Page 80 of Shadow Warrior
Twenty-Five
“Someone cut their throats.” Devon finished examining the last cadet. “This isn’t the work of a mist creature.”
Not unless mist creatures carried blades. No. My mind was whirring. “First, the traps in the forest that Henrich said he hadn’t planted and now this.”
“The fomorians are here,” Lloyd said.
I nodded. “Fuck the trial. We need to get to the fortress and warn the knights, and we need to take the shortest route.”
“We head east,” Brady said.
“We can’t just leave them here,” Devon said.
“They’re dead,” Lloyd snapped. “And if we don’t get back to the fortress, more might die. We can’t let anything slow us down. Move out.”
He was right.
“If we leave them here, the fucking creatures will have them for lunch,” Aidan growled.
It was the first time I’d seen him lose his shit.
The ground several meters away began to seethe. It was moving and churning.
“Something’s coming,” Carlo warned.
Devon crouched to pick up a dead cadet, and the ground that had been moving exploded to expel a wormlike creature with an anus mouth filled with teeth.
Aidan grabbed his brother’s arm.
There was no more discussion as we turned and ran.
Five minutes, ten. The mist was too thick, filling my lungs and slowing me down. Howls and screeches surrounded us. The monsters of the mist were out in force. It was only a matter of time before they found us. There was no time to stop and fight. The fomorians were here. They’d killed our cadets. We needed the knights, we needed our hounds.
Dark shapes appeared up ahead, and my body tensed, but then the mist shifted a little, and I caught sight of armor and a raised arm.
“Hey!” Lloyd called out to the three cadets as they headed our way. “We need to head back to the fortress.”
But the cadets were picking up speed, and more shapes appeared behind them. Huge misshapen shapes.
Wild mist hounds.
Fuck, this was the last thing we needed.
I drew my blade, and the click of the others drawing their weapons accompanied me.
“Hold,” Brady ordered. “Hold.”
“Now!” Lloyd cried.
We rushed forward, slipping between the fleeing cadets and heading straight at the feral hounds. There were three of them and six of us. But the hounds were fast, with mouths filled with teeth and powerful jaws. They attacked hard, and we took them on two on one. Carlo and I teamed up, jabbing and stabbing and swiping until the hound was a mass of wounds, bleeding out while we tried to get the stab that would shut it down.
“Die, already,” Carlo ordered.
It rounded on him as if offended by his words, and its neck was exposed, open to receive the full brunt of my blade.
Its roar died to a whine, and then it hit the ground with a thud.
Carlo backed up, daggers pointed down. “Clear.”
