“Don’t,” Ronen barked. “Reserve it. Release on three.”
I tensed. “Stay close,” I said to Aspen and my squad.
“One.”
Rune and Hadrian prowled closer to the flaming edge. Blades unsheathed. Power rumbled behind us. The air pulled taut with tension and anticipation.
“Two.”
Aspen and Ronen held up their swords. My heart pounded with nerves.
“Three,” we chorused.
Our weakening barrier dropped.
Ronen redirected his shadows, slicing necks and infiltrating minds. At least a thousand infected dropped. Every fire elemental nearby unleashed their power and burned the bodies.
Melanie wasn’t even fazed or surprised.
She knew we found immunity, just like she knew she had the numbers.
Another thousand infected and blood-banded filled their spots. Ronen silenced them too, quick and efficient. We burned the bodies.
Their spots were filled.
They just kept coming.
It was nothing I could’ve ever prepared for.
We drilled. We faced other squads. Our fights were brutal and sometimes lethal, but not to this extent. Powers flew left and right, hissing, whipping, colliding. Bodies luscelered in every direction, blurring and converging. Flaming arrows shot from the sky with expert precision, downing infected long enough for fire to finish them off.
Aspen sent out shockwaves of blue flame, incinerating infected in seconds. Dusty pinned them with his vines. Zera sent knives into their eye sockets. Ichi captured them in her sword. Rissa beat them unconscious, and I took care of the bodies.
We worked as a team, much like the squads around us.
We recycled so many infected, killed blood-banded. But there was always more to replace them.
More horns. More hissing. More black veins.
More powers I’d never seen before. More chaos.
More.
I had a difficult time keeping an eye on Aspen when all I could focus on was my next opponent. The guardian bond fluttered inside me, warning that he was in danger, attempting to dig in its claws. But it couldn’t, not since Ronen accepted our bond.
I touched one infected, completely encasing him in ice, then sent an ice spear into his chest, shattering his soul as I dodged a knife.
An infected with long red horns threw knife after knife at me. I didn’t understand how he had so many until I realized he could duplicate the weapon in his hand. He dodged every fireball I volleyed back.
Both of us luscelered out of the way while attacking.
Until one of us couldn’t.
The ground loosened, and I sank into the mud to my knees.
Another infected helped him.
I tried to send lusceler into my legs, to rip myself out of the quicksand, but I was stuck.
