They attacked in waves, pulling back when wounded, letting fresh fighters rush forward while others circled to find weak points. The youngsters darted between the adults’ legs, slashing at ankles and knees before vanishing back into the melee.
Trall.
A blade whistled past his ear… Michelle, swinging what looked like Raaze’s weapon. Her movements were all wrong for the oversized blade, her grip too high, and her stance unbalanced on that broken leg. But she fought with determination that made his chest tight, blood running down her temple from a gash across her forehead.
Zeke spun to intercept a feral coming at them from the side, but Raaze was already there, his blade opening it from shoulder to hip. The warball player moved with an economy of violence he hadn’t expected, every strike calculated for maximum damage, no wasted energy on flashy moves, just brutal efficiency.
“Left side!” Raaze barked, and Zeke reacted without thought, catching a feral’s claws inches from Michelle’s ribs. He crushed its windpipe and used the body as a club to clear space around them.
Kraath’s weapon sang through the air on their right, the garrison commander holding his section. For a handful of heartbeats, they moved like one unit, three warriors forming a lethal perimeter around the female at their center.
But the math was against them.
His muscles burned as he tore through another attacker, his body already pushing against its limits. Sweat ran into his eyes, mixing with blood that might have been his or might have been from the half dozen ferals he’d already killed. Bodies littered the ground around them, but more kept coming, always more.
He heard them moving through the shadows… at least twenty still mobile, probably more. They’d already killed fifteen, maybe twenty, and hadn’t made a dent in the assault. These weren’t separate hunting packs that had stumbled across each other. This was a clan, a tribe... something that shouldn’t exist according to everything he’d been taught about ferals.
Michelle’s breathing had gone ragged behind him, each exhale carrying a sound of pain, her swings slowing, the blade dropping lower with each pass.
A feral with two heads—two draanthing heads on one body—rushed their position. Zeke met it head-on, driving his claws through both throats, but three more used the distraction to push forward, and their formation broke.
Everything went to hell in seconds.
The ferals drove between them like wedges, forcing them apart through sheer mass. He tried to hold position, but a massive brute with crystal spikes for shoulders slammed into him, driving him back three steps.
Those three steps opened a gap and Michelle stumbled, suddenly exposed.
“No!” The word tore from his throat as he fought to get back to her, but bodies pressed in from all sides, his claws painting the air red, but for every feral he dropped, another took its place.
Through the chaos, movement on the ridge above caught his eye.
His blood turned to ice.
A figure stood silhouetted against the stars, and everything he knew about ferals shattered into fragments. It was a female. She stood with an authority that radiated from her stance alone, one hand raised as she directed the assault with precise gestures.
Her eyes found his across the battlefield. Yellow. The same yellow as his.
The shock of recognition, not personal, but something deeper, something in his blood, nearly got him killed. Claws raked across his back, sending fire through his body. He spun and caught his attacker’s head, twisting until vertebrae separated with a wet crack.
But that moment of distraction had been enough.
The attack pattern shifted, the ferals flowing around him like water around a stone and isolating him from the others. He caught glimpses through the press of bodies… Kraath pressed against the canyon wall, Raaze bleeding from a dozen wounds, and Michelle...
She stood alone in a pocket of space, the blade hanging loose in her grip. Blood ran down her face, her chest heaving as she tried to track threats from every direction.
Holy trall. He saw it happening like slow motion, every heartbeat an eternity as the massive feral charged from Michelle’s blind spot. She was looking the wrong way, trying to track a smaller feral circling to her left.
The thing was huge—easily twice his size, its body a mass of scars and mutations, its arms thickened into clubs of muscle and bone. Its claws extended as it ran, each one the length of a combat knife.
Claws that were aimed straight for Michelle’s throat.
“MICHELLE!”
A terrible roar welled up and tore from his throat as his legion exploded through his system, armor flowing down his arms and legs as he moved. The ferals between him and Michelle ceased to exist... he went through them like they were made of paper.
But he was too far away, distance and time working against him and each meter felt endless as the massive feral closed on Michelle. She started to turn, warned by his shout, but her movements were slow, exhausted... human.
The feral’s claws swept toward her throat.
