker doubles over, and Wolf’s attack hits him in the back, driving him prone and lodging in the ground beneath.

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  Two fighters rush Sarah and she knocks the first attacker’s weapon aside as he rushes past. She deflects the second fighter, then extends her pistol over his shoulder, firing next to his ear while aiming across the field. A distant fighter is hit in the ribs and falters in his attack against Jack. Her katana comes back around, and she slices the first attacker diagonally across the body, stooping into a kneel and turning to thrust the tip back into the fighter clutching his ear.

  Sarah opens a portal in the ground behind the impaled fighter and allows him to fall back into it, exiting above the trail. The body plummets ten feet, collapsing two fighters and tripping a third.

  Jack swings like the activation of a windshield wiper, sweeping a fighter’s straight sword and over and pinning its tip against the ground. Jack releases one hand from the axe and punches the guy, eliciting a neck pop from the force of the strike.

  A spear wielder rushes towards Jack as the sword wielder falls away, but the spear doesn’t reach him. The fighter’s body jostles, and his spear tip lowers to the ground as he reaches towards his ribs. The man pulls his fingers away to see blood and collapses to his knees, then face.

  Jack looks back across the field as Sarah’s katana skewers an attacker’s abdomen. He nods and glances up to the sun now peeking over their plateau, sending sunshine to his side of the clearing. He turns back to receive the next charge.

  Two archers come off the trail, ready bows and fire. Both arrows sail towards Wolf, one of them burying into the back of his shoulder and causing him to look back around with a snarl.

  The archers prepare to fire again as three more step onto the field, draw, and fire, sending five arrows towards Wolf. A catching portal opens in front of him, redirecting the second volley back at the archers. Three of them collapse and a portal opens under the remaining two. They fall a short distance but remain on their feet.

  They acknowledge Wolf directly in front of them as he thrusts his sword through one’s chest. Over five feet of steel protrudes from the back of the dead man, and Wolf’s attention turns to the other with an increasingly audible growl. The man’s panic barely has time to reach his eyes when Wolf closes his jaws over the man’s face, then removes it.

  The fighter falls back, his eyes rolling free of their sockets as he reaches towards the pain while kicking frantically. Wolf looks down at him and spits out gobbets of cartilage, then wipes blood from his chin before looking back over his shoulder at the arrow.

  An explosion erupts from the treeline as one of the grenade traps triggers. Another follows soon after from the opposite side.

  Jack swings horizontally, hitting a fighter in the stomach when the ice effect activates. Huge stalagmite-like ice shards erupt, bursting out of the fighter’s back and angled forward like a wave rushing to crash on a beach. The ice protrusions extend forward, puncturing the leg and abdomen of an approaching fighter as the effect spans the twenty-feet between Jack and the trail exit.

  Another soldier is also punctured, a shard passing through his forearm. One bone shatters outright, while the other snaps when the arm folds over the wound. His sword falls out of the useless arm’s grip, but he still has the wherewithal to bend down and pick it up with the other. He stands upright again and looks around, lost, when a bullet finds him from across the field. It strikes him in the head, his body seizes up, and he falls like a felled tree.

  Jack wrenches his axe out of the ice and looks at the fighter folded around the explosion. It completely separated his torso. The ice had expanded on contact with some shards pinning up by driving down through his legs and into the ground. His upper half clings to the top like a tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole.

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