Mantle of the Gods

We left Edward alone at camp.

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” I looked back at him as soon as we were out of earshot.

“You’re the only other one of us who might be able to solo a monster on their own.” Justia looked at the stake in my hands. "Shouldn’t you have the blade?”

I shook my head. "I’m good with this thing. Besides, it makes more sense that Aelin and Ether also have a weapon.”

“Aelin!” Justia shouted. "Don’t get too far away from us!”

The blonde was only about fifty feet away from us, but considering that we didn’t know what we were dealing with, she probably didn’t even need to be that far away from us.

“It’s okay!” Aelin shouted. "I don’t see any..!”

“Aelin!” Justia started running. Ether was right behind her, but neither were anywhere close to as fast as me.

I made it over to her in less than a second. In that short amount of time a snake that was easily ten feet long had wrapped itself around her, pinning one arm above her and the other next to her side.

I hit it with the stick, but it didn’t show any signs of damage.

“Aelin!” Justia reached us and lifted her ax.

“Wait!” I turned to Ether who brought up the rear. "Blade!”

The white-haired tank tossed the knife to me. The blade was about as long as my hand which was more than enough for what I needed to do. I honed in on a place that I could strike without hitting our Buffer and plunged the knife into the monster.

The snake tried to uncoil, but the twisting motion only helped me to pull the knife through the side of the snake, slicing it almost in half.

As soon as the snake released Aelin, Justia brought down the ax, cutting into it, but not all the way through it.

I began rapidly stabbing with the knife until I realized that it had turned to me and started opening its mouth.

I was thankful that the brown and green speckled snake had circles instead of slits for eyes, but the way its mouth just kept expanding was unnerving. I grabbed the head of the ax mid-swing and pulled it out of Justia’s hands. I slid it through my grip as I swung it, taking the monster’s head off in one swing. Before the head had a chance to fly off, the monster exploded into smoke.

“You okay?” I flipped the ax over and offered it to our Healer. She pushed it towards me as she dropped to her knees to check on the blonde.

Ether was on Aelin’s other side and the three of them were making some sort of half-crying mess.

“I don’t think I want to be the bait anymore.” Aelin looked at me like she expected me to disagree.

“I completely understand.” I looked at the other two women. "As fast as that thing attacked, I’m not sure we need bait.”

“But how are we going to find them?” Ether looked afraid to voice the question.

I tried to think. The Hitter had to have known about this, which is probably why he was willing to give me the information. Aelin had eight Speed, which meant that I wasn’t going to have a much better reaction to them than she did. The next option was to let Ether be the bait, but judging by the look on her face, the thought of being squeezed to death before being swallowed more than just scared her.

I’d been able to budge it, but I had my doubts about how well Edward would be able to struggle against them if he was bait. All things considered, this was something that we could beat, but with how tired we were, it would be really easy to get hurt. And as soon as we got hurt, our ability to farm was going to plummet.

“I want to try something.” I picked up the crystal and put it into the sling bag, then handed the bag over to Aelin. "Where’s the sword?”

The blonde shook off the other women and began pawing around in the matted grass. Once she found it, she offered it to me.

I gave the other two women their weapons back as I gripped the broken blade. I wanted to see if I was right about how far apart the spawns were.

“Go ahead and head back towards camp.”

“What about you?” Ether demanded,

“I’m not going to get too far away.” I looked at the women who didn’t seem to believe me. “I’m going to stay close enough that you can rescue me, but we’ve got to figure out a safe way to hunt these things.”

They didn’t look convinced, but got up and started heading towards where Edward was either totally oblivious to what just happened or choosing to act that way.

I tightened my grip on the sword and started running.