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Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Kultur leap into the air and unfurl his wings.
You’ll thank me later from the depths of hell, the keeper of the kíota whispered into his neural node before rushing into the darkness. Or perhaps never.
Sana’a appeared to float to her feet, flinging a blade after the fast-disappearing kaugur.
One caught up to him and sliced through his back wing, shearing it.
He wheeled around with a screech of pain, shouting an íkantation into the wind.
A dark shroud formed from thin air and descended over the fleeing traitor.
The mass congealing and twisting in on itself turned into a replacement pinion, dripping with murky tendrils.
With triumph in his eyes, Kultur stroked away.
Killen’s eyelids fell, too heavy to keep open.
A commotion sounded in the distance as Kaxim rushed to the edge of the kíota and raced into the air to give chase.
He choked.
Kione’s arms came around him, keeping him upright even as he gagged.
Sana’a’s urgent, complex, commanding voice pierced the cloudiness of his mind. Her hands slapped at his face until his eyes fluttered ajar. ‘Killen! You’ve got a poison in you that none of us can cure. Use your freakin’ headlight to counter the venom. Do it now!’
The urgency in her utterance jolted him and cut through the fog.
With a groan, he sent a command to hawkstone to summon waves of kσχ?ς íkan to his aid.
He sensed its surge toward the dark tendrils, the light washing over him like a tsunami, fighting the rising tide of kízakan in his sinews.
The two powers surged against each other, battling, clashing, and lost in their ancient affray.
He inhaled as his lodestone suddenly activated his kemí, the breath of life from deep within its lungs.
He discerned it draw alongside the kσχ?ς, searing away at the kíza.
His body rose into the air, back curved tight like a bowstring as the agony raced through him, causing him to crash to the floor once more, his limbs thrashing.
Yet, at the edge of his consciousness, he perceived Sana’a and Kione looking on with horror. In the distance, Kaxim’s essence tracked back through the skies, chasing after the traitor.
His hawkstone flashed as it battled to save him. The two energies worked to keep him breathing surged, then with a more resounding, shuddering gasp of oxygenated kemí, the kσχ?ς cut through, healing him just enough to keep him from tipping over into Hades.
He slumped back to the floor, landing with a heavy thud even as oblivion enveloped him.
The malicious íkantation potion almost overwhelmed Killen.
Although the kemí and kσχ?ς within him prevailed, keeping him just alive, the last tendrils of kízakan were stubbornly fighting back, turning his skin a sickly shade of greenish-grey.
His hawkstone kept his consciousness alive, and his veins bulged with the battle raging in his sinew and arteries.
So weakened was he that it took Kaxim and Kione to carry him to his room in the kíota.
Where Sana’a attended to him, her care and tenderness unceasing.
His laboured breathing filled the air. Accompanied by a rasped cough as his body struggled to expel the poison.
The eerie silence that followed each hacking croak was a haunting reminder of how close he was to death.
