The guard's eyes were wide and hard at once, ears flicking with the effort of listening past the crackle of the torches that were not torches. The forest night pressed in around them, resin-scented, damp underleaf breathing cool against boot soles, and inside that hush the howl of the Djinns twisted like wind in a bottle. She had her bow half raised without remembering drawing it. The wild light from the cave mouth found the flat of Ludwig's blade and ran along it in a thin white vein.
"What did you just do?" the guard said as she looked at Ludwig with full surprise. After all from all the running he did and the main weapon he held, he was anything but a caster, but this type of magic, capable of forcing his enemies into a mental destabilization and a frenzy was more than enough to prove his attainment in the art of magic.
"A simple trick," Ludwig said as he swung his sword in an arc at the crossed scissor like daggers of the assassin.
