AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nothing.
Thinking at him really hard wasn’t working. I focused on Xhan and reached in the hopes of making contact through the blade as I’d managed once before. But I immediately recoiled from their remorseless savagery. Both blades were stoked to a berserker frenzy, unrestrained and vicious. That avenue of communication was closed.
Impotent rage swelled within my chest, sending black lightning crackling through the groundcover of rakkuhr. I couldn’t get through to him. I couldn’t breach that wall. My team was occupied and unavailable to help. I was going to die at the hands of my lover.
And it would destroy Mzatal to be the instrument of my demise.
I’m so sorry, my beloved.
Heat flared at the small of my back. The twelfth sigil. Ashava’s. Her gentle touch brushed my mind, imparting encouragement and unwavering support. Gratitude swept through me at the gesture, and on its heels an idea sparked into being. I bore eleven other sigils—an intricate scar for each lord. Experience had demonstrated that the scars maintained a connection to the lord they represented—and the lords were the offspring of telepathic beings who engaged in communal thought as easily as breathing. Moreover, the lords had passed their legacy on to their descendants. Me, Idris, Elinor, and so many more. Having Ashava’s support rocked, but why stop there? I needed backup, and lots of it.
I placed the back of my hand over Ashava’s sigil, reinforced the connection and let her feel my intent. She responded with understanding, followed by the sense of Jill—fiercely protective of all whom she held dear. Elinor joined them, her presence as familiar as my own skin.
Yes! They were busy with the rift, but I wasn’t alone. A pleasant tingle in the scar on my left side accompanied the arrival of Seretis and Bryce. An instant later my upper chest blossomed with warmth as Rhyzkahl’s sigil flared into life, then he and Idris joined the crazy mind-meld.
There were no words, simply a sharing of knowing.
Of purpose.
Now that’s how to have a kickass posse!
“Zharkat,” I said. The power of the gestalt backed my word, sending it reverberating through the air. “Mzatal.”
His aura flickered, but the walls remained. He advanced another step, right arm drawing back for a thrust that would end with me consumed by Khatur.
A single concept floated through the gestalt. More.
To my surprise, Elofir’s sigil scar along my right abdomen began to prickle. His calm touch joined the mind-meld, and with it a soft brush of his lover, Michelle Cleland. An instant later, my surprise turned to outright shock as Jesral’s warmed. His presence followed—cold and calculating and snarky—with the unequivocal sense that this was merely a momentary truce. Fine by me.
Within the span of three heartbeats, others ignited. Rayst, whose sigil-scar lay entwined with Seretis’s. Vrizaar, sigil flaring on my left back, then Vahl’s along the right, followed by a caustic burning at the very base of my spine that marked Amkir’s. With each addition, the gestalt grew—enemies uniting against a common threat. Even Szerain’s sigil held a weak flutter of presence, bolstered by Turek. Last was Kadir, heralded by a creepy wash of goosebumps on my right side, and carrying with him the whisper-touch of Paul and Pellini.
> Only one sigil remained still and silent. Mzatal’s, in the very center of my chest. Its partner—my sigil—lay over his heart. He’d carved it there as a reminder of what he’d walled off.
“All right, Kara,” I murmured. “Tear down this wall.”
Lifting my hands, I pulled rakkuhr and sent it racing through the sigil-scars. They’d been born of rakkuhr, and now I called to that spark at the heart of each one, setting them aglow until I blazed with power. The sigils’ original purpose was to replace my Self with the Rowan entity in order to turn me into a weaponized summoner. But Rowan couldn’t hold a candle to what this Self was about to do.
Zharkat. Mzatal. I am here. We are one.
I encapsulated the emotion and heart and promise and truth of those words, then hurled it at Mzatal’s barriers. The gestalt roared with unified purpose and drove the capsule forward to smash against his walls like an extinction event meteor slamming into a planet.
A crack appeared. Thinner than a hair on a bumblebee’s ass, but a crack nonetheless. Through it, I arrowed straight to his essence.
Mzatal gave no outward sign that I’d reached him, but his response resonated in the core of my being—a brief touch, an acknowledgement. We are one.
On my chest, his sigil went supernova, and his white-hot presence merged with our glorious gestalt. He turned on Xharbek and buried both blades in the motherfucker’s heart.
Faster than the speed of thought, we channeled our unified strike through Mzatal and into the seething malice of the blades. Xharbek threw his head back and flung his arms wide, mouth stretched in a silent scream. Light webbed over him, searing hotter and tighter until he burst into a vortex of a billion prismatic sparks that spun around the blades. Yet rather than scattering, the sparks picked up speed and began to rise.
Without missing a beat, Mzatal brought the tips of the blades together in the midst of the vortex. The sparks froze in place for a fraction of a second then collapsed into a golf-ball-sized orb of darkness balanced on the blade points.
Mzatal gave an unearthly roar of anger and hatred that reverberated through the gestalt like a clap of thunder. In a brutal move, he jerked the blades apart. Rakkuhr crackled between them, taking on the form of a dragon’s head that snapped its jaws closed around the orb. An ethereal scream of anguish rose and faded even as the rakkuhr-dragon head dissipated, leaving nothing but empty air in its wake.
The world shuddered. Ilana collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, then vanished.
I put my arms out for balance until the earth stopped moving. “We did it,” I breathed. Did something at least. Wasn’t sure exactly what. Was Xharbek scattered or destroyed completely? Or had the blades consumed him?
Doesn’t matter, I told myself. For now, he was out of our hair.
