It crossed the room faster than anything that size had a right to move.
Ashara threw herself sideways and the sludge hound's jaws snapped shut where her torso had been a half second earlier. She hit the ground rolling and came up in her stance, but the thing was already turning, already coming at her again. She pivoted and kicked it in the side of the head.
Her foot sank into the sludge. The kick connected and then kept going, the mana behind it swallowed by the thing's body like she'd punted a bag of wet sand. The impact traveled nowhere. She pulled her foot back and it came away trailing black residue, sticky and warm.
[What the fuck?]
"Ice!" she shouted.
Isendra fired a lance of ice at the thing's shoulder. It hit clean, formed a crust on the surface, and shattered two seconds later. The sludge underneath just oozed over the frozen spot and filled the gap.
"It's not holding!" Isendra yelled.
"I noticed!"
