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Let us in, little one. Let us in.
Tenah ignored Chaos’s tempting call through her channels. Clawing and thrashing and cursing, she wriggled her way out the other side of the tunnel. Her boots struck the stone floor, and she burst from the surface, gasping at the air.
Through the blurry haze of her vision, a golden source of magic burned in the center of the small chamber, shrouded by swirling clouds of darkness. Faces of monsters reared at her from within. But she was not afraid of them. Not after having nearly drowned on some disgusting, unidentifiable substance.
Elementals be good to her, this had better be the gift she’d come to retrieve.
She crawled out of the liquid and reached for the mass of Chaos, eager to touch the foreign energy on the other side.
Something wet leashed around her wrist, ripping her away from the warmth of the magical source and hauling her back into the foul pool of liquid.
Chapter38
Renton
They had defiled the camp.
Corrupt and feingrot scurrying on too many or too few limbs. Soaring on membranous and black feathered wings. Ashens in black cloaks, drilling their magic into the weaker minded and turning them against their own. Even Adra’s armies—Scourge—in their hellish armor, raising shields against a torrent of Ruzgorn arrows cascading from the sky.
Aeyis had been silent for what felt like eternity. Renton tried not to let that distract him from slashing through enemies. He had to believe that his brother was doing the same, wielding his unfathomable magic against their minds.
Still, he couldn’t stop his eyes from drifting to the bell tower where Gireth had posted up with Tenah. Fresh panic coursed through him when he spotted the broken railing. The tower was empty.
Tearing his blade free from the gut of a Corrupt, he scanned the camp.
Aeyis. His brother should be able to pinpoint them.Answer me, damn it!
With a snarl, he ripped out his dagger and stabbed it into the skull of another Corrupt. How many had he already felled? How many more would pour out of the rift?
Unhinged, he let rage fuel him. He sailed through clashing armies, spinning and dodging and slicing implacably, poisonous clouds left in his wake. A giant, bulbous feingrot caught his attention, tossing aside Ruzgorn on a warpath for Hakkan. The warlord was already overburdened with enemies.
Renton exchanged his sword and dagger for his father’s cumbersome blade and charged the beast. His muscles strained as he met it head-on, boots skidding back on the dry ground. The feingrot knocked the blade aside with a swipe of its great claws. Smaller Corrupt tumbled from its back. Renton carved through them, spitting brackish blood onto their desiccated bodies.
Stomping powerful feet, the feingrot slashed out in a frenzy. He dodged the strikes. The beast released an ear-shattering roar. Renton dove under its maw, hidden from its many eyes, and slashed his blade clean through its neck.
He scaled its corpse, eyes sweeping over the camp. His jaw tightened. There were still so many enemies to slay. The strain on Ruzgorn was evident. It didn’t seem fair that they had to take the brunt of this attack when they’d done nothing to stir up trouble in the first place.
Fuck it. Renton would regret the depletion of his energy, but he needed to give the Ruzgorn a chance against the waves of enemies crashing against them and Tenah the opportunity to seal the rift.
Leaping onto the back of a feingrot darting by, he rode it into the Void, where he gathered up his magic and pushed it out to weave an illusion of the Boglands around all enemies in his radius.
A smaller radius than he expected. The strain had his channels contracting in warning of his approaching limit. The shard bit down with ferocity, needing to feed on something now that he’d deprived it of his magic.
But gods, it was a glorious sight. His enemies turned on each other, locked in the illusion that they were fighting Boglands monsters. He understood how this kind of power could be addicting.
A streak of white through the masses caught his eye. It was sprinting deeper into the Void, away from the armies. Horror throttled him.It couldn’t be. Tenah was somewhere around the bell tower, not leashed to the back of a feingrot. Was his own magic playing tricks on him?
He kept his gaze locked on the feingrot. When it breached the edge of his magical area of effect and didn’t waver, invisible hands gripped his insides and wrung them out.
Not an illusion then.
He recognized it for what it was. Bait to lure him out. He had an understanding with Cirel. Only one, and it involved her. The claiming way the king had looked at her, as if she was his property, had almost shredded every bit of his self-control in the temple.
Tenah was right. His weakness was his heart. She was in danger, and he would stop at nothing to get her back.
Renton jumped from the feingrot’s back only to collapse onto the ground. With a growl, he slammed a fist against his heart, determined to rattle the shard’s crushing hold on him. His illusion crumbled. With its absence, all Corrupt and feingrot heads jerked to him.
Chapter39
