The blade cuts clean through.
His body drops to the ground, his knees hitting first and sending the white smoke in the air pluming around him.
I’m not done with him. Still gripping the weapon, I veer sharply to the right. My left hand lands on his shoulder as I race past.
“Stone.”
Let him remain there for the humans to see what happens when they try to kill me.
The man to my right shouts, half-turning, trying to leap away from me, but his reflexes can’t match mine.
The sound in his throat strangles as my left hand rams against his turning shoulder.
“Ash.” The command leaves my lips and his body instantly fragments and collapses, dust raining onto the earth at my feet.
Thankfully, the mask I’m wearing stops me from inhaling it.
Two more men rush toward me on my left. One of them is bare-chested, his shirt wrapped around his shoulder. He’s the one I attempted to stab in the heart.
I duck the axe he aims for my throat and slide past him through the muck. His arm is raised, exposing his ribs, and my left hand brushes his side.
A second later, he, too, is nothing more than smoke.
I spin to the final three men, one of whom has a shirt wrapped around his thigh. He hurries backward, and I let him go for now because he won’t get far.
I hurl the axe into the chest of one, this time hitting the mark. As he falls to his knees, I duck the second one’s weapon, plowing into the dirt as my left hand slaps against his thigh.
Another pile of ash falls to the earth.
I scoop up his dropped axe and prowl quietly after the final man, following his unbalanced footfalls.
He’s managed to get quite a few paces away from me, but his silhouette soon becomes clear in the smoke.
He spins back to me, throwing his hands up, while trying to stumble away from me.
“Don’t kill me,” he pleads. “We can make a deal. I’ll let you go. I’ll buy you time so you can escape while the smoke clears.”
It isn’t a terrible proposal.
However…
His voice may be muffled behind his mask, but I recognize it from before.
He’s the one who called the Vandawolf an animal.
Pity.
“Better to be ruled by a fucking animal,” I say, watching as the man’s eyes widen, “than be torn to shreds by a Blacksmith.”
I swing my arm back, preparing to fling the axe at his neck, coldly calculating the angle needed to account for how far he’ll get before the weapon strikes him.
He shouts, but the blade flies toward his throat.
It does its work, stopping his speech.
I wait the second it takes for his body to hit the ground and then I drop beside him in the mud, press my left palm to his chest and command him to become stone. I’ve left the axe where it fell. Once the smoke clears, he will be another gruesome reminder to the humans that they have made an enemy of me.
Slowly, I rise back to my feet.
