A cry escaped me as it all happened too fast for me to react, and I smashed into it face-first, my flesh scraping across the jagged unforgiving material.
What the—
Hands grabbed my shoulders, wrenching me off it, only to slam me into it again.
And again and fucking again.
Blood sprayed everywhere, bones crunched, pain tearing through me.
The disorientation was real.
I tried to call my power, but magic hit my wrists, snapping them and making me roar.
A heavy weight pressed into my back with such force, it drove me into the black rock.
“It’s been too long, deathborn darling,” a voice seethed at my ear, making me shudder.
“Ruxnoth,” I choked.
He ripped me back, and then I was hurtling down the mountain, spinning out from the force of his throw.
No, not just a mountain.
A volcano.
This wasKrestaz.
I threw my hands out and managed to find purchase on… something.
I roared as grabbing hold of whatever it was yanked at my broken wrist and wrenched my shoulder brutally, clearly dislocating it.
Still, I held on and looked up from blurring vision to see I was hanging onto a ledge about halfway down the volcano.
“Fuck!” I bellowed out into the distance, the pained sound echoing right back to me, as I forced myself up.
Digging my nails into the rock surface, I managed to gain enough purchase to roll myself onto the ledge on my back.
I was panting and spluttering, adrenaline flooding me.
I could feel my healing kicking in, just too fucking slowly for my liking.
As Ruxnoth made all too brutally apparent when he was suddenly there hovering in front of the ledge, his glinting blue and gold wings outstretched.
A familiar gray glow was encompassing him.
The same gray of the magic that had torn me from my teleportation path.
Corrupted necromantic magic.
He’d also been using that, pulled from his Sanctus allies before the collapse, or something he’d always had stored for emergencies or whatever other fucked-up reason.
“Yes,” he said, registering my reaction. “It provides a little extra insulation from certain tracking spells. And what you need to concern yourself with currently is that I’m using the last I have of it to conserve my own true power in order to see to you.” He snarled and ripped open his gold coat which had seen better days. He’d fixed it a little since I’d last seen him, but not all the way. He’d even had it buttoned up, but now bared his chest to me, revealing so much of his skin still tinged gray from my death state infection. “You will undo this!”
I snarled up at him. “The only thing I’ll do iscompletethat infection.”
His eyes flashed.
And then a creepy look played on his features. “Hmm. We’ll see about that.”
