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I want to take all of them apart, limb from limb, spill blood like rivers, and stain the wall with their brains and organs.
Nothing has ever made me this enraged. This is for Lana and only Lana.
TWENTY
LANA
I struggle like a sea creature being taken ashore with what feels like a thousand little hands trying to pin me down, to make me give in, to make me submit. I am not a person who will ever give in to such malicious violence. My pride and stubbornness simply will not let me.
But I am only so physically capable. The minions push at my legs so I cannot run, pinning me to the floor while I scream for something, anything, to have a change of heart. Lord Egretz has me by the forearm, squeezing with inhuman strength to keep me still.
His fingernails are long and trimmed evenly, but he could dig into my flesh like sand if he really wanted to. They would sink into the muscles and likely poison the nerves, unraveling them with ease.
I continue to struggle anyway. I refuse to go out like a dinner dish. I will go into the eternal night of death thrashing like a rabid animal.
Lord Egretz holds the machete in the air, clearly amused by my antics. He hisses to me how much this is going to hurt, then I clench my eyes shut, waiting for the abrupt snap into darkness.
“Lana!”
The machete comes down, but not on my wrist. It slams into the table that my arm is pinned to, but I shake and squeal, half-expecting my hand to have been severed from my arm anyway. I open my eyes to see the machete embedded into the marble like a sword stuck in a stone.
I hear someone calling out to me, but I can’t compute it. Everything around me is muffled and blurred like a dream sequence I didn’t consent to. Lord Egretz is still holding my wrist on the table, but he is standing upright and grinning toward the door like an idiot.
I turn my head lazily like a ragdoll losing its seams. I see something that I think, at first, cannot be real. He cannot be here on my behalf.
“Systorak,” I mutter to myself, “you came back.”
I feel my legs weaken, and the minions keep them in place. Lord Egretz lets out a howling, maniacal, and villainous laugh that echoes through the massive chamber.
“Your prince in shining armor has arrived!” He hoots, then grabs hold of the handle on the machete, ripping it from the indent in the table. “Or should I say, the traitor in not-so-shining armor?”
Lord Egretz isn’t taking any chances with Systorak and raises the weapons high in the air once again. I writhe and scream for Sys, who is already running toward the table with the razor sharp focus of an archer and the power of a bull.
His head slams into the side of the table, successfully knocking it sideways and nearly toppling onto Lord Egretz, who loses the machete in the process, its metallic material skittering across the floor. He manages to get out of the way of the marble weight just in time, letting go of my arm, and setting me free simultaneously.
“Lana.”
Systorak’s eyes beam at Lord Egretz, bright and dangerous like lightning, as he takes me by the waist and pushes me behind him. The minions screech, trying to keep from being crushed by the table, and desperately scurry to escape imminent death.
Systorak quickly uses all six of his limbs to cast a spell I had never seen him apply before, a royal, sparkling purple emitting from his blackened fingertips in the direction of the tiny demons. The spell impaled each and every one of them to the dazzling ground, puncturing their bodies like balloons and deflating them of life.
I try to swerve around his body to contribute, but Systorak holds me back with his giant body.
“Don’t move,” he snaps at me.
“I can help,” I snap back.
There isn’t any time for our argument as we both notice Lord Egretz has risen, no longer clamoring for the machete. His hair is disheveled, and his face is reddened with blots of frustration, yet he runs his hands through his hair with a cool look on his face.
“Oh, Systorak,” he says calmly. “You truly have challenged me. I will give you that, good sir.”
Systorak grits his teeth as I come to his side, my wrist still pulsating from the twist, but my conviction is high and devoted.
“Give it up, Egretz,” Sys hisses. “She has the coin, and there is nothing you can do about it. Let it go, and we will leave you with at least some of your limbs intact.”
Lord Egretz throws his head back once again, his maniacal laugh having been perfected in the echoey halls of his lair.
“You are the most stupid, lowly, shameful demon I have ever met,” Egretz seethes. “I have no other choice than to kill you both and sever the arm for my own bidding.”
