Page 41 of Bright Soul

“It is me,” I said in a two-toned voice, mine layered with Braza’s. “Plus Braza et…” I hesitated before plucking her title out of my memories. She was the second prince’s adopted daughter, which made her the… “Sudairae.”

“Sounds like Big P’s last name,” Ben commented. He had his big daggers out but a bandolier of the smaller ones for throwing at the ready over his torso.

“Title,” I corrected. “Tell you about it later. It’s…a lot.”

Braza’s shadows contracted over my skin. I felt her awareness that hundreds of monsters were converging on the library. Some had two feet, an extra bad sign for us.

An alarm blared on Madigan’s phone at the same time. “Incoming,” she announced.

Bianca lifted her crossbow. Its loaded bolt was coated with glowing maroon. Orthus raised his hand and started manifesting sharped crystal spikes from seemingly nowhere, and Madigan lifted her gauntleted fist to take control of them with a muttered spell. They circled over her head with slow gravity.

The fae tossed a few extra to Geo, who absorbed and reformed them with all of his quartz into a large mace to match his massive crystal shield.

“Close your eyes a moment,”Braza said in my head, using my focus and hers to comb the upper levels of the library to detect Phaeron. She knew he would enter as shadowy vapor and take the most direct route to us, solidifying in a rush to catch us off guard.

And that’s exactly what he did. Her reflexes caught the strike of his sword before I even opened my eyes again. My heart threatened to stop before kicking into three times the speed. That was indeed Phaeron bearing down on me in full shadowborn form and everyone else reacting around us with shouts and fired spells.

He had one sword, the talons of his opposite hand extended into long and deadly points. It was the traditional shadowborn fighting style, to have one hand empty to weave shadows while an opponent was distracted with swordplay. But where was his other sword? He had the dexterity to fight with two and fight with his shadows at the same time.

“Focus on him. Do not worry about anything else,”Braza instructed. We pivoted to avoid a slice of sharpened shadows aimed to hit our back. We…I raised my left hand and blasted Phaeron with a Lux spell from the sun staff. I held the concentrated rays of sunlight out at him for a few seconds.

His talons dispelled away from the light, as did the other sneak attack he’d been manipulating from the shadows. But even as the exposed skin on his arm darkened, he didn’t make a sound, not even a hiss of pain.

I struck, and he parried, the two of us engaging in a deadly dance between the fired spells and projectiles of my allies. Braza helped me find the steps to match him, her strength reinforcing my arms. Phaeron struck without an ounce of mercy. Our weapons rang with each impact, the force rattling my sword so hard it threatened to jump out of my grip.

Phaeron fought with supernatural grace to keep up with me while avoiding more than the graze of bolts and crystal spikes. My weapon grazed his shadows and skin superficially, all made possible by the pressure we put on him at multiple angles.

I noted Geo’s obsidian form closing in, shield raised, and parried another strike from Phaeron, straining as I tried to hold him steady for my gargoyle protector’s charge. Suddenly, Phaeron grabbed me with tendrils of shadow, and I was hit with the vertigo of being wrenched to a different location.

For a couple precious seconds, I reeled and wavered on my feet. Thorn-studded shadows wrapped around my legs, sinking into my skin to anchor me in place. “Fuck,” I muttered. A quick cast of Lux rid me of them, but the deep punctures remained, and wet rivulets dripped down my legs.

“I will take care of it,”Braza said, urging me to keep my attention on Phaeron. Her shadows flowed into the wounds, soothing and cool.

He’d taken me as far from the powercore chamber as he could carry me. The foyer of this level, with its waiting area full of chairs. I lifted one with an inexpert grab of shadows and held its legs out to keep Phaeron at bay. It caught the swing of his sword, the fabric parting like butter and the frame snapping quickly.

I flung the ruined thing at him. It clipped his shoulder, throwing off the rhythm of his footwork for a moment. Meanwhile, Braza used the telepathy of her powercore side to inform our allies of where we’d gone.

“Phaeron, stop. I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

He didn’t spare any acknowledgment. He seemed an unstoppable, untiring force, while I felt the first hints of soreness and strain in my body even with Braza helping me keep up. I focused on blocking, parrying, and thrusting as darkness writhed around our feet, thrashing between his will and Braza’s.

I backed into a chair and hopped up onto its cushion, spreading my wings of shadows and flapping. I put my weight behind the next strike downward. Fuchsia blood sprayed from a cut around his shoulder, quickly covered by shadows before I could determine where exactly I’d gotten him.

White shadows flicked up the side of his arm. The next thing I knew, I was landing with my ankle twisting on the unexpected arrival of stairs. I stumbled, barely catching myself on a guardrail before I could tumble down the flight we’d appeared on. Again, we hadn’t gone far, but his shadowborn control was slightly stronger than Braza’s. At this rate, he’d inch me up to the surface, where Myuna’s monsters would help subdue me.

I lifted the staff, prepared to blast him with light. Anticipating the move, he shot out a lasso of shadow, which whipped around my left wrist and wrenched me to the side. It solidified and tightened mercilessly until the sun staff clattered down the stairs.

I flexed my free hand, growing shadowy talons over my fingers. Lunging at him, I moved to position myself further up the stairs than he was, taking a sharp graze on my side as he exploited the opening in my guard. Pain flared over my torso.

“Submit,”hissed a voice from Phaeron’s mouth, unexpectedly feminine and awful.

I bared shadowy fangs and shouted with Braza,“Never!”

I landed a kick to the center of his chest, and he fell backward, landing at the bottom of the stairs next to the staff, his limbs briefly still and splayed like a discarded doll. The way he stood was also disconcerting, heaving upward like a puppeteer hadn’t mastered the motion of lifting with the legs first.

I used his own trick to grab him in my shadows and carry him back into the foyer, where my allies were rushing past. Ben reacted quickest and turned, launching himself at Phaeron’s tail. I heard the brittle snap of bone.

“Such insolence,”snapped what had to be Myuna, using Phaeron as her mouthpiece. He acknowledged another fighter for the first time in throwing Ben off and impaling him against a wall with an inky black spike.

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