Our horses almost flew over the ground, going faster than I’d ever seen them go before. They, too, could feel the threat rising behind us. They, too, could hear the daemon boots on the ground. The grunts and yells. The mass of hostiles coming for our outnumbered asses.

These animals were truly impressive, and their prowess didn’t consist of speed, only. Oh, no, as soon as we reached the base of Ragnar Peak, our indigo horses climbed each set of stone stairs with mind-blowing agility and ease. Their hooves clicked on the limestone steps, taking two to three of them at a time. My stallion panted but didn’t give up. He knew what he had to do in order for the both of us to survive.

The Imen went ahead, using their swords to cut down all the extended branches of trees and shrubs making our climb more difficult. We had to reach the fortress at the top before the daemons got to the base. One quick glance over my shoulder made my stomach churn. Cason and his fiends were less than two hundred yards away.

Arrah, Patrik, and Scarlett stayed behind by several feet. Arrah dropped small satchels of explosives on her way up, at a distance of five to eight feet on both sides of the stairs. The Druid muttered spells under his breath and tossed some of his own herb and crystal mixtures back at the peak’s base. They split open as soon as they hit the ground, making me doubt his magic skills for a second.

“Are they supposed to do that?” I asked, unable to hide my skepticism as I continued my climb, with Avril right in front of me.

“What do you think?” Patrik shot back, oscillating between amusement and offense.

“Well, okay, I don’t know what to—”

I didn’t get to finish that sentence. A loud bang tore through the air. I let out a short cackle, watching as the first three daemons of Cason’s crowd stepped in the herb and crystal mixture. It instantly exploded, throwing them back and tearing limbs off in the process.

“Holy crap!” Avril gasped, stunned by the effect that Patrik’s explosives had. “Holy freaking crap!”

Patrik chuckled and continued tossing his highly explosive linen satchels from the bag he’d mounted behind him, on the saddle. “I found some much-needed ingredients in that cabin’s pantry this morning, so I decided to get creative.”

“You’re an artist, Patrik!” I replied, continuing our race up the stairs. “I take back every single doubt I had about you!”

“What, there was more than this one just now?” Patrik retorted.

I stifled a grin and kept going, constantly shifting my focus between what was ahead and what came after us from behind. We were halfway up already. Another explosion prompted me to look back. Ten more daemons had been obliterated in an explosion at the bottom. Some of Arrah’s little “gifts” had gone off. The first set of stairs below crumbled, making the surviving daemons fall flat on their faces and slip back down with the dirt and rubble slide.

“My satchels are timed,” Arrah briefly explained. “Well, the first round, anyway. I added the final ingredient before I tossed each projectile. A couple of minutes later, boom!”

“Chemical reactions, one ingredient reacts with another and it causes both to ignite,” Scarlett muttered, then motioned for Hundurr to keep going. The pit wolf was reluctant and was tempted to go back down there and tear the daemons a new one. “Come on, Hundurr! Keep going! Forget them!”

“Yeah, I’m out of those, though,” Arrah replied, then flipped open another bag on the left side of her saddle and started tossing out different, slightly smaller satchels. She made sure to throw them at least twenty to fifty yards back.

Each satchel hit the ground or the stone stairs a couple of times before exploding. Each detonation left behind a large, smoking hole and caused a chain reaction on the bottom side of Ragnar Peak. Landslide after landslide came down, sweeping the climbing daemons off their feet and forcing them back to where they’d come from.

“Obviously, you’re not running out of tricks yet,” I muttered.

Arrah grinned, then threw back five more of those satchels. They only needed a jostle or two before exploding upon impact. “Plenty more where those came from!” she said.

“You’re outnumbered!” Cason’s voice thundered from below. “You won’t make it through the night! I will get up there and I will tear that fortress down, little mice!”

I looked down and saw him sneering at us, though he did stay back, leaving his daemon grunts to do all the hard work of trying to climb the peak and either dying, getting maimed in explosions, or being thrown back by the landslides. But as much as I hated to admit it, there was some truth to his words.

Our explosive resources were finite. We were going to run out at some point. Then, all that remained between us and the two hundred and fifty or so daemons left were the walls of the fortress, now just a hundred yards away. I could almost taste the temporary safety of its solid, thick stone walls and heavy iron gates.

“I don’t know, Cason,” Scarlett shouted, without bothering to look over her shoulder. “From where I am, it’s not looking good for you. We’ve taken down bigger and badder monsters than you before. Come morning, it’ll be your bones that will be scattered on Ragnar Peak!”

I heard Cason laugh. He was going for mockery, but there was a higher pitch in there that didn’t quite fit. There was a tinge of doubt and fear that maybe, just maybe what Scarlett had just said would come true. He didn’t like it. He barked orders at his daemons, who continued in their attempt to climb the peak.

“Who’s got some water to spare?” Patrik asked. Arrah tossed him her reserve. Patrik removed its cork, muttered a spell under his breath, then shoved some powders into it and tossed it high in the air behind us.

The water bladder exploded in a bright blue cloud that stretched over the crowd of daemons and released a brief shower of instant rain. It was enough to make Cason and his daemons visible again. They were taken by surprise, but didn’t relent.

Arrah and Patrik kept tossing their explosives at them, not only causing more mudslides and sudden deaths on impact, but also destroying the only set of stairs leading up to the fortress.

“The others will have to find other routes,” Patrik said, as if reading my mind. “Besides, they have the dragon.”

“Speaking of which…” Avril’s voice trailed off as she looked up and to her left. I followed her gaze and felt a sudden surge of energy fill me to the brim.

Coming in fast and furious was Blaze in full dragon form. His black wings were stretched out as he glided on the western winds. I spotted the others down on the ground, about three hundred yards away, hot on the dragon’s trail.

The Imen cheered, while I glanced over my shoulder and had the pleasure of seeing Cason freeze. He was a little too far for me to see his expression, but I was willing to bet that the color had drained from his face.

Blaze let out a single spine-tingling roar that echoed across the flat ground around the peak. The daemons scrambled both up and down the base. Some wanted to flee, while others looked for cover from the rain of fire that the dragon was about to unleash on them. Only then did I notice the sun’s glimmering reflection on the daemons’ shields.

They’d brought meranium shields with them. However, that wasn’t going to be enough to save them.

Arrah pulled out her bow and a quiver of arrows, then slowed down on the last set of steps before the fortress. “You all go ahead. I’ve got one last round for these monsters,” she said.

“Listen, for an Azure Heights maid, you sure know your warfare!” I croaked, then watched her shoot a flurry of projectiles from her bow. Each arrow whistled through the air and hit both shields and daemons, six hundred yards down.

The arrowheads exploded upon impact, just like the satchels, taking down about thirty more daemons. A second roar from Blaze let Cason know that he was getting dangerously close, while Cason’s daemon army was dwindling before his very eyes.

“So, who’s more screwed now? Us or them?” I chuckled, shaking my head as we reached the fortress’s black iron gates.

Patrik sighed. “Both, really. We’re—”

“It was a rhetorical question!” I berated him. “Of course we’re all screwed!”

I knew Cason wasn’t going to be the only one coming for us. Soon enough, the whole of Ragnar Peak would be swarming with daemons from all neighboring areas, hunters and soldiers alike, answering the call of one of Shaytan’s sons.

But we were no longer alone, either. For now, I chose to focus on getting us all inside the fortress and securing our position there. Everything else could wait until we shut the gates behind us and reunited with the rest of our team.

“You were right, Heron,” Avril breathed. I looked up at her and noticed the half smile stretching her lips. “We’ve got this.”

Just then, a third roar from Blaze rippled through the air, loud enough to make me shudder.

This is it.