After that mont, the group were relatively silent, looking at the dead Star Prowler on the ground that warped the air, causing it to carry the tallic tang of stellar mana that was sharp and cold against the tongue.
The dead beast lay sprawled among broken roots and scorched moss, its once-glimring hide dulling rapidly. The constellations crawling across its body dimd one by one, collapsing into lifeless fur as the stolen light bled back into nothing.
Dorg leaned heavily on his shield, chest heaving. "By the ancestors... that thing hit harder than a siege ram."
Ssil pushed himself off the tree he’d been slamd into earlier, rolling his shoulders with a faint hiss of pain, "My ribs will complain later," he muttered. "But later is acceptable."
Mirela wiped her blade clean again, though this ti her movents were much slower and more deliberate. Her gaze kept drifting to Jax, and everyone noticed.
There was a subtle shift in the group now. The unspoken recalibration in their mindset that happened when a variable revealed itself to be far more dangerous, or valuable, than expected.
Kael broke it first, grounding the mont like he always did. He crouched by the fallen Star Prowler, pressing two fingers to its neck ridge out of habit, even though he already knew the truth.
"Dead," he confird. Then he looked up, "And not alone obviously," He said, turning to the dead body of the second Star Panther that they had taken care of.
Lysa stiffened, "You feel it too?"
Kael nodded. "This wasn’t a lone hunter. It was definitely a scout. It’s partner was nearby too,"
Ashanti’s eyes were locked on the treeline ahead, pupils faintly glowing as she focused on the lingering distortions before whispering to Jax so the others couldn’t hear.
"There’s more," she said quietly. "Not nearby, but close enough to feel this one die."
Jax followed her gaze, expression unreadable as he had already sensed them a long, long ti before. It was three distinct signatures, circling them wide now.
These three were smarter than the first duo, very cautious as they tested the periter without fully stepping into it.
A pack, and Star Prowlers usually didn’t Hunt in packs.
Kael rose smoothly to his feet. "Alright. We don’t linger. We clean what we can, fast, and we move."
Dorg grunted. "Toward the village?"
Kael shook his head. "No. Away. If they’re converging, I’d rather draw them deeper into the forest than let them scent the farms."
Mirela’s lips curved faintly. "So... we’re the bait."
"Like always," Lysa said, already resetting her crossbow chanisms.
Jax watched them prepare. They had no idea how close they were to being outmatched. So he adjusted the field again, with suggestion.
As they moved, Jax subtly warped the ambient mana flow, not enough to be noticed, just enough to create a trail. A scar of disrupted stellar residue that would read to the Prowlers like blood in water.
He was herding predators, and all the while, the forest grew stranger the deeper they went.
The canopy above fractured into impossible geotry, branches overlapping at angles that hurt to look at for too long. Shadows slid against the direction of movent. Occasionally, stars flickered into existence between leaves, blinking in and out like half-rembered dreams.
Ssil halted suddenly, fist raised.
"Three," he whispered. "Ahead. Spread formation."
Ashanti swallowed.She could feel them now too. Three imnse presences, moving in a slow, predatory arc. Not rushing or charging, just studying them.
Kael lowered his voice. "Sa plan as before. Focus fire. Do not split unless forced."
The first Star Prowler revealed itself by stepping onto a fallen log, its body rippling into visibility as if peeled out of thin air. A mont later, a second appeared to the right, perched impossibly on the vertical trunk of an ancient tree.
The third stayed hidden.
That was the worst part.
"CONTACT!" Kael roared.
The first Prowler lunged straight at Dorg, its body phasing mid-stride as it reappeared above him, claws glowing with condensed starlight.
Dorg braced, shield flaring as he took the hit head-on.
~BOOM!~
The impact shattered bark and sent shockwaves through the ground. Dorg was driven to one knee, teeth clenched, veins standing out along his thick neck.
"Still standing!" he bellowed.
The second Prowler dropped from above, targeting Lysa but thankfully, Ssil intercepted in a blur, blades flashing as he carved a shallow arc of sparks across its chest, but the beast twisted, tail snapping out and catching him mid-air, flinging him hard into a cluster of stones.
"SSIL!" Mirela shouted.
She moved instantly, crimson mana flooding her limbs as she engaged the second beast, saber flashing in a flurry of precise, lethal strikes.
Kael advanced on the first Prowler, spear humming with layered enchantnts. "Lysa! Now!"
Lysa fired.
Three bolts streaked through the air, weaving between allies with surgical precision. One detonated beneath the beast’s hind legs, destabilizing it. Another wrapped around its torso in glowing restraints.
The third never landed, as the third prowler erged, phasing right behind Kael, jaws already opening and compressing stellar energy into a lethal beam.
This ti, Jax didn’t wait, catching the beam barehanded
~BANG!~
The stellar energy collapsed against his palm like water against stone, dispersing into harmless motes that fizzled out before they could touch him.
The third Prowler scread as Jax looked at it, folding space around the Beast as it wrenched sideways, slamd into the ground with such a force that the earth cratered around it, roots and stone pulverized beneath its mass.
"Finish them," Jax said calmly, already turning away. "All of them."
The hunters didn’t hesitate.
Kael surged forward, spear driving clean through the first Prowler’s skull as Dorg pinned it in place with a roar of triumph.
Mirela vaulted over the second beast, blade plunging straight down through its spine as Ssil reappeared beneath it, severing its hind tendons in a single clean motion.
Lysa’s final bolt pierced the third Prowler’s eye as it struggled to rise from Jax’s unseen pressure.
Three massive bodies hit the forest floor almost simultaneously.
The aftermath was chaos and breath and silence.
Dorg dropped to one knee, laughing hoarsely. "That, hah—that was a fight."
Kael leaned on his spear, chest heaving. "Three Star Prowlers... dead."
"Now let’s get the fuck out of here," Lysa said, and everyone nodded.
They were injured, exhausted, and the forest had grown too unstable to linger. Even with three Star Prowlers dead, the mana imbalance would take ti to settle.
As they walked back toward safer territory, the tension gradually eased.
Eventually, Jax fell back beside Ashanti, their footsteps quiet against the moss.
For a long mont, neither spoke.
Then, softly, so only she could hear him, Jax said, "Do you think you’re ready to test your powers again?"
Ashanti stopped.
She closed her eyes.
She rembered the fear, the restraint, the instinct screaming at her to act and being forced to hold back.
Then she rembered the calmness of all of them in battle, and the way they would let things co to them.
She opened her eyes and smiled.
"Yes," she said, voice confident. "I am."
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