Page 180 of Elven Crown

He was still here too, and with her back turned while she’d fiddled with the weapon, Rebecca had made herself a wide-open target.

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When Rebecca turned, ready for a fight, she found the necromancer on the opposite side of the balcony, arms outstretched and head thrown back in concentration and the ecstasy inherent in using this kind of magic.

The spell he’d been weaving had manifested as an amorphous cloud of black unlight, churning with glittering specs as it matured into what would eventually become strong enough and deadly enough for the conjurer to unleash.

If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, if she hadn’t felt it within every cell of her being, Rebecca wouldn’t have believed this type of spell existed in front of her. Or that even a necromancer, for all their bad rap with death magic and turning it against the living, would have dared to attempt such a thing.

Not only was this guy attempting it, he’d almost succeeded in adulterating his own powerful energy into the magical equivalent of a deadly airborne virus meant for biological warfare.

The necromancer had given his spell enough of his own life-force spark to create an undead attack missile set to search and destroy. Once he eventually set it loose, he would direct it at the targeted individuals, who would have zero recourse to stand against it.

In other words, Rebecca and her team.

Thank the ancestors she’d gotten here just in time. And that the guy had been too busy powering up his spell to bother with her now.

Shoving herself away from the superpowered machine-gun cannon she’d finally disarmed, Rebecca stormed toward the necromancer, her Bloodshadow spear already summoned and glinting in her tight grip. “Hey!”

The necromancer’s hands lowered at her shout before he started to turn his head toward the elf crashing his spell-casting party.

Before he’d even gotten a good look at her, Rebecca’s spear tip plunged into one side of his throat and out the other in a spray of unnaturally dark necromancer blood. When she jerked back her spear, the necromancer crumpled to the balcony floor without a sound.

Then it was over.

Ithadto be over, which was what she’d assumed would happen, because that was how this kind of thing worked. A magical died and took all their unrestrained magic and unfinished spells with them.

But the churning cloud of noxious black specks like a swarm of fleck-sized insects, sparking here and there with bright purple and green, didn’t react to its caster’s sudden demise.

Instead, it rose higher and higher into the air, still growing.

By the time Rebecca realized she’d miscalculated, that she hadn’t produced the intended effect of putting down the necromancer and changing the tides for her team in this insanebattle, the necromancer’s death cloud had already reached the theater hall’s ceiling.

Now, it had expanded to the size of the entire balcony on which Rebecca stood.

Alone.

With no backup plan to end the harrowingly powerful spell looming above them all, because it should have ended with its maker’s death.

She hadn’t stopped shit. This was still happening.

Even as the horrifying thought hit her, the death cloud continued to grow, stretching and elongating across the ceiling. Long filaments detached themselves from the larger mass, spreading in every direction around the theater hall.

The only reason she could see it this distinctly was because of her Bloodshadow magic. Not quite the opposite of necromancy but not all that different when it came to the general mechanics.

The necromancer had either been a complete idiot or a zealous fool, far more dedicated to his purpose than his own life.

In whatever ways he’d twisted his own magic to get the job done, he’d somehow added an extra fail-safe bonus, disconnecting himself enough from this massively dark old-world spell that it would continue to grow and spread until it had sucked all the life out of this theater hall.

And who knew how much longer it would continue after that, if at all.

Unfortunately, with the necromancer now dead, the magic he’d unleashed had no one to direct it.

An undisciplined, uncontrolled power like that did not discriminate.

Very much like a virus, the growing mass of death magic would do what it had been crafted to do, and it wouldn’t stop until it finished what it had started.

Dammit. Rebecca had always hated necromancers, especially those straight from Xahar’áhsh, which this one had so obviously been.

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