“Pull back!” Daila yelled to the company of soldiers. She must not have wanted to even entertain the idea of dealing with more enemies. I turned around, following her orders, only to find that the odd purple mist had completely surrounded us.

  The mist somehow just hung in the air, ignoring the chilly breeze that rolled along the field. I couldn’t see through the shifting purple cloud, like a gender reveal gone terribly wrong. Except the stakes were a bit higher than miss colored cake and balloons.

  I clenched my fists. How did it surround us so quickly? Daila had soldiers posted all around us. I wasn’t sure how many, too busy wallowing in my own inadequacy to take note of that. I looked at one such guard, an antlered woman wearing leather armor, sporting a long spear. She stood inches away from the smoke screen, unmoving. Wait, that wasn’t right, she swayed. Just barely but a little. Then she fell over, her spear rolling away as she dropped it.

  The other three soldiers on the perimeter followed suit, each falling to the ground simultaneously. Once they fell, the mist closed in, swallowing the bodies.

  “You are sorely outnumbered and outmatched. Give Liam over before this gets ugly.” The voice spoke again, it was a woman’s. Yet I couldn’t pinpoint where from the mist it was coming from, it sounded almost as if it came from every direction.

  The archers in our group held up their bows, aiming out into the mist, but they had no clue where to point either.

  “Everyone! Do not breathe in that mist. Get as close to me as you can.” Daila ignored the commands from the woman in the mist, instead rummaging around in one of the packs on her hip. Glass vials clinked together as she searched for something. Her eyes focused and determined.

  The squad followed her orders immediately, backing away from the encroaching purple wall of mist. They stopped once we were all effectively packed together like sardines, a closeness that would have been truly awkward in any other situation. Tawny and Hait stuck to my sides as Daila slid up to my chest, her roughly tied hair bun tickling my nostrils as she searched through her unimaginably deep fanny pack. She smelled nice.

  “Fine. Hard way it is then.” The woman’s voice spoke again, sounding thoroughly annoyed at being ignored.

  The cloud wall shifted, a portion melting to the ground before swelling to twice its original height. The mist flowed from every direction, just like when you submerge an empty bowl in a body of water. And we sat at the center.

  But just before it crashed into us, Daila nodded. She pulled a beaker filled with a dull blue liquid from her pouch, one much larger than any of her normal vials. She slammed it on the ground just as the purple mist reached the outer rim of our group. Light blue smoke exploded out, covering us before the purple mist had a chance.

  Everyone in the squad hacked and coughed as the blue smoke filled our lungs. The smoke felt heavy, heavy for smoke at least, as it traveled down my throat, finally stopping once it hit my chest. It swirled around, forcing me to cough even harder as my body tried to expel the foreign gas.

  However, after the bout of coughing, my lungs chilled, my whole chest really. Not a bad chill, more like the chill from chewing on mint gum, maybe thirty times as stimulating.

  The entire squad stopped coughing at roughly the same time. I opened my eyes and saw that we were surrounded by the purple haze. Not a single trace of Daila’s light blue smoke could be found. I held my breath instinctively, but released once I realized there was no way in hell I didn’t already inhale a crap ton during that coughing fit.

  But as the mist swirled around us, nothing changed. No one fell over or dropped their weapons. I still breathed in shallow breaths, but it looked like whatever potion Daila used protected us from the effects of the mist.

  But that was only half of the problem. The other being the fact that I couldn’t see three feet in front of my face in this mist. I could just make out Daila and the twins. I tried to think of a way to handle the situation, but I came up empty. I closed my eyes and ran through everything I could do, all my forms, both creature and object. My arsenal wasn’t quite equipped to handle a smokescreen. If only I had mimicked a fan, not that they exist here. Actually, I wonder what happens if I mimic a machine. Hmm. I shook my head, better things to be using brain power on. Damn it. For having such a versatile power, it sure feels like I’m under equipped all the freaking time.

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  Daila must have noticed my movements, or my frustration. She placed a hand on my chest. “It's okay. We just have to wait this out. They can’t see us in the same way we can’t see them. And her followers can’t enter it.” Daila’s voice was calm, soothing even.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’d probably be dead by now if they could. Well, everyone but you.”

  Her statement irked me. A lot. I realized right then how tightly the twins held on to my side. Neither making a sound. They’d been fighting nonstop, just like me. That is enough to wear on anybody, let alone two teenagers in their first real battle.

  The very idea of the twins and Daila lying on the ground dead because of me blossomed a fresh urgency in my heart. And that gave me a little clarity. My mind steeled against the disorienting fog, my eyes solely focusing on finding a break in the fog.

  “Got it,” I looked down at Daila for a moment, “Ma’am.”

  She nodded. “Once the fog clears, we make a stand. Be ready. I might suggest a new form, however. Preferably your Ursa. We are down quite a few frontliners.”

  I agreed with her logic, but I didn’t want to put another form on cooldown so quickly. I was already down most of my forms. Ursa, Squirrel were all that were left, which basically meant Ursa was all that was left. No trees in this field. Unless Elea, the wood mage, could make some. Hmm. Testing may be required.

  Salamandras was coming up soon, only eleven minutes left on the timer, but well. Nah. Not against a female adversary, even if the range would be helpful.

  After a tense minute in the fog, the raging, chaotic movement of the haze died down. Laughter rang out from the haze.

  “Should expect nothing less from one of Laurel’s finest Lieutenants. Our intel needs some updating, I see.” The woman spoke, her voice still impossible to pinpoint properly. “I’d truly hoped to avoid shedding the blood of a friend of my former father-in-law,” as she paused, the mist died down further, becoming translucent. Dark silhouettes dotted the mist now. At least twenty, yet it was impossible to gauge their distance.

  “This ability would have only put you to sleep. And seeing as how far we are from the fighting, you and your squad would have been safe. But now,” she sniffed, “have forced my hand.”

  One of the silhouettes raised a weapon into the air, holding it there.

  “Glenna. Avoid the center.”

  “Aye.” The silhouette’s arm shot down.

  “Scatter!” Daila yelled out just before the attack went off. All of our soldiers ran off at once. I went to join them, but was stopped. Daila held on to the front of my armor. The twins clung to me as well.

  “Don’t move, that attack isn’t meant for you.”

  In the next instant, a shockwave blew straight through the haze, barely missing me by a few feet to my right. Though one of our archers wasn't so lucky. He took the full brunt of it, blowing him dozens of feet away, leaving only a trail of blood.

  The blow dispelled a majority of the haze, revealing the group that surrounded us. Soldiers wasn’t the right word to describe them. Warriors were more apt. Each one covered in animal hide or very basic cloth outfits, much like the ferals that kidnapped me.

  At the head of the group stood a tall woman in much finer armor than her counterparts, armor that looked much more similar to that of the Legions. She wore a hood that obscured her face, but it didn’t hide her number one defining feature: a massive orange foxtail that flicked behind her. Purple mist oozed from it, telling me she was the source of the haze.

  To her side sat a burly woman with brown braided hair. She pulled a massive double-bladed axe from the ground. She must have been the one who sent that shockwave. She plopped the axe on her shoulders.

  A man crouched down on her other side. A mess of dark black feathers covered his body. He stood up and grinned at our group.

  The rest of the fox woman’s group surrounded us, none quite as striking as those three at the front. Though the woman wasn’t lying earlier, we were outnumbered two to one.

  The fox woman raised a hand, then pointed at Daila. “Last chance to surrender.”

  “The Legions of Laurelhaven do not know the meaning of the word.” Daila replied, grabbing a few vials from her bandolier.

  “No. No they don’t.” The fox woman said, though my Apis enhanced ears picked something up in her voice. A longing, or sadness maybe, as she answered Daila. The woman raised a hand out in front of her.

  Daila spoke in a hushed whisper before the woman did anything else. “I’ll handle the leader. Elea, get the crow.”

  “Yes ma’am. ” Elea, the elven wood mage who had apparently been standing behind me the whole time, responded.

  “Liam, now would be a good time for Ursa. I doubt anyone else can handle her.” Daila gestured to the burly woman with her head.

  She was right. But before I replied, the fox tailed woman snapped her fingers. “Attack.”