4

Those words, despite the pain they'd caused me as a child, pushed me forward. I knew I'd been in worse pain. I knew I could handle this physical pain. It was easier to bare then my mental anguish. Especially since I was doing it to myself. 

I didn't know why the fact that I was doing this to myself made it better, but it did. I failed to draw the bow. I tried to force my arms through the motions, but they couldn't do it. I tried again. I could only draw the bow about halfway. This was really bad. 

I wanted to get this over with, but my arms simply didn't have the strength anymore. The creature's eyes focused on me all of a sudden. Many of it's mouths twisted into nasty smiles. I straightened slowly backing away from the crevasse. 

"I need to give my arms some time to recover," I shouted, "Don't let up."

I stopped just outside of the creature's reach, and watched from the sidelines quietly dousing myself in scent disguiser one more time just to make sure I didn't stand out to the ghouls before sitting along the edge of the trees. My arms were still shaking pretty badly. I was tired, and really wanted this to be over with. I was frustrated that my body had given out on me. I wouldn't be able to force my arms to do more then two or three shots at a time from here on out. 

That was going to set us back a good amount. What could I do about it? Absolutely nothing. I was pretty much out of this fight. I hated it. 

I stood up, and stretched slowly. The muscles in my arms refused to tense, and I could tell the others were starting to get pretty worn out as well about now. How could I solve this problem? I moved over to the crevasse slowly. I fully intended to fire a few more arrows, but the numbers of zombies hadn't thinned down enough for us to have the upper hand. 

Several ghouls started to climb up over the lip of the crevasse. We were in trouble. We'd fallen behind on how much damage we were doing. The creature was able to create ghouls faster then we were able to kill them. We no longer had the manpower needed to keep up with him. 

Then I heard a sound that used to mean so many bad things before these crazy times. I never thought I would welcome the sound of a gunshot so much. Not just one gunshot either. There were multiple. For the first time since entering this mess I smiled. 

It was beginning to look like I might survive after all. That gave me a bit of energy. I drew my bow again. Charging up one arrow for every five I fired. I didn't know where I got the strength for it all. 

My half asses plan was working. The number of ghouls was small, and the number of zombies was starting to dwindle although I was a little irritated that the zombies were attracted to all the commotion because they were pretty much walking right into this monstrosities maw. Giving the fucking thing virtually unlimited health. That gave us a different problem. Ammunition. 

I was the only one that had a decent amount of ammo left, and although the sniper had jumped to grab my spare bow, and join in with some crappy archery of his own. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that I wasn't going to be able to keep this up. Not that anyone was paying much attention. Our other gun guy had a gun skill that basically gave him unlimited ammo as long as he didn't miss. Most of his nervousness had been forgotten when surrounded by so many people that looked confident in their skills. 

"You never told me how you got those arrows to explode earlier," The sniper piped up mid shot. 

"I just over charged it with mana," I answered without thinking. 

He was lucky he got an answer at all with how focused I currently was. 

"That's assuming you took the time to open your mana channels," I continued absentmindedly, "I can only channel mana freely through my right hand because those are the only channels I took the time to open." I fired another shot, "That was a mistake on my part."

My arms felt as if gravity increased on them with each shot. Tremors of pain going all the way up my arm from my poor wrists that weren't used to this sort of thing. My fingers had turned the string red as my calloses were stripped off by the hard fiber of the bowstring. I'd managed last time simply because thicker calloses had formed when I'd been healed, but my fingers were only raw then. This time I was tearing through layers of flesh as I continued to fire well past what my body could handle. 

I didn't care. My fingers would heal. If I could get them to hold out a little longer then we might just survive this. A steady stream of tears had started to flow down my face. Making my eyes start to puff up, and my aim suffered for it. 

I'd stopped using mana since the dagger so I'd managed to regenerate about half my reserve which was a testament to how long we'd been at this. I reached for another arrow, and found that I had none left. I wanted to scramble to get more, but they weren't doing that much damage so I didn't know if there was much of a point. I stared down at my bow for a few seconds. A crazy thought occurred to me at that moment. 

If an arrow could handle ten mana, and the dagger could handle twenty. What would the rest of my mana do to this bow? The impulsive part of myself just wanted to know what would happen. The logical side said why the fuck not. It's not like I have anymore arrows to use anymore.