The levee was about to break.
You could hear it in the cracking of shields, the death rattles of soldiers, the sinister groaning of the human structure disintegrating under the pressure. The circle tightened, becoming a trap rather than a bulwark. The stench of despair, acrid and metallic, mingled with that of blood and black sap.
Elisa, her face streaming with sweat and taut with effort, felt the breaking point arrive. Her lead pellets were now just desperate patches, quick fixes on a hull that was shattering. She became something else. The "scalpel" became a hand.
A first puppet, a massive lizardman, charged a group of soldiers. Instead of a clean shot, an invisible force, like a giant palm, plucked it from the air with staggering brutality. She didn't push it. She seized it. And she squeezed. Scales cracked, bones snapped with a wet sound. The body was reduced to a shapeless ball of flesh and thrown like a projectile into the enemy ranks, crushing two goblins with a soft thud.
