Onoli sat and meditated in the serenity, finding his center and easing away all the tension, stress and guilt that came with being a leader of the Edge Guard. The sounds and smells of the outside world could not distract him, but nor did he dismiss them.
He was on his feet in an instant, but the attack was already coming. The monstrous strength of his adversary was obvious as he was thrown across the city park to collide with a tree. His magical katana fell from his grasp in the shock as he landed.
His opponent was upon him swiftly, and Onoli caught sight of a male werewolf, not an especially large one either. However, he did recognize the man from descriptions given.
"Aren't you dead?" Onoli asked, intercepting the werewolf's charge and tossing the attacker across the scene in return for his own flight.
And then a blast of magic and fire washed over Onoli, slamming him back into the tree and dropping him to the ground, a pained, charred mass.
"No," Brendan said dusting himself off as he walked over to join Selina's side. Along the way he snatched up Onoli's katana and with it and his thrall left the scene, not hanging around to watch Onoli's death. "You are. And that handles the sword that can free possessions."
****
Sheila walked through the local bazaar with Raphiel, enjoying the young werecheetah's good cheer and wonder at the sights about him. Raphiel was really such a sweet guy.
A smirk worked its way onto her face as she glanced surreptitiously behind them to get a glimpse of a certain weretiger caught deep in the throws of jealousy. That was another benefit, she wasn't doing anything with Raphiel, but let that jerk think otherwise, see how he liked it.
The smirk died when she saw the playboy tiger talking it up with a rather young girl several booths back.
She didn't pay much attention to the path in front of her. Especially not as the girl Tirga was talking to kicked viciously upward into his groin. The smirk was starting to work back onto her face again...until the girl started shifting forms and continued attacking.
"Hey!' she called out. She started to turn around towards the werecheetah. "Raph, Tirga's in trou..."
"Sheila, look out!" Raphiel shouted, not quite soon enough as a huge hammer slammed into her and sent her through a booth of a silversmith.
The sound of Sheila crying out in pain distracted him from the attacker, and started to twist to head for his friend, not aware that vendors were already moving to clear the lycanthrope "child" from the silver.
Raphiel was fast, but inexperienced, and a moment's hesitation was enough for their attacker to swing her hammer into his face, stunning him long enough for a fist to smash down into his face, knocking him out.
Down the path, Tirga had failed to recover from the initial surprise and was likewise having problems with the young martial artist.
The sound of approaching militia brought the situation to a close as claws slashed downward and the werewolves ran for cover.
****
Thropan was inside on this night, at the local tavern simply enjoying some quiet time and a nice mug of ale to himself. The tavern was sparsely populated for the night, most of the people outside and enjoying the impromtu festival that came with the wonderful evening.
In fact, there was only one other woman in the room, with dark hair and a slightly off-center pony-tail to go with the slightly off-center expression on her face.
"Somebody's attacking your friends!" a man said, poking his head into the tavern for a moment. "Hurry up!"
"What?" Thropan gasped, grabbing for his weapon and rushing for the door.
He hadn't yet reached it when a ribbon of some sort snaked out and caught him, pulling him back viciously.
"OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!" the girl inside with him laughed, as she shifted into her hybrid form and slashed out at the off balance Edge Guard. "No need to go to the ambush. The ambush is already here! OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!!"
And with that Kodachi bounded out of the inn to re-join her master and sister-thralls, leaving a were panther bleeding to death on the tavern floor.
****
"And that settles the Edge Guard," Brendan said. "Or at least the part that are friendly with the Diggers."
There was still the male jagwere and those human students of Julia's of course, but they were elsewhere. He'd have to handle them later.
"Are you all sure they're dead?" Brendan demanded.
"Certainly, Master," Danielle said.
"Yeah, we got them good," Sakura agreed enthusiastically.
****
"Well?" Cleo asked of Nali as the healer came back from the recovery room.
"They were all just short of death," Nali said. "But they'll recover in time. If it was just one of them, I'd say they were lucky...but all of them. I'd say those werewolves didn't really want to kill them. Not at their heart at least."
Cleo sighed and shook her head.
"Thralls," she said distastefully.
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(Posted Thu, 11 Sep 2003 08:37)
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