Nevander flinches back. “I apologize for overstepping—”
“Not you.” Seren clutches his practice branch, as if he could do anything. “Something’s coming. An augray. No. Two of them, from that way.”
Predators arrow closer. Across the clearing, tiny voices rise and scatter.
“Why are they here?”
“Aren’t they frightful?”
“Shouldn’t we flee?”
“Shouldn’t we flee?”
Nevander’s golden blade jumps to his hand. “Run to the treehouse. Wait.” Pale green wings displace the air with a crack. Nevander yanks out a feather. “This will get you past the circle.”
The great tree isn’t far. Seren grasps the feather and halts mid-step. His mind whirls with foreign hunger. “Are you coming too?”
“I’ll follow,” Nevander growls, shoving Seren forward. “Shield your mind andrun.”
Running is easy. Reweaving his shield is harder in Seren’s panic. With each push against the soft earth, each whip of meadowgrass, Seren shores up his defenses with comforting truths. Nevander is right behind him. Nevander chased off the last augray. If Seren does what Nevander says, everything will be fine.
Halfway to the tree, excitement pierces Seren’s shields. The thrill of a predator spotting its prey. He glances over his shoulder, unable to resist. Dark, too-familiar shapes spear from the tree line. Cat-like hounds or hound-like cats, with burning eyes and dagger teeth. Shadows skirl in their wake.
They run far faster than Seren and Nevander. Seren races forward, gasps propelling each step. Cold nips his heels, and shadows flicker at the edge of his vision.
Thirty feet from the great tree, the grasses cut off in a perfect circle. Colorful pebbles swarm the border—no, mushrooms. Green light flares in welcome as Seren crosses the border. He staggers around.
Nevander promised to follow, but not all the way. He stands ten feet away, rooted in place, to meet the first augray’s charge. His wings tuck close, and he surges forward, colliding with the augray in midleap.
Blood and feathers spray. Seren can’t see whose, because the second augray dodges the fray, arrowing straight towards him.
Seren scrambles back with a strangled shriek. He’s too close, too slow. His mind sings with hunger, purpose, bloodchilling joy, as his eyes fill with gleaming fangs. The augray leaps, claws outstretched.
Green light flashes again. The augray slams into solid air. It lands clumsily, tail thrashing. Swipes again, but the mushroom circle holds. Frustration storms, then vanishes, as Seren finally restores his shields.
Relief blooms in its place. The mushroom circle works. Seren is safe here, even with the augray pacing its border, close enough to pick out the faint green iridescence of its black pelt. The gray sclera of its eyes.
A metallic moan shrieks out. Seren and the augray both turn as Nevander’s sword rips through the other augray.
Black blood splashes gray armor. The moan cuts off. The creature slumps to the ground. First its hindquarters. Then, nearly severed apart, the remainder relaxes into a pool of entrails.
Nevander braces himself, intent not on the surviving augray, but on an empty space in the center of the clearing.
“What’s out there?” Seren asks, fear shoving down his nausea. “Join me in the circle.”
“Stay there,” Nevander says, which isn’t an answer.
The surviving augray circles a wide berth around Nevander and the steaming corpse. It stops, forming a triangle between itself, Nevander, and the empty space—the slice of nothing that shimmers into shadow.
Then resolves into a figure. Dark as the night. Clear as the stars. Clad in black armor, Lord Midnight stands with an augray’s vicious grace.
“Begone,” Nevander says, with such anger Seren isn’t sure how Midnight stays standing. “You are forbidden from this land.”
Midnight extends both hands to the sides, as if in greeting. “This isn’t your domain, Lord Guardian.” A dark, thin blade appears in each hand. “The queen is dead. The king has not been crowned.”
Something is different about him today. Violence sings beneath his words.
“Nevander,” Seren calls, his own voice sharp and strange. “I command you to get inside the circle.”