In the wake of losing his magic, Feyrith struggles to adapt and survive the new and constant onslaught from the feral jungle beasts, trying to keep himself as well as Sunwood alive. Something unnatural has disturbed the beasts and though it's danger...
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It took a staggeringly short amount of time for the jungle beasts to attack them. Almost as soon as they entered the jungle, a pack of timblerclaw tigers jumped at them out of nowhere. Edwyr almost fell out of his saddle in shock, but before he could even think about steeling himself for being mauled by a tiger, golden light enveloped them.
The tigers roared as they hit the magical shield covering their entire party at full speed, but they didn't scamper away in fear or defeat, instead starting to circle them, looking for any weakness in the shield. Even before looking around Edwyr knew that Wyn was doing this. And sure enough, he found the elf holding his staff up, its tip glowing with bright yellow light, a frown of concentration on his face.
Edwyr tried not to wince every time they clawed at the magical barrier, trying to break through. He had all the faith in the world in Wyn, but Edwyr still had no idea how the elf was doing this. Maintaining such a large shield, let alone for more than a few seconds—it didn't make any sense in Edwyr's mind, not that he was complaining. He just hoped that Wyn could keep it up.
Jumping off Tempest's back and reaching out with his hand, Edwyr waited for one of the tigers to get close to him before summoning fire, sticking his hand just outside the shield as he did. The tiger roared, the branches its body was made of catching fire, and immediately it ran, disappearing deep inside the jungle. More elves joined in, the magicless ones staying in the middle and the ones who could use magic taking position in a circle around them, throwing fire at the tigers whenever they could until all of the beasts were gone, giving up on trying to kill them.
Despite the distance between them, Edwyr could hear Wyn let out a long breath as the shield fell. He looked very strangely collected for what he'd just done, sitting back in his squawker's saddle. Edwyr felt like he had gotten more winded from casting flames than Wyn was from holding his shield up.
"Good work," Wyn said, looking at all of them. "But the noise has likely alerted more beasts to our presence. We must press on."
Unsurprisingly, no one disagreed, and with a few mumbles of agreement, everyone climbed back into their saddles and set off, following Wyn and Genrith who were in the front. Edwyr was right behind them, riding next to Orenis, who was staying uncharacteristically silent, her face serious, almost grim. But he supposed he shouldn't be too shocked by that given the gravity of the situation. The more noise they made, the more likely it was that more beasts would find them, so unnecessary talking was out of the question.
But despite staying relatively silent, it didn't take long for more beasts to find them, looking to fill their stomachs. First to attack was a scalewing, and while a few elves sustained injuries that were then healed, it was relatively easy to chase it off, the beast having likely realized that the group of elves were at a massive advantage due to numbers.
Once it left, not too long after a pack of sawtooth wolves tried to attack them, which was incredibly odd because Edwyr had only seen those once in his life before, many years ago. Their horrible, jagged teeth were just as fearsome as back then, but they were much less intimidating when Wyn kept his protective shield up.
