He scanned the landscape, eyes narrowed, searching for movement. Fang sat alertly beside him, no longer the magnificent storm-wolf, but subtly altered. Lloyd had instructed him to dampen his overt lightning aura, letting his coat appear a more mundane, if still impressive, dark grey. The blazing golden eyes were shielded, appearing a more common deep brown. Camouflage. No need to advertise their true nature out here.
"See anything, Fang?" Lloyd murmured, trusting the wolf's enhanced senses.
Fang shifted, head tilting slightly, ears swiveling. He let out a low, almost inaudible whine, nudging Lloyd's leg gently and looking towards a shallow depression thick with knee-high, rust-colored grass about half a mile away.
"Got it," Lloyd acknowledged. He focused his own senses, extending his Void awareness, feeling the subtle life signatures within the tall grass. Not just one. A small flock. Maybe… ten? Twelve? Perfect.
He began moving, not directly towards them, but circling, using the rolling terrain for cover, keeping the wind in his favor. Fang moved beside him like a silent grey shadow, perfectly attuned to his master's intentions. Lloyd felt the distant presence of the followers keeping pace, clumsy compared to Ken's undetectable passage. They were getting further from the city, further from help. Their mistake.
He reached a ridge overlooking the depression, peering cautiously through the swaying grass. There they were. Ten of them. Large, shaggy creatures, heads down, grazing peacefully. They looked almost ordinary, save for the sheer thickness and slightly greasy sheen of their wool, which seemed to subtly warp the air around them, creating that faint psychic haze.
Okay, time for pest control, version 2.0, Lloyd thought, kneeling behind the ridge line. Avoid the wool. Avoid the aura. Precision takedowns.
He focused, reaching into his bloodline, drawing on the hidden power. The air beside his outstretched hand shimmered almost invisibly. Ten whisper-thin filaments of steel extruded themselves from nothingness, hovering silently, vibrating with barely contained energy. He pushed his will into them, feeling the innate fire respond, heating them instantly, not to incandescence this time – no need for flashy burns – but to a deadly, invisible sharpness, hot enough to slice through flesh and bone like parchment.
Simultaneously, he sent a mental command to Fang. 'Ready the Chirp. Target priority: fast movers, flankers. Synchronize on my release.'
Fang tensed, lowering his stance slightly. Lloyd felt the crackling energy build within the wolf, the faint, high-frequency precursor to the Thousand Chirp Strike beginning to hum just below the threshold of normal hearing.
Lloyd took a breath, centered himself. Targeted the lead sheep with five of his searing wires, aiming for the legs. Targeted the rearmost sheep with the other five, same targets. Isolate. Immobilize.
He released his control.
The ten wires shot forward, silent, invisible streaks of deadly heat through the tall grass.
Almost simultaneously, the world erupted in the piercing shriek of a thousand birds as Fang launched himself down the slope like a grey thunderbolt, blue-white lightning exploding around his foreleg.
The lead sheep bleated in sudden alarm as invisible forces sliced cleanly through its front legs just above the knee. It collapsed instantly, unable to flee, its distressed cries panicked bleating from the others.
The rearmost sheep suffered the same fate, its hind legs severed by the unseen wires before it could even register the threat. It went down, struggling futilely.
The eight sheep caught in the middle panicked, scattering in random directions, their movement churning up the psychic miasma.
But Fang was already among them.
Chirp-SLICE! The lightning claw flashed, connecting with the neck of a fleeing sheep. The creature dropped without a sound, spine severed.
Before the sound even fully registered, Fang was already redirecting, a blur of motion. Another sheep tried to bolt right – Chirp-SLICE! – collapsing mid-stride.
Meanwhile, Lloyd, still kneeling on the ridge, extended his Void control again. More wires, thinner now, like burning spider silk. He didn't aim to kill, just control. One wrapped around the back leg of a panicked sheep trying to circle around, tripping it into a clumsy fall. Another flicked out, slicing the tendons on the front leg of a fourth, bringing it down thrashing.
Fang, moving with impossible speed, took down two more with precise, lightning-fast strikes to the neck or head, the piercing chirp announcing each lethal blow fractions of a second before impact.
Four sheep remained, panicked, disoriented, trying to flee but hampered by the uneven ground and the terrifying speed of the grey predator relentlessly herding them. Lloyd used his wires again, tripping one, slicing a leg tendon on another.
Fang finished the last two. A final flash of azure lightning, a final piercing shriek, and then… silence. Broken only by the sighing wind and the faint, distressed bleating of the two initially immobilized sheep still alive but unable to move.