The Villain Who Seeks Joy-Chapter 87: The Hard Point

We hit the edge of Aldric’s camp at a run.

It wasn’t a camp anymore. It was a buffet.

The fancy carriage was on its side, one wheel spinning lazily in the air. The canvas tent was shredded ribbons flapping in the gale. Fire from a kicked-over brazier licked at a pile of furs, throwing jagged shadows across the snow.

And in the center of the light, ten students stood back-to-back, wands flashing wildly into the dark.

Surrounding them were the Leapers. Not twelve. Twenty.

They moved like liquid shadows, darting in to snap at a leg, then fading back before the lightning could hit them. They were toying with the prey. Waiting for the cold to slow the wands down.

"Deploy!" I shouted.

I slammed my heel into the snow. Cael and Marcus dug in. Marrow clawed for traction. The Centurion sled skidded to a halt ten yards from the students.

"Wake," I gasped. The leash burned.

I pulsed the current. The Centurion unlocked its joints. It didn’t stand up fully—too much wind. It knelt, locking its glass shields together to form a V-shaped barricade facing the pack.

"Behind the wall!" I roared. "Move!"

The students were frozen. Panic does that. It glues your feet to the place that’s killing you.

Aldric was at the front. His fur coat was torn. Lightning crackled constantly around his hands, erratic and blinding. He wasn’t aiming; he was just discharging fear.

"Voss!" Cael shouted, his voice a hammer. "Move your people!"

Aldric turned, eyes wild. He saw the Centurion—a monster of bone and glass rising out of the snow. For a second, he thought we were another threat.

Then a Leaper lunged.

It came from his blind side, over the overturned carriage. It hit Aldric high, claws scrabbling for purchase on the expensive fur.

Aldric screamed and went down. The lightning sizzled out.

"Cael!" I said.

Cael was already gone. He didn’t run; he blurred. He hit the Leaper with his shoulder, knocking it off Aldric. He didn’t stop to fight it. He grabbed Aldric by the collar and threw him—physically threw him—toward our line.

"Get them in!" I told Lyra.

Lyra didn’t flinch at the chaos. She grabbed the nearest student—a girl sobbing into her hands—and shoved her behind the Centurion’s glass flank.

"Inside!" she ordered. "Gareth, Pelham—drag them if you have to!"

The Leapers realized the game had changed. The easy meal was moving.

Three of them broke off and charged the Centurion.

They hit the glass plating with a sound like a car crash. THUD-CRACK.

The construct groaned. The bear-femur spikes drove deeper into the permafrost. It held.

"Hold the line," I gritted out. The leash was heavy. Three threads. Marrow guarding the flank. Hollow spotting from above. Centurion taking the hits.

My head pounded.

"Right side!" Marcus yelled.

Two Leapers tried to circle the barricade. Marcus met them. He didn’t use a sword. He cast an illusion—a wall of fire that wasn’t there.

The beasts flinched. The hesitation cost them.

Gareth lunged with his spear, catching one in the shoulder. It snarled and swiped, snapping the spear shaft like a twig.

Gareth stumbled back, falling.

"Marrow!" I barked.

The hound launched from the shadow of the sled. He hit the Leaper mid-air, jaws clamping on the throat. They rolled into the dark, a ball of white fur and yellow bone.

The second Leaper went for Gareth on the ground.

I stepped out from the wall.

I didn’t have a spear. I had my sabre and the Anchor Step.

I waited. The Leaper crouched, bunched, and sprang.

I stepped forward.

Left foot anchor. Pulse. The ground became part of me.

I swung the sabre. Not a slash. A chop.

I aimed for the spine, just behind the skull.

The blade bit. The force of the Anchor Step drove it through muscle and vertebrae.

The Leaper dropped like a stone.

I yanked the blade free. "Get up, Gareth."

He scrambled up, grabbing a broken piece of the carriage for a club. "Thanks."

"Back to the wall." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

We retreated.

By now, Cael had dragged the last of the stragglers behind the Centurion. The space was tight. Twenty people huddled behind a wall meant for five.

The stove was radiating heat. The copper wire grid on the sled floor kept the snow melted.

It wasn’t a fortress. It was a life raft.

Aldric sat on a flour sack, clutching his arm. Blood seeped between his fingers. He stared at the glass plating of the Centurion as a Leaper slammed against it, claws screeching uselessly.

"It holds," he whispered. He sounded stunned.

"It holds," I said. "Because we built it to hold."

The pack circled us. Eyes reflected the lantern light. They tested the left. They tested the right. They found steel and glass and Cael Veyron standing like a mountain at the gap.

They were predators. They did the math. The cost was too high.

One by one, they turned and slunk back into the dark.

"They’re gone," Pelham said, his voice shaking.

"They’re waiting," I corrected. "They’ll come back when the fire dies."

"Then we don’t let it die," Mira said. She was already feeding a chunk of the broken carriage into the stove.

I did a headcount. Everyone was inside. Three bite wounds. One broken wrist. Hypothermia setting in on half of them.

Lyra was already moving, triage mode. "Warm water," she told Mira. "Gareth, get blankets. If they don’t have them, use the flour sacks."

She knelt by Aldric. "Let me see the arm."

He flinched away. "I’m fine."

"You’re bleeding on my floor," she said sharply. "Show me."

He showed her. Four deep punctures.

"Clean it," I said to her. "Wrap it."

I walked to the edge of the shield. Cael was watching the dark.

"That was too many," he said quietly. "Leapers hunt in packs of six. Maybe eight. That was twenty."

"Something drove them together," I said. "Or someone."

"The Foundation?"

"Maybe," I said. "Or just winter. Desperate things bunch up."

A noise from the east made us both turn. Not a growl. A whistle.

Specific. Three notes.

Shapes emerged from the gloom. Not monsters. People.

Seraphine walked into the circle of light. Her team was with her—eight students in heavy winter gear, carrying shovels and braced shields. They moved in a tight phalanx.

She looked at the wreckage of the carriage. She looked at the shivering students huddled behind my bone wall.

She looked at me.

"You seem crowded," she said.

"We have room," I said.

"My camp is dug in," she said. "We have a pit. Earth berms. It’s ugly, but it’s warm."

"We have the wounded," I said. "We can’t move them."

She looked at Aldric, pale and shaking. Her mouth tightened.

"Then we move to you," she said.

She signaled her team. "Extend the perimeter. Berm the flanks. Dig in."

Her team moved. They didn’t argue. They started digging, expanding our safe zone, packing snow against the Centurion’s sides to widen the wall.

It wasn’t charity. It was survival.

Seraphine walked up to me. She stood close enough that I could smell the cold on her coat.

"You brought a wall," she said.

"I brought a sled," I said. "It moonlights."

"Resourceful," she said. She glanced at the Centurion. "Is that... the Chimera?"

"Parts of it," I said. "Waste not."

She almost smiled. Then she looked at the dark again.

"They aren’t gone, Armand. They’re regrouping."

"I know."

"We have fuel for two nights," she said. "If the storm holds, we’re stuck."

"Then we ration," I said.

I looked at the camp. Three teams merged. My "boring" wall protecting Aldric’s pride and Seraphine’s ambition.

Lyra was bandaging Aldric. Cael was sharpening a sword. Gareth was passing out soup.

We weren’t students anymore. We were a garrison.

"Get inside," I told Seraphine. "It’s warm."

"I’ll take a watch," she said.

"Suit yourself."

I sat down on the sled chassis. I disconnected the leash for a moment, letting the heavy construct lock into its mechanical brace. The pressure in my chest eased.

My hands were steady.

I took out my logbook.

Day 2. Hollow Lands. Hostile contact. Multiple packs merged. Camp Aldric overrun. Assets recovered. Perimeter established.

I looked at the line I had written. Assets recovered.

I looked at Aldric, shivering.

People recovered, I corrected in my head.

I closed the book.

Winter had teeth. But we had a wall. And for tonight, that was enough.