"The bird is grounded. The bear is bleeding. And the little human... has nowhere left to run."
Kaya stopped struggling.
She looked at Siss, then at Cutie, who was swaying on his feet, losing massive amounts of blood from the acidic burns and deep slashes covering his body. She looked out over the burning canyon, listening to the screams of her people.
She had lost.
Despite all her modern knowledge, all her tactical brilliance, and all her arrogant confidence, she had fundamentally underestimated the sheer, horrific resilience of the beast world. She had played a game of thrones with monsters, and the monsters had won.
But as Kaya looked at the mutated, gloating face of Lord Siss, the profound despair in her chest suddenly hardened into a cold, unbreakable spike of pure spite.
She reached down to her thigh. Her hunting knife was gone, lost somewhere in the subterranean stairwell. She had no weapons. She had no army.
