Page 179 of Elven Crown

The second troll wobbled as his comrade’s dead weight pulled him down with him by the swirling silver spear skewering them both, fighting desperately to pull the weapon free of his own body.

The blood pouring from the wound and staining his t-shirt made finding a good grip impossible, but he tried his best.

Rebecca reached for her spear and called it back.

With a wet slice and two heavy ensuing thumps, the Bloodshadow spear pulled itself free, sent two troll corpses toppling down the stairs toward her, and sailed in the blink of an eye right back into Rebecca’s open, waiting hand.

The blackhorn snarled when he saw what she’d done, but it didn’t deter him from picking up the pace down the stairs toward her.

She leapt over the first body thumping down the stairwell step by step, gaining speed as it rolled, then tightened her grip on the spear. When she stepped over the second body, she ducked beneath the blackhorn’s wild swipe at her head.

And thrust up with her spear.

The blade stuck him through, though she didn’t pause to see exactly how. She did let his wild downward momentum send him flying over her shoulder before he toppled down the stairwell after the others.

The blackhorn’s agonized scream cut off halfway. Rebecca didn’t need to see it to know he was dead before he reached the bottom landing. She could feel it through her spear still embedded in him, which she called back to her again and caught in her hand.

Then she reached the door at the very top.

Any other time, and she might have slowed down to enjoy herself, to consume what remained of one or two sparks from her recently deceased attackers. But this wasn’t a Bloodshadow mission, nor did Rebecca need any extra help with special healing.

She was racing against the clock, and all she had the time for was to keep moving.

Then she burst through the door, and she was there.

Standing on the same balcony with the enormous enemy magical operating the insane energy cannon that had almost blown her to smithereens down below. Several times.

At first glance, she figured he was an ogre, or maybe even a half-giant, judging purely by the size of him. She didn’t take the time to look any more closely.

The guy behind the enormous weapon spewing yellow-brown bursts of cripplingly destructive magical attacks whirled toward her the second the door to the balcony banged open.

Rebecca had already summoned a furiously churning fireball in her hand, the roiling flames struck through with bits of deep turquoise. She launched it at him, happy to be using fireballs again just to switch things up.

Her attack crashed into the center of his chest and knocked the guy back by several feet.

The big guy’s clothes erupted in flames, crackling across his entire body from head to toe in seconds. His curdling scream didn’t come anywhere close to the cries of agony this asshole and his entire outfit had produced from Diego and Titus with that machine bomb.

Pity. Rebecca would have liked to make him suffer even more than they had. She just didn’t have the time.

So while he staggered across the balcony, his arms flailing as he screamed and her fireball consumed everything it touched, she followed it up with two quick bursts of crimson battle magic. The first sent the big guy crashing back against the balcony railing, and the second hit him high enough in the chest to send him toppling backward over the banister.

He dropped to the auditorium floor, the flames flickering madly as he screamed all the way down.

She didn’t hear him hit the floor over the deafening weapons fire still spewing across the room in all directions, but his scream cut out almost instantly.

Still, she wasn’t finished.

Her mind was so set on keeping the rest of her team as far from more danger as possible, she reacted instinctively, lunging for the enormous weapon spewing yellow-brown obliterating streaks in all directions. Its powerful mechanism made it turn sporadically on its swiveling mount, and it was surprisingly difficult to haul back under control while it fired randomly.

After a quick search of the weapon’s bulky frame, she took a wild guess that the giant red knob on the side was as likely as anything else to be what she wanted. She slapped a hand down against the switch to see what happened, and she was right.

The grinding whine of this new weapon fizzled out with a hiss and more metallic clicks as it powered down and stopped rotating on its mount.

One threat down, a few dozen more to go.

Whatever relief she might have felt drowned with the overwhelming, surging intensity of that dark, ancient, purely old-world magic she now felt again. This time, the familiar sensation prickled across her skin with intermittent heat and bone-shattering cold before she remembered the big guy manning the big gun wasn’t the only enemy combatant up here.

The other person on the small balcony with her. The source of all that dark, consuming energy that made her own Bloodshadow magic hunger for the rarely encountered power within another that truly matched her own.

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