Bryce

The four heavily armored guards near the throne opened fire on our group and Rajak lifted a hand in the air with a palm facing outwards. Dozens of azure spears manifested, floating in the air around the djinn.

The members of the pack reacted quickly. Daria and Rashka ran in opposite directions, moving to flank Rajak, while Lysc sprinted straight towards the incoming fire. Davix, Patches, and Nikko all spread out while opening up with their rifles.

Between their thick skin, accelerated healing, and body armor, the shifters seemed to shrug off most of the gunfire and my shield was holding strong.

Then Rajak unleashed the volley of spears. I don’t think he had the ability to aim them, but there were so many that it really didn’t matter. I was far enough back that I only caught the very edge of the attack, a spear passing through my left shin, bypassing my shield entirely.

The rest of the pack wasn’t nearly as lucky. Patches and Davix were both on the ground with at least half a dozen spears sprouting from each of them. Nikko had been far enough to the left that only his right side had been exposed. Even still, his arm was hanging uselessly with two of the spears protruding from it.

I couldn’t see Sora, but Thea looked unharmed. She seemed reluctant to move away from me, which was a problem under the circumstances.

“Go! Focus on Rajak! We can’t let him get off another volley like that!” I had to shout over the gunfire. Thea nodded before sprinting forward to help Lysc.

Tuning out the surrounding battle, I focused on trying to think of the right spell for the situation. I needed something that wouldn’t hurt my allies, but would be significant enough that Rajak couldn’t just shrug it off. I couldn’t think of anything directly harmful that wouldn’t kill everybody in the room, so I started casting a restraining spell.

It would take time to finish, maybe a full minute, but I figured that if I could get it to stick, then our heavy hitters could finish the battle.

I was stunned to see that the four elite guards could hold their own against Rashka and Daria. Their armor was allowing them to ignore most attacks, which meant it had to have been heavily enchanted.

Thea joining meant that battle was turning in our favor. Lysc, on her own, could barely defend against Rajak’s attacks, but with Thea’s help, the djinn was just too slow to pressure both of the women.

Nikko was no longer able to aim his rifle with his wounded arm, so he moved to assist Daria with fighting the guards.

He was wielding one of the short spears that Rajak had thrown and was surprisingly good with it. He managed a killing blow on one guard, and a few seconds later, Daria killed the other.

Rashka didn’t need any help. She quickly tired of the two-on-one battle, deciding to simply lift one guard into the air and throw him fifteen meters, into the far wall.

The remaining guard looked like he was about to shit himself, but Rashka didn’t even allow him that last dignity before she tore his head clean off his shoulders.

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With the guards dead, all of our focus shifted to Rajak. He had been fighting Lysc and Thea with his bare hands, managing to deflect their attacks without so much as moving from in front of his throne.

When the other three joined the fight, he summoned a pair of ethereal scimitars that looked like they were made of crystallized blue flame. Rajak wasn’t even breaking a sweat fighting five powerful opponents at once.

Finally, I finished casting my spell. A pair of transparent emerald vines sprouted from the palm of each of my hands. I whipped them both forward, concentrating on Rajak’s hands as they moved at unfathomable speeds to block my allies’ every attack.

The vines disappeared halfway to Rajak, reappearing around his wrists and stopping his arms mid movement. I clapped my palms together, forcing Rajak’s wrists to do the same. With a mental flex, the vines combined, preventing him from pulling them apart.

Rajak switched from blocking to dodging, but he was still able to avoid everything we threw at him. I saw him glare at me from within the melee, recognizing the source of the bindings.

I focused on the spell I was maintaining, summoning more vines and whipping them at Rajak until he finally slowed.

Thea landed the first actual blow. Her fist impacted Rajak’s chest and left him stunned for just long enough for the others to get a few hits in.

“Animals!” Rajak empowered his voice with mana, causing a shock wave to radiate from where he was standing. The attack pushed everybody surrounding him back by about a meter, and it knocked me and Nikko to the ground, but everybody else managed to maintain their footing.

Four new arms sprouted from Rajak’s body, each wielding a copy of the azure scimitar. He swung at the vines, cutting them all, before vanishing.

He appeared above me at nearly the same moment, and I barely rolled out of the way as Rajak fell from above. Six scimitars stabbed through the spot where my chest had been only a half-second ago.

“Bryce!” Thea sprinted to pressure Rajak again, but he intercepted her with a kick, launching her past the throne and through the back wall.

The djinn stood to his full height and began floating with a blue mist swirling in the air underneath him. It seemed like he was done playing with us.

“I'm done playing with you.” Yep, I was right. “Nobody will remember your name and I will scatter your pack across the stars as pets to—”

I interrupted Rajak’s evil villain speech by whipping more vines at him, but he cut them out of the air before they could get halfway across the room.

My shield shattered, and I hit the wall before I had time to register Rajak’s kick.

Hundreds of spears appeared in the air and started raining down on the remaining pack members.

Lysc and Daria were barely still standing, but Nikko was lying on the ground, unmoving, and Rashka was tearing the spears out of herself.

She pulled the last one from her shoulder and snapped it in half before leaping forward. She wielded the two spear halves and used them to deflect and parry Rajak’s attacks.

It was damn impressive, but she was still on the defensive.

That’s when Thea darted out of a hole in the wall, dodged under a scimitar attack, and grabbed the wrist of Rajak’s lower arm, before using it to swing onto his back. He stabbed down at her using his topmost set of arms, but she dodged out of the way, grabbing the arms and adding her own strength to the attack to pull the swords down into Rajak’s back.

Rajak let out a pained shout as we saw his blood for the first time. Rashka took advantage of the moment to stab the spear shards into Rajak’s chest.

I poured more mana into my spell and started restraining the djinn’s limbs as best as I could with the newly reinforced vines. I pulled them downward, forcing Rajak to the ground, then to his knees.

Thea walked around to the front of the djinn, spawning the soul-blade from her storage.

Rajak let out a deep and rumbling laugh. “You’re signing your own death warrant.”

“Nope, just yours.” Thea growled before swinging the sword and decapitating the djinn with a single clean swipe. Rajak’s corpse fell to the ground, a blue mist escaping his neck and entering Thea’s blade.