Finnian’s hand went straight for the iridescent stone, and he gripped the pendant between his index and middle finger, tapping into its energy. “Excitare ex somno!”
The trees swayed violently as a gust of wind rustled through their branches. A magical force that kept Cassian down on his back.
Glowing globes of milky light shot from Finnian’s pendant in all directions, halting in the air around him. Bone, then sinew, then patches of skin wove around the bright spheres.
Souls.He had been keeping them—waiting to turn them into ghouls—in his necklace this entire time.
A rotted hand coiled around Cassian’s shin, breaking him from his thought. The bone of his knee snapped.
He grunted through clenched teeth.
The bodies of the ghouls solidified around their spirits, taking an offensive formation around their master. Their dark, brittle bones were reinforced by the young god. Cassian could see the glow around them; it was like an oily flame, yet the color of snow.
Another pair of hands surprised Cassian from behind, swiftly immobilizing him by his shoulders.
Two corpses loomed over him, their decaying flesh clinging to their skeletal frames like a sheet draped over a clothesline.
One drove its bone fingers through Cassian’s shoulder.
He chuckled darkly at the twinge of pain twisting in his flesh. The suction of his knee-bone fusing back together reverberated up into his hip, and he lunged up and caught the ghoul’s face like a ball in his palm and squeezed.
Its skull shattered and its knees gave in, collapsing as if never coming to life at all. Its soul retreated to the pendant.
Cassian lifted his leg off the ground. The toe of his boot buried into another’s chest.
The ghoul flew up in the air and landed in the stream.
Cassian quickly rose to his feet as more ghouls swarmed him. Imbuing his right hand with divine power, he circled his palm above his head, creating a stream of slick shadows around him.
“Rest!” He bellowed the word as he closed his fist, and the ring of ruination shot outwards. It passed through the army of corpses, encircled around the young god’s pendant, pulling the souls like a cloud as it touched them.
Cassian’s power magnetized the glistening spiritual casings, rightfully releasing them from the husks of meat and marrow, as well as from the dreadful crystal, and holding them in the air.
He scoffed as he patted the dirty smudges from his sleeves. “Do you honestly believe your little ghouls stand a chance against me?”
Charcoal ribbons streaked with gold twisted out from Cassian’s back, gathering into a black-tinted mass that swirled and swelled over his head. Twisting left, he fixed his attention on Finnian standing on the other side of the stream.
The abyss flowed down from the tree canopies and the Errai emerged from within it, hidden in cloaks and masks.
“Collect them all,” Cassian ordered.
The velocity of their movements painted the forest in a disarray of magenta blue tendrils, wispy fine trails of smoke curling around trees.
Each member of the Errai approached an individual orb and coaxed it into their palms. The luminescence in the forest dimmed as the sea of stolen souls were guided home. When all had been retrieved, the Errai returned as quickly as they entered, trusting in their master’s ability to handle himself.
A menacing energy gathered in the atmosphere and nipped at Cassian’s skin.
Finnian lifted his hand, and a dazzling burst of magic materialized above his open palm, pulsating and swirling until it took the shape of a vortex. Its power rippled through the leaves on nearby branches. Cassian’s hair whipped in every direction.
A roar escaped the young god’s mouth as the swiveling nebula burst forth from his palm, ripping up roots and sending stones crashing into the nearby stream.
Cassian’s divine power enclosed around him like a shield, pushing back against the devastation.
A thunderous echo reverberated when their powers collided. The impact shuddered through the ground, quaking the forest’s foundation.
Cassian’s aegis disbanded and lifted like vapor as the magic fizzled into glittering specks.
He raised his chin and met Finnian’s fierce glower across the stream.
