"Dammit! Take it out! Fuck! It hurts!" Lucius cried out in pain. Paul and Lethen were holding him down by the arms, preventing him from moving to much. At the same time Rena and Jen had pinned down his leg and were trying to remove a handful of Quillow Beast spines from his leg.
They were only a day's travel away from the city of Lelvern when the caravan came under attack. On the main road through the Silverthorn Forest, there was a pack of Quillow Beasts that had decided to graze on some of the flowers growing by the roadside.
Being the territorial creatures they were, they postured threateningly at the group of wagons, but the guards in the front of the caravan did not know how strong these things were.
As such the situation quickly devolved into a massive fight. The pod was only a group of three, but it was way beyond what the front line was able to handle. In a single barrage of spines, most of them fell instantly. Silver spines were sticking out of their bodies as if they were human shaped pincushions.
After the initial attack, Rena put all her strength into a massive earthen wall to separate the monsters from the rest of the caravan. She then used a follow-up spell that created stairs up to the top of the wall which allowed those with ranged attacks to hit the monsters from above.
Jen, Lethen, and Lucius skirted around the sides of the wall to take the fight directly to the monsters, while Paul and Rena ran up the earthen stairs to attack from above. A few of the stronger guardsmen joined both groups, while the rest attempted to help those injured from the initial barrage.
"[Forsaken Arts: Sand Veil]!" Lucius used his ability since it was out in the open to momentarily blind the creatures, however only two of them ended up affected by it.
"[Forsaken Arts: Mutilation]!" Lucius set upon one of the blinded creatures with another attack he kept back. Since he was surrounded by the mana infused dirt cloud he made, others wouldn't have to see the skill directly. However, instead of the standard golden glow that signified the use of Arts, Lucius' blade glowed a bright red.
His machete's edge became sharper and formed a serrated edge made of this red mana. Every slash at the monster's body caused the receiving creature to howl out in pain as pulling his weapon free from it resulted in repeated sawing like motions.
The bodies of the guards that perished were also burned as per the custom, though not before being relieved of any important items they had. No point in burning gold, now is there? All said and done, out of the thirty people, not including Lucius' party, they lost about ten to the attack. All of them were guards and none of the merchants were harmed.
There were a handful of injured too, though not many and Lucius was one of them.
"Hold still! We are going to take them out, but we have to make sure they didn't pierce anything important. You have some important areas in your legs that we don't want to damage any more than they might be." Jen chastised. "Then we are going to talk about what happened."
"Okay, Lucius...bite down on this." Rena shoved a piece of cloth into his mouth that was wrapped around a stick.
No matter how badly he wanted to tense up in preparation for what would happen next, he fought against those instincts by closing his eyes and forcing himself to relax.
"Okay. Let go of me. Grab them all at once. Lethen, help Jen. If we have to do this multiple times, I won't be able to stand it." He begged. The stick and cloth fell out of his mouth, which Rena promptly shoved back in with greater force.
Lethen moved down to his leg and Paul secured both of his arms.
"Three...two..."
There was a horrifying ripping sound as Lethen and Jen simultaneously ripped out four different spines that were stuck in his thigh. The pain made him chomp down hard and tense his entire body. The stick crunched into pieces as he bit through it.
"Gahhh! What happened to one?!"