Alana watched Dominic fly past her and hit the tree behind them. Her momentum faltered for half a step, then she pushed the sight out of her mind and kept moving. There was a job to do. That was all she could afford to think about right now.

When she saw the boar’s face fully for the first time, something lurched in her chest. Six enormous eyes where the mouth should have been, all of them moving independently, tracking everything. The inverted mouth where the eyes should have been, wet with blue blood from the deer, fragments of blue flesh visible between the upward-curving teeth. It looked at them the way something looks when it has no concept of prey surviving the encounter.

It roared. The sound moved through the air like a physical force.

Alana didn’t stop. She continued her march forward.

She swung wide to the boar’s right, positioning herself approximately five metres from its flank. She raised one hand toward Macy, who was circling above.

"Macy, Wind Cutter. Now."

Macy banked sharply, descended in a tight arc overhead, then flipped into a full rotation. Her tail swept through the motion and released a large crescent of compressed air that tore through the space between them and connected squarely with the boar’s back.

Alana watched it land and felt a surge of relief.

Then she saw what it had actually done.

Fur, cut away from the impact site. A shallow mark on the skin underneath. That was all. No penetration, no meaningful wound, the attack had done almost nothing. Like striking stone with a damp cloth.

Her expression emptied.

The boar registered the hit. It turned its head, located her with two of its six eyes, and roared again, lower this time, more deliberate. Then it came toward her. All six legs, directly at her, closing three of the five metres between them before she had fully processed that it was moving.

Alana froze. Her body stopped responding to her.

The gap was too small and closing too fast. Her mind caught up with what was happening just as her body acknowledged it couldn’t get out of the way in time. Then she heard a voice from her opposite side.

Phoenix’s Breath.

Something slammed into the boar from the opposite side.

A flying fire bird hit the creature at full speed, wrapping around its body as it made contact, engulfing the boar’s flank in flame. The creature’s forward momentum stopped completely. It stood still in the middle of its charge, surrounded by fire, and released a sound different from the ones before it, deeper, rougher, the sound of something that was actually feeling what had just happened. The previous attacks had been minor enough to ignore. This one, it felt.

It turned its head away from Alana and looked behind it. There was fury in its eyes.

Hana stood there, thrower raised, the weapon still aimed at the boar. Her face still showed fear, visibly, undisguised. But she hadn’t moved. Her stance was steady. Her hands weren’t dropping.

The fire had done real damage, and the boar knew it. Its blood-red eyes locked onto Hana with the particular focus of something that had decided she was responsible.

Hana was reloading. Her hands were moving as fast as they could.

The boar moved faster than before.

It covered the ground between them with a speed that didn’t match its size, and in the scramble Hana’s fingers fumbled, the potion bottle slipped, struck the ground, and didn’t shatter only by luck.

Her body stopped responding to her.

It’s going to kill me.

***

Across the clearing, Dominic was still down.

He couldn’t find the strength to rise. His internal injuries were significant, and the impact with the tree had taken something out of him that sheer determination couldn’t immediately replace.

Then he noticed the light warping around him.

Golden, soft, moving in slow patterns around him. And with it, the pain was changing, not gone, but retreating. The internal damage that had been shutting him down was closing, slowly, from the inside out.

He turned his head.

Sarliya. Hands folded in prayer, lips moving quietly, her attention wholly fixed on him. The healing was coming from her, steady, deliberate, pouring out of whatever she was connected to.

Within moments he had enough.

He didn’t wait for more. He got to his feet, gripped his sword with both hands, and ran.

***

The boar was one and a half metres from Hana. It closed the distance with most of its speed.

Hana had closed her eyes. She wasn’t ready to see herself be split in two pieces. But then she suddenly heard something.

From the right side of the clearing, a single word, spoken in the most calm way imaginable.

"Bind."

The ground split open in ten or fifteen places simultaneously, and from each crack a chain of lightning emerged, each one forty metres long, moving like living things, serpentine and fast. They converged on the boar from every direction and wrapped around it in overlapping coils, legs first, then the body, five or six loops securing each segment until the creature was locked in place, unable to advance even half a step.

The boar strained against them. The chains held, for now.

Hana opened her eyes. Something in her chest seized.

The boar’s face was centimetres from hers. Six blood-red eyes, all of them looking directly at her. The mouth below them, still wet, teeth curved upward.

She heard a voice from her right.

"Hana, move away from the front, now. Those chains won’t hold it long."

The one who spoke those words to her was standing there with a calm expression, hands in his pockets. Necrotize.

She took one second to process. Then she threw herself left and cleared the space.

Dominic arrived in the same moment.

He brought his sword up to his chest, hilt pressed inward, blade pointed directly at the creature’s heart. His eyes closed for one breath.

Aslan Style, Fourth Sword. Tiger Slaying Emperor Slash.

The blade moved in a single, completely fluid motion, no hesitation, no wasted arc, aimed precisely at the inverted demonic boar’s heart.

Stab.