Page 13 of Elven Shadow

Titus was more than busy trying to keep Shade’s leader away from said building, which grew increasingly more difficult by the second as the neon-yellow wards kept growing around the building’s perimeter. Its constant energetic hum rose louder and higher in pitch with no sign of abating.

“Doesn’t look like they’re stopping anytime soon,” Leonard shouted from farther back in the parking lot.

“Well don’t just stand there like a useless lump,” Diego roared back.

At the same time, two particularly thick, heavy whips of his writhing blood-magic coils pulled a massively huge griybreki off its laughably large feet, his arms outstretched toward the target. In one swift, abrupt motion, the Cruorcian clenched both hands into fists, his entire body surging with crimson light.

The griybreki in the grip of his magic was powerless to withstand the force.

The next second, the struggling, choking, gasping little ghoul met its final end with a thick, heavy pop. A spray of red, noxious-green and putrid-yellow ooze, and chunks of skin and bone exploded in all directions, peppering the griybreki’s comrades with pieces of himself splattering across the asphalt and pinging back toward the building.

“Maybe time for a retreat?” Leonard hollered.

“I can’t believe you’re actually suggesting that right now!” Diego spat back before he was forced to duck beneath the enormous snarling wolf leaping through the air toward another enemy target.

“Anyone have eyes on Edwardo?” Rebecca shouted, lunging away from a gurgling, hissing griybreki leaping toward her with his hands outstretched and an oddly glowing blue tint to his razor-sharp front teeth as he snarled.

The gross little frogman missed her completely, then found himself sprawling face-first across the asphalt after Rebecca’s crackling, hissing bolt of attack magic seared a hole through his back the size of her fist.

“Anyone?” she shouted again.

“Man, fuck Edwardo,” Diego hissed. “You’re the one who said to keep our fearless leader away from the building.”

More likebrainlessleader.

Rebecca didn’t have the opportunity to share her thoughts out loud, because Aldous was apparently one-hundred-percent committed to making this mission a complete failure in every way.

The enormous changeling who’d had fashioned himself in the likeness of this monstrous, colossalthingstomped about, now splattered with the red, green, and sickly yellow of way too many griybreki insides dripping off his bulbous nose and that fat, protruding lower lip of dark green dripping with saliva.

Nyx flickered back into existence in the air in front of him, trying to catch his attention.

His enormous hands swatted at her, and she let out a terrified squeak before popping out of existence again to somewhere hopefully safer.

The hoard of griybreki surged together in a renewed volley toward Aldous The Thing, yammering and gnashing their teeth and gargling their battle cries.

They were no match for the guy.

He picked each attacking little cretin up off the ground the second they came within reach before hurling each one blindly across the parking lot.

“Watch the wards!” Rebecca shouted. She really hoped the rest of her team had been paying attention to the quickly growing barrier of neon-yellow light pulsing like a heartbeat as it stretched and broadened and grew farther and farther away from the building’s physical structure.

Her hope came slightly too late, just like her warning.

With another trembling roar of mindless rage, Aldous clawed at a griybreki that had managed to climb up the guy’s gargantuan calf and thigh to start stabbing its laughably tiny blade at the green monstrosity’s gut.

The squirming frogman yelped when that enormous green fist closed around him to jerk the creature off his own wobbling form before chucking it away with a reverberating howl.

That throw just happened to be aimed directly at Titus.

The griybreki screamed as he hurtled through the air and smacked right into Titus’s face. His scrawny arms wrapped instantly around the vuulbor’s thick neck and shaved head as he gargled and hissed and choked under the impact of being chucked like a hand grenade.

Blinded by his surprise attacker’s entire body clinging to his face, Titus boomed something unintelligible and stepped back, his arms flailing as he slapped at the enemy blocking his vision.

“Titus!” Diego shouted, reaching out in horror toward the one member of their team who’d always been the biggest, most intimidating guy they had—until Aldous completely lost his shit tonight.

At the same moment Diego tried to ensnare Titus in his lashing blood-coils bursting twenty feet away from his hands to keep the big guy away from the deadly wards, Aldous’s enormous green fist closed around a griybreki launching himself through the air.

His fingers also closed down around Diego’s magic to trap the Cruorcian’s blood tendrils in the same grip.

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