The Manifold by Mike Truk

Author:Mike Truk [Truk, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Published: 2020-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Madness. The flashing of scythe-like blades, serrated at their base, alien visages that seemed all incisors. The air alive with hisses and screams, the world all around us moving, twisting, a maelstrom of flickering bodies, almost too fast to track. The ground muddy underfoot, treacherous, a hint of a cliff face before us, the sky darkening overhead.

But no time, no time for anything but to burst forward, seizing hold of the Second Prism so that multiple bolts of lightning flared out before me, causing chitinous shells to burst, black ichor to burst forth, shrieks to erupt, and I was stumbling forward, Shard in hand, laying about me with Manipura’s might, severing, hacking, parrying, turning, searching for Valeria -

There, just to my side, battle-ax singing, in her element, eyes wide, black blood spattered across her cheek.

Hundreds of them around us. Too many. Bladed forearms so sharp they made the air whine as they swung them at us.

Fuck this.

Manipura’s roar was the Niagara Falls within my mind. I flew at Valeria, grabbed her outstretched hand, flew straight up, a line of fire opening down the side of my thigh, agony hole punching into my calf. Up, up into the clear air, leaving the writhing mass of demons or whatever they were beneath us - but they weren’t content to let us go.

I saw a half dozen of them crouch and then leap up like fleas flinging themselves after us. Shooting up like bullets, scythe-like limbs churning.

A swipe of Shard unleashed an arc of golden light that severed half of them mid-air. Valeria batted another away, shearing through limbs. Blood, hot and burning, misted the air.

Higher I flew, intent on simply getting away from this insanity, blood running down my leg, giving thanks to the Source that we’d survived those manic few seconds in that hellish pack.

“Noah!” Shock in Valeria’s voice, urgency like I’d rarely heard. “I know this place! That cave - that’s where - we have to clear the demons!”

I stopped my flight. We were a good thirty yards up, the cliff tapering off to my right, undulating hills stretching out around us, pockets of trees growing in their valleys. The heavens were sulfurous, the setting sun casting everything in refulgent yellows and crimsons.

Below us, the demon horde was assaulting a cave mouth. Easily a hundred of them, the bulk of which hadn’t even noticed our arrival. Hurling themselves at a pale white ward that stretched across the cave entrance, slamming their scythes down upon its curved surface again and again.

“Please! It’s going to fall, and then -”

I hoisted Valeria up, Manipura rendering her nearly weightless, and wrapped my arm around her waist. Then dove down, Shard extended before me. The First Prism joined the Second, that familiar churn of power deep within my reservoir, my magic refining itself through Muladhara even as I braided the result, split it and split it again, then again, then again.

I leveled off ten yards above the seething mass and let loose with a dozen bolts of lightning.

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