"Oh fuck!" Recruit 7 shrieked as the massive lynx slammed into him.
The Lynx had moved with a velocity that defied its size, pinning Recruit 7 against the cold limestone before Henry or Recruit 1 could even take a step. Recruit 7 had managed to jam his blade horizontally between the beast's snapping jaws and his own throat, but the weight was crushing him.
"Guys, help! This thing feels like it's going to melt me!" Recruit 7 screamed, his face turning a panicked shade of purple.
Henry, being the closest, lunged forward. He poured every ounce of strength into a precise thrust aimed squarely at the Lynx's exposed chest. But as his blade drew closer, the air began to shimmer.
A wave of blistering, unnatural heat rolled off the creature, hitting Henry's face like an open furnace. It was so intense he felt the hair on his arms singe, and his hands throbbed as if they were being held over a bed of white-hot coals.
Sensing the steel whistling toward its vitals, the Lynx snarled and disengaged. It shoved off Recruit 7's chest with its powerful forepaws and executed a frantic, mid-air shuffle to its left, narrowly avoiding Henry's thrust.
It landed five feet away, its fur smoking slightly as the red spots on its coat began to glow with a dull, volcanic light.
Recruit 1 quickly passed Henry, placing herself between the lynx and her shaken squadmates. "It's a Fire-Mana Lynx!" she called out, her voice urgent but controlled. "Don't stay close for too long! If you touch it with anything but your blade, you'll burn up like kindling."
She shifted into a high guard, her eyes tracking the heat-haze rising from the creature's spine.
"Luckily, it's still at the Foundation level," she added, a note of relief in her voice. "It can't project that heat yet. It has to touch you to kill you. Keep your distance and attack together!"
The Lynx lowered its head, a low hiss of steam escaping its bared fangs as the moisture in the air evaporated around its muzzle. The clearing, once freezing under the mountain night, was now steaming hot like a sauna on full blast.
Henry watched the beast's eyes that didn't just reflect the moonlight, but seemed to burn with a cold, calculating spark of intelligence. It wasn't just a hungry animal; it was an observer. It paced in a tight semi-circle, its paws leaving faint, charred prints on the bare dirt they had cleared hours ago.
Henry's mind raced, slipping into the tactical mindset he'd been honing during his long nights after his nightmare. 'If I was the Lynx, what would I do?'
He looked at his squadmates for a second. Recruit 1 stood like a statue, her blade steady, and her confidence seemed unshakeable. She was a high-risk target. Then he looked at Recruit 7. He was lightly shaking with terror, his knuckles white and his breathing coming in frantically. He clearly hadn't recovered from the shock of the first attack.
'If I'm the lynx,' Henry realized, 'I don't hunt the wolf amongst us. I kill the panicked sheep first.'
"7, brace yourself!" Henry hissed, his own legs coiling as he prepared to move.
The lynxed stopped its pacing, its muscles bunched and exploded toward Recruit 7 just as Henry had predicted, but as Henry lunged to intercept the path, the beast showed the true depth of its cunning. Mid-air, it twisted its torso using its momentum to pivot towards Henry.
It had baited him into overextending.
Henry's eyes widened as the lynx shifted mid-flight. He was caught in the middle of a stride, but he twisted his torso with desperate speed, throwing his weight backward to avoid a killing blow, but the lynx was too fast. The middle claw of the Lynx's right paw lashed out like the end of a saber.
The talon carved a shallow, vertical line down Henry's left forearm. The wound ended in a hooked curve, a signature left behind as Henry's frantic retreat narrowly pulled his limb out of the path of a deeper strike.
The heat of the mana-infused claw cauterized the skin as it tore, leaving a burning trail of scorched fabric and raw, throbbing pain.
Henry stumbled back, clutching his arm, but the Lynx didn't give him a second to recover; it landed with a predator's grace and immediately coiled for a killing blow, launching itself back into his space.
Just as the massive paw swept down to finish him, a flash of steel intervened. Recruit 1 lunged in, catching the Lynx's left paw on the edge of her arming sword. The impact forced her into a deep crouch, her muscles straining against its momentum.
"Help!" she screamed, the command raw and desperate.
The Lynx, finding its left limb pinned, snarled and reared up on its hind legs. Its right paw lashed out in an arc aimed directly at Recruit 1's side. She was locked in a power struggle, both hands gripped on her hilt to keep the left claw at bay, leaving her completely defenseless against the second strike.
Ignoring the agony in his arm, Henry threw himself forward. He met the incoming right paw with his own blade, the metal clashing against hardened talons just inches from Recruit 1's ribs.
The Lynx was now trapped in a vertical stance, both front limbs engaged in a stalemate. It was a momentary lapse in its feline agility; it couldn't retreat without first dropping its weight back onto its front legs.
The shout for help had finally snapped Recruit 7 back into focus. Seeing its back exposed and its weight shifted upward, he charged. With a yell, he swung his sword in a low, wide arc. The blade bit deep into the Lynx's hindquarters, severing the heavy tendons of its back legs. He didn't cut off its legs, but the strike was able to destroy the foundation of its agility.
The Lynx let out a genuine cry of primal pain. Its hind legs buckled, and it instinctively dropped its front paws to the earth to compensate for the loss of balance.
It was the opening they needed.
As the lynx's chest dipped, Henry drove his sword forward in a single, explosive thrust, burying his sword deep into its chest. Simultaneously, Recruit 1's blade whistled through the air in a horizontal arc that met the Lynx's neck, severing its head clean off its body.
Its massive body collapsed into the dirt, the orange glow in its fur flickering once before fading completely.
The adrenaline of the battle began to ebb, leaving a heavy, cold weight in their limbs. For a full minute, the only sound was the uneven rhythm of their breathing and the faint sizzle of the Lynx's cooling corpse.
Recruit 1 was the first to straighten up. She wiped a smudge of dirt from her cheek and looked at Henry. "14, you alright?"
"Yeah," Henry said, clutching his arm. "I'm fine."
Recruit 7, seeing the danger had passed, puffed out his chest. The terror that had rooted him to the spot only moments ago seemed to evaporate, replaced by his usual bravado. "You're welcome, by the way. For saving you guys."
Recruit 1, who rarely wasted breath on anything that wasn't a command or a survival tip, paused. She looked at 7 with a flat, icy stare. "You were only in a position to help us because you froze so badly in the first place. If you hadn't, 14 wouldn't have had to rush towards you."
"You—you—" 7 stammered, his face flushing a deep red. He was clearly speechless that the normally stoic Recruit 1 had actually bothered to deliver a comeback.
Finding no way to defend his cowardice, he jerked his chin toward Henry's arm to change the subject. "14, let me see your wound."
Henry obliged, raising his forearm. The wound was ugly, but it wasn't bleeding. The intense heat of the Fire-Mana Lynx had effectively sealed the skin as it tore through.
Recruit 1 leaned in, inspecting the charred edges of the skin. "Well," she noted dryly, "at least you don't have to worry about disinfecting it."
"Good," Henry muttered, the exhaustion finally hitting him like a physical wave. "Because I'm too tired to do anything but lie down right now."
He turned and began a slow walk back to the sleeping mats against the wall. Recruit 7 followed close behind, his own brush with death having finally drained his remaining energy.
Recruit 1 didn't follow. It was her shift now. She knelt by the headless carcass and drove her blade into the center of its chest, rummaging through the muscle where the heart would be. After a moment, she stood and called out.
"14."
He turned, his eyes half-closed. He saw a small, red orb whistling through the air toward him. He caught it instinctively. The sphere was warm to the touch and pulsed with a faint, internal light.
"It's the Lynx's mana core," she said, her silhouette dark against the forest. "Keep it in your pack for now."
Henry looked at the glowing stone for a second, but his brain was too foggy for any in-depth observation. He shoved the glowing stone into his pack, the light vanishing beneath his gear.
Despite the stinging pain of the cauterized wound and the cold, hostile air of the forest, his exhaustion won out. His eyes drifted shut the moment his head hit the mat, and he slipped into a heavy sleep immediately.