The Guardians' Throne - The First Magic Swordsman

                    Erean group kept fighting like there was no tomorrow. Still, despite the hardships, they managed to win the fight after suffering a small number of losses since the enemies most ignored everyone aside from Ameria. Erean and the people who fought and survived raised their weapons upward and cheered when they couldn't see a single enemy in front of them. But then Erean stopped when he heard Drannor's voice.

"Oh, shit…" Drannor said while he was looking at the place he left Zaos.

                    Everyone looked in that direction and saw Zaos in the middle of a pool of his own blood. They dashed toward that direction, but then Ameria suddenly stopped them for some odd reason.

"Wait, do step on that!" Ameria said while she was pointing at the ground.

                    They found the symbols that Zaos wrote on the ground. Only Ameria had noticed that since she was used to most symbols and had an amazing peripheral vision. They moved to the side in order not to erase the symbols, and then they found Zaos with two swords piercing his chest. Despite losing all that much blood and the swords still being there for probably a few minutes, he still was alive, but his pulse was extremely weak.

"We need to pull the swords," Erean said.

"Are you crazy? He will die of blood loss if we do that!" Drannor shouted.

"Those words had been coated in poison. He will die anyway if we don't do that," Erean said. "Usually, I would say that he is a lost cause, but since his heart still is beating, he might have a chance. He has a crazy amount of vital energy, and besides… he has this."

                    Erean pointed at the focus amulet on Zaos's neck. Drannor and Ameria looked at each other because they knew what those could do, and they also knew that Zaos always had one of those in the last few years. His focus was higher than most people, so he recovered his stamina, health, and mana pretty fast.

"All right, just be ready to use the healing spell once we do that, Ameria," Drannor said. "We might not be able to do much with the mana we have, but it will help anyway."

"All right," Ameria said. "Still, I want to see what those symbols are for, so I will try to activate the spell and…"

"Don't bother. It is probably the spell Zaos used to dispel the poison on us during the party," Drannor said. "Just focus on learning and memorizing as fast as possible."

                    Ameria nodded and went to check the message. It was amazing that Zaos managed to write all that while he was facing an enemy that put him against the wall, the reason for that was the fact that the spell had over forty symbols… it certainly was an advanced spell that she had never heard of.

                    Even though she was in a hurry and pretty nervous due to the battle, and thanks to the whole situation, Ameria memorized the symbols pretty fast. She returned to where the others were, and when she saw that after pulling the swords and using some healing spells to close the wounds, they used Crow's dark cape in place of bandages to stop the bleeding.

"This isn't working…" Drannor said while biting his fingernails. "We don't have more mana and…"

"What if we try to use the herbs on the wounds," Noemi suddenly said. "He said that some of the herbs that can be eaten also work to close wounds and disinfect them."

"Did he say that? When?" Drannor frowned.

"When we were collecting them," Noemi said.

                    Zaos probably did, but Drannor didn't pay attention to it since it was a boring subject. Regardless, Ameria acted fast and told Noemi to bring the herbs. Soon after, Ameria used Cleanse. Much to everyone's surprise, the purple marks around Zaos's wounds decreased in size, but they were still there when Ameria depleted her mana after using Cleanse two more times. 

                    After a couple of minutes, Noemi returned with the herbs she believed were the right ones. Truth to be told, she didn't have the chance to learn much about all of them, but she assumed that a plant that could be eaten wouldn't worse Zaos's current situation. The bleed continues for a while but eventually stopped… the group sighed in relief, but they still had to move Zaos to a safe place since he was white like a ghost and because of the rain.

            Once they sighed in relief, the group noticed that they paid a high price despite the victory. Aside from Zaos, Erean, and Drannor, the group only had three more soldiers, and that by counting Orleand's guards. Aside from that, the heads of at least fifteen families had died while fighting. Orleand himself had a wound on his left shoulder, and that forced him to withdraw from the battle. The group won, but it seems things wouldn't be much better in the future.

            After tending the wounds, those who still could move began to bury the fallen people of their group. After that, they took away the gear of the enemy soldiers and burned them in several piles. That being said, even before ten percent of those bodies had been disposed of, Erean called everyone.

"We won this battle, but we can't relax yet," Erean said. "We need to check things on the other side of the island since we can't let ourselves be attacked again. Our job this time is to prevent another battle like this."

"Is that even possible?" Noemi asked.

"It is, after losing so many of his lackeys, Ferdinand suffered a huge blow," Erean explained. "So, he will try another approach to solve this problem. Not to mention, he still had something else to worry about."

"The people that we alerted when we sent the ravens," Ameria said.

"That is right," Erean nodded. "He has to worry about the other islands and the possibility that some of our allies are approaching. That is why we need to check the port and check what he is up to."