The lead Mammoth exhaled heavily, frost pluming from its trunk in a long, resigned breath. Its legs trembled once, then locked, standing but spent, a statue of what it had been moments ago.
It had been neutralized, for now at least.
Bruce didn't linger. His gaze was already fixed forward.
He shot across the field, and the sky changed.
Not darkened but webbed.
Crystalline threads stretched across canyon gaps and mountain passes, glittering like constellations suspended at eye level. Frostweaver Spiders clung to cavern walls and jagged outcrops, horse-sized bodies anchored by eight crystalline legs embedded deep into ice.
Their abdomens pulsed faintly as they spun silk strands thicker than cables, each strand refracting pale blue light in prismatic arcs. The webs spanned entire chasms, turning open sky into a lethal lattice.
Touch one, flash-freeze. Conduction through ice-crystal silk would immobilize prey instantly, frost racing through veins before thought could follow.
