Page 160 of The Ascended
My vision blurred at the edges. Black spots danced across my sight as I pushed harder, demanding more power.
Marx screamed somewhere to my left. I turned to see her overwhelmed, her curse-forms flickering and losing cohesion as exhaustion took its toll. She managed one last desperate manifestation—a writhing mass that made the elemental's arm wither and combust—before her knees buckled.
No.
I reached deeper, pulling on reserves I didn't know existed. The pain was immediate and absolute—being turned inside out. Myskin felt too tight, ready to split apart. But power came, raw and terrible.
The starlight that erupted from me wasn't beautiful. It was violent, uncontrolled, a nova of pure destruction that sent elementals flying. Marx's attacker disintegrated.
But the cost?—
I fell to my knees, screaming. My vision went white, then red, then started to fade. My skin was on fire—no, not my skin. Underneath my skin. I was overheating.
Through the haze of agony, I saw Kavik break free from his battle with Aelix, and he turned his eyes on me—terrible, empty, glazed over eyes. The Aesymar crossed the clearing in seconds. His hand was reaching for my throat, and I had nothing left to stop him.
"The threat must be eliminated," he said, and his fingers were inches from my skin when?—
The world stopped.
Flames froze mid-flicker. The wind died. Every sound vanished.
The ground... was it moving? Breaking?
Everything was sliding in and out of focus, doubling, tripling. Sounds reached me distorted—wet tearing that might have been fabric or might have been something worse. Then cracks.
Things were coming up. Dark shapes that moved wrong, too many joints bending in directions that made my poisoned mind reel. The smell hit me—rot and earth and putrid sweetness.
The shapes kept rising, kept moving toward the fire beasts.
Then there were screams. Everything was muffled now, underwater sounds that meant nothing.
Kavik's face swam above me, his mouth moving. Angry words I couldn't process. His hand closed around my throat with crushing force. His fingers were iron bands, cutting off air, crushing my windpipe. I clawed at his wrists, but my strength was gone. My lungs screamed for air that wouldn't come.
A dark figure stepped from the shadows, bringing the coldwith it. My vision was going gray at the edges, but I felt the temperature drop, saw frost spreading across Kavik’s cheek.
Words. That voice.His voice."Release her."
Kavik's grip tightened. More words I couldn't catch.
The earth beneath me rumbled. Something clawing its way out. Pale in the darkness. Rot crawled up my nostrils.
The thing rose, towering over us—cracking sounds splintering my ears.
Then it all came into perfect view.
A corpse. Inches from Kavik’s face. Half its flesh had rotted away, revealing a grinning skull beneath. Dirt was compacted in an empty socket where an eye should have been. Its jaw hung loose on one side, connected only by strips of blackened sinew.
The dead.
Xül had raised the dead.
A maggot dropped from its throat onto Kavik's shoulder.
The corpse's hands shot forward, rotting fingers sinking into Kavik's arms. More of them erupted from the ground—a circle of decay closing in. They grabbed his legs, his torso, their decomposing hands finding purchase despite his struggles.
Kavik's hands left my throat as he fought against them. But there were too many.
They dragged him backward, toward the center of the clearing where the earth had split wide. I watched him claw at the ground, leaving furrows in the dirt. Watched the corpses pull him down into that dark fissure, their bodies following him into the earth. His screams grew muffled as soil began to close over them.
