“Fuck,” she exclaimed, clearly not used to it.
Because it wasn’t the same as taking a brute force attack, or even a standard magical bombardment.
This was vibrational resonance.
I looked to see Winter cursing as he staggered to his feet. Unharmed. Relief flooded me, then I went to see to Zayn, but he abruptly burst out of the water, his Ifrit flame blazing around him and lashing violently.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he spat, shuddering, but his flame drying and warming him quickly.
As Winter rushed back over to us, he frantically asked Zayn, “Do you need my shadows? To help you dry?”
“No. My flame’s got it this time. Still way too close to that Keuric situation for my liking, though. Déjà vu, Win. Completely not-fun-one-little-bit déjà vu.”
Evira grunted as the wall endured further damage all too quickly.
I caught sight of ripples traveling across the ground—they were going to decimate the foundation itself from beneath.
No.
With a spark of my magic, I called my twin jeweled daggers forth, spun them in my hands, then leapt over the wall, clearing it, and landing in a deep crouch a few feet in front of it.
Employing my senses to their fullest, I locked onto the closest two targets, then tossed my daggers. They shot across the distance with blurring speed, then came to an abrupt halt at the same time as I heard two pained cries. The camouflage slipped away and then two assassins came into view a dagger buried in each of their hearts. My daggers laced with my venom, which I hadn’t held off with like the last time I’d used them in battle, that being against Temperance.
I twisted my wrists, then the daggers tore from their bodies and sailed back to me, snapping back into my hands.
The hostiles slumped forward and collapsed on the grass.
Nothing could save them now. My venom directly in their hearts was a death sentence. They had mere moments left to live.
“Reveal yourselves!” I boomed across the distance. “Don’t continue to present yourselves as cowards. You dishonor our kind. Your Empress and her Consort have already done far too much of that.”
I added the last part purposely to incite exactly what I needed to end this quickly with far less chance of casualties—for my loves. I cared not for these agents of my parents. Coming at me and in such a disrespectful manner at that, one that threatened those I loved, that dishonored the Basilisk people as a whole and their collective call for me to take up the mantle… they’d marked themselves beyond salvation.
The fusillade of pulses ceased.
“How dare you?” a familiar voice hissed.
There it was.
I’d felt her energy here in among them.
Norla Canor.
My so-called mother.
High Empress of the Excetra Crown.
As her energy was interlaced with the assassins, I hadn’t been able to determine her precise positioning.
In the next moment, she and the remaining eighteen assassins revealed themselves, dropping their camouflage and pushing out into the clearing between the trees and where I stood a few feet from Evira’s ice wall that she was reinforcing rapidly.
I took in the agents of Septna covered in moss-green, black, and sickly yellow armor etched with serpentine markings. The armor wasn’t leather like other Basilisks such as myself wore when entering battle. No, for this twisted yet elite unit, their breastplates, greaves, and bracers were made of a material that was a cross between stone and metal—a special material forged only within the Basilisk Dominion.
Norla was even adorned in it.
Hmm.She’d most definitely thrown herself so heartily into this.
Into killing her son.
