Bloodflowers Bloom (The Astral Wanderer Book 2), D'Artagnan Rey [essential reading .txt] 📗

of their adversaries and sliced each through their chest before they could even react to her approach. As she turned, they began to repair themselves so she doubled back and attacked in a flurry of fearsome scratches. The armor fell as they also turned into fog and dissipated into the sky.

A fiend leapt at Jazai but he knocked it away with the shield. When another attempted to strike him from behind, he blinked behind it and extended his ring finger. The ring flared and a mana blade formed around his hand and sank into his attacker’s head.

“Shock!” He summoned an arc of electricity and sent it through the blade and into the fiend. It neither twisted nor flinched but began to stretch its hands toward him. He grunted, pulled the blade back as two more shambled closer to him, and raised a palm. “Pulse!” A wave of mana blasted out in front of him and hurled the three away. “Elemental magic doesn’t work on them. Be careful.”

“It’s not a big concern for me,” Devol replied and thrust his blade into an armored being, which filled and erupted with light similar to Farah’s magic. “If you need help, let me know.”

“Show off.” Jazai snorted and pointed his pinky at the recovering fiends. Chains were summoned around the three of them and he held both hands up. “Blast.” A large mana orb appeared in front of his palm and when he fired it at the creatures, they were instantly engulfed by it. The sphere erupted and the robes and armor scattered to leave only the dark fog that drifted into the trees.

Farah felt a sharp pain in her side and turned toward a half-destroyed fiend, a shadowy trail left under its chest, that had managed to inflict a small cut on her ribs. “Someone needs to finish their work!” she yelled and knocked it aside before she stabbed her blade into its head.

“It might have been me. My apologies!” Asla called and noticed two of the enemy that crept forward behind the light-magic-user. She slid her hand to the quiver Roko had given her, removed an arrow, and loaded it into the crossbow on her arm. Calmly, she fired the bolt and controlled it so it pierced the heads of both beings and stalled them. “Farah, behind you!”

The swordswoman spun and cleaved through the two. She nodded in thanks to the wildkin once she’d finished off her would-be ambushers.

Devol had become separated from the group and a line of fiends advanced on him. The distance from his teammates worked for him as he had no need to worry about where the others were when he attacked. He lifted his sword, built his mana up, and stretched the weapon skyward before he arced it at his enemies. The blade lengthened into a large blade of light that sliced the beings in half where they stood. They immediately turned into fog and disappeared into the ground or the air. He frowned as he watched it. Something was odd about the dark vapor but he would have to explore that later.

“I’m going find Wulfsun!” he shouted and sprinted to the temple. “Can you hold?”

“We’ll be fine,” Farah responded. “Whatever snatched him was far bigger than these annoyances. Find him!”

Devol nodded and ascended the stairs to the temple quickly. Once he stepped through the entrance, the doors slammed shut behind him and he was left in the dark. A loud shout from below sounded distinctly like Wulfsun. The boy found a large hole in the main chamber, and without hesitation, he leapt into it, hoping to find his mentor within.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Devol charged his anima as he plunged into a cavern below the temple. He landed with a splash in a shallow pool of water and used vis to compensate for the impact.

Even with the aid of his mana, his legs gave way and pain surged through his ankles and calves. “Wulfsun. Are you alive?”

“Devol, get down!” the Templar shouted and the boy ducked reflexively as something large flew overhead. He turned quickly to look for whatever had attacked him as his mentor splashed through the water toward him.

“What was that?” He gasped, retrieved his sword hastily from where he’d dropped in the shallow pool, and held it up.

“I haven’t been able to get a good look at it.” Wulfsun checked the boy and the rest of his gear. “But it didn’t look like any beast I know and it is bloody massive.”

Devol stood and began to walk to the bank. “I saw its eyes. It didn’t have any irises, only a blank void of white like the fiends above.”

“So there are fiends, then?” The Templar dug in his satchel and removed three red orbs. “Let’s hope they weren’t too badly damaged. I fell down here while fighting this blasted creature.” He lobbed them into the air and they hovered in place and illuminated with a bright red light. “I have a couple more but should probably save them in case this goes on for a while.”

The swordsman scrambled onto a pile of rocks and took a moment to catch his breath. “It looked huge—at least ten to twelve feet tall. Something like that shouldn’t be able to hide so easily.”

“Despite its size, it is a fast beastie.” Wulfsun looked at the hole high up in the ceiling. “I’m not sure we want to fight down here. Can you make it up there?”

“You’re by far the heavier of the two of us,” Devol replied as he studied the aperture carefully. “I can probably make it if I can get good footing. Do we want this beast to follow us to the surface, though?”

“Are you worried about the others?”

He nodded. “They are already dealing with the fiends. While they are not all that troublesome, there are many of them. If you have fought with this beast for this long, it must be dangerous.”

“I merely have a hard time landing a strike on the dammed thing,” the Templar