Warden sat down on a heap of corpses, his heart restless, his chest heaving up and down in rhythmic exhaustion. The surrounding still reigned in darkness; he didn't even have an ounce of power to lift off the formation. It would have been a lot easier had he done it from outside, but the solution wasn't the same for one to do it from the inside.
He spat a mouthful of blood and saliva, surging with his radiance essence to recover from the worn-out state. His radiance essence had weakened considerably, wishing if he could just eat raw quintessence of light to gain back the lost power. But that was as foolish an endeavour as any.
[Higher grade energy harvested!]
[14.3 Recovery.]
[1.4 Dexterity.]
[1.2 Spirit.]
"Cheh!" he squeaked, feeling the rush of new essence. Perhaps in a minute or two, he would be in the state of fighting again. "But there ain't time to rest yet..."
The recovery potion wouldn't do in a small amount of time, considering he had taken three of them in the last five minutes. So, he simply had to find May and ask her to do the honour. But to get to her...
Warden focused on the Will he had on the array flags and forced out a little of his awareness—as much as his spirit let him. He actually could feel it now; it felt like a small bird trapped in some fragile cage. It could break free from the traps of the cage, but the bird wouldn't survive the harsh nature of outside.
His senses picked up on a dozen of the array flags out of the thirty-two. He stood up and trudged his way to the closest one. On second thought, using the Anti-gravity runes might be easier...
Thinking that, he flew onto the array flag. He wondered why they call it a flag, considering it was more like a pole. No time for musing...
Warden opened his mouth to say something but found the guy as worn out as he was, with a heavy wound on his torso, attire torn up, skin pale and swelling. "You too."
The fight had already ended, and the group of women and soldiers gathered in one corner. May was likely tending to the wounded there. He found Lady Cassandra meditating in one corner, two women stood by her side, and many others in a similar meditation state, as though readying themselves for another fight.
A dead body of a couple of women lay among them; they were too exhausted to even start mourning over the loss.
"How the hell did it turn out like this?" Warden wondered. When he left them, there were less than ten trolls and three times the number of orcs—it shouldn't have killed more than a couple of them.
Warden crept forward into the group. May looked up from the soldier she was tending, and her eyes found him. She stood up and scurried towards him.
"Are you alright?" she said after casting a general healing spell. "Gods, you look awful."
"I'm fine," Warden said, catching her arm before she could begin searching through them for any wounds. "I'll heal fine. What happened here, where are the rest of them? Did they..."
"Unfortunately, nine of us have fallen," she said, her voice turning softer. "Over a dozen seriously injured."
"How?" he asked, sounding incredulous. "I thought that we could have..."
"Hold our own against the forsaken," May completed for him. She gritted her teeth to continue, "That we did, for a couple of minutes, until Lord Tayl decided to run on his own. Because you took down most of the forsaken that were protecting the gate, he and his minion hardly had a problem fighting off the remainder.
He jumped into the gate after taking care of the few, leaving us outnumbered in our plight."