Kira moved first.

She came in from the left at a low angle, dagger point-down, the way a fighter closed on a wounded animal when the animal still had teeth. Her boots barely made sound in the snow. The frostpanther’s ears rotated to track her before its head did.

Lena stepped wide on the right. Water ribbons trailed off her wrists in thin uneven lines, gathering into two lengths as she moved, the shapes tightening into whips as her fingers flexed at her sides.

Tom hung back at the centre. His baton was up in both hands, held too tight, the knuckles white where he’d wrapped his fingers.

Edgar had shifted his angle behind them. Small blades of wind spun in his palms.

The frostpanther’s weight rocked back onto its good hind leg. The dragging one stayed limp behind it.

Its head tracked Kira.

Its haunches loaded.

Then it broke sideways, not forward. A hard cut toward Lena, the leg that shouldn’t have worked pushing off the snow in a burst that dropped my estimate of the injury by half.

"Left."

Lena’s water whip came up on instinct. The lash cracked across the animal’s front shoulder as it crossed her path, drew a red line through the fur, and the frostpanther twisted mid-air to bring its claws down where the whip had come from.

Tom lunged.

He led with the baton in a two-handed swing that was too wide and too high, meant for a head that wasn’t there anymore. The frostpanther slipped under the arc without slowing. The baton whistled past its ear. Tom’s feet kept going forward with his weight, momentum pulling him past his own centre of gravity, and he stumbled two steps into the empty space Lena had been standing in a moment before.

He’d taken her spot.

She hadn’t taken his.

Lena spun sideways to keep the animal in her sightline. The water whip in her right hand snapped out again, caught the frostpanther across the flank, and this time the crack of the impact came with a hiss of steam where the salt hit the open wound from Buddha’s Palm. The animal jerked away from her.

Right into Kira’s angle.

Kira drove the dagger down between its shoulder blades in a short hard stab. The blade sank half its length before the fur locked around the edge. The frostpanther bucked. Her wrist twisted on the follow-through, tearing the wound wider, and she rolled off its back into the snow before the swipe of its claws could find her.

Edgar’s wind blades came in a beat later. Two clean cuts across the flank, one along the base of the tail. Thin cuts. Slow bleeders. Enough to keep the animal turning in circles trying to work out where the pain was coming from.

The frostpanther’s ice-blue eyes fixed on Tom.

He was still off balance.

Its haunches loaded a second time.

Tom saw it coming. His baton came up in a defensive angle across his chest, elbows tight, the block a beginner drilled in his first month of combat class. Textbook. It would have held against a training partner throwing a slow strike from a stationary start.

Against a wounded predator crossing three metres in a single leap, the block was going to buckle on impact and drive the baton straight into his own throat.

The frostpanther pushed off.

Tom’s back was to Lena. She was two paces behind him, still in the follow-through of her last water lash, her whip curled loose at her side. When the animal launched over Tom’s block, its trajectory wasn’t at his throat.

It was past him.

The follow-strike would land on Lena.

Her eyes went wide.

Realising the trouble Tom had placed Lena in, I took action Immediately.

Crossing the four metres between the cave mouth and the fight line in a single burst of Afterimage Step.

The world went hazy at the edges for one breath. My image stayed at the cave frame. My body ended up between Lena and the incoming leap with my right hand already up.

My fist connected beautifully with its chest, and I heard its ribs break instantly.

The impact folded the animal around the strike in the air. The frostpanther flew like a ragdoll, before it hit the snow ten metres down the pass and slid to a stop.

It didn’t get up.

Lena was frozen. Her hands were still lifted from the last whip. Her water had dispersed into fine mist along her wrists. Her eyes were fixed on the corpse in the snow, then on my back, then on Tom.

I turned my head.

"Tom."

Tom’s baton had dropped. His mouth hung open. His hands were shaking at his sides.

"You broke your line."

"I, I didn’t—"

"You committed to a swing you couldn’t land, went past your own centre, and left the person behind you exposed. Lena was under a major threat because you stepped into her angle without covering the space you left."

I lowered my hand.

"In a formation, you hold your slot. If you swing and miss, you reset before you move. You never pass through another teammate’s coverage without warning them. That’s the rule. If you’d said ’crossing left’ before you lunged, Lena would have rotated to cover the gap. You didn’t. She almost paid for your mistake with her life."

Tom nodded twice, small quick motions, clearly upset with himself.

He turned to Lena.

"I’m sorry. I- I didn’t mean to leave you open. I panicked. I saw the head and I swung. I should have called it. I’ll call it next time."

Lena’s eyes came back into focus by degrees. She was still looking at the corpse. Her arms had crossed over her chest, her hands tucked under the opposite elbows, and she was trembling.

She nodded once at Tom.

Then her eyes lifted to me.

"Thank you for saving me."

I gave her a small nod back.

I crossed to the corpse in the snow and let the storage ring dissolve it into the pocket dimension. The fur would be useful. So would the meat.

[+40 SP]

I turned back toward the cave mouth.

"Let’s get inside before something else smells the blood."

After using Afterimage Step, my mana had reached an all time low, just an inch away from mana drainage. Thankfully, after evolving my core to C-Rank, I no longer collapsed after using the skill.

’I can use it once without any side-effects...but my mana will be completely spent.’