“Dann—” Dann’s raised hand cut Calen short. He squinted as he stared into the dense brush.
His voice was a whisper. “There’s something…”
Calen thought he could hear it. The rustling of leaves. The snapping of branches. The thumping of heavy feet. A small puddle of water in front of them rippled at regular intervals.
In a flash, a wolfpine burst out of the trees about ten feet ahead of them. Its fur was mostly a greyish-black, mottled with streaks of dark blood. The wolfpine stared straight at them. Something was wrong. It was large, less than half a foot smaller than Faenir from nose to tail. But it was not large enough to cause the ripples in that water.
“Oh, for the love of the gods! This is getting ridiculous! Can’t we just catch a bre—?” Just as Rist was about to finish his sentence, a massive axe with a half-moon blade followed the wolfpine out of the trees, swinging through the air with a ringing metallic whistle. The axe blade was massive, nearly the width of the wolfpine’s belly to the crest of its back, with a smooth translucent gemstone set into its surface. It crashed straight into the creature’s ribcage and, with a howling whimper, lifted the wolfpine off its feet. The sheer force carried it through the air and slammed it into the trunk of a nearby tree. Calen didn’t need to look to know that the animal would not be getting back up. He felt his grip on the spear involuntarily growing tighter as fear made itself at home in his bones.
Dann was in the middle of nocking an arrow when two creatures emerged from the trees near the body of the wolfpine. An unintelligible noise came from Rist’s mouth.
A thousand thoughts ran amok in Calen’s head, none of them able to make sense of the other. He had to squeeze his hands around the spear even tighter to stop them from shaking. Uraks.
They were human in shape, but the larger of the two was easily over seven feet tall. Its shoulders were heavy and broad, and its dense muscles rippled with every movement. Its ashen-grey skin was thick and rough, almost like it was made of leather. Of everything, its sharp, angular face was the least human. The pale skin made it seem almost bereft of life, while its thin bluish lips curled back to reveal a yellow set of sharp, vicious teeth.
It wore no shoes of any description, but battered pieces of plate mail covered its legs, secured with thick straps of leather. Its chest bore no such protection; the exposed flesh was crisscrossed with half-healed wounds and scars of battles long past. What struck Calen the most, though, were its eyes. The irises were as red as blood, and the pupils were long and sharp, like those of a kat. He had never seen one up close before.
The smaller of the two Uraks looked similar to its companion, although it was around a foot shorter, and its skin had more of a brownish hue to it. Like the larger one, it wore no shoes but bore a ragged iron chest plate and vambraces to match.
It only took a couple of seconds for the Uraks to notice Calen, Dann, and Rist huddled together a stone’s throw away with dumbstruck looks on their faces. Wrapping a thick grey hand around the shaft of the axe buried in the crumpled heap of the wolfpine, the larger of the two shouted something at the smaller one. Its voice was harsh, like stones crashing down the side of a mountain. Calen could not understand anything it said.
Without hesitation, the smaller Urak charged towards the group at a pace that Calen would not have thought possible, given its size. It swung a jagged sword over its head, unleashing a guttural howl. The charred-black sword was nearly four foot long, with a translucent gemstone set into the blade, just above the crossguard.
Calen heard the familiar whistle of Dann’s arrow only half a second before he saw it jutting out just above the armour on the creature’s chest. It did not slow it down. Within seconds, it was upon them.
Rist was the closest one to it. Twisting out of its way, he jabbed his spear straight for the creature’s legs. He missed by the thickness of a hair, then took a backswing from the pommel of the beast’s sword. It struck him right in the chest and sent him tumbling into the base of a tree. He didn’t move.
Calen roared. His pulse was like fire in his veins, fear driving him on as much as anything else. The Urak evaded the first jab of his spear with alarming ease, but found Calen just as well equipped to dodge its return strike.
When Dann planted a second arrow, this time in its abdomen, the creature erupted in a frenzy of flailing swings. Calen lost his footing. Tripping over a loose stone, he went crashing to the ground. Smelling blood, the creature lunged after him. In a panic, Calen heaved his spear up into the air behind him, turning as he fell, eroding every last bit of strength he had left in his body as he did.
As the Urak lunged downward at Calen, it was trapped by its own momentum, helpless as the spear plunged straight through its exposed neck, spraying blood down over Calen. The weight of the creature as it collapsed pinned the spear into the ground, leaving both suspended in mid-air above Calen. Its piercing red eyes, void of life, still somehow burned with anger as they stared through him. A putrid smell of rotted flesh wafted from its open mouth, nearly emptying the contents of Calen’s stomach.
Calen didn’t have long to catch his breath. A blood-chilling roar
