Page 17 of Elven Throne

Now, he only saw bits of shredded metal and sagging exterior panels, the rest of the equipment that had ensured his upcoming victory half-melted on one side. Still oozing, as if he’d made a deal for machines of augmented parts that onlylookedlike steel but performed like a stick of melting butter.

Then, within the eeriness of the ensuing silence, while thick smoke rose in dark columns against the night sky—from the parking lot below, the building, and nearly a dozen other locations in the woods around the base’s perimeter—the grimbúl finally realized the worst of it.

Nothing made a sound in the explosion’s aftermath.

Not even the thousands of griybreki he’d unleashed on his enemy to wipe them off the fucking map.

Because not a single one of his horde remained.

They were all gone. No trace of them left behind. As if they’d been swept up by a different type of portal and transported somewhere he would never find them.

They hadn’t disappeared. They’d been systematically eradicated.

“That fucking piece of Xaharí scum fuckingliedtome!” he roared, his snarling growl bursting across the remains of so much destruction.

Then the grimbúl whipped out a small cell phone laughable in size compared to the thickness of his fingers fumbling to open the damn thing.

Seething with fury, spittle flying from his mouth with every venomous exhale as he stabbed at the buttons, he finally made the call and nearly crushed the phone against the side of his head when he slapped it to his ear.

As soon as he heard the click of the answered call, he unleashed his rage in a single string of bellowing without even pausing to draw breath. “You fucking lied to me! It’s gone. All of it! No, I don’t give a shit what your fucking technology wassupposedto do. I’m telling youit’sfuckinggone! And you’re gonna make it right!”

He spun around to trudge across the open land in the small wooded clearing, now cluttered with not only forest debris from the explosion but bits of asphalt and charred building rubble flung by the blast.

“No,youlisten! I’m gonna find you and wrap my hands around your lying gullet, you fucking fraud! Let’s see how hard you laughthen!”

He almost chucked the phone at the boulder beside him but thought better of it and paused, growling. The hulking grimbúl considered his options, which had now changed drastically, thanks to this unforeseen disaster.

He’d been played like a fucking moron, and now the whole game had changed.

Intent on making an entirely different call, he searched the contacts in his phone, fuming and growling through heaving breath.

Something rustled through the underbrush behind him.

Soft and short-lived. Definitely the sound of movement.

He froze.

Was that son-of-a-bitch warlock here in the flesh, watching the whole time? Laughing at him while the grimbúl laughed at his previously assured victory?

Forcing himself not to move, he listened for the sound again. When it came, he moved with more speed than his enormous size and girth suggested and spun around to face its source.

It didn’t take long to find.

In the darkness, the pair of large, silver-glowing eyes stood out like beacons from between trees.

Those eyes hardly moved at all until they’d doubled, tripled in size far too quickly.

The scant moonlight falling into the clearing illuminated the vicious head of an enormous, shaggy gray wolf descending upon him, those glowing eyes at its center.

Jaws stretched wide in a snarl. Exposed fangs flashing in the moonlight, like an echo of the dying star that had just wiped out the entirety of Eduardo’s griybreki army in this world.

But the wolf got Eduardo all to himself.

6

Rebeccathoughtshewasdead.

It would have made sense. Part of her had even expected it as the worst-case scenario, if she’d somehow failed.

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