“You bitches,” Bardot snarled. “I won’t be brought down. I’m a god. A god ordained for greatness. I am a member of the Celestial Coven. You don’t stop me. You’re nothing!”
“Keep it up.” Chanelle tightened the floral bindings. “I’ll add some starlight to those roses.”
“You think I’m afraid of you?” Bardot thrashed. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“You wanna know fear?” Jennifer tilted her head.
Name: Jennifer Jung
Branch: Psychic (Empathic)
“Don’t engage,” Chanelle said.
“No, he doesn’t know fear.” Jennifer channeled her empathy, siphoning as much fear from the building as she could, stealing it from the minds of everyone on the street, and pulling in the fear until a mass of dark blue energy hovered above her. “Let me introduce him to it.”
A silhouette of a creature made of all white, representing Jennifer’s empathy, carried the fear over to Bardot. The beast opened the man’s mouth and shoved the fear unbound down his throat. He choked on terror, mind lost to the delirium of a thousand horrors he’d never noticed until this moment.
“That’ll shut him up for a while.” Jennifer stumbled, having severely overexerted herself.
“Good.” Layla kicked the petrified Bardot. “The bastard deserves worse.”
With that, Layla went over to Campbell’s body, offering the fallen guild master a moment of silence, then moved the body over to a couch.
“I wish we could do something more for her,” Chanelle whispered.
“We can clear her guild of these goddamned fiends,” Layla said furiously, hiding the lump of sorrow in her throat. “She worked hard to make this the best guild in the state. Let’s remind everyone that’s still true.”
Layla turned, channeling her claws and fueling them with banishment. Amani walked beside her; Jennifer forced herself up and joined them. Tia and Olivia followed too.
“Well, Dorian?” Chanelle thought, revealing her intrigue now that the dust here had mostly settled. “What’s going on around the city?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I thought.
“Maybe you can tell Milo to get those top ten enchanters to do some of the heavy lifting,” Chanelle thought. “I know he was supposed to grab them today.”
A hell of a time for the Celestial Coven to strike. I didn’t know if it was hubris on The True Witch’s part or if she truly believed she had enough strength to challenge the top ten enchanters when they’d all gathered together.
“I’m sort of disconnected from myself at the moment,” I explained.
“Then you need to go resolve that,” she thought. “Don’t worry. I’ll secure Cerberus, and I’ll watch over the girls.”
I studied Layla and the others as they banished fiends. They didn’t need protection. They were ready for all the hardships and horrors that came with the industry.
Milosoared through the city, ignoring the outbursts of destruction from nearby guilds and the pleas from enchanters fighting hordes of fiends in the streets. Instead, he focused on a looming threat that I couldn’t make sense of. Even as a manifestation latched to his side, I barely kept up with the whirl of intel filling his mind.
I wanted to reach out, to tell him I’d been locked in a psychic trap. But when Milo reached his destination, I froze at the sight of the destruction.
The Global Tower, an embassy of magic authority, had been leveled. Not the entire building, but the top five stories now littered the ground with debris. Flames fluttered across the block. Ten sets of red eyes locked onto Milo as he slowly hovered toward the demons.
“She said the clairvoyant would show up,” one of the demons spoke, sending an icy chill through my body.
This was no demon. This demon possessed a host. This was a devil. And he possessed the most frightening host imaginable. A muscular man with a slight tan and slicked-back blond hair.
Richard Kingston, the number one witch in the world. Thestrongest witch in the Global Guild. He was known as America’s sentinel. America’s vanguard. He was also occasionally referred to as America’s dick, given his name and our nation’s need to swing our metaphorical cock around in a measuring contest for authority.
These ten witches were the top ten members of the Global Guild. The greatest enchanters in America. The collection of power that’d finally agreed to gather so we could put an end to The True Witch and her Celestial Coven. And now… Now they all stood possessed by demons.
Gladiatrix and Wadsworth stared down Milo with their shimmering crimson eyes. Even as a fragment of psychic energy, the pulsating ferocity of their demonic energy made me recoil. How had the top ten guild witches in the world all been possessed by demons? The True Witch managed to subdue them all long enough for possession. A frightening thought.
