The hard plastic of the slide snapped into jagged pieces, penetrating through her torso. The iron rods holding up the structure bent and creaked from the impact. Gravel flew like pellets of hail, bruising her skin.
Fresh blood gushed down her pelvis as she climbed up, yanking out the debris from the depths of her chest.
Marina gritted her teeth against the waves of pain echoing through her body. She locked her focus on the Herald in front of her as she limped out of the hazy sheen of dust and sleet, back under the streetlamp.
Its speed matched Acacius’s. She expected it to be powerful, but not as quick as he. It sparked worry in her.
The monster’s figure distorted, and Marina went to rip her arm up in defense. It fabricated to her, catching her by thewrist and violently bending its hold. Marina’s bone snapped. The sound reverberated up into the dome of her skull.
She reared her foot up to kick as its other arm shot up.
Soren flickered in her periphery.
A clean slice sounded.
The Herald’s arm severed and fell at its feet.
Marina ripped free of its hold and threw her hand up. Whorls of her divine power reached up into the sky, like ebony fingers locking around nature’s innate darkness. She reared her elbow down. The Night bent to her command, condensing into a column of raven-colored might, and struck the creature’s frame in a windblown eruption, detonating the ground where it stood. Its viscera scattered across the snow-strewn playground.
The weaponized umbra diluted back into a billowing cloud. It shrouded the light around them as it returned to the sky, fading the glacial landscape into an achromatic haze.
Soren appeared at her side as she straightened her arm. Her bone was visible through the mangled flesh. Slowly, the ashen plate fused back together.
Soren gripped her waist firmly and tore a large, plastic piece from her side in a swift pull.
She grunted as blood poured down her leg. Lethargy tugged at her fading vision. She blinked and forced her spine to straighten.
“You good?” Soren asked.
Marina’s eyes constricted around the contour of a body banding back together in the obfuscation of her Night. She waved her hand to thin the layer, watching as an arm, a foot, and pink, wormy intestines slithered across the ground and reformed the Herald.
It tilted its head up to the sky as it completed its grisly restoration, and a feral screech poured from its throat.
Marina and Soren winced. The noise lanced her ears in a debilitating shrill. A sharp throb jolted through her forehead. The ground beneath her feet shook. Electric lines above them snapped like fishing wire. Sparks popped and rained down luminous embers as the wooden poles toppled over.
Marina and Soren teleported out of the way.
The loud crash threw up a veil of soot and icy powder.
Red flashes of light broke through the plume of smoke and darkness. Mortal voices carried from the nearby streets, eager to investigate the destruction.
“Time’s up.” Soren wouldn’t risk getting caught. His identity as an assassin depended on it.
“Go!” she ordered.
Soren nodded once in affirmation and teleported away, leaving her alone with the Herald.
The crackleof the electricity jumping between broken poles lit the grayscale playground in purple and indigo. In the flashes of color, the eerie veil of the Herald twisted in uncanny angles, like an intrigued predator.
A shiver wracked her bones, exhilarated to be the focal point of such horror. She couldn’t help but admire it, and part of her despised that feeling. It’d taken her fear and rage years to manifest into a single nightrazer. It took even longer for her to learn how to attune them to her desires. Their abilities enhanced alongside her own, developing in tandem.
Acacius had five thousand years to hone his Olethros. He was able to mold his power into three different variants of his nightmares. They were extensions of him, just as her nightrazers were of her.
The Herald before her was a rare specimen she wanted to dissect. Perhaps she could play with it a little longer, get a better idea of what all it could do.
Marina solidified her stance and brought an arm up. Obsidian threads fabricated into a set of thin, smoky darts, levitating above her fingertips. She flicked her wrist and sent them flying through the air.
The Herald disappeared like a fading illusion.
