Page 35 of Sanctuary

Here we go. “Finn, go to the back room where the fridge is. Turn left. There is a box sitting on the second shelf, looks like a pirate chest. Bring it to me.”

Finn took off running.

Behind the knight, the priest raised their hands. Magic snapped between their fingertips, an invisible, jagged line of power. The priest stretched it, shaping it, their movements practiced and complex, almost hypnotic, a blend of martial and ritual.

“What’s the plan?” Fulton demanded. “Do you want us to back you up? Do you need auxiliary support?”

The magic gained color. It wasn’t a glow or a radiance. No, it was viscous, a kind of ichor or plasma stretching between the priest’s hands, a bright, shocking yellow that smudged and hung in the air. It felt like nothing Roman had experienced. Divine and yet not divine, filtered through human magic, but not limited to it. Alien. Unnatural.

What the actual fuck…

The knight spun in place, twisting and turning, their hands snapping into well-practiced forms. Yellow plasma sheathed the knight’s sword.

Finn rounded the corner, slid across the floor, and thrust the chest at him.

They would need to be outside for this. Roman swiped Klyuv from its spot against the wall, stuck the staff into his armpit, and took the chest. The front door swung open in front of him on its own. Roman stepped onto the porch, sending a spike of power through each foot as it touched the floorboards. The skulls on the posts burst into blue fire, rattling their jaws.

The knight and priest paused.

Now you know what you’re dealing with. Walk away and live.

The priest twisted, spinning their yellow ichor. The knight started forward, slow, deliberate, unhurried.

It’s like that then? Fine.

Roman set his staff down, planting Klyuv into the porch boards. The staff remained upright, held by magic. Klyuv’s vicious eyes rotated in their orbits. The wicked beak gaped in a silent scream and clacked closed, crushing imaginary bones. Darkness poured out of the spot where the staff met the floor, spreading along the ground, blanketing the front yard in a foot of evil fog.

The knight took two more steps, untroubled. The darkness swirled around them, clinging to their boots and pants.

A ring of yellow plasma formed behind the priest, eight feet tall, and it hung there like a wagon wheel with the familiar irregular spoke arrangement.

Roman flicked his left hand. A giant bone hand erupted from the ground and backhanded the knight. The warrior flew backward a few yards, flipped in the air, and landed on their feet just outside of the boundary. The mask cracked and fell off, revealing a man in his late twenties.

Nice acrobatics.

Roman opened the chest. Black soil waited inside. He dipped his fingers into it, scooping a handful. It was soft like powder, slightly moist, and cold to the touch. Its magic licked his skin, cold, ancient, terrible, unknowable, and unfeeling, the magic that was there before humans and would be there after they passed.

Finn recoiled. “What is that?”

“Soil from the border between Nav and the Void. Whatever you do, do not step off the porch.”

Roman barked an incantation, snapping each word, and tossed the handful of Nav dirt into his yard. It sank into the fog, and he felt it burrow into the ground. Otherworldly magic spread through the ground, sliding just under the surface, awakening things he’d buried years ago. He could feel it rush through his yard, widening in a ring around his house, a magic field just under the fog.

Across the yard, the priest crossed their arms and threw them to the sides, as if cutting an invisible enemy with their hands. The yellow wheel behind the priest rotated toward the house, launching gobs of ichor that stretched and snapped into slender swords in midair.

Roman jerked his arm up. The bone hands burst out of the ground in front of the porch, shielding them from the yellow barrage. The giant fingers shuddered under the bombardment. Bone splinters rained onto the porch.

The magic Gatling gun kept firing.

“Should I…?” Finn offered.

“No.”

The kid packed a truckload of power, but without training, he used it on pure instinct. When he unleashed his magic, he would do exactly what he’d done before—he’d sink it all into one terrifying burst and then he would be tapped out. They had to save it for the right moment.

Chunks of bone pelted the ground. The yellow blades kept coming, slicing into the bone shield with a hiss. The left ring finger broke, then the right index finger, falling to the ground. Roman could see the lawn through the gaps, and the flashes of yellow around the attackers.

Fuckers. It would take a lot of bone to regrow the hands.

---