Spirit's End by A. R. Knight

Author:A. R. Knight [Knight, A. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946554130
Publisher: Black Key Books
Published: 2017-08-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

I unsheathed the great sword from behind my back, leveled it out towards the boy. Selena drew her cleaver and long knife beside me. The two of us hadn’t taken a breach solo, but this one wasn’t burning. Not yet anyway.

“Carver,” Selena said. “We don’t have a tablet.”

“Then we clean it up as best we can,” I said. Without a sapphire tablet I wasn’t sure how we’d close the breach, but leaving spirits around would, eventually, create an angry swarm. The breach would grow. Swallow the desert town and start pouring spirits north. Delaying that as much as possible still mattered.

Turner didn’t move as I went up to him, as I twisted the hilt, as the blue fire burned up and over him. The other spirits turned to watch, gawking as I made my way around, sharing slashes with Selena. Wiping what was left of the spirits out of Riven so that their mindless souls could start on their last walk to the Cycle. Within a minute we’d cleared most of the courtyard. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

I almost jumped at the first howl, so at odds with the silence of the place. The rustle of the wind on the sand, the occasional whisper of the breeze looping through a nearby house. Otherwise, the only noises came from the swishing of our blades. Until the newcomers made their presence known. They crawled from the breach without us noticing, one hand at a time. Hauling themselves out, looking like soldiers. Or natives from a land I didn’t know. Breaches didn’t discriminate.

A pair of spirits stood up from the pool, looking around. Their eyes flickered with the pale blue fire that meant all shred of sanity had left their souls.

“And just when I was getting bored,” I said to them, waving the sword their way. The spirits hissed and charged towards me, their arms outstretched and clawing for my face.

I stepped forward with my left leg, leading into a wide swing that bisected both of the spirits and sent them burning away to the ground. Behind them, though, four more sets of arms appeared through the breach, pulling the spirits through.

“Finish up the rest,” I said to Selena. “I’ll handle the newcomers.”

I ran over to the spirit arms as they appeared, and swiped down. First one, then another, and another with consecutive slashes. Burning them away as they crossed through into Riven.

Something snatched up my ankle, and I fell flat on my back. The breach spread up beneath me, a window into a ruined mountain town. That accounted for the variance. A war-torn village in a country I didn’t know, soldiers and townspeople crossing through as shelling continued.

Not that I had time to appreciate it. The same spirit that had knocked my ankle aside clamored out of the breach on top of me. Clawing my coat as he climbed up towards my face. With my left hand, I grabbed my long knife off my belt, and jabbed it into the spirit’s chest, twisted the hilt and burned him away.

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