Chapter 27 – And the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down

Aurelia and Raynard moved through the forest.

While Raynard was carrying the unconscious pastor, Aurelia was fighting against the monsters. Though she gave up seriously fighting a long time ago. It didn’t take her too long to figure out it wouldn’t make much of a difference if she took them on with full force. In fact, it would only slow them down and also cost her lots of mana and stamina. So, she resorted to just kicking them out of the way, while slowly moving towards where she hoped the village was.

Sadly, her memory of the forest wasn’t as good, as say Misha’s who took on the forest on a daily basis. Also, Nathan wasn’t with them. She could only hope he had managed to reach the village.

“Is everything alright?” She asked Raynard behind her.

“Yeah, but I keep wondering, why are the zombies still this deep into the forest. I thought they’d head straight for the village.”

Aurelia hadn’t considered this, but now that she thought about it, it made sense. “Maybe they lost their orientation, because the priest got knocked out?”

“Well, that would optimal...”

After they had moved on for a short while, he added, “Hey, do you smell that?”

Aurelia, now breathing heavily, halted to take an intentional breath for a second, which was hard without choking.

“Hah, oh my ...” she brought out in between breaths. Her brows moved to form a frown and she took a step back trying to look though the treetops blocking out the moonlight.

At least that is how it should have been.

Instead, the sky had turned orange with dark clouds in between.

“Oh great,” she muttered looking at the smoke rising from what was without a doubt the burning forest below it.

She stood still for a moment, not sure what to do in this situation, which only spoke for her exhaustion, until her listlessness was interrupted by a sudden gust of wind coming from in front of them.

A pack of tempest wolves sped past them, completely ignoring them in spite of their usually aggressive behavior.

Aurelia shielded herself from the debris they brought with them in their haste. As soon as the wind calmed down, she exclaimed, “We need to go!” and moved back to where they came from.

“What, where to?” Raynard was obviously confused but complied, nonetheless.

“The gate. I think our best chances at outrunning the fire would be to hide inside the emergency exit.”

“Oh, alright. Hopefully, it stayed open since we left ...”

Why now of all times, she thought to herself.

God I just hope Nathan is safe.

Little did she know Nathan was the cause of the fire.

***

I exhaled one last time and looked at my work below.

Using a fire breathing spell and Raven’s flight I set the forest on fire from above.

The spell used up lots of mana for every second it was in use, so I had Raven giving me blood transfusions the entire time via biting me, so I didn’t faint like ... just a couple of hours ago.

No, I don’t learn from my mistakes.

At least not as long as I find some loophole.

Starting from the river at the village border, I flew across the forest in one straight line and set everything below me on fire. Though everything would be saying too much. For the most part I let nature, that is physics, take its course.

That should hold the zombies at bay.

Of course, we made sure the village people were all evacuated, and thanks to the Grimoire it was only a matter of minutes. The townspeople had also gathered at the forests edge to contain the fire in case it would reach the village, which it definitely would.

“Okay, that should do it,” I said, and Raven stopped biting my neck. A few droplets of blood escaped from the bite marks that I quickly covered up with my hand. I would have to deal with that later. Unfortunately, my little itty-bitty was the least of our problems.

“Should I fly back to the village?” Raven asked, now hovering on the spot with me in his arms.

“No, we should look for Raynard and Aurelia.”

“Oh, right.”

The Grimoire still didn’t pick up on the pastor’s mana signature, however it was monitoring Aurelia’s and Raynard’s, so I had an idea of where they were. Just a few minutes prior the Grimoire had notified me that Aurelia’s mana level was below 20 percent, so I started getting worried. I of course immediately checked their position. Sadly, reading a map that consisted mostly of same-looking trees wasn’t my strong suit, but at least I could tell that they weren’t at the gate anymore.

So, I figured, or rather hoped, they managed to fight back against the priest and leave for the village.

Hopefully, they had reached the village by now. The Grimoire hovered below me as I tried to figure out their position from the very rudimentary map.

Wait ...

They were back at the clearing with the gate.

“Why-”

And then it struck me.

“Holy crap, they don’t know about the plan!”

“Master, please don’t move that much, I- I’m having trouble holding you!”

“Raven, I didn’t tell them that I wanted to burn down the forest, and now they’re stuck, because they didn’t manage to return to the village!”

“If it would cheer you up, I’d like to point out, that if we had waited for them to return, the zombies would have reached the village by now.”

“Well, that’s true, but ... anyway, Raven, just fly that direction until you see a clearing with a weird stone structure in the middle. That’s where they should be,” I said, as I pointed where I hoped my friends were.

“Very well,” he replied, and leaned a bit to the side, to adjust his angle.

Once more I took a look at my work below, the fire gradually eating its way into the forest.

I dramatically sighed at the sight. I kinda felt at peace.

And then I started coughing, my chest heavily convulsing.

“Raven,” I hissed through my scratching throat.

He had flown us straight through a cloud of smoke, in which I obviously couldn’t breathe very well.

Luckily, we traversed it within a couple of seconds and the entire rest of the way down, I spent coughing out dead trees.

We landed near the gate, I think. I wasn’t quite sure at the moment, because my eyes had become very watery, and I just couldn’t stop coughing. I immediately freed myself from Raven’s embrace, because quite frankly I felt like I was asphyxiating.

“Raven, you should know, that between different species there is different standards for how they breathe ...” I somehow managed to get out, though I realized my sentence probably made zero sense.

“Nathan? Oh my, are you alright?” I heard Aurelia shout from somewhere.

“Yeah, fine just ... whatever,” I replied as I stood up.

“A fire has broken out,” Raynard who was just approaching us said.

Oh.

I noted the unconscious pastor on his shoulders and moved on, because there were more important matters to discuss.

“Ah, yeah about that,” I responded, “that actually was my doing.”

“Huh?”

Aurelia responded with the most dumbfounded expression I’ve seen from her thus far. Though, she has rarely been on board with my bullshit, anyway.

“Okay, so it turns out those zombies’ weakness is fire. You can get rid of them by burning them, and so I figured setting the entire forest on fire would be the easiest way to kill them all.”

“Wha- Why would you set the forest on fire?” Aurelia wasn’t even particularly angry anymore. Maybe a bit desperate.

“I don’t know, I thought it would be the easiest way to get them all! And also, I might have forgotten about the two of you ...” I sheepishly admitted after finishing my quick explanation. “But that’s why I’m here now,” I quickly added.

“Wow, great thinking,” Aurelia replied deadpan. Raynard just idly stood by.

“Anyway, do you have another great plan?” Aurelia asked.

“I was thinking Raven could fly us all out of the forest ...”

“Yeah, there’s too many people. I’d have to fly at least twice,” he responded.

“And by then the fire might have reached us,” Raynard completed the train of thought.

“We were hoping to get back through the underground passage,” Aurelia said.

“I’m not sure this is the safest way to get out of this situation ... The fire and or the smoke might have spread and effectively turned this thing into a gas chamber,” I objected.

“Well then, what do you want to do?” I could hear she was desperately trying to stay calm.

“Wha- why me?” I questioned. “Aren’t you like ... a princess and stuff, shouldn’t you lead?”

“Being a princess doesn’t have to do anything with this. You are the one in possession of, I don’t even know, some almighty weapon, I was hoping it would help us out!”

“Okay, well, what do you say?!” I asked the Grimoire out loud, even though I was the only one who could hear it. Or whatever [that] qualified as.

[It would appear the most effective way to solve the problem would be to dowse the fire.]

“That sounds reasonable,” I commented.

“Care to enlighten us?” Aurelia asked.

“Sorry, I forgot.”

I really need to get used to forwarding the Grimoire’s messages to the others. Or can’t I just establish a connection between them and the Grimoire? Well, that’s a problem for later.

“So, how much water-” That was all I managed to say when I realized a couple droplets on my head.

“Never mind.”

I looked up towards the sky, and despite there not being a single cloud the droplets became more and more. When Raynard became soaked in a matter of seconds, he shuddered giving off a weird high-pitched sound. Aurelia meanwhile just held her face towards the pouring water, as if wanting to wash the grime of battle off of her.

Steam rose up from around us, and we started getting wet from all sides, as the rain fell down on us, while the vapor crawled along our bodies from below.

It would probably take a bit for the fire to be extinguished but to us this rain was a sign of the battle coming to an end.