Her perfect lips curve into a condescending smile. “A mortal with a toy. How quaint.”
I’ll show her quaint. I launch myself forward, my blade a silver arc in the golden light. The air grows thick and heavy, like wading through setting concrete, but I power through, every muscle screaming in protest. This is what I do. A creature from another realm shows up and acts like a threat? It gets the pointy end.
My blade stops dead. A hand’s breadth from her chest, frozen in mid-air by a force I can’t see. An invisible wall of pure energy hums against the steel, jarring my entire arm.
“Did you truly think that would work?” she asks, her voice laced with a weary sort of pity. She hasn’t moved a muscle. She just watches me, a queen observing a particularly stupid peasant.
With a delicate flick of two fingers, not even touching the blade itself, she sends a wave of force down the steel. It slams into me like a battering ram. I fly backwards, hitting the far wall of the mausoleum with a crack that I feel in my teeth. My head smacks against the stone, and the golden light of the crypt fractures into a thousand glittering shards. My knife clatters to the floor somewhere nearby.
Shaking my head to clear it, I reach for the blade and grip its hilt. This was forged in the Order’s sacred fires andquenched in blessed water. It was designed to kill monsters, and she, her appearance suggesting otherwise, is definitely a monster. She hasn’t moved a muscle as I get to my feet, shaking slightly, but refocused. I misjudged her and her magic.
I never make the same mistake twice.
Her gaze sweeps over me, a flicker of something that might be interest in her golden eyes before it’s gone, replaced by that same crushing boredom. “Your defiance is noted and dismissed.” She raises a hand, palm open, and the air around me crackles.
I dive to the side, rolling behind a stone sarcophagus just as a bolt of pure energy incinerates the spot where I was standing. The granite wall behind it glows red-hot, molten rock dripping to the floor.
“Hiding won’t save you,” she calls out, her voice echoing in the small space.
“Didn’t think it would,” I shout back, my mind racing. I have to catch this bitch by surprise.
Somehow.
Knowing that time is running out, I launch myself through the air, feeling the rush of adrenaline burning through my veins like liquid fire. My body twists mid-leap, muscles coiling tight before I land in a roll that sends vibrations up my spine. The cold stone floor scrapes against my palm as I position myself behind her, silently thanking every gruelling workout that made this movement second nature.
“You will all bow before me!” she cries, her voice reverberating off the ancient walls. “This mortal realm will be mine! You will all serve me or die!”
I raise an eyebrow at the power-hungry monologue as I surge upward, my knuckles white around the engraved hiltof my blade. The runes etched into it glow faintly blue against her golden aura.
She spins before I can strike, her hair whipping around like pale flames, but I was counting on it. The momentum of her turn brings her face directly into my path.
With a smile, I ram the blade into her face, feeling the satisfying resistance as the enchanted steel punctures flesh and bone before she can stop me.
The force of the hit sends me flying backwards, bringing my knife with me as my fingers were gripping it so tightly. I land hard on my arse, sliding across the slick stone until my back slams into the sarcophagus again. Stars burst behind my eyes, and for a second, the world is just a ringing in my ears. I gasp for breath, my ribs screaming in protest, as golden light flashes all around me and the shrieks of this otherworldly creature resonate through the crypt.
Just as suddenly, there is darkness and silence.
I blink, adjusting to the sudden gloom of the crypt. I pull out my little flashlight from my hoodie pocket and flick it on. I scan the crypt, the beam cutting through the darkness.
I’m alone.
“Really?” I mutter. “All things considered, that was too easy.”
I wince as the words leave my mouth and I brace for the blowback, but for once, my words are just… words.
Nothing happens.
I don’t trust it. But at the same time, the threat has been neutralised.
I wait, the moments tick by, but still nothing happens.
However, I didn’t get to twenty-eight years old, slaying demons since I was sixteen, to not trust my instincts.
This isn’t over.
But right now, there is nothing to fight.
Moving around the crypt, I notice the fissure in the floor is still there, but now darkened. I flash the torch beam downwards, sweeping over the rock, but I can’t see anything. Nothing jumps out at me.
