Page 15 of Elven Shadow

Rebecca recognized the sights, sounds, and more importantly the feeling in the air of an insanely dangerous weapon powering up in seconds.

Then she realized, in a moment of dumbstruck and baffling realization, that their team didn’t need to find a non-existent breach point in the wards. The enemy had already opened one for them.

It just also happened to be the point of exit for enemy foot soldiers to surge out of their hideout for a physical battle in the parking lot.

If she was right, those open doors and the hollow space in the wards existing momentarily between them was about to also serve as the pre-made barrel of what was undoubtedly about to be a magical RPG launched straight out of the apartment building’s lobby.

Aldous stood right there in front of those open doors, howling and roaring like an idiot and making it too damn easy for the enemy to target him with the very thing he’d come here to steal.

“Move, move, move!” Rebecca shouted. “We gotta get him out of—”

She’d thought they’d have more wiggle room, but the griybreki proved her wrong when the enormous and insanely powerful weapon in the building’s lobby detonated.

5

The blazing neon-yellow light was so bright, Rebecca couldn’t see a thing as she darted not toward the van like she’d instructed but straight for the building.

They were out of time.

The whisper and thump and searing, crackling heat bursting through the building’s front doors overpowered everything else.

She just kept running, a volley of her own battle magic at the fingertips of both hands now and ready to launch at the enemy.

It was the only breach in the griybreki defenses she and the rest of her team were going to get.

But it didn’t look like she would get there in time to save Shade’s dumbass of a leader.

The whole world felt like it moved in slow motion.

The searing blast of energy from the apartment building unfurled like a mushroom cloud and burst through the open glass doors, shattering that glass and taking thousands of tinkling shards with it.

All of it headed straight for Aldous’s stupid fucking head.

Rebecca darted to the side at the last second, gritting her teeth in a snarl of effort. She dropped to her knees and slid across the asphalt to avoid the worst of the flying glass and shredded metal springing outward in a wide ripple with the blast wave.

All she cared about was her battle magic and her aim.

One, two, three, four enormous, thickly churning orbs of crackling red destruction launched from her hands, aimed right for the center of those open doors and the source of the attack belching out of the building.

She heard Aldous’s next furious bellow in his overblown, overdone monster voice.

She heard Diego snarling against the strain as deeply glowing crimson lines streaked through the blinding yellow-white of the explosion like lightning through storm clouds.

She heard the screeches and gargling screams of even more griybreki falling under a different attack before Leonard shouted, “Goddammit, why are you—”

The earth beneath them all trembled violently, a thunderous boom echoing in all directions.

More glass shattered in the windows. The screech of twisting metal was unignorable.

The light of the explosion still drowned out most other visuals, but Rebecca could have sworn she’d seen her launched attacks heading right where she’d meant for them to go with damn near perfect precision.

The enormous shudder through the earth felt like it should have caused more damage, but she didn’t stop to wonder why it was different.

With her legs burning through her ripped jeans, she scrambled back to her feet. Then another dull explosion rocked the area. She couldn’t stop to look at the damage she’d wrought. She didn’t have time for that shit.

Instead, she spun around and took off toward the rest of her team and the butter-yellow van waiting patiently for the Shade members to get the hell back into it before they got themselves killed out here.

More griybreki screamed and threw themselves forward at an enormous, slightly familiar shape sprawled across the pavement right in front of the building.

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