No sooner had he grabbed the sword at his side and unsheathed the dagger from his boot than two shadows flew at him, pushing him onto his back, keeping him from rising.
He used the momentum of their push downward to kick his legs upward as he fell, tossing them off of him while landing on his hands in a backflip then righting himself in a crouched stance, fully armed.
They were being attacked from all sides, he saw, as three shadowed forms came at him in tandem.
Ben slashed and stabbed with focused precision, aiming for the throat to inflict mortal wounds, and the back of the knees and ankles to debilitate.
Within seconds, he knew his attackers to be Immortals. Dark Ones, if he wasn’t mistaken.
They used weapons too, their blades glinting in the eerie dawn light, along with their fangs as they hissed and growled.
Where was Sin and Zai? Ben wondered.
But he didn’t call for them in case they were hidden somewhere else. Zai had moved away from Ben’s camp sometime during the night, and Sin, as always, had followed.
Perhaps they were safe for now. Perhaps they would surprise Ben’s attackers in an ambush of their own.
Ben certainly wasn’t waiting for anyone to come rescue him. He fought with everything he had.
But his enemies were too many. They were stronger, faster, and more skilled in combat than Ben.
It was a minor miracle that Ben had lasted this long. Already, only minutes into the battle, he could feel his strength waning. The wounds he’d sustained, though nothing fatal, still drained him of life force along with his blood.
He wasn’t going to survive this.
Just as the thought entered his mind, a giant liger charged into the fray, followed by three whistling arrows that targeted three different Dark Ones from within the shadows of the forest.
Each arrow met its mark—one through the throat, one into the forehead, and one directly into a Dark One’s heart. All three enemies disintegrated into ashes, fluttering to the ground before they could deal mortal blows to Ben, who had fallen down to one knee, only his dagger still in hand.
The liger pounced with claws and teeth, roaring furiously as he went. He tore the throats out of his victims with as little effort as a cat toying with mice. With one swipe of his paw, Dark Ones fell left and right.
But still, there were too many.
Fuck! How the hell were there so many?!
Like a swarm of black spiders they came at Ben and his friends from all corners of the forest. They must have killed dozens already, but still more came.
Zai had used up all of his arrows at this point and was now pulling them out of the ground where they’d struck through disintegrated Dark Ones to use as short spears in hand-to-hand combat.
That was all the attention Ben could afford to pay others; he had his hands full of killing Dark soldiers himself.
The least he could do was not be the weak link in their group. He didn’t want to endanger the others by asking for help.
Then, just as he pushed the latest attacker off of him with a powerful kick, followed up with a spinning slash of his dagger across the Dark One’s throat, a frantic yelp and a flurry of white drew his attention out the corner of his eye.
He ran to the tangle of black and white and aimed his dagger at the black. The Dark One shouted as Ben’s blade struck bone, having stabbed through his back all the way into his spine.
He still held the fox with both fists around the creature’s neck as he went down.
The fox kicked and squirmed, its eyes rolling into the back of its head, and landed with a thud on the ground with the Dark One’s body falling on top of it.
Ben tried to rush in and push the enemy off of the fox, but another Dark shadow rammed into him from the side, taking him to the ground as well.
How many more were there?
When would they stop coming?
Ben used his bare fists to fight off his attacker, trying to hold the Dark One’s gleaming fangs away from his throat.