Clarity.
Because I can see how it ends from here.
Because I know the distance.
Because I know I don’t have enough left to keep this up much longer.
“You had a good run,” I mutter, a dry edge slipping into my voice as I track the next movement. “Real impressive, honestly.”
One of them lunges?—
And something slams into it from the side hard enough to snap its trajectory mid-air.
The impact is wrong, violent in a way that doesn’t match my shots, and the creature hits the ground with a heavy, broken sound that cuts through everything else.
My head snaps toward it, vision sharpening as something else moves through the basin.
Another one drops.
Not from my shot.
From his.
“Get down!” the voice cuts across the space, sharp and immediate.
I don’t question it.
My body reacts before my brain catches up, dropping lower against the rock as another shot cracks past me, close enough that I feel the displacement of air.
I turn?—
And there he is.
Hrask moves through the basin like he’s done this a hundred times, his steps controlled, deliberate, each motion cuttingthrough the chaos instead of reacting to it. His weapon comes up, fires, resets, fires again, each shot precise enough to drop anything that gets too close without wasting movement.
“You’re late,” I rasp, because apparently that’s what comes out when my brain finally catches up.
He doesn’t look at me right away, his attention locked on the movement below as he adjusts his position, drawing them away from the rock.
“Yeah,” he shoots back, voice tight but steady. “Had to make a stop.”
Another one breaks toward him from the side, fast enough to make me tense, but he pivots into it like he expected it, firing once and stepping through the space it occupied without breaking stride.
“You always pick the worst places to hold out,” he mutters, scanning the remaining movement.
“I didn’t pick it,” I snap, pushing myself upright despite the way my ribs protest the motion. “It was this or getting torn apart out in the open.”
“Next time,” he says dryly, “aim for somewhere less hostile.”
Another creature lunges at him from behind, and I react without thinking, raising my weapon and firing.
The shot lands clean.
It drops.
He glances back at me then, just long enough for something sharper to flicker across his expression.
“Still shooting straight,” he says.
