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Not again. No, never again.
The lightning ball aimed at us, curved, and streaked to me like a heat-seeking missile.
I dashed to the side, spurred by panic, ripped the energy whip off my belt, and squeezed it. The filament burst out in a shower of yellow sparks. I snapped the whip. The tip caught the ball of lightning. The impact reverberated through my arm, and I threw myself to the ground.
The orange sphere exploded with white fire. The magic blast wave punched me, pushing me backward across the stone. The overload of revolting magic stomped on my ribs, and my heart screamed in my chest. Pain drowned me. I swam out of it, gagged, sobbed, spat blood out of my mouth, and rolled upright.
Karat sliced at the corrupted ad-hal, insanely fast, her sword an extension of her body. The creature raked her armor with its claws. She roared and kept swinging, fast, precise, leaving it no opening to gather its magic.
The werewolf woman staggered to her feet, gripped her knives, and lunged at the ad-hal, looking for an opening. They tore at the creature from opposite sides. It darted between them like a rag on a clothesline dancing in strong wind.
I wasn’t fast enough to keep up with either of them. If I tried to attack, I’d hit one of them with the whip.
A long streak of blood drenched the side of Karat’s face, wetting her hair. The werewolf’s right side was a mess of holes and smoldering clothes. The black hardsuit she wore underneath showed through the gaps.
Karat thrust. The ad-hal spun, turning its back to her, and her blade missed by an inch. The werewolf saw an opening, dove in, and slashed with both knives. The ad-hal jerked aside, avoiding the slash, and lunged at her in the split second her arms were apart. Its clawed hand caught the werewolf just under the sternum. The creature ripped its hand upward, carving flesh and clothes with its claws in a spray of blood. The werewolf screamed.
Karat slashed at the ad-hal. The creature slid out of the way, but the blood blade caught the edge of its robe. A piece of the fabric flew, cut free. Karat grinned, her face a terrifying grimace, and launched a frenzied attack. Left, right, swing, cut, slash, I could barely follow.
The werewolf darted in, stabbing.
Magic spun within the ad-hal’s robe.
“Run!” I threw my arm up, pushing my magic in front of me like a shield.
Karat ignored me and stabbed at the ad-hal.
Magic erupted from the creature like a shockwave from a collapsing star. The foul torrent hit Karat and the werewolf, tossing them behind me like they weighed nothing, and smashed into my shield. The air in front of me flashed with turquoise. Orange lightning smashed at the screen of my magic. It felt like a thousand red-hot needles pierced me in a single moment. My arm went numb.
The fetid magic died.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Karat convulsing on the ground. The werewolf sprawled on her back, making small wheezing noises.
The ad-hal hovered in front of me. A black stain spread through its robe, from the hood to the hem, as if it had shed its skin, exposing its true nature underneath.
I felt it. There it was. The corruption. The awful, wrong, cosmic thing that wanted to infect, consume, and smother.
Wisps of orange lightning snaked over the former ad-hal, rising up, as if the creature were caught in an invisible dust devil. This thing with clawed hands and a monstrous jaw used to be a person. A human just like me. Now it was a husk, a host for the corruption within, and that corruption would kill me, then it would kill Karat and the werewolf. None of us would get out alive.
Memories flooded me. Fighting a creature just like this one, almost dying, bringing its body to the inn, learning it was my brother’s best friend, and then watching the corruption within it leak out and escape. It crawled inside my inn like some disgusting parasite. It tried to infect Gertrude Hunt and Tony, while I could do nothing, helpless and torn from my own body by the death of the tiny inn I’d tried so hard to save.
I had killed that intruder. I had purged it from my inn. I was an innkeeper, and I would purge this one. It was my duty.
I pulled the broom from my back and planted it in front of me. Magic streamed around me, spiraling from my body and tugging at my hair.
The corrupted ad-hal snapped its hands up.
I pushed my magic out into the building under me. It streamed through the stone of the terrace into the first floor below, glowing from the soles of my feet like roots of a tree.
Twin balls of lightning flared in the ad-hal’s hands, fed by its magic. It clamped them together. The glowing clumps connected, merging into a blinding sphere churning with energy. More lightning clasped it, sliding from the creature’s robe.
