[9]

Uneasy eyes rested on the wolf-human duo, but none of them dared to approach them.

"Anything we can do?" Layla asked as she looked around as the crowd easily reached nearly a hundred people.

"We can knock through that gate," Fenrir huffed as he eyed the inky sky above them.

Moonlight had been well enough, but the smoke blotted out any chance of it getting through. Lanterns, torches, and scrap wood lit the crowd. A few low-level mages cast their own little light spells. All of them pushed on the gate to get through.

"We can't do that!" Layla hissed. "The undead will get through if we do!"

"And the undead will kill all of these mortals and get through." Fenrir retorted.

"So, we just endanger the city just so you can found your Mistress?" Layla spat.

"She's your Mistress too now," Fenrir said in a calm voice.

But he wasn't calm at all. His emotions flared violently. Keeping his distance from the mass of panicking humans, Fenrir was having his own panic attack. The thread of mana that connected to his Mistress had disappeared completely. The storm was slowly growing stronger. Mana was thick in the air as it forced the blizzard to push harder against something.

Something...

His Mistress!

The thought was like an explosion of focused delight that cut away all the swirling thoughts in his head. He knew what he needed to do. Instead of following the faint, and not obscured thread - he only had to go to the epicenter of this storm. But that presented another problem, dulling the idea's blade.

"We have to get inside the city still!" Fenrir said as the mass of humans long forgot about the duo as they packed themselves tighter in the street.

"Then we're going to have to get past that." Layla leaned forward and pointed to the mass bodies. Now, people - armed with swords, axes, and anything remotely effective enough to fight with; they had begun to hack away at anything that tried to break through onto the main road.