With a final, desperate lunge, a lone direboar was brought down by Maya's punch. Its death throes were a lone knell in the silence that came upon the battlefield.
The very few remaining beasts, their ranks decimated and their bravado shattered, looked around with bewildered confusion. The tide had turned, not with a whimper, but with a brutal, grinding halt.
So they fled.
A cheer erupted from the Vanguard ranks, a ragged but heartfelt roar that echoed through the blood-soaked night. It was a human sound, a guttural release of tension that had been building for what felt like an eternity. They had held, they had survived. The first wave, the seemingly unstoppable tide of monstrous fury, had been broken.
