Location:Mid Ring, Vel'thari Containment — Fortress Outskirts, Kill Corridor
Date/Time:Late Frostforge, 9941 AZI — Week 3 of the Harrowing
Realm:Lower Realm, Doha
The copper tang hit first.
Not blood. Charling fluid. The stuff that ran through them instead of blood, amber and thin and carrying a mineral reek that clung to the back of the throat like a chemical burn. Jayde crouched at the edge of the kill zone and tasted it on the air and knew, with the flat certainty of someone who had just crossed a line she could not uncross, that this was what hunting tasted like down here.
Four dead. One gone.
She wiped the spear point on her thigh and counted backwards through the engagement.
***
Three hours earlier, the kill zone had been an empty corridor.
