Night fell quickly on the Boneyard Desert. The merciless, white-hot sun sank below the horizon, and the sky turned from a pale, washed-out blue to a deep, star-dusted indigo.
A profound cold seeped out of the white sand, the opposite extreme of the day's brutal heat.
Rhys stood over the twitching, broken bodies of the Ossian Stalkers. The milky-white fluid that was their blood had already soaked into the sand, leaving dark, sizzling patches on the surface.
He used the tip of his iron sword to flip one of the dead creatures onto its back. The black, sinewy tissue that held its mismatched bones together was still pulsing with a faint, residual energy.
It was not a biological substance. It felt magical, like a kind of living, necromantic glue.
Emma came to stand beside him, her face pale in the moonlight but her expression resolute.
The initial shock of the attack had passed, and she was now looking at the dead creatures with the analytical gaze of a scholar.
