The world was on fire.
Not yet. But it would be.
The sun dipped behind the jagged ruins of Orion. Long, bleeding shadows stretched across the battlefield.
The Slime King loomed, rolling forward like a relentless tide. The horde followed, rippling in its wake—
Undeterred. Unstoppable.
And racing straight toward them—
Came a stampede of chaos.
We were losing.
And then Fee came back.
The same Fee who had stormed off, barely holding herself together after Ivory died.
The same Fee who had cursed us under her breath, who had walked away without looking back.
Now she was here charging toward us on the back of a panicked hoglet while a stampede of enraged boars thundered behind her.
Why?
The ground shook beneath their hooves, the air thick with dust and the sharp scent of adrenaline. Their tusks gleamed like daggers in the dying light.
She reached the front of the trench, her hog skidding to a stop. She held out a hand to Lance, still on the ground.
"Need a hand?"
He didn't take it.
I wanted to see his face. Shock? Anger? Relief? Resignation?
Instead, he just bowed his head.
The tension broke with Hogan's baffled voice. "What the hell is happening?! And why do you have hogs chasing you?!"
Fee tried to answer, but Connie cut in first.
"Please tell me your plan isn't just 'hope these hogs win the war for us.'" Her usual snark was back, but I could tell she wasn't just being bitter. She was trying to get a read on Fee.
So was I.
Fee gritted her teeth, struggling to keep her hoglet steady as it bucked beneath her. The perky, reckless half-elf was still there—but something about her felt different.
The way she sat stiffly, the way her eyes flitted over us, like she was searching for something but not sure if she'd find it.
"Why… are you here?"
Lance's voice was quiet. Not commanding. Not accusatory.
Just tired.
Fee exhaled sharply.
"Look, I'll answer everything later. But right now, we've got two big disasters about to crash into each other, and I think I have a plan."
Her fingers tightened around the hoglet's bristly mane. "Are you guys with me?"
We all exchanged uncertain looks.
Lance had always been our anchor. He was falling apart.
Fee had been the one who left. Now she was here, trying to hold us together.
It wasn't glue. It wasn't solid.
But it was something.
"A 'sorta' plan is better than none, right?" I forced a grin.
Fee smirked at that. Not her usual cocky smirk—this one was thinner, a little more forced.
She told us her idea. It was insane.
But so was everything else.
"PUSH!"
The cannon. Half-destroyed. Barely holding together. But if we could just get it to the edge of the forest…
I slammed my shoulder against the rusted frame, gritting my teeth as metal screeched against the soil.
Fee was back. And this time, she wasn't leaving. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
She gritted her teeth, eyes locked onto the advancing slime king. She knew what needed to be done. She didn't want to say it, but she had to.
"Give me the orange vial," she called out, voice sharp and unwavering.
Lance flinched.
For the briefest moment, I saw it—the hesitation. The memory. The fire, the screams, the blood on the dirt.
Ivory.
His fingers twitched around the vial strapped to his belt. Then, jaw tightening, he ripped it free and tossed it to Fee.
"Whatever you're doing, make it count."
She caught it in one hand, rolling it between her fingers. Not looking at it. Not thinking about it. Move. Move. Move.
She gripped the hoglet's neck, urging it forward.
Now I understood.
The only reason these massive beasts were following her—was because she had stolen their child.
A cruel trick. A reckless gamble.
But it was working. Because Fee's plan, in all its insanity, was simple:
Lead the hogs into the forest. Make the slime king follow.
A massive moving feast was a bigger lure than we were.
And once it was inside the trees—
We'd set everything on fire.
No guarantees. No second chances. Either it worked, or we all died here.
Lance tried to push himself up. His good arm braced against the dirt, armor scraping, legs trembling. Then he buckled.
And this time—he didn't get back up.
He sat there, staring after Fee, his breath shallow, his broken arm limp at his side. Whether it was from pain, exhaustion, or something worse, he stayed down.
And let her take the lead.
The slime king surged forward, rolling toward the rotting woods at Orion's edge.
Fee shot ahead, her body perfectly balanced as the hog beneath her weaved between the twisted trees. The stampede crashed around her, tearing through the underbrush, kicking up dirt and shattered branches.
Connie followed in their wake, cutting down stragglers, her rabbits darting through the chaos, forcing any wandering blobs back into the herd's path.
I had my own job.
I gritted my teeth and shoved. The cannon moved an inch. Just one damn inch.
Hogan was the one really pushing—his muscles straining, his breath coming out ragged.
I was just a kid. A baker's son. Eighteen years old, born into flour and ovens. Not into this.
I hadn't asked for this. I hadn't chosen this. None of this was my fault.
So why did it happen to me?
My arms burned with the effort. My lungs ached.
I wasn't strong enough. I couldn't do this.
…Or maybe—
Maybe this was my training. Maybe this was my chance. To prove that I was more than just a baker's son. To prove that I deserved to be a knight. To prove that I wouldn't die here.
"C'mon, Kev!"
Hogan's voice cut through my spiral.
"Put your back into it! You can do it, brother!"
Brother.
The word hit me like a hammer to the ribs. I'd never had one.
I'd begged my parents for another sibling when I was younger, but even back then, I'd understood—we couldn't afford another mouth to feed.
And now, as my arms shook, as I forced my body forward, I wondered—
Where was my family right now? Were they hiding in a shelter? Were they safe? Were they wondering if their son was still alive?
I had to be. For them.
I sucked in a breath, braced my legs—
And pushed.
Were they already dead?
No.
I couldn't think that. I wouldn't think that. I had to believe—no, I had to KNOW—that they were still fighting. That my parents, wherever they were, were doing everything they could to survive.
Just like us.
I looked around—at my team, at the people who had become something more than just allies.
Fee, vaulting through the trees, faster than thought, faster than fear—scattering drops of liquid in precise, calculated streaks.
Connie, a blur of motion, breaking apart slimes with sheer, ruthless efficiency, her rabbits weaving through the battlefield like shadows.
Hogan, throwing his full weight behind this hunk of metal, sweat streaming down his face, his grip iron-tight.
Meili, hands steady despite the panic, tending to Lance's broken, bleeding arm like her own life depended on it.
Even the animals—Silver, Bacon, and Connie's rabbits—all pushing forward, fighting, surviving.
They weren't thinking about giving up. So what the hell was stopping me?
My eyes burned. Maybe from the stench of burning slime. Maybe from the pressure of the cannon's weight. Maybe from the thought of a future where I was home, where I was safe, where I could just sit and eat in peace with my family—
My old family. My new family. I dug my feet into the earth and pushed.
Not because of some miraculous boost of strength. Not because of some knightly valor or heroic instinct. But because I had no other choice.
We had to finish this.
. . .
Above us, the first stars pierced the darkening sky.
Orion. Scorpio. The River of Eridanus.
They shined coldly, distantly, watching. The battle raged below them.
And through blood, sweat, and the fire in our veins—
We moved the cannon into position.
"SHOOT THE CANNON, KEVIN!"
Fee's voice rang through the forest—sharp and urgent.
The hogs were gone, already barreling through the rotting woods, their thick hides barely scratched by the decay.
And the slime king? It was all the way inside.
The forest loomed around it like a coffin lid, and the slime queen, the one we thought we had killed, rose from the depths to meet it.
A twisted reunion.
Two titans of rot.
A perfect funeral.
"Let's light it up," I whispered, voice raw.
I dropped the match. Pulled the lever. Nothing.
The cannon shuddered. Sputtered. The mechanisms were busted to hell.
No, no, no, no—
Then—
Steam. Pressure. A groan of metal. A final, violent cough—
And the cannonball erupted into the sky.
A black mass, swallowed in flames.
The problem before was simple:
The cannonballs didn't burn them. They poked holes in their mass, but the slime just knit itself back together.
This would be different. This time, the fire was already there. This time, the trap was already set.
This time—
It wouldn't stop burning.
"Let's hope this works," Hogan muttered.
His hand found mine, gripping tight, like he needed something solid to hold onto. We watched the cannonball trace its arc across the sky.
And in the corner of my vision—Fee was still inside the forest. Still moving. Still running.
Connie jumped back toward Hogan and me, her sharp eyes locked onto the flaming cannonball.
"It's going off course."
"Yeah, well, it's kind of hard to aim properly when the cannon's half-destroyed, don't you think?" Hogan snapped, running a hand through his wild, sweat-matted hair.
She wasn't wrong, though. The flaming projectile wasn't heading straight for the slime king. Instead, it veered toward the forest's edge, thudding into the ground with an anticlimactic whump.
Nothing happened.
Meili and Lance approached, his arm now wrapped in a rough splint. I would've passed out from that kind of pain, but Lance just clenched his jaw and kept moving.
"It's not working?" Lance muttered. And then—
The fire moved.
It started as a whisper, a delicate flicker licking through the scattered droplets of the orange liquid Fee had meticulously laid out. It brushed the bushes, climbed the brambles, and slithered up the trees like a living thing.
Then—the screaming began.
Not human screams. Not even animal screams. It was something worse.
It sounded wrong.
Like someone was letting the air out of a hundred lungs at once, a long, stretched-out exhale that curdled in my gut. The slimes sizzled and shrank, their gelatinous bodies drying up, bursting apart. The sound wasn't a scream. It was a wail, a death cry, a final, empty exhale as the flames crawled higher and higher, devouring them whole.
And the slime king?
Now it realized.
It tried to escape—too late. Its massive bulk rolled, squelched, and ruptured, sending up smaller explosions wherever it moved. Air trapped in its burning body burst free in violent, sucking pops.
The fire blazed into its core, eating it alive from the inside out, until—
The flames changed.
Orange became blue. A wicked, unnatural cobalt blaze, as if the very slime itself had become fuel for something else.
The screaming climbed higher.
Higher. Higher. And then—
A different scream.
Shorter. Sharper. Actual conscious emotion.
"Fee," Lance breathed. "Where is she?"
Connie's head snapped toward the fire. "She never got out."
And then we saw it—
A silhouette, moving wildly in the inferno, flames clinging to its body.