Even though she was in her were-form, she was still wearing the black jumpsuit. It must have been one of those rare grades of enchanted fabrics which were specially bound to shapeshifting Outworlders.

”Shoot her!” the bald soldier yelled, squeezing the trigger of his gun as he frantically stumbled backward, away from Astrid’s terrifying transformation.

I flung myself to the ground as the sound of discharging rifles filled the still forest.

My ears were ringing as I rolled onto my back and looked up to see small spheres of crackling lightning energy screaming through the air. They slammed into Astrid, but they did nothing except cause a few sparks.

”She has immunity!” a soldier cried out as they took cover behind the treeline. ”Switch to Fire rifles!”

In a blur of motion, Astrid rushed toward one man before he could successfully make it into the trees. With one monstrously taloned hand, she gripped him by the throat.

”Silly little human,” she said, lifting him from the ground. In her monster form, her voice was deep and growling but somehow still feminine.

The soldier flailed around in her merciless grip, his feet pinwheeling as he attempted to bring his rifle to bear, but she cleaved off his hand at the forearm, and the rifle dropped to the ground along with the severed limb. Blood geysered from the stump of his arm.

Without hesitation, Astrid crushed the soldier’s throat in her hand and then hurled him at a second soldier. His bleeding body flopped through the air like he was a sack of potatoes before slamming into his shocked comrade. The two went down in a tangle of blood and limbs.

I was thrown by the sudden violence of her attack, but I couldn’t think much about it because my hands were already racing to complete the mudra required for a Force Barrier spell.

”Get behind me,” I said to Astrid as the other soldiers took position a few feet from the road.

Her eyes widened at first—I guess she wasn’t used to a kid like me telling her what to do.

Then she saw my hands forming the spell mudra and realized what I was about to do. One powerful, elegant leap took her behind me on the road.

I drew upon my internal chi, converted it to mana as it coursed through my veins, then pushed it out through my fingers, now twisted in the Force Barrier mudra. The symbol of my fingers and outstretched hands became the vector for my spell, and my will manipulated the mana as it poured from my body.

The familiar feeling of power that came with manipulating mana flooded me. Tiny silken threads extended from my fingers, almost too quickly to be seen by the naked eye. They formed an incredibly strong material that anchored itself to the ground and then grew until it extended above Astrid and I, blocking off the space between us and the startled soldiers.