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Oh, now I understand how a highly inexperienced fighter like Elden didn’t get beheaded in one stroke by a man with preternatural skill in battle. It’s not actually Roldon trying to kill him. It’s Nesanth controlling him... and she’s nowhere near as skilled.
Demetria blurs into a smear of dark vapor, streaking across the room to rematerialize in front of Roldon. She grabs him by the throat and lifts him one-handed up off his heels, staring into his eyes. A second later, he goes catatonic, head dropping. “The child is right. This man is not acting of his own free will.”
“I’m not a child,” mutters Tammy.
I pat her shoulder. “The woman’s at least 500 years old. Don’t take it personally.”
Demetria releases Roldon, who promptly collapses, out cold. She turns her gaze on Meritha. “Ahh, there you are.”
“Irini.” Meritha scowls at her, then glances at me. “I should not be surprised that one as weak as you would require outside help.”
Demetria appears to bristle at being called ‘Irini,’ though her ‘I win’ smile comes back in seconds. “Oh, dear Nesanth, it does not matter to me if I require help or not, so long as your schemes collapse around you. I’m not the one with the unwieldy ego.”
“Curva!” snaps Nesanth/Meritha.
Demetria laughs.
“What the heck does ‘koor-va’ mean?” whispers Allison.
“Pretty sure it’s one of the nastier things you can call a woman in Romanian,” says Kingsley.
Lindsey raises both eyebrows. “Didn’t seem to bother her much.”
“Some girls wear the title ‘bitch’ proudly,” I say. “Went to high school with two of them.”
Kingsley grimaces. “I think the word is a bit more severe than ‘bitch’, but it’s been about fifty years since I visited Romania.”
“Ai fost mereu un prost,” says Demetria while waving dismissively at Nesanth. “Admit you’ve lost and release your hold on the mortal creator. Wait, no. Don’t. It will please me more to tear him away from you despite all your efforts to keep him.”
Nesanth shouts a rapid series of words in Romanian—I assume they’re all the sorts of phrases people don’t learn in school—then raises both hands up over her head. A smoky orb of vapor backlit in dark violet appears between her palms. Intense evil radiates from the magic anomaly coalescing in her grasp.
Demetria lunges at her blurry fast.
Nesanth is equally speedy, sidestepping into a twirl, then smashing the smoky sphere into the floor. It bursts outward into a rolling carpet of ick. Kingsley grabs Lindsey and Damon by one hand each, hoisting them up and setting them on the nearest table. Anthony scoops Allison into his arms seconds before the black shin-deep fog rolls by. I’ve already grabbed Tammy and leaped up onto the closest table.
Kingsley makes a face like he stepped in manure as the mist sweeps over his feet. Curiously, the mist avoids my son, leaving several inches of gap around him. Elden yanks his sister up off the floor right as the fog reaches them. He holds her briefly before losing consciousness and collapsing. Screaming, Sansha curls up on top of him, trying to avoid touching the mist.
Roldon, already on the floor unconscious, disappears in the black fog.
Anvar jumps onto a chair.
Malin Normund holds his hands out at the floor, chanting. Nothing obvious happens other than him not passing out.
The partygoers who could not make it to an elevated surface fast enough to avoid touching the vapor cry out in anguish as the fog makes contact with their legs. I grab the two nearest mortals and toss them on a table, screaming in rage that I know I won’t be fast enough to save everyone before this fog kills them.
A white ripple of magical energy comes from Lindsey—she thrusts her hands out to either side. Everyone in the room suddenly bobs three feet into the air, floating above the killing vapor.
“Move quick,” yells Lindsey. “The levitate spell won’t last long! Get on something! Don’t touch that fog!”
“Whelp!” roars Nesanth. She flings her arm at Lindsey as if throwing a baseball.
Anthony dives between them, absorbing some manner of invisible projectile before it can hit Lindsey. My son veers to one side as if hit by a speeding car, tumbling legs over head until he slams into the wall back-first. The look on his face is all anger. No pain. He’s not upset at being hurt. He’s furious Nesanth tried to kill Lindsey, a ‘defenseless mortal.’
People scramble for cover on tables, chairs, and anything they can get to that’s not open fog-covered ground. Good grief, this is taking ‘the floor is lava’ to ridiculous levels.
Evidently deciding the fog spell isn’t working, Nesanth shrieks something in Romanian and makes clawing gestures at the air. Dozens of columns of black vapor well up from the floor, rapidly taking on the shape of shambling corpses. They remain as black as a midnight sky but take on the form of zombies.
Nesanth snarls at Demetria, then hurls herself into the air before flying out one of the tall window-doors at the back of the enormous room, shattering the glass and flimsy wood on her way out. Without a word or bit of hesitation, Demetria flies after her.
