The bracket narrowed overnight the way these things did, four names burning off the board while Soren slept with a fox tail wrapped around his bandaged arm.
By the time he reached the staging hall the screen had him slotted against a Class B second-rank he'd never read about in any chapter.
Maren walked him down.
She'd untangled herself from his arm at the gray light and said nothing about the night, which was its own kind of statement.
The girl across the staging line was small and quiet and she had her hands in her jacket pockets.
Then her beast came up out of the floor.
◆◆◆◆
It was a burrower.
Long body, dense shoulders, claws built for moving earth, and a hide that drank the staging-hall light instead of throwing it back.
Soren catalogued it before he catalogued the fight.
Earth-type.
Tunnel work, ambush, terrain control, the exact gap nothing in his pack covered. Selah went cold. Maren went hot.
