They never stood a chance.

  Something had silenced my voice as Klix charged. All it had taken was for her to see Kara restrained, and she’d started running. I wasn’t sure what type of message Kara had sent, but whatever it had been had got them running.

  The tendrils waited until they got close, which I realized even Harror and the two Roots that had stayed with her at the other end of the block were too close. I watched helplessly as Klix tried to cut into a tendril with an impressive-looking white sword, only for the tendril to wrap around it. That was all the connection that had been necessary for it to twist down the blade and around her wrist as she tried to drop the weapon. As soon as it touched her skin, it wrapped around her, pulling her to the ground and dragging her towards one of the purple circles.

  Two of her Scarlets tried to pull her in the opposite direction, but that made them easy targets for the tendrils that were coming after them.

  Harror tried to put down a healing field, but that wasn’t helping, so instead she began sprouting vines through the concrete to grab onto the tendrils, but as soon as one of the vines touched a tendril, it shriveled and died.

  Gesai was running towards us and grabbed my shoulder. “What are you doing? Get out of here!”

  I felt warmth flow into me from her hand and realized that she was dispelling whatever paralytic had been immobilizing me.

  “HE WANTS YOU, NOT ME!” I pushed her away from me and tried to move in front of the tendril that was aiming for her. I missed it as I tried to tackle it, skinning my arms on the road. I hadn’t worn my armor because there hadn’t been a need to put it on for the last week and a half. I looked up to see that the teacher hadn’t been able to dodge it any better than I’d been able to grab it.

  “NO!” I slammed my fist on the road. I looked around and saw that everyone except Harror, Whisper, and one of the Scarlets had been captured.

  “HE WANTS YOUR EXPERIENCE! JUST GET OUT OF HERE!”

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  Harror started to back up, but she only made it a few steps before the tendril that was after her was able to tear through her wood walls and wrap around her foot. Once it had her, it pulled her down, then immobilized her and started dragging her towards one of the three remaining open circles.

  The other Scarlet managed to make it all the way to Yoriel, who looked panicked until their white blade bounced off of the barrier.

  Yoriel laughed as the Scarlet was grabbed and dragged them screaming to the closest empty purple ring.

  “And then there was one.” Yoriel pointed at Whisper, who was doing an impressive job of keeping away from the last tendril.

  “What are you doing?!?” I waved for the bandit to leave. “Get out of here! Go get…” I was going to say help, but if Klix and Harror couldn’t do anything, I wasn’t sure who could.

  Ether was pounding on the barrier that was holding her sister, while Justia was trying to pull her away. I watched as Whisper danced away again, putting more space in between himself and the tendril. For a second, I thought that there might be a chance that the blonde bandit could pull it off. Then I saw what was coming down the street. There were a dozen Adventurers coming from each direction.

  “Just give up!” Yoriel laughed. “There’s no way that you’re going to be able to keep this up!”

  Whisper was running out of room, and he needed help, except I knew that I wouldn’t be able to take on but one of those almost fifty Adventurers. He was getting closer to Yoriel, but I didn’t know what he was going to try.

  The bandit’s large gold sword diverted the tendril, but he had to drop the weapon to keep it from grabbing his hand.

  “I’ll double his bounty for whoever gets him caught!” The demon cackled.

  One of the adventurers in shining silver armor tried to tackle Whisper; they missed, but it was enough to put him off balance, so that he wasn’t ready to dodge the arrows that were being shot at him. There was only one direction for him to go and not get hit by something. I saw the look in his blue eyes and could tell that he knew it was over. He closed his eyes as the tendril hit him in the chest.

  “NO!” I started to move towards him, then realized that the tendril had wrapped around something in front of him.

  My heart jumped into my throat as Rix materialized inside the tendrils grasp. Time seemed to slow down as she was yanked off of her feet towards the last ring.

  Whisper stood frozen in shock as he watched Rix get dragged away in his place. The heavily armored Adventurer punched the blond man in the face.

  That was all the free hits that Whisper was going to allow. The silver man caught the next punch and broke the other man’s armored hand.

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