Snezna
His vision swam.
If not for the gale he'd conjured to slow his fall, his spine would've snapped like brittle twigs against the trunk he crashed into. Bark splintered under him. He spat blood, breath ragged and thin.
Goddamn it.
They're back.
Nightmares rarely lingered. Rarer still did they hunt in the open like this. Something was wrong—deeply, fundamentally wrong.
His sight cleared just in time to catch it: a flash of pale lightning across the forest floor, then one of the abominations lunging for Varka's throat.
Don't let them touch you!
Even from this distance, the idea of one of those things brushing skin felt like it could unmake a man. Unthread a soul.
The tree at his back lurched violently. Another nightmare had uprooted the entire trunk, lifting it as casually as a hunter hefting a spear. Snezna reacted on instinct—wind roared from his palms, blasting the creature backward. Splinters rained across the shredded ground.
"These things are too fucking fast," he muttered through clenched teeth as he forced himself upright.
Then he saw them.
Not one.
Not two.
Nearly a dozen.
Slinking from the black treeline, their forms twitching, reshaping—shadows held together by something older than bone. They weren't attacking blindly.
They had encircled him and Varka.
Baited them.
Herded them.
Patient hunters wearing bodies that struggled to stay formed.
And some of those bodies… were changing.
Elongating. Broadening. Their silhouettes echoed something disturbingly familiar—echoes of men. Of him. Of Varka.
Revulsion twisted hot and sharp in his gut.
He conjured his bow instantly, but there was no time to spare Varka even a glance. The nightmares were already moving.
A gust carried Snezna upward.
The sky is mine, he thought grimly.
But as he rose, a nightmare's hand snapped up toward his ankle. The wind current shielding him screamed in protest, hurling it back before it could connect. The ward held—this time.
From above, he scanned the battlefield—just as another shockwave of wind slammed into him from the side. The impact rattled his teeth. One of the creatures had sprouted wings of shadow, flapping up toward him in a grotesque mockery of his own domain.
"Well, I'll be damned," he spat, steadying himself. "You're learning. Almost proud of you."
A spear of compressed stormlight formed at his fingertips. He loosed it. The flying creature twisted aside, the blast vaporizing soil below in an eruption of roots and dirt.
Movement behind him.
Teleportation—flickering.
A nightmare's hand clamped around his neck, phasing through his protective gale as though it were tearing open the world itself.
They're adapting…
But this one was too slow.
Snezna twisted, wind gathering around his fist, and slammed it into the creature's ribs.
Detonate.
The gale crackled violently. The nightmare folded backward, hurled through the air—and then it exploded, shredded by the storm erupting inside its warped body.
No reprieve.
Another above him—its arms peeling into jagged glass—showered razor shards downward. He bent the air in a tight spiral, redirecting the barrage in a screaming arc that sliced the monster apart midfall.
Through the chaos, he risked a glance toward Varka.
One nightmare locked its claws around Varka's sword wrist.
Another lunged for his throat.
A third unleashed shockwaves that tore the forest floor into splinters.
Snezna's bowstring sang.
A storm-carved arrow slammed into the one reaching for Varka's neck. He didn't stay to see if it killed. There wasn't time.
Another creature closed in on him from behind—too near, too fast. He couldn't dodge. He couldn't shadowstep like Varka.
So he twisted his torso at the last second. The claws pierced his shoulder instead of his heart. Pain like molten iron erupted through his nerves.
But pain was opportunity.
He conjured a blade in his right hand. In the bleeding wound of his left, he gathered a shrieking torrent of wind.
His sword sliced the creature's arm clean off.
Then he shoved the storm into its chest.
Penetrate. Ignite.
Wind slithered through every crack in its skin, every fold of its warped flesh—and then it ignited.
The nightmare screamed as it was thrown toward the ground—straight into another creature below. The impact was catastrophic. Both abominations burst apart in a grotesque bloom of black ichor and ash.
Snezna hissed and clutched his shoulder, but remained airborne. Steady. Ready.
He turned, preparing to finish off the last flying nightmare—
Only to see it already cleaved in half by Varka's blade.
Good.
But—
Through the drifting ash, Snezna caught motion near the carriages they had left behind.
Two nightmares.
Moving fast.
Too fast.
And their shapes were already familiar—sickeningly familiar—as they closed in on the slaves.
Snezna blinked.
No.
He was too far.
Too late.