The breath was knocked out of him. He lay there with the sky tilting overhead, his sword still in his grip by instinct alone, and he couldn't move, couldn't draw air, but he could still hear the fight continuing around him as though it were happening somewhere distant.
The ground beneath his head was cold and wet and he could feel something warm spreading along his scalp. Above him, he could hear the fenrar moving.
The instant the connection to his shadows severed, the tendrils that had been coiled around the first fenrar simply ceased to exist. One moment they were there, dark and solid as it wrapped tightly around the creature's legs and throat. The next, they were gone, dissolving into nothing.
The fenrar lurched forward the moment the restraints fell away, throwing itself at the nearest hunters with renewed fury. A man went down screaming. Another scrambled back barely fast enough to avoid the snap of its jaws.
