Lower and lower, he dipped me into it deep, all the way up to my chest. I was barely keeping my hands high enough to avoid it, and I honestly didn’t know how long I could even manage that.
Especially when I felt the full force of the lava burning through me, melting my skin, starting to liquefy my insides, dissolve bones.
I managed to call my Wraith frost, but with me already badly injured, it couldn’t do much, trying to heal me and shield me from this… it was beyond.
All I could do was scream and scream and fucking scream as he held me there.
Twisted sounds of satisfaction from him wrapped around my screams.
And then he yanked me out and tossed me into the chamber wall.
I landed on my stomach, shaking, roaring, unable to move from the chest down at all.
He strode toward me, and I frantically fought to call my power.
I… I needed help.
I needed help now.
I managed a spark and choked out,“Subitis.”The spark floated up and out through the chamber opening, sending out an SOS.
Ruxnoth roared, “What have you done?”
He grabbed my hands and went to break them again, but before he could, I pulled.
I pulled fucking hard, drawing all that corrupted necromantic magic into me.
Not storing it, but doing what I remembered Dad showing me during part of our training before.
“Cease!” he cried, trying to back away, but he was currently tethered to me all the while I was pulling on the power attached to him. “It’ll corrupt you as well,” he tried to warn me.
Bullshit.After everything he’d fucking done to me, I knew one thing for sure now. “I can’t… be… corrupted.”
My lower body was screaming in so much agony, my hands shaking, and it was making it hard to absorb the power. But then it happened, my amber magic sparked into being. I felt my eyes flare with it, which had Ruxnoth’s shooting wide.
“You should… be afraid,” I rasped.
In a final, definitive rush, all the corrupted power whooshed into me, and I felt it held there protectively by my own power so it wouldn’t infect me.
And then I let out a roar and sent it exploding out of me in a shockwave, right at him.
It blasted him across the chamber and he landed on his ass several feet from me, groaning in pain.
Now, not only was the necromantic protection gone, but that sudden burst of so much necromantic power would have sent out another SOS as a side effect. Dad and the necromancers would have registered it for sure. They just needed a little time to track it here.
Unfortunately, Ruxnoth pushed back to his feet all too soon.
I tensed as he snapped his palms up and called his midnight-blue power, his eyes flaming at me.
I managed to call my amber magic again, but it was currently unsteady, until I healed more. I could feel my body already getting there, one of my feet now operable, the wheezing tapering off as my ribs healed, that boiling of my organs subsiding a little too. But a lot more still needed to be done. And the pain… it wasn’t exactly making it easy to hold concentration, or even to just fucking think.
He went to strike me.
But at the last second he pulled up short.
I frowned as he spun toward the chamber entrance.
A split-second later, Evira burst in and fired her glacial magic at him.
