Page 53 of On Broken Bonds

There are more of the dire wolves.

Dozens of them.

They explode from the fog in every direction, enormous bodies crashing through brush and undergrowth, their snarls and growls echoing across the mountainside. Some are merely terrifying. Others are monstrous, towering over the competitors around them. Gray fur bristles along their backs, their massive paws churning the earth as they charge. Everywhere I look, yellow eyes gleam through the mist, locked onto prey.

A scream tears through the chaos.

My gaze catches on a vampire just as one of the beasts lunges. The dire wolf's jaws clamp around the man's leg and, with a violent jerk of its head, tears the limb free. Blood sprays across the rocks. The wet ripping sound is somehow worse than the scream itself, wrong in a way that makes my stomach lurch violently. I look away before I can see more.

Then a roar shatters the mountainside. The sound is so deep it seems to vibrate through my bones. I whip my head toward it and freeze.

A massive shape emerges from the fog.

At first, all I see is golden fur and movement. Then the creature steps fully into view, dwarfing the wolves around it. Its body resembles that of a lion, every muscle rippling beneath its tawny coat. A mane the color of burnished bronze frames its massive head, and when it opens its mouth, fangs longer than daggers gleam in the sunlight.

But it's the wings that steal my breath.

They unfurl from its shoulders in a vast sweep of feathers and razor-sharp bone, each one easily twice the height of a man. The edges look more like blades than feathers, glinting as they spread wide enough to cast a shadow over the battlefield.

The creature throws back its head and roars again.

Around it, even the dire wolves hesitate.

Talon kneels beside the vampire missing a leg, pressing his hands to the wound in an attempt to slow the bleeding, then leans back just in time to avoid having his head taken off by the creature's wings.

His friend, Eamon, I think, is not so lucky.

Manticore. My brain tells me the name of the beast with the lion face, recalling it from the books. A creation of Terranis.

The vampire’s head thuds to the ground, and is, a second later, stung through by the manticore’s scorpion tail like a toothpick through a martini’s olive. Talon races away, surviving, for now. But I can’t focus on that now.

The monsters are on one side of us, the pile of materials and competitors on the other.

“Get behind me!” Thorian backs us into a small alcove, the hill rising up behind me sharply enough to mimic a sheltering wall, and positions himself between me and the din of creatures and competitors, blood and metal, teeth and bone.

I feel the urge to argue with him, to tell Thorian I should be fighting alongside him instead of hiding behind his back, but my hands are shaking hard enough that it takes me a full minute to free my dagger from its sheath despite all the practice we've done.

Even at his side, I'd be more hindrance than help.

A sharp clicking sound cuts through the chaos. At first, I think it's stones tumbling down the mountainside. Then the sound comes again. Louder. Closer.

Click.

Clack.

Click.

The fog ahead of us stirs.

Something enormous moves within it…

A long, pale shape slides from the mist, and my stomach immediately drops. It's a serpent, easily the size of a horse and perhaps twice as long, but there isn't a scrap of flesh on its body. Vertebrae grind against vertebrae as it moves. Ribs flex and contract. Its skull sways back and forth as though scenting the air despite having no nose to speak of.

The thing shouldn't be alive. It shouldn't be moving. Yet it glides toward us with terrifying speed. Its empty eye sockets lock onto us.

Onto Thorian.

Onto me.