Winter had ended and the forest did not part for the shack.
It screamed.
Ancient trunks split under its passage, roots wrenching free of loam as two colossal wooden legs pounded through undergrowth with seismic rhythm. Branches shattered against its walls. Moss and birds' nests rained in its wake. The structure lurched and corrected itself like a drunken titan, windows rattling, chimney coughing sparks into the night.
Inside, SK braced himself against a workbench as another blast rocked the rear wall.
"Persistent little shits," he muttered, finally wiping blood from beneath his nose with the back of his sleeve.
A lance of golden light tore past the left window, clipping the shack's corner. Wood blackened. Sigils carved into the beams flared and dimmed in protest.
They were gaining.
Behind him, deeper in the forest canopy, three figures advanced not by chasing the shack's path but by intersecting it.Torvin led them.
Even at this distance, SK could feel the man's presence through the forest's Flow currents—dense, grounded, immovable. He could also feel that the man was corrupted.
'Why, is being corrupted a trend among the youngins' nowadays?'
Torvin did not sprint recklessly. He ran like someone who knew exactly where the target would be. Two other knights flanked him, their grey cloaks reflecting fractured moonlight between branches.
Lyle was not among them. Of course he wasn't, Lyle was a Votary and therefore could not keep up with the pursueing Saints so he had been left behind while the thre Dishonoured closed in. He'd catch up soon enough though
Another explosion rocked the shack.
SK grabbed the rod-like artifact he'd been caliberating from the table and slammed it into a socket carved into the floorboards. Runes along the interior beams ignited in sequence.
"Right," he breathed. "Let's see how you like this."
Outside, the shack's legs kicked off the earth simultaneously. For a brief, impossible second, the entire structure vaulted over a ravine in a spray of splintered bark and stone.
Midair—
A saucer, moving so fast and reflecting enough moonlight to appear like a comet, shot upward.
Torvin.
The projectile smashed into the shack's underside, cracking reinforced beams. The impact reverberated through SK's teeth. He staggered, catching himself on a hanging cabinet.
The shack landed unevenly, one leg buckling before stabilizing.
"Bloody hell!"
He opened a window and pouered a bucket full of talismans . The wind blew them backward and, once activated, the forest around them shimmered as illusion arrays expanded outward. Duplicate shacks flickered into existence between trees, each one running in a different direction, each one thundering convincingly through undergrowth.
For a heartbeat, the real shack vanished into misdirection.
Then—
A silver arc cleaved three illusions in a single sweep.
Torvin had thrown one of his disk blades again,.
Another Dishonoured wielded a blade of pure condensed Flow, its edge humming at a frequency that disrupted construct integrity. He stabbed the ground and the frequency wave that expanded caused the illusions to collapse like glass sculptures struck by a hammer.
"Tch." SK clicked his tongue.
The third knight raised both gauntleted hands. Threads of black energy lashed outward—not unlike Roric's, but thicker, cruder. They shot into the forest floor and lashed at the shack. There were Containment acted like a shiled but after thre whips the barrier collapsed.
"Cheeky fuckers," SK muttered.
A barrage followed ob both the disks and the tendrils.
The second man slammed his sword into the earth. The force caused the ground to break open and rise in jagged pillars ahead of the shack, forcing it to swerve violently. Torvin then launched crescent arcs that carved deep gouges into its flanks. The third knight amplified the network of his tendrils, each lash sending erratic surges through the shack that destabilized it's circuit anchors.
Still, SK kept moving.
Trees detonated from internal pressure. Wildlife fled shrieking. A hunter's outpost near the Iron Forest's edge collapsedas a result of the rubtured earth attack when they passed.
SK felt none of it abstractly, he felt it personally. Every miscalculation cost something. The shack barreled through a grove and into a clearing bathed in moonlight.
"Stop running," Torvin called out, voice steady even over the din. "You're making this worse."
Inside, SK barked a laugh.
"Oh, am I now?"
He jammed another artifact into place. The shack's windows flared with blinding white light. A concussive wave erupted outward, flattening grass in a perfect ring and blasting all three persuers backward.
Torvin skidded several meters before digging his fingers into soil to halt momentum. The second flipped midair and landed crouched. The thirdt rolled, gauntlet sparking.
The shack seized the opening and bolted.
Its legs churned, splintering the rampart as if it were brittle clay. It leapt over Torvin, chimney scraping branches, and plunged deeper into the forest.
"Bloody brilliant," SK breathed, heart hammering. "Still got it."
Behind him—
The two dishonoured pute thier hands together and Torvin climed atop it. They then launched him like a shotput towards the fleeing target. Torvin landed infront of the wooden giant, the earth around him rising with the impact. Before the debris could settle however, he stretched his hand behind him and threw a disk straight ahead with all his might. Manipulating Inertia, the blade simple accelerated while SK was caught in a pocket of deceleration, unable to avoid it in time.
The blade struck the shack and there was a loud Boom as its left leg was blown off.The structure toppled sideways, crashing into earth with a thunderclap that scattered birds for miles.
Inside, SK was thrown violently against a cabinet. Glass shattered. Artifacts spilled across the floor. For a moment, there was only ringing. Then footsteps.Heavy. Measured.
"Ah," SK coughed, tasting iron.
"Motherfucker."
The shack tried to rise.
Torvin placed his hand against the fallen structure's exterior wall.
Space obeyed and the structure was pinned in place, unable to accelerate into any motion.
The structure groaned once more as if trying to resist—
Then stilled.
There was silence.
Inside, SK exhaled slowly.
"Well," he murmured, pulling on a pair of oversized black boots from beneath the wrecked workbench and reaching for his patchwork sack. Runes stitched along the sides of the boots flickered alive as he secured them.
"Time to leg it."
He kicked open a window and launched himself into the night.
The boots responded instantly. Speed flooded his limbs. The world blurred. He hit the forest floor running, weaving between trees faster than a sprinting horse. After loosing a piece of his soul when helping Elias, he couldn't sustain his energy for long. But he could for long enough.
Behind him—
Torvin stepped from the wreckage.
"After him."
The Flow-blade dishonoured surged forward in a streak of silver. The third one vanished and reappeared several meters ahead of SK, using corrupted nodes as stepping stones.
"Fuck," SK hissed, veering sharply.
A silver arc sliced the tree he'd just passed in half.
He slid under a fallen trunk, a disk blade missing him by centimetres—
Torvin anticipated the angle. The blade richocheted of another tree and embedded itself into the ground SK was about to step on. The mini explosion of dirt flung him foward. He rolled, boots screaming against friction as he forced himself upright. He weakly dropped to one knee. He noticed drops of blood on the ground beneath him and touched his nose.
'Flow Circulation isn't helping. Fuck, its bloody sucks to be old.'
They surrounded him in a loose triangle.
Torvin in front. Blade to the right. Gauntlet knight to the left.
Breathing steady.
Unhurried.
"Come quietly," Torvin said. Not cruel. Not triumphant. Simply inevitable.
SK spat blood into the leaves.
"Quietly? What am I, a fucking dinner guest?"
Blade shifted his grip.
"You've caused enough damage."
"Oh, don't start with that sanctimonious shite," SK snapped.
"You lot leveled half the bloody forest chasing me."
Torvin's gaze did not waver.
"You are required."
"There it is," SK barked. "Required. Needed. Useful."
His laugh cracked.
"Do you have any idea how sick I am of that word?"
The third's gauntlet flared faintly as he tightened. SK felt tendrils brushing at his perception They would split him in half if he tried to run.
"Stand down," Torvin repeated.
"Or what?"
The blade dishonouered moved.
In one fluid motion, he stepped forward and swung.
The arc of condensed Flow howled toward SK's neck.
Time slowed.
SK did not flinch.
The blade never connected.
A shockwave struck from the side, colliding with the man mid-swing and hurling him across the clearing. He crashed through three trees before stopping.
The remaining two knights turned sharply.
Space shimmered between them.
It did not ripple like illusion.
It folded.
A figure stepped through the seam as though exiting a doorway only he could see.
Jax.
He straightened casually, breathing heavy but steady.
"I'm afraid," he said lightly, glancing between Torvin and the stunned knight embedded in trees, "that I won't be letting you succeed tonight."
Torvin's expression tightened for the first time.
"Jax."
"In the flesh."
The forest held its breath.
SK remained on one knee, chest heaving, staring at the man who had materialized from nothing.
"Who the bloody hell are you?!"
The third man shifted, corrupted energy pulsing harder through his gauntlets as he reassessed the network of tendrils.
Jax smiled faintly.
"You really should learn when to give up," he told them.
The clearing seemed smaller suddenly.
More fragile.
Torvin stepped forward once more, earth trembling beneath his boots.
"Move aside."
Jax's smile did not fade instead he raised his spear and made his stance.
"No."