Without breaking his stance, his sapphire blade moved in a continuous, quiet circle, leaving nothing but clean, headless heaps of meat in the mud.
Suddenly, a massive, suffocating pressure broke from the ferns.
The Layer 3 Alpha Blood-Hound finally entered the fight.
The beast stood at least twenty feet tall, its skin a scarred, blackened crimson, covered in deep grey bone-ridges that ran down its spine like a row of broken spikes. Its jaws were wide enough to crunch a human torso in half, and its heavy breathing forced hot, bloody vapor out of its nostrils, melting the morning frost on the ferns.
"Holy ancestors..." Bran stammered, his leopard-spirit traits firing erratically as his legs twitched to run. "That's a full pack. If they all howl at once, the main Zerith camp will hear it before we can take ten steps."
"No worries," Sol said, his voice turned into an exciting register, that instantly froze the panic in the boys' chests.
