Leonotis took one last, steadying breath, the cool night air a balm on his frayed nerves. He looked at the laughing bandits, at the terrified girl, and his resolve hardened into cold steel. He raised his hand, held it for a beat in the pregnant silence, and then dropped it.
The signal was given.
The night exploded.
From the ridge above the camp, a sound like the world cracking in half ripped through the air. Low, her muscles corded with a power that was not entirely human, tore a massive section of the cliffside loose. It wasn't a boulder; it was an avalanche. Tons of rock and earth plunged downwards with a deafening roar. The bandits, their laughter cut short, scrambled to their feet, their faces a mask of drunken confusion turning to stark terror. The rockslide didn't hit the camp directly—it slammed into the ground behind it, shaking the very earth and throwing up a massive cloud of dust. The escape route was gone.
As every eye turned towards the cataclysm, a second attack began. Zombiel, a small shadow moving with unnatural speed, flicked his wrists. Embers like angry red eyes shot from his palms. They didn't arc randomly; they flew with deadly purpose. One touched the canvas of a supply wagon, and the oil-soaked fabric erupted in a silent, hungry whoosh of flame. Another found a pile of dry brush, which ignited into a bonfire. In seconds, a crescent of fire blazed to life, penning the panicked bandits between a wall of flame and a wall of rock.
The chaos was absolute. The central campfire was now the only familiar point of light in a world of roaring fire and choking dust. But its comfort was short-lived. A dark wave crested over the edge of the camp, summoned from the nearby stream by Jacqueline's will. It crashed down onto the fire pit with a violent, concussive hiss. The world plunged into a blinding fog of steam and smoke.
Screams of pain and confusion echoed through the darkness. The bandits were trapped, deafened, and blinded. It was into this maelstrom that Leonotis strode.
He drew the weapon from his back. It wasn't a sword of steel, but a gnarled, twisted length of ironwood, seemingly dead and inert. This was his Root-sword, a conduit not for cutting, but for commanding. He gripped its familiar handle, the wood humming with a latent energy only he could feel.
"Now!" he yelled, his voice cutting through the din.
As Low charged from the rocks, a roaring force of nature scattering men like bowling pins, Leonotis plunged the tip of his Root-sword into the soft earth.
The effect was instantaneous. It was as if he had plugged himself directly into the lifeblood of the world. Power surged up his arm, raw and green and wild. The ground beneath the bandits' feet writhed. Thick, thorny vines, energized by his will, burst from the soil with explosive force. They were an extension of his own determination, lashing out, coiling around ankles, and dragging men down. Bandits who tried to fight back found their weapons ripped from their hands by whipping briars. Those who tried to flee were ensnared, their struggles only causing the thorny vines to constrict tighter. Leonotis stood at the center of it all, his knuckles on his sword's hilt, his face set in a mask of intense concentration. He didn't need to shout his own name. The forest itself was screaming it for him.
The tide of the battle had turned into a rout. But amidst the chaos, one man remained standing, untouched by fire or vine.
The bandit leader.
He was a mountain of a man, his bald head gleaming in the light of the fires. While his men panicked, he stood with an unnerving calm, his arms crossed over his massive chest. Low, seeing him as the final threat, let out a battle cry and hurled a boulder the size of a man's torso directly at his head.
The leader didn't even flinch. He simply raised one hand. The boulder stopped dead in the air, inches from his face, held by an unseen force. A cruel smirk spread across his lips. "Child's play." With a casual clench of his fist, the boulder imploded, the stone cracking and groaning as it reshaped itself. In seconds, the compacted rock formed a long, wickedly sharp spear, which he plucked from the air.
Leonotis's blood ran cold. The man's control, his raw power—it was on a completely different level. He saw Jacqueline in the swirling smoke, cutting the last of the girl's ropes. He saw Low momentarily stunned by the display of magic. He saw Zombiel keeping the fires burning, his focus absolute.
They were all occupied. He was the only one left.
The bandit leader's cold eyes scanned the chaos his men were trapped in before they finally settled on Leonotis, recognizing him as the source of the vines. He hefted the rock spear, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. "So, you're the green aseborn from the rumors. And here I was, thinking this day couldn't get any better."
The very ground began to rumble as he stepped forward. "Relax, men!" he bellowed, his voice cutting through the panic. His untethered men, who had been running frantically, froze in their tracks. "We're about to be rich! They're just children who are in way over their heads. Get the others. This one is mine."
Fear, sharp and icy, lanced through Leonotis. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to hide. This man could kill him without breaking a sweat. But then he saw Jacqueline pulling the crying girl behind her, trying to retreat into the shadows.
And he knew he couldn't run.
Gripping his Root-sword until his knuckles ached, Leonotis pulled it from the earth and took a step forward, planting himself directly between the bandit leader and his friends. The Gethii wouldn't have been worried. The hero he daydreamed himself to be wouldn't have been afraid. Leonotis was terrified. But he stood his ground anyway.