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She dropped to the ground, curling into the fetal position as she smashed her hands against her pounding temples. The silver-eyed boy she was certain she’d just watched die knelt down beside her. She had the brief thought to run. To fight. Something wasn’t right, especially when his harsh smile brought warmth to her chest as he swept her tears away.
Tenah, you’re going to have to be stronger. Absorb it. Absorb the darkness, and you will walk free from this.
She bit down hard on her tongue, striving to break whatever spell this was. A memory? Renton’s brother fucking with her head? Would she be able to escape it with a bit more of that unholy dark magic pumping through her channels?
Visions of Ames’s death resurfaced, only it wasn’t feingrot looming over him. It was her father with a blood-drenched blade.
This is your fault,he accused.
She screamed as he buried the blade into Ames’s ribs. Again and again. There was nothing she could do to stop him. After all, one strike was all it had taken for her father to kill her too.
Powerless. You are powerless.
The words echoed in her head, bouncing around so fast the ground lurched beneath her.
“Tenah!” Renton’s booming voice snapped her back into the forest.
His bright eyes, brimming with concern, met hers over hordes of writhing enemies. Then he was sucked back into battle with three clawing, furious Corrupt. Using spurts of magic to disappear, he made efficient work of cleaving them apart. Gireth wielded his glaive with the same unforgiving, brutal technique. Buried up to his shins in corpses, his grin never wavered. It was as if he’d peered into the depths of the fallen elemental Xith’s temples and found the madness there lacking.
She might have stayed ensnared by their undiluted hatred of Corrupt had she not caught the faint glint of a spider web in a beam of sunlight above their heads. Only, this string thrummed like an electric current.
Chaos.
Tenah blasted a spark of red flame into the sky. It sizzled as it collided with an invisible forcefield of magic, and for a moment, an entire web of dark magic rippled into visibility. She could see lines of energy feeding into every monster surrounding them, powering them like some sort of hive mind.
As long as Mias kept them trapped in his illusions, Chaos woman was going to keep sending enemies at them. Tenah needed to get out of Mias’s range, then she could better assess how to deal with this situation.
She hoped Mias was distracted enough with the others to let her slip through as she shot off the path, hurtling over gnarled roots and vines. Fog along the forest floor coalesced into growing shapes, propelling her legs faster and faster until…
Tenah halted, fury bubbling in her channels as she found herself right back on the path where she’d started. Mias had run her in a circle.
Absorb it,Chaos tried again, yanking her head down to look at the Corrupt boy’s corpse.
Would you give it a rest already?she raged, charging back into the forest with heightened determination. The drumming of limbs pursued this time. Her heart quickened, and her hands crackled with flames.
A Corrupt burst from the fog. Its elongated nails raised up, prepared to slice into her flesh. She devoured the thing in flames. Her eyes snapped wide as it shrieked in agony before exploding into a cloud of black dust that stained the ground.
She stared down at that stain as footsteps pounded closer from all directions. Where was the Chaos caster finding all of them? Could she manifest them somehow? Had they been shadow before that woman had gotten her hands on them?
Tenah needed to move. She knew that. Glowing, orange-slitted eyes materialized in the fog, accompanied by giant black wings and gangly arms with long talons.
Blood hammered in her veins as she crumbled to her fear. She didn’t have to verbalize the order—her body was already siphoning the black Chaos dust into her channels.
There was no other choice. She couldn’t be weak. She couldn’t be powerless.
Her arms trembled from the immense amount of hot energy she’d absorbed. It lifted her hand and cleaved the air in two.
Climb in, little one.
Tenah held her breath as she stepped into the Void. So many sources of pulsing magic. They expanded beyond what she’d gleaned from astral projecting, an endless sea of possibilities. The birthplace of all magic.
Large antennae bobbed in her peripheral vision, jolting her survival instincts. A long, segmented body scuttled around her in a wide berth.
Corrupt or something more deadly? She didn’t care to stick around to find out.
Tenah broke into a sprint, but how far would she need to run before she reached the edge of Mias’s range? How did time and space work in the Void?
The thought struck her—she could keep running. Flee so far from the Boglands that Renton would never find her.
