Page 258 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
“But that might only make them regenerate—”
“We’ll figure it out!” Kase shouted, swinging at another soul and missing. The man grabbed Kase’s wrist. Kase screamed. The man’s fingers seared into his skin like fire.
Hallie’s hand shot out, her fingers glowing. “Anora van esque vral!”
The soul in front of him puffed into golden mist. His sooty fingerprints encircled Kase’s wrist, but whatever she’d done had worked.
Hallie thrust out her power, the words a chant. The trio worked their way toward where Navara had been.
“Try again, Hallie!” Skibs said. “Addmaxima!”
“Anora van esque vral maxima!” Hallie shouted.
Golden light flared out from her hands, drowning the room in brilliance.
The souls vanished into glittering mist.
Hallie fell to her knees.
Kase dropped beside her.
“No!Kase!” Skibs screamed.
He looked up to see Eravin’s glittering midnight sword arcing toward Hallie. Skibs swung the shadow sword. Missed. Kase fumbled for his own, raising it only a second beforeEravin’s sliced through Hallie’s skull. The strike vibrated through his arm and shoulder, aching horribly.
He groaned against the strain. Skibs pulled Hallie away, but Kase couldn’t get off his knees.
“Yrea va na tari!”
Golden fire blasted Eravin in the side, engulfing and knocking him sideways.
Hallie.
Kase’s sword flew from his hands. He scrambled toward it just as Eravin recovered enough to send more glittering black energy at her. Kase’s fingers gripped his shining sword, and he flung himself to his feet, launching at Eravin.
“No!”
His father’s sword, the one fabled to belong to a Yalven legend, blazed like lightning through the air, its arc aflame with searing white-gold.
In the second before the sword connected with his neck, Eravin turned, looking directly at Kase. His eyes were no longer solid black.
They were dark brown and unmarred.
Sad, anguished.
The shining sword sliced through muscle and sinew, bone and skin, black blood spraying Kase. It boiled. Kase screamed as it licked his skin like liquid flame. Eravin’s head rolled off his shoulders and his body collapsed forward, his blood like a night sky without stars, spilling onto the ground.
Kase fell to his knees. He dropped the sword.
Everything burned.
Everything blurred.
He couldn’t see. It had all happened so fast. His heart was going to beat out of his chest. Fire seared his insides like he’d drunk a gallon of acid. Whatever Eravin had punched him with earlier raged in his blood.
He was going to die just like his father.
A thousand memories, the worst ones, assaulted him as he knelt, his skin burning. The pain of breaking his arm when he was seven. The sickness that had taken both his grandparents. Each disappointed look from his father. A dozen near-death experiences with Eravin.
