Lola watched from her perch and its relative safety. Silently she hoped that Russel would be able to win even though she wasn’t quite sure what would happen to her when he did. How long did this primal, bestial form of his werewolf side go on for? Was it all night? Days? Weeks? The rest of his life? Was he stuck like that forever?

She realized panic was starting to drive out everything else. It was insane to stay there, watching, but she also couldn’t bring herself to run. It was like a tether held her back, rooting her to that specific spot until whatever happened next happened.

Watching the attack, she was worried at first. The onis’ collaborative fighting technique looked like it might be too much for Russel’s more primitively savage fighting style to handle. The repeated slashes and cuts kept sending torrents of his blood out and onto the ground, making the dirt there thick and muddy. This, ironically, ended up helping him as opposed to being detrimental to the fight. The ground became more treacherous for the oni. Their sure-footed, powerful attacks became harder to dish out. They kept getting stuck, the muddiness sucking in their feet.

One of the oni had more unfortunate bad luck than the rest of them. Right as it was trying to dart back and away from Russel, that muddy, quicksand-like bit of ground sucked in his foot at the exact wrong moment. It misjudged its timing and couldn’t do anything as one of Russel’s powerful arms swiped into the side of its head. It made no sound as it died, its head getting knocked cleanly off its body. The head went flying through the air and smashed into a rocky part of the landscape. It didn’t splat like Lola had assumed it would. Instead, it simply hit and then dissolved into smoky darkness. The rest of its corpse did the same and just a few seconds later, it was like the oni had never been there in the first place.

The other oni there watched one of their number get killed and seemed to hesitate for a moment. Russel took the opportunity to lunge at one. He tensed his body and then jumped through the air, shooting toward the creature like an arrow launched from a bow. Its thick, mask-like face didn’t emote well but as the amber light coming from Russel’s eyes brightened it up, Lola could almost feel the surprise coming from it. She could almost, she thought, read its mind.

Oh shit, I’m dead.

Or something to that effect.

Russel’s jump carried right into the oni and he wrapped himself around it. The two crashed into the ground with a loud sound. Then, with a roar and a furious amount of struggling, she watched him rip into the dark, shadowy creature.

This one didn’t make a sound either as Russel literally ripped it completely apart. The other two oni could only watch as parts went flying and dissolved into shadow just seconds after hitting the ground. In less than five minutes, two of their number had been mercilessly killed. Despite that fact, both of them lifted their swords into attack positions. While the werewolf was busy with his latest kill, they moved in to try and finish him off.

The body of the oni disappeared, returning to the shadows that made it up.

Then Russel’s enormous werewolf head whirled around and focused on the pair trying to sneak in and cut it to ribbons.

It stood to its full height and let out a deafening roar of challenge.