As he danced to dodge more damage, he flicked his other, attached set of fingers towards the Heralds. Sears of symbols appeared on their foreheads at once, causing them to fall and convulse in animalistic bursts, their pain palpable.
A tortuous curse.
Cassian pointed the fresh flesh of his recovering hand toward his brother. “Go!”
Marina released her oily power into the snow at her feet as she ran for the jagged cliffside ahead.
Nightrazers crawled from the onyx mouth, monstrous apparitions soaring forward to slice open another trio of Heralds that glitched toward her, their birch crowns piercing the dirt below as they fell.
She ascended the icy ridge, forming a sharp whip of her dark energy as she teleported in small leaps up the steep terrain. The forceful gust beat against her. Spheres of dense sand, dirt, and gravel rained from above, but Marina used calculated flicks of her wrist to cut through the plummeting hazards and break them before they ground her to paste.
Her bare feet touched down on the rough surface of the cliff.
Up this high, the view of Tenebris shined through its cloak of night, its village included in the magical barrier.
Marina’s heart jumped up in her throat.
But before her panic could spread, she noticed how her village was untouched. No fires, no explosions decimating buildings, no frantic prayers from her worshipers, no Olethros raiding its streets. It was how she’d left it.
That bastard.
It was silly and selfish, but she was furious at him for taking her death this hard, for causing her to worry about him this much.
She ripped her head up at the place Acacius floated.
He was ascended, inhuman. An empyrean being in every sense, and she finally understood the power of the three primordial gods. His hands were extended, palms up in a ruinous prayer. She couldn’t hear his scream over the crunching of earth and shrills of dying Olethros below, but she could see the vibrating veins in his throat as his divinity poured from him like an infinite vase.
A battalion of his Daemons separated them, knowing to protect their master at all costs in his vulnerable state.
The choir of clicks unnerved her. The illusions she fought before would pale gravely against the strength of these.
Her shadow crept up from the terrain, twisting and taking shape like the flicker of a black flame. Nightrazers manifested out of the dancing mass.
A few of the Daemons lunged and ran full speed at her, galloping on all six limbs in a vengeful pack.
She drove her arms out.
Her nightrazers fled forward, meeting the band of Daemons head on.
The creatures traded violent blows.
Curled, darkened talons pierced through thin skin, just to be gored by sharp antlers. One nightrazer held each end of a skull before ripping it in half. A Daemon pounced and forced the nightmare back to its wispy home.
“Acacius!” Marina bellowed her plea through the wailing wind.
Alongside her army of gloaming, she herself continued on in a desperate path to her lover.
Forming a long, thick spear from the depths of her Night, she charged against his creatures, collecting them on the end of her weapon as they jumped for her like a spit being loaded with meat.
She needed to connect with him, make him believe that she was there,real,right in front of him.
Memories of the last six months played in the background of her mind as she charged on, and where their aversion toward one another began to blossom into something more.
She thought of the violence of her spikes and his grin as they plunged into him, and his indigo swimming in her veins as he buried himself inside of her.
From the beginning, the collision of their energy had always been the catalyst that sparked eruption between them.
You are not too much.
