Almost immediately, the snakes funneled in. Without even needing to coordinate or speak, the members of the snakes were already in the room.
Boots scraped stone. Leather creaked. Metal clinked against metal in sharp, disciplined bursts. The air inside the cave, already thick with dust and reptile musk, seemed to compress as bodies poured through the threshold.
No shouted commands. No frantic pointing. They moved like they had rehearsed this in their sleep.
Formation snapped into place around the basilisk in seconds, angles covered, flanks claimed, distances measured by instinct rather than words. It was clean. Too clean.
Arrows shot forward, aiming to blind the creature and rob him of his sight.
Three bowstrings thrummed at different pitches, the vibrations layering over one another. The arrows sliced through the stale air, their fletching whispering past Kael's ear as he hugged the edge of the room. They went straight for the eyes, no warning shots, no testing.
