ShadowBound: The Need For Power

The first new Mauler burst through the old barracks door in a spray of splintered wood, its shoulders knocking loose stone from the frame. Another shoved through behind it, jaws opening around a wet roar. From the collapsed storage house, a third crashed through a weakened section of wall and rolled over broken beams before rising.

A fourth dropped from a low roofline with a heavy impact that cracked the courtyard stones, bone growths along its back scraping the wall as it turned. More movement churned inside the den-like opening near the barracks, the dark interior shifting with bodies.

The fight escalated all at once.

Asher moved to meet the nearest two, not by charging straight into them, but by cutting across their line and forcing them to turn. Their heavy bodies were strongest in forward momentum. Turns cost them. He used that. A controlled burst of blue flame carried him across the courtyard’s open stones, drawing their attention away from the weaker structures and toward the wider space.

When one lunged, he angled low flame across the ground near its claws, not high enough to catch old wood, just enough heat and light to make it hesitate. The second tried to circle, but Asher drove his longsword into a loose pile of rubble and kicked it outward. Stones scattered beneath the Mauler’s feet, disrupting its footing as it tried to accelerate.

"Left one is slower!" Asher called.

"I have eyes," Liam answered from behind a broken wall.

"Use them faster."

Liam already had.

He had noticed the left Mauler favoring one arm, not from injury but from habit. It protected its right side more than the others, meaning either old damage or instinct around a vulnerable patch. When Asher forced it to turn, Liam moved through the angle created by the broken storage wall. He crossed behind a fallen beam, ducked under the Mauler’s swinging arm, and cut the inner elbow of the protected side. It roared and snapped down at him, jaws closing hard enough to crush the corner of the beam instead of his shoulder.

Liam’s second dagger slid into the throat fold while its head was low.

He stabbed, twisted, withdrew, and moved before the dying weight collapsed. The Mauler slammed into the ground behind him, thick claws scraping uselessly across stone.

Kara fired again from the wall.

Her arrow struck a Mauler charging Asher, ice spreading across the creature’s front knee just as it committed weight. The leg did not freeze completely, but it slowed half a step. Half a step was enough for Asher. He pivoted outside its line, slashed into the back of the knee, then used a burst of blue flame from his heel to drive himself upward and over the creature’s shoulder. His longsword came down into the exposed side ribs when the Mauler reared to follow him, the blade biting between plates with a hiss of blue fire.

The creature spun, trying to crush him against the ground.

Asher landed, rolled under the swing, and came up with an annoyed laugh. "These things are ugly and stubborn."

"They would say the same about you," Liam said, slipping past another Mauler’s blind side.

"They would die saying it."

Liam guided his Mauler toward a narrow lane between the storage house and a low wall. The wall was too weak to hide behind for long, and he knew that after one glance at the cracks running through its base. He did not use it as cover. He used it as timing. The Mauler slammed a claw through the wall where he had been a heartbeat earlier, stone breaking around its arm.

For a moment, the limb stuck. Liam stepped onto the collapsing wall, ran across two shifting stones, and drove both daggers into the creature’s shoulder crease from above, weakening the arm before it tore free.

Kara’s arrow followed, striking behind the same shoulder.

Frost crawled across the joint.

Liam dropped away as the Mauler ripped itself loose, slower now on that side. Asher, seeing the opening without needing to be told, crossed the courtyard with a low flame burst and cut across the creature’s hamstring area. The Mauler dropped to one knee. Liam moved in from the opposite side and finished it with a stab beneath the jaw.

Their coordination was not polite.

It did not need to be.

Asher drew attention, forced momentum, and turned the Maulers where he wanted them. Liam punished the openings that created. Kara slowed charges and locked joints at the exact moments when a half-second mattered. Wing circled above, giving Liam glimpses of movement before it entered his line of sight. The Maulers had numbers and strength, but they were territorial rather than tactical. They reacted to intrusion, noise, and movement. Liam and Asher made those reactions predictable.

Still, predictable did not mean harmless.

One Mauler burst from the barracks faster than expected, using the body of a wounded packmate as cover. It crashed into Asher’s side before he fully turned, its shoulder slamming him toward a cracked stone pillar. Asher twisted just enough to avoid being crushed flat, but the impact still drove the breath from him. The Mauler’s jaws snapped for his head.

Asher jammed his longsword crosswise beneath its jaw.

The bite closed on the blade instead, metal groaning under pressure.

"Any time, shadow bastard," Asher snarled.

Liam was already moving. A small fire burst struck the creature’s eye ridge from the side, and Kara’s arrow hit the inside of its elbow almost at the same moment. The Mauler’s arm buckled. Asher shoved upward with a growl, blue flame flaring along his sword, and kicked hard into the creature’s knee. Liam passed beneath the raised arm, dagger flashing once across the throat fold. Asher ripped his blade free as the Mauler staggered, then drove the sword into the opening Liam had made.

The creature collapsed heavily, its jaw still trying to bite as it died.

Asher pulled his blade out and glared. "Took your time."

"You were not dead."

"I was inconvenienced."

"How tragic."

Asher spat to the side and turned back toward the den. "More coming."

Two came together this time.

They emerged from the barracks opening shoulder to shoulder, forcing the fight toward the courtyard’s center. Behind them, another shape moved in shadow but did not fully exit. Liam noticed that and marked it mentally.

Not ordinary. Waiting? Injured? Larger? No time to confirm.

Asher stepped forward first, then stopped himself.

For half a breath, Liam saw the adjustment. Asher wanted to rush them. His flames wanted to answer pressure with greater pressure. Instead, he looked at the courtyard, the cracked road, the storage house already unstable on one side, and the wall where Kara needed clear angles. He shifted his stance and moved right instead of forward.

"Pull them wide," Asher said.

Liam’s eyes flicked toward him. Good. "Left one first."

"Right one has better footing."

"That is why left one first."

Asher understood immediately. The left Mauler stood partly on broken stone and partly on damp soil, its rear foot near a shallow drainage channel. If pressured wrong, it could be made to stumble into the channel and expose its side. Asher surged right with a controlled blue-flame burst, drawing both Maulers’ attention. Liam cut left, striking a loose piece of wood with his boot and sending it clattering across the stones. The left Mauler snapped toward the sound, not fully fooled but distracted enough to step badly.

Kara fired.

Her arrow struck the damp soil near the creature’s rear foot rather than its body. Ice spread across the edge of the drainage channel, slick and sudden. The Mauler’s foot slid. Its body twisted to recover, exposing the rib gap beneath its left shoulder.

Liam entered that opening like a blade finding cloth.

He stabbed once between the ribs, withdrew before the creature’s arm could crush him, then sliced behind the knee as he passed. Asher met the other Mauler head-on for just long enough to make it commit, then used a burst from his shoulder and heel to pivot around its charge. His longsword cut across the inside of its elbow, then the throat fold when it turned too sharply. Blue flame seared into the wound, and the creature staggered back.

The left Mauler fell first.