Resilience Run

Chapter 13

"Burn?!" Lillian yelled, "Our home?! There's no way they could do that!"

"How long have you been drugging people?!" Rhys yelled, "Why wouldn't they want to do that?!"

"All I've ever done is push people to do what they would do themselves in due time!" Lillian yelled back, "Repression has no place in this modern society!"

"We don't have time to argue!" I croaked, "Backup is coming!"

"Riley's right," said Rhys as she turned to the family, "We have to move, quickly! Which of you can fight the best?"

"I can." said Lillian.

Rhys grimaced.

"No time for argument!" I said, "Listen!"

Rhys' ears perked up through her hair when I said that. Sure enough, after a couple of seconds, all of us could hear the rustling of people running, most likely in our direction.

"Alright, fine." said Rhys, "Theo, take your dad and our kids into the house, where it's safe!"

"I'm not going anywhere!" said Jagos out of nowhere, "I'm staying here to fight!"

"Count me in too!" said Baugh, "I can fight too!"

Before Rhys and I could argue, the bushes nearby started rustling, indicating the fight was about to start. Just like that, several more hooded people jumped out of the bushes and started charging with swords and daggers.

Felice's attention was on point, immediately knocking down a guy that was charging us, and stopping a man going for our flank with a simple swipe of our sword, like it was nothing.

Rhys was doing just as good, knocking down two men with the launch of a fireball, followed by a swipe of her sword knocking down two more men.

I noticed someone coming for my flank before Felice could see it coming, but the man was knocked away by a fireball before he could make it to us, courtesy of Jagos.

"Nice shot!" I managed to call out. Jagos beamed at me, then focused again as he fired more magical fireballs from his hands to knock out some more mercenaries that were coming our way. Several of them were carrying torches, as Rhys had predicted, but they fell onto the dirt path when they were dropped and fizzled out really quickly. The only torch that landed anywhere near the house was quickly stomped out by Baugh, who was still standing by the front door.

Unfortunately, the distraction by the torch took long enough for two of the mercenaries to charge at the boy and knock him to the ground. Before Felice and I could go to help him, we got accosted by two more mercenaries that came out of the woods.

"Baugh!" I called out, but that was all I had time to do before Felice and I were forced to focus our attention on the people trying to kill us. Once they were swiftly dealt with, we turned back to Baugh, but he was fine. Apparently, when Rhys and I weren't looking, Jagos had managed to get one of the men attacking Baugh off him with a magical blast, which gave Baugh enough leeway to knock out the other man who was on top of him.

Rhys and Lillian dealt with one more guy together, and that was it, no more were coming. All of us kept our weapons ready for several more minutes, just in case some other guy decided to come running out of the woods, but all was quiet.

"Looks like we're in the clear." I said. My voice had mostly come back, but my body was still feeling heavy, so Felice kept me going as we regrouped at the front door of the house.

"Thank you." said Lillian, "If it weren't for you, those men would've killed me and my family."

"Maybe you should think twice about removing repression, or whatever it is you called it, in the future," said Rhys, "Look where it got you."