Frostbound

Marcus(cont.)

Christopher's aura, wild and flaring, disappeared abruptly. The once smothering blanket of otherworldly cold and fury left so quickly it made it seem like it hadn't even been there in the first place.

It was such a stark difference Marcus had to strain his own tired aura to make sure the man was still there and his eyes weren't deceiving him. The only other time he'd seen such an abrupt difference from flaring to gone was when someone died.

Reining it in manually didn't result in such whiplash, even if Chris was in a state of mind to do it. From the pummeling he'd just witnessed, Marcus doubted the shift was manual.

Chris stepped to get off the decapitated Orc and faltered. His strength had left him. Marcus moved before he registered what he was doing and caught him before he fell.

His body was freezing to the touch and his fingers burned but he held the man upright through the pain.

"Thank... you," the words were nearly inaudible, but they were enough.

While that was all good, and Marcus was glad to be of help, there was one thing on his mind after watching the Orc die.

What now?

There were three more out there somewhere. He couldn't feel them anymore and by the notifications rolling in and the essence transferring, the fight was over, but was it?

When in a prolonged fight, the System usually delayed any distraction until the fight was over, but it had done so now. Did that mean that all the other War Leaders were already dead?

For some reason, Marcus doubted that. He wasn't so arrogant to believe that others didn't have the ability to kill them, but not nearly as quickly. The fight had lasted only a couple of minutes and Chris did most of the work, killing it any faster would be a challenge he didn't believe every other Faction could accomplish.