Watch out!" Kade shouted as three Elites came flying out from behind them.
Temas's laughter rang out through the night and he joined the fight.
"Oh, maybe you haven't completely lost it, protégé."
Ashyn twisted round, a handful of metal shards already slicing a path towards a leaping Elite. Even if she didn't know they were an Elite beforehand, she would know by the deadened glare of the man that something was different.
Not lesser, but other.
He didn't flinch at the shuriken, despite the red scratch forming along his cheek, and brought down his sword in a mighty arc.
She swung out of the way, letting Yeona take the brunt of the hit with her metal staff, and circled round to jump upon the Elite with her knife. But he whipped his arm around, hitting her to the ground, before entreating on Yeona, meeting her staff with powerful blows.
Ashyn scrambled upright, the hit shocking her. Kade did such a good job of downplaying his Elite status, she'd forgotten how strong they really were.
She saw the killing blow before Yeona did. The king's staff was angled too far away from her body, and it would take too long to bring it back to protect herself from the sword making its way towards her. Ashyn moved. She knocked the sword down, disarming the Elite, and sent a flurry of deadly aimed punches reinforced with silver knuckledusters and her blade slipped between her fingers. She drew blood with a grimace.
Yeona kicked the sword away, and drove the spikes of her staff into the back of the Elite. She didn't get very far. He reached behind to grab the staff, yanked it out with a grunt, and sent Yeona sprawling across the ground, weaponless. Or so she thought.
As the Elite spun back to Ashyn, fists closed, Yeona jumped up and clumped him on the head with a rock several times as Ashyn fought to get her knife into his heart. With a roar, he dropped to the ground, using his weight to crush Yeona who had been on top of him, and knocking Ashyn over backwards in the process, who wasn't quick enough to break her fall.
Yeona groaned in desperate pain, and somewhere, Wres was shouting after her.
Angry but hopelessly winded, Ashyn gasped as she struggled upright, trying to prepare for the eventual attack. But no attack came.
The Elite had backed away several paces, on his hands and knees, eyes trained on them. He was trembling, muttering something under his breath. Ashyn fumbled for her knives. She once again had the awful sense of wrongness seep down her spine.
The sense of something other.
The Elites eyes evolved from dark and dull, to shiny and gleaming in the moonlight, and his low unintelligible muttering turned into growls, and the trembling morphed into the raising of his hackles. Bones cracked and broke and remade themselves. Gone was the brown-haired Elite who had fought them, and instead stood a mahogany toned wolf, the size of a small horse, baring teeth sharper than any blade and narrowed eyes smarter than any normal wolf.
"Holy Mothers—" she started.
He had just—
It was now—
What in the holy fuck?
Around her, the other three Elites began the same process, and where had previously stood humans, now stood wolves in all their terrifying glory. Temas laughed like a madman before he finally sunk into the form of his large grey wolf.
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Heart of Ash (The Dark Arcane Series: Book 1)
FantasíaAshyn was not in the least concerned with the serial killer haunting the city; she was focused on revenge. She had bargained her traitorous services to the witch rebels in return for having a hand in killing the emperor. But as catastrophic plans a...
