Court of the Shifter 8 by Logan Jacobs

Author:Logan Jacobs [Jacobs, Logan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Lor yelped at the noise and immediately fluttered back on her wings. The rest of the party raced forward to surround her, and I jumped between the fairy and the door.

I could feel the primal energy rippling beneath my skin, waiting to be unleashed in the form of a shift or a fireball, and Luxe let loose a very bear-sounding warning snarl behind me.

But no one leapt out of the hut to attack us.

Instead, I looked down into the slate-gray eyes of what I assumed was a dwarf, and the short man just blinked up at me with a blank expression. I didn’t know how dwarves aged, but he looked around fifty in human years. He was about four and a half feet tall, and a nest of salt-and-pepper curls surrounded his head and protruded from the bottom of his face. The beard reached to the middle of his chest, and it looked like parts of it had been braided at one point, but the braids had turned into mats and dreadlocks that looked a little crusty. His clothes were equally dusty and unkempt, and I realized that the sour, salty aroma I noticed earlier was coming from him. The filthy clothes also hung off his body at awkward angles, and beneath his beard, his face looked thin.

The two of us stared at each other as the hail and rain picked up around us, and I refused to be the one to blink first. I could sense my friends tensed and ready to fight behind me, but the dwarf wasn’t even holding a weapon. He could potentially be a magic user, however nothing about his body language read hostile. He didn’t even look very surprised, which I found odd.

Thunder suddenly clapped just overhead, and I winced involuntarily as a ping-pong-sized piece of hail struck me on the shoulder.

The dwarf slowly raised his gray eyes to the swirling, blackening sky, and then he brought them back down and locked gazes with me again.

“Well…” he grunted in a hoarse voice. “Ya just gonna stand there all night, or ya gonna come in?”

I blinked in surprised confusion, but before I could respond, the dwarf turned and disappeared into the shadows of his hut.

I waited a few seconds, but when he didn’t come back, I glanced over my shoulder at my companions.

A drenched Nicolai was still holding his sword at the ready, but Zolas had his hand lifted into the air with his palm pointed at the sky. A faint glowing shield extended from his hand and protected his head from the hail and rain, and Luxe and Lor were crowded close to the mystic to take advantage of the same protection.

The storm was only growing worse around us, and we didn’t have a lot of options to choose from.

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst?” I suggested and motioned to the elongated hut.

Nicolai looked reluctant, but everyone else nodded, and a lightning bolt even struck a tree on the edge of the village, so it seemed our choice had been made.

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