Page 15 of The Demon Tide

The anguish intensifies. Could Yvan have somehow survived and be in hiding like me? On the run, my features grayed by an Elfhollen glamour...

A child’s scream cleaves through the Wyvernfire’s roar.

I startle, hard, and the fire rips away from my lines with such force that I’m pitched in the direction of its northeastern flow, my hands and knees slamming onto the ground. The purple landscape snaps back into view as the demon-sensing rune Sage marked on my abdomen begins to sting.

Pulse thundering, I register everything before me in one sweeping glance.

I’m in a field of swaying, violet grass, the smoking corpses of the three scorpios I just brought down splayed out to my sides, a purple forest beyond. A black-haired teenage girl with Mage features stands before me, her sickly, violet-hued, point-eared mother and young sister to her back. There’s a blade in the teenage girl’s hand, and their eyes are wide with horror as aswooshsounds behind me, along with a raspinghiss.

I whip around. Four huge wraith bats, big as men, are soaring down into the clearing on leathery wings. Baring sickle-sharp fangs, they zoom toward me, the lead bat rapidly enlarging as it fills my vision, an incoming nightmare of teeth...

I roll to the side, dodging its attack, before springing up. A wing blow smacks my side and I’m hurled back to the ground, grunting from the collision, dry grass scraping my face as a visceral rush of fright streaks through me.

Lukas’s voice overtakes my mind.Suppress your fear! They feed on it!

Teeth gritted, I pull hard on my fire power like Lukas trained me to, incinerating my emotions. I roll upright just as a clawed grip digs into my waist and hoists my body skyward, the air punched from my lungs as I’m buckled into a V. The world below swings away and I kick and flail, scrabbling for my rune blades, panic rising as the other three wraith bats fan out their wings and take flight.

The teen girl runs toward me, her heart-shaped face a mask of feral determination as she hurls her weapon, an incoming silver streak.

Her knife finds its mark above me with a dullthwick.

The bat lets out a furious hiss and I’m suddenly released, a wall of lavender grass flying toward my face. I reflexively bend my limbs as I crash into the ground with bone-jarring force and roll into the fall over the rough grass.

The Wand of Myth tingles against my calf and I reach for it, heart thundering, its spiraling form still sheathed in the side of my boot.

I still have perfect aim.

A vicious warrior resolve taking hold, I spring to my feet and unsheathe the two runic blades at my sides, the powerful Ash’rion blade Valasca gave me in my wand hand. Eyes narrowing, I track the bat that seized me as it lands in a snarling, jerking mass, bucking and straining as it attempts to dislodge the knife. The other three touch down behind it, their black lizard-slit eyes set on me.

Lukas, Valasca, and Chi Nam’s training snaps into place and I take swift notice of the single Shadow rune marking the lower chest of each bat.They’re not deflection runes, I coldly note as another realization strikes home in one harsh blow...

I’m at full-on war with Marcus Vogel.

A war to control my own gods-damned power.

“You can’t have me,” I seethe as red-hot wrath ignites, fueled by the memory of Lukas’s patient hands on mine as he taught me how to use these very blades, sliding my fingers across their charged runes while murmuring the fire-amplification spell as I’m doing now.

The bats advance, their dark forms hunched, nostrils flaring as they hiss and spit and bare teeth. But I’m beyond fear now, a volcanic fury rising to singe it to ash.

“Screw your Magedom,” I growl at Vogel. I draw my arms back and the Wand’s guiding translucent green tracks, visible only to me, appear in the air, leading from my blades to the necks of the closest beasts—the injured bat and the one beside it.

With a harsh grunt, I hurl the knives.

The blades streak through the air and impale the two bats in their broad necks with dualsnicks. The beasts’ cavernous mouths wrench open, releasing metallic shrieks into the air, before their heads and upper torsos explode into bright balls of golden flame, the Ash’rion blade’s explosion the most potent.

The other two bats launch themselves at me and I break into a dead run.

Wet snuffling noises sound behind me, and a clawed grip closes around my ankle, pitching me forward. I twist around, pressing my fingers to the weapon-retrieval runes Valasca marked on my palms, the marks hidden under my gray glamour.

My blades fly from the dead, flaming bats and hurtle to me in a blur, their hilts colliding with my palms with satisfying stings. I press my fingers to the fire runes, and stab one blade into the bat restraining me, then hurl the other at the eyes of the bat that’s closing in. Both creatures’ heads explode into fiery balls.

The heat rushes over me, the grip around my ankle loosening. I scuttle away, breathing hard, as the flaming bats flail and convulse, then lie still. Hoisting myself to my feet, I scan the lavender field and purple forest, every nerve on high alert. Heart thumping against my rib cage, I find no additional threats. Nothing but rustling leaves, a storm darkening sky, and the forest’s aura of hostility, thick as tar.

I raise my hands and my blades rip from the beasts and fly back into my palms, their hilts scalding against my fire-resistant skin. The Wand’s energy shivers against my calf as gratitude for its aid courses through me. Feeling as if liquid steel has entered my veins, I turn to face the teen girl, the Urisk woman, and the young child.

The teen’s eyes are combative as they meet mine, as if she’s still engaged in battle. Her mother has backed away to the forest’s edge, her little girl swept behind her. The child’s tear-streaked violet face peeks at me from around her mother’s side and the terror on her innocent face rouses a fierce sympathy in me.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

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