“Xander!” she cried. “Go!”
He ignored her, his own magic responding in his palms.
The witch at their front was almost on them, and she couldn’t see the one at her back. “They’re enforcers,” she explained, hoping he understood the significance. “If you counterstrike they will kill you.” They had come to take her back to The Magicka. Back to Frederick.
Xander let out a steady breath. “They’re not taking you.” His sphere of arcane expanded, the tattoos that peeked out of his shirt pulsating with a white glow. He blocked the next shot from the wand at his front, bearing his teeth as he waited with trained patience to make a strategic strike of his own.
Kyra felt the magic at her back, was able to throw herself to the side before the enchantment hit her. It had been a ball, a pellet of some sort that exploded into a fine dust against a tree. Another enforcer stepped into her view, a gun held in one hand, and a wand in the other.
“Get down!” he snarled, marching over to her with the gun pointed to her face. She wasn’t sure what the spell was, the smell slightly bitter and no way earthen magic. Kyra risked a glance to the tree that had been hit, the bark bubbling.
In that split second he was on her, wrapping his hand in her braid and forcing the gun into her side. She hit out, her fist connecting to his throat with just enough weight behind it to give a satisfied choking sound, but it wasn’t enough.
“Get on your knees, bitch,” he gasped at her, her chi on fire as if it was being painfully pulled. “If I feel you call to your magic I’ll shoot your pretty...” His threat was cut off as Xander appeared behind him, a heavy fist connecting to his head. He fell, but Xander didn’t stop his advance as he swatted the wand from his hand as if it were a twig.
Kyra’s hair was released. “Incenduro!”she screamed as the enforcer scrambled for his wand, her arcane flames searing across his hand in a burst of purple. The centre burned white, almost iridescent in the sun.
Xander grunted, and she turned just as arcane marked at his chest, the spell burning through his shirt to eat away at his skin. A gun shot, and then a pellet hit the same spot.
They were going to kill him.
Kyra screamed, the siphon on her arm vibrating as the magic she hated flowed, the arcane that had started in her palms growing until the magical flames were up to her elbows. The purple darkened, almost black against the white of its heart.
She could feel them all around her, sparks of sentience and dread. She could feel the bodies buried beneath her feet, at the ancient bones and half-rotten corpses. Hundreds, maybe more that stretched across the whole of the Borderlands and even beyond as her awareness spread.
She set her attention on the enforcer before her, his mouth snapping open as she saw her image reflected in his wide eyes. There was no heat from her arcane, only an endless cold that burned even worse. She could feel his thread, his life tethered by something so easily cut. But that wasn’t what she wanted. No, it was the spirits that surrounded them, drawn to her like a moth to a flame. They came in their waves, thousands pulled to the field. They made no sound, no footsteps in the snow. She knew when they had reached the first enforcer, the one who fought Xander while his chest was still burning, melting.
His scream almost made her want to cover her ears, but she couldn’t rip her eyes away as the spirits tore at him, clawing and tearing away at flesh that would never be theirs again.
They glittered against the surrounding white, a sea of souls that ignored Xander as he turned toward her in horror. His mouth open in a warning.
A weight hit her head, hard enough the world spun and she fell to her knees, her fingers pressing into the snow that she couldn’t feel. A wand was pressed to her cheek, the end sharp enough to cut.
“Call them off now or I’ll kill you!”
The spirits roared, a cacophony of deafening cries.
She needed touch, her skin on his. Without a word she reached up to touch his hand, just her fingertips. It strengthened her connection, the thread that tethered his life heavy against her senses when she pulled it gently, like she was playing the harp. His soul sang to her as he sucked in a startled breath, and then the pressure was gone, ripped away by a man of controlled fury. She couldn’t focus, not when the souls all started moving to her, wanting something more, wanting life that she could not give.
“Kyra!” Xander stood before her, his chest a splash of red.
She felt his thread, more of a silver woven rope that felt velvety against her senses despite there being no physical connection.
“Kyra!”
His hands went to clamp down on her arms, ignoring the arcane that hissed and struck out like vipers.
“No!” she screamed. “Don’t touch me!”
The spirits surrounded her, so close they blocked out the sky. So close they could touch her, their misty fingers blindly reaching.
“Ignore them!” Xander shouted at her. “They can’t hurt you.”
“Don’t touch me,” she repeated. “I can’t control it.” The spirits rippled across her chi, their energy merging until they were part of her, the power too much. The souls continued to reach for her, and she couldn’t stop them. “Please, no, stop!”
“Kyra! Look at me!” Hands on her face, eyes of impenetrable ice. “Look at me!”
She blinked, drowning out everything else to concentrate on him, only him. The edge of her peripheral darkened, the spirits disappearing one by one.
