The Elf appeared a distance away, his hand regenerating fast and he was back to normal, but this time he did not rush to attack, as if scared of what Aren would do.

Aren moved first.

He closed the gap before the male elf had both swords fully raised, the Ancient Devourer coming in low and forcing the block downward. The elf absorbed it with good technique and pushed back hard. Aren let the momentum carry, stepped around it entirely and raked the blade across his ribs on the way past. Not deep. Just opening the conversation about where the gaps were.

The archer drew the moment she had a clear line. Aren felt the angle before she committed to it and stepped behind the male elf, putting his body between himself and the shot. The flaming arrow screamed past them, close enough that the heat rolled across the back of Aren’s neck. The elf’s shoulder twitched.

Aren was already pressing again before the echo of the shot died.

"Fang."

The wolf came up from the ground on the archer’s left, two meters of dark mass moving with a quiet certainty, lightning threading white and restless through its fur, a low constant flame burning along the line of its jaw. It didn’t lunge. It simply walked her angles down one by one, matching every step she took to reposition, the lightning surging once each time she raised the bow.

She kept lowering it. She was fast and she was sharp and none of it was giving her anything to work with while Fang was there.

Aren left her to it and gave the male elf everything.

He came in with a crossing pattern, high right and low left moving simultaneously, the kind of combination that split a defender’s focus cleanly down the middle. Aren read the dominant shoulder before the swing even started, stepped into the low slash and removed the angle completely, the blade cutting air behind him. He drove his elbow hard into the elf’s jaw on the way through and kept walking without looking at the result.

The elf recovered fast and thrust with his right sword, fully committed. Aren parried it downward into the dirt and stamped on the flat of the blade before he could pull it free. The steel snapped at the hilt. The elf looked at the broken handle for a fraction of a second, something shifting behind his eyes.

Aren used every part of that fraction.

He came in with a full slash, the Devourer swinging with his entire body rotating behind it, and it connected across the elf’s chest and sent him airborne. He hit the ground hard and skidded, came back upright with one sword now, stance adjusted, expression stripped down to nothing but focus.

Aren gave him no room to breathe, pressing forward immediately with three attacks in clean succession, each one landing on the same shoulder, forcing the single remaining sword to defend reach it no longer had. The elf held the first two with everything he had. On the third Aren feinted high, dropped low and opened his knee to the bone.

He went down hard.

Aren was already turning toward the archer.

She had moved position while his back was turned, circling wide to find a clean line away from Fang. The wolf tracked her without instruction, cutting off each new angle as fast as she found it, lightning pulsing outward in low arcs that scorched the ground around her feet. She was good at reading space but Fang gave her nothing and she was running out of ground to work with.

When Aren crossed toward her she made her decision fast, swinging the bow horizontally as a close quarters weapon, using the full enchanted length of it in a strike that had real force behind it. Aren caught it in his free hand and held it, the impact going nowhere. She was already moving her other hand, short blade coming from her hip in the same breath, driving for his throat without hesitation.

Fang hit her from behind before it arrived.

The wolf’s full weight connected with a simultaneous lightning discharge that detonated on impact, throwing her forward hard into the ground. The flame running along Fang’s jaw caught her sleeve on the way through and she hit the dirt rolling and burning, the enchanted bow still held in Aren’s grip. He looked at it once and set it down to the side carefully.

The male elf came from behind.

Last sword raised in both hands, everything he had left poured into a single overhead that came down with genuine power behind it, the kind of swing built from desperation finding its shape as commitment. Aren turned and met it with the Devourer, held the lock and felt the elf pushing with everything, jaw locked, eyes burning, body fully extended into the effort.

Aren broke the lock with one arm.

He hit the elf across the back of the skull with the pommel and the big body dropped face first into the ground and stayed there.

The archer had pulled herself to one knee a few meters away. Her arm was burned, her bow was gone, the short blade still in her grip but held low and without conviction. She looked at her partner on the ground and then she looked at Aren and the calculation on her face completed itself quickly and quietly. She didn’t move.

Aren stood between them both and let the silence sit for exactly one moment, the Devourer humming low in his hand, the field around them still and dark.

Then the shadows came.

They spread from beneath his feet without any announcement, without drama, a slow and patient tide rolling outward across the scorched ground in every direction. When it reached them it folded over them both the way darkness fills a room when a light goes out.

No resistance. No sound.

Clean. Easy.

Done.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

He consumed them, his eyes already turning to the rest of the elves.