Page 3 of Elven Throne

From hundreds, maybe thousands, of griybreki feet, the combined sound created a constant, slapping rush echoing around the compound—like a high-pressure waterfall spewing over the edge of a rocky cliff onto even more stone beneath.

The roar was deafening. Add to that the crackle, sizzle, and hiss of battle magic launched through the air and the cracking rapport of augmented weapons fire, and it was impossible to hear anything else.

Rebecca couldn’t even hear herself think.

Only the mind-numbing insanity up ahead existed now—such an unreal, shockingly bizarre sight, it would have been easier to believe she’d hallucinated the whole thing.

Constant streams of griybreki swarms five to six frogmen wide charged in from various pockets around the property’s perimeter. Rebecca counted six separately swarming forces, though visibility behind the compound’s main building remained nonexistent from their current position.

Thousands of the nasty little frogmen barreled toward the compound in one of these streams, fueled by their mission, their battle lust, and their fellow idiots all scurrying forward in an endless, heaving wave from unseen origin points hidden in the surrounding woods.

That wasn’t even the worst of it.

When Rebecca widened her eyes, the scene before her morphed slightly, as if she’d been staring at a painting for too long and could no longer see the entire piece the way it had been created.

Those half-dozen columns of scrambling, shrieking, bumbling griybreki almost looked like streams of energy moving across the ground, all of them surging inward to converge on one enormous, blindingly bright, white-hot center of powerful energy and concentrated magic. Swirling like a tornado funnel in the parking lot only a few yards away from the compound’s front entrance.

No matter what the magic around them did or how it reacted, the streams of griybreki just kept coming. As if their numbers were as endless and infinite as the wind.

Even when those at the front of their attacking columns disappeared within the burning light in the parking lot, the other frogmen neither slowed nor seemed to recognize those ahead of them weren’t coming back out.

Rebecca couldn’t stop staring at the very center of the chaos, that blistering column of white light swirling in the parking lot and rising higher than the building behind it.

Even from here, she felt the unimaginable power radiating from the central storm of magical energy, the blindingly white funnel too bright to look at head-on.

The quickening pulse of all that unnaturally formidable power blazing away made her breathless, captured her in its cruel grasp, and refused to let go.

It was one of the most beautiful fucking things she had ever seen.

“Jesus Christ,” Theo murmured, his voice rising with perfect clarity through the silence of the comms. “Where are they allcomingfrom? It just doesn’t stop…”

Then, as if the seal on their silence had been broken to unleash their combined thoughts aloud, everyone spoke at once.

“Is that even real?”

“It’s like he just…opened up half a dozen fucking portals all over the woods.”

“Wait, that’s not even possible, right?”

“Possible forsomeone, maybe. But how didEduardomanage it?”

The sudden outburst of speculation filled the comms, making it impossible to differentiate between dozens of smaller simultaneous conversations. Or maybe they were all the same.

Rebecca still had nothing to say.

At this point, everything she heard over the comms seemed like a viable possibility, especially now that they were here, watching this insane attack unfold.

Not that the truth ofhowEduardo had managed this even mattered. The devastating effect was the same, either way.

“…I thought the guy was a total moron this whole time, but now he’s pullingthisshit?”

“How can Eduardo handle even one portal, let alone six?”

“He can’t. Probably picked up a few tricks from someone else, more likely.”

“Yeah, that’s wheremymoney’s at. He didn’t manufacture the arms shipment we took off his hands. No way did he makethishappen on his own…”

Somehow, Rebecca managed to drown out the constant noise from her operatives, focusing instead on the blinding, white-hot pillar of light rising from the parking lot, frozen by the sight like a rabbit caught in a snare.

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