The obsidian stinger didn't just pierce Shad Darc's arm—it shattered the cold silence of the valley.
He was then toss aside like a discarded doll which sent him fying a couple of meters away.
As Shad fell to the flower-covered ground, clutching his bleeding, ruined elbow against the trunk of a dark-blue tree, the world around him seemed to slow down. The primal fear that had gripped his body was still there, but as he wiped the cold sweat and blood from his eyes, he realized something crucial.
The white crocodile wasn't looking at him anymore. In fact, after tossing him aside like a nuisance, its pale, eagle-like eyes were locked entirely on Fray.
And Fray was looking back with an intensity Shad had never seen before.
The look it gave wasn't the frantic hunger of a beast fighting for survival. This was pure, unfiltered, burning hatred directed towards the white crocodile .
The white crocodile slowly opened its wide, shark-toothed mouth, but no feral roar came out. Instead, it made a deliberate, clicking sound—a complex, rhythmic vibration that sounded unsettlingly like a taunt. A message meant only for Fray which seems or rather looked menacing and earie in a different kind of way .
Fray's response was a low, vibrating growl that shook the very ground beneath them. Just like the white crocodile it also seems to smile in weird kind of way, anybody that sees this smile will immediately feel a cold chill running down his or her spine but the white crocodile felt nothing at all but an odd sense of joy and anticipation.
Shad pressed his back against the tree, using his good right hand to force his Flow into his shattered elbow, numbing the searing pain just enough to keep his mind sharp and focused. As he watched the two massive creatures circle each other among the sky-blue and purple flowers, his keen observational skills picked up on the subtle dynamic between them.
They weren't looking like two strange creatures encountering each other in the wild for the first time. Instead they look as if they knew each other's movements and also as if they had known each other before. To be simplethey knew each other's habits.
'They have history,' Shad realized, his eyes narrowing.' No... it's deeper than that.,' one of his mental identity spoke.
Almost instantly they got into action
In the way Fray anticipated the crocodile's tail sweeps, and in the way the pale monster casually exposed its flanks as if knowing Fray's current strength couldn't break through, there was a dark familiarity.
These weren't just two wild beasts as he might have thought. They possessed an intelligence remarkably close to that of a human. And once, a long time ago, they hadn't been enemies. They had been companions. At least that is what he is speculating at the moment
Fray lunged forward, not with mindless rage, but with a calculated, desperate strike aimed directly at the crocodile's throat. The oversized cat-beast's claws left dark trails in the air as it poured every ounce of its strength into the blow.
"Clang!"
It resounded as if it was metal against metal.
The white crocodile didn't even attempt to dodge. It simply shifted its weight, letting its dense, chalky scales absorb the heavy impact. Sparks flew into the air, scattering across the flower bed, but the blow barely left a scratch.
The white monster made another clicking sound, its eagle eyes curling into what looked almost like a cruel, mocking sneer.
It opened its jaw wider, and for a split second, a strange, distorted pulse of energy rippled around its throat.
Shad's breath hitched. "That energy.." Shad was able to recognize it as energy flow but it didn't know how the white monster was able to make it pulse like that "damn it they just so many things I don't know" while grimace his face in pain
It wasn't the crocodile's natural power. The frequency of that energy pulse was jagged, dark, and eerily similar to the essence that flowed through Fray.
The moment Fray saw this it instantly recognized it his energy flow which made it more angry
In that moment, Shad only became more confused because Fray was showing a hint of recognition to the pulsing energy flow as if to say that is mine. This only puzzle Shad's mind.
"Now that I think about it used the same fear attacked on me just Fray did but it's was far more powerful and felt more natural could this be a kind of coincidence or something more."
During there fight Fray was forced to remember what happened between them
This white bastard . It had betrayed Fray and the rest of their former pack. It had turned on its own companions, backstabbing them when their trust was highest, and stole a core piece of their very energy flow.
That stolen energy was the reason why the crocodile's defenses were so absurdly high. And it was the exact reason why Fray was currently so much weaker than it was naturally supposed to be.
Fray roared—a sound dripping with the agony of a betrayal that had cost it everything and almost it life.
Driven by the memory of its fallen animal friends and the stolen power humming inside its enemy's throat, Fray threw itself forward again. It ignored the obsidian stinger whipping toward its side, taking a glancing blow that ripped through its dark hide just to get its jaws locked around the crocodile's neck.
"CRACK!"
Fray's wolf-like fangs clamped down hard on the pale scales. Blood—dark, tainted, and smelling of ancient decay—finally leaked from the white monster's neck.
For the first time, the crocodile's cold sneer vanished. It thrusted its massive body violently, its scorpion tail swinging around to drive the obsidian tip straight into Fray's skull to finish the job once and for all.
Fray was pinned, its jaws still locked onto the beast's neck, unable to dodge the incoming lethal strike.
"Not today, you backstabbing lizard," Shad muttered through grit teeth.
He couldn't use his left arm, and his body was running on pure adrenaline and Flow, but he wasn't about to watch Fray get finished off by a traitor.
Shad pushed off the tree trunk, his right hand gripping his crude bone-dagger tight as he burst into a sprint, targeting the tiny gap where Fray's teeth had cracked open the crocodile's impenetrable hide.