A sharp, guttural hiss broke through the slits of Brandt’s iron mask as the operative abandoned all pretense of surrender.
The mud beneath his boots churned violently, splattering against the locked star iron pavises as a thick, crimson aura erupted from his chest with the concussive force of an exploding furnace. Instead of yielding to Edric’s spear, Brandt drove his palms downward into the muck, using the violent expulsion of energy to blast his body upward off the slick timber, twisting midair to bypass the spear tip by a hairsbreadth. His fingers curled into rigid, claw-like postures, coated in a boiling layer of dark crimson fluid that hissed and scorched the ambient fog into acrid white vapor.
He lunged directly at Caleb Conway, his eyes gleaming with lethal, desperate fury behind
