Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Nice acrobatics.
Roman opened the chest. Black soil waited inside. He dipped his fingers into it, scooping a handful. It was soft like powder, slightly moist, and cold to the touch. Its magic licked his skin, cold, ancient, terrible, unknowable, and unfeeling, the magic that was there before humans and would be there after they passed.
Finn recoiled. “What is that?”
“Soil from the border between Nav and the Void. Whatever you do, do not step off the porch.”
Roman barked an incantation, snapping each word, and tossed the handful of Nav dirt into his yard. It sank into the fog, and he felt it burrow into the ground. Otherworldly magic spread through the ground, sliding just under the surface, awakening things he’d buried years ago. He could feel it rush through his yard, widening in a ring around his house, a magic field just under the fog.
Across the yard, the priest crossed their arms and threw them to the sides, as if cutting an invisible enemy with their hands. The yellow wheel behind the priest rotated toward the house, launching gobs of ichor that stretched and snapped into slender swords in midair.
Roman jerked his arm up. The bone hands burst out of the ground in front of the porch, shielding them from the yellow barrage. The giant fingers shuddered under the bombardment. Bone splinters rained onto the porch.
The magic Gatling gun kept firing.
“Should I…?” Finn offered.
“No.”
The kid packed a truckload of power, but without training, he used it on pure instinct. When he unleashed his magic, he would do exactly what he’d done before—he’d sink it all into one terrifying burst and then he would be tapped out. They had to save it for the right moment.
Chunks of bone pelted the ground. The yellow blades kept coming, slicing into the bone shield with a hiss. The left ring finger broke, then the right index finger, falling to the ground. Roman could see the lawn through the gaps, and the flashes of yellow around the attackers.
Fuckers. It would take a lot of bone to regrow the hands.
Ancient magic shifted underneath the fog. Almost there.
The glow of the knight’s sword split into eight lines, like thin ribbons emanating from the blade. They wrapped around the knight. He charged, unnaturally fast, covering ten yards in a blink.
The moment his foot touched inside the magic field, the lawn yawned underneath him. It was as if the solid ground itself had sprouted a mouth and opened wide, its edges studded with razor-sharp bone teeth. The Void hungered for life and magic. It would devour anything it touched.
The warrior leaped up, drawing a circle with his sword as he twisted in the air. The earth jaws followed him like a great white shark breaching and gulped him down.
The left bone hand shattered. A glowing sword shot through the gap. Roman yanked Finn out of the way, and the blade sank into the front door, which melted into a blob of magic that sizzled like acid.
Roman bared his teeth.
Two knots of magic coalesced just under the surface of the soil and sped toward the priest, leaving trails in the fog.
The priest continued twisting their arms, oblivious, focused on their spellcasting.
The ground in front of the priest crested in twin waves, fanged mouths sliding within it.
The priest jumped straight up. Simultaneously the wheel fell forward, and the priest passed through its center. The wheel spun, its edge chewing at the ravenous dirt. Above it, the priest hovered in midair, waving their arms, throwing the yellow plasma back and forth in a complex frenzy.
And they could fly. Great, just great. What’s next? Fire-spitting?
The mass of soil that had swallowed the warrior burst. He sprung free, swinging his sword in a wide arc, no worse for wear. Shit.
“That’s not good, right?” Finn asked.
“It’s not great, kid.”
The priest jerked the knife from their belt and stabbed it downward in a wide arc. The yellow ichor flew off the blade and bit into the ground. A phantom mouth sank red-hot teeth into Roman’s stomach and tore out a chunk of flesh. The pain was raw and hot, and it took all of his will not to clamp his hand over his actual gut to check himself.
An eight-foot-wide chunk of the magic field vanished from Roman’s mental horizon, its edges burning with pain. A hole had formed in the fog, revealing a circle of bare ground. Thin yellow tendrils sprouted from it, like the tentacles of some upside-down jellyfish. The wheel slid forward over them, carrying the priest with it.
The priest stabbed the ground to their right. Agony blossomed in Roman. Another chunk of the fog vanished, more tentacles slivered out, and the warrior moved onto them and ran across the thin tendrils as if they were solid ground, leaping in front of the priest onto the rim of the wheel. It was still spinning, and he should’ve fallen off, except his feet didn’t touch the edge. He hovered six inches above the glowing yellow monstrosity and clamped his hands together. Thin red vapor emanated from his body, flowing upward and turning bright yellow.