We closed our eyes, for a brief moment of stillness, to bring our concentration to the maximum. The positions and expected actions of the elves below filled our mind and our plans to deal with their conditioned reflexes were checked once again before the moment to strike had come.

Silently, we stepped off the high branch we had prepared on, a mere silent shadow in the night, our wings catching just the smallest bit of air, to keep our descent controlled. A second passed then two, as the Blades of the Northern Wind separated from the crown on our head, spreading out along the lines of our wings like falling feathers.

One of the elves below made a joke, causing laughter, only to suddenly stop, their attention shifting to Sigmir who had tensed when she felt our determined approach. Her hand didn’t go to her Lok’Nar, but there was a faint hint of danger they could feel from her aura. Not that it would help them, the danger wasn’t coming from her.

“What?” One of them asked, rising as if to prepare to fight with Sigmir, her voice sounding funny to our ears, as Bullet Time activated in our mind, giving us all the time we needed. Our eyes flared with multi-coloured light, as Wind, Ice, Darkness and Death were all warring for supremacy, intense amounts of Astral Power flooding out of our body, for that all-important opening attack.

Darkness- and Death-Magic were coiling around our talons, completely focused for that one, singular strike that would shatter the elven leader’s defence and take her out of the fight, hopefully even killing her instantly.

Ice- and Wind-Magic, channelled through the crown resting on our brows, flared around the Blades of the Northern Wind, no longer falling but now moving with deadly intent, each targetting one of the elves, not in a strike to end them, but in a strike to wound, distract and disrupt them. It would give the others all the opening they needed to take out one of two of them, hopefully turning what should be a deadly fight into a manageable encounter.

Another of the elves must have noticed something, his eyes over to our falling form, only to freeze, blinking in confusion, if only for a moment.

But a moment was all we needed and before he could even open his mouth to shout a warning, our attack arrived and suddenly, nobody needed a warning.

The elven leader never knew what hit her. Her magical defence flared, primal energies trying to resist but the powers of Death and Darkness were perfectly suitable to pierce through a defence based on the vitality of the forest, the powerful carried nothing more than a flimsy membrane, easily penetrated and stripped away under the brutal plunge of our claws. For a moment, we could feel the life of the elf, the blood flowing through her body and with a savage rip of Blood Magic, we not only took her life, but also the power flowing through her, an orb of blood, teeming with stolen power, floating between our claws.

The other elves had better luck, our attack on them, while strong and quite deadly, hadn’t been perfect, it had only been a simple and quite straightforward attack. Only one of them was gravely wounded by the falling blades, the weapon piercing past the collar of his armour and striking deep into his chest, the wound likely lethal, even if nobody added any attacks. The wounds of his companions were lighter, a few deep flesh wounds, some cuts but nothing that would be fatal in and of itself, just enough to make them focus on me, not on my companions.

And those companions had been ready to strike, before the elf I had slain had followed the call of gravity and collapsed, Rai had jumped into action, smoothly stepping through the shadows to arrive behind one of the lightly wounded elves, the one furthest away from us, somehow already with a blade in hand.

There was a moment of realisation in the elf's eyes and he was trying to dodge but that moment he needed to realise that it wasn’t the large, dark-winged shadow they needed to fight, but that amiable wolf-man they had been talking with during the day was enough to delay his reaction. Rai didn’t care for the elf, of for a fair fight, his blade swiped across the elf’s neck, the attack not instantly fatal but adding to the flesh wound the elf had sustained from my attack, it would likely cause the elf to bleed out unless treated. And unless anyone else stabbed more holes into his body.

Sigmir was just as fast to react as Rai, only that she had to physically move, not simply fall into the shadows and appear behind her target. Her aura flared around her, making it obvious that she was involved in the fight and her Lok’Nar swept out, crashing through the hasty parry of her opponent, through her armour and biting deeply into her side. Another wound that would likely be fatal, and most certainly took that elf out of the fight for the moment. She was more concerned with keeping her intestines inside her body than with continuing to fight the angry Giantblood.

Ylva got into the mix as well, her size shifted to make her the size of a horse, her maw opening wide enough to get an elf’s head between her jaws before snapping shut with a sudden, wet-sounding crunch. There was nothing the elf’s leather helmet could do against that, nothing but maybe give Yvla ingestion if she hadn’t spat it out, before turning towards the feline mounts of the elves and we could feel a trace of canine eagerness as she set about chasing those cats.

Adra was the slowest to react, not that it really mattered, it seemed as if the elves were ignoring her, almost as a matter of course. By the time she had pulled out her spear, my second strike of the fight was already cast.

Blood, especially blood drawn with Blood Magic, ripped away from its owner with brutal disregard for their life, was a wonderful thing. The precious vitality that made it so important for a creature’s life was rapidly decaying into miasma after it was stripped of the Astral Power normally keeping it balanced, Astral Power I could then use, now faintly aspected to Death, instead of life.

A small twist of that Astral Power and suddenly, the crimson liquid, still warm, bloomed into Ice, a flower as beautiful as any rose, and with just as many thorns.

But just freezing the blood into Ice didn’t consume all the Astral Power we had ripped out of that unfortunate elf, there was still some of it left, more than enough to turn the freshly-bloomed rose into a rain of deadly petals, streams of sharp shards flowing towards the remaining elves.

One of them managed to dodge, only that he dodged right into Adra’s spear, finally ready for combat, while another, still suffering from the initial attack of the Blades of the Northern Wind, wasn’t as lucky, the small petal-like shards ripping into his armour, some of them finding their way into his flash and creating deep, freely bleeding wounds. Wounds that would soon fester, as the miasma inherent to Blood Magic took root. It wouldn’t harm this elf, he would just decay along the blood that began the process early, but that was scarce comfort to him.

Suddenly, there was only one elf left, one lone elf who hadn’t yet fully comprehended the situation. But then, they had been lax, maybe lulled into a sense of security due to their numbers and home-field advantage, maybe due to Adra’s presence, as a Dryad would never work with enemies of the forest, right? That Adra had advanced along a different trajectory than other Dryads, more akin to a strangling vine, ripping the life out of old trees and taking their power for her own, was something they had never noticed.

The poor, lone elf didn’t have to suffer for long. As we quickly flapped our wings, joining Rai and Ylva in hunting down the escaping cats, Sigmir’s Lok’Nar broke the elf’s spear with a resounding crack, leaving the elf completely open to Adra’s spear, the wooden weapon easily piercing into the elf’s back.

Soon, the cats were dealt with, none of them managing to escape the pursuit of two dogged wolves and a guiding raven and silence settled across the forest once more. The battle was won, but all of us easily understood, it would be the first of many.

The idea that nobody would miss the patrol or notice our deeds, was ludicrous to the point that nobody dared entertain it. We didn’t know how long it would take, minutes, hours or with an incredible amount of luck a few days, but we knew one thing: The hunt was on, and we were the prey.