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

to do it himself but she had a point. He nodded and turned to Jazai. “Then you and I will hobble it,” he stated. “I’ll blind it with the light from my majestic and you can tie it down with your chains.”

“Got it,” the boy said with a decisive nod. “Flayers are fast but not typically that strong. It would have a considerable struggle to break the chains, even with the enhancements it gets with mana.”

Devol nodded as Asla extended her claws. With their plan in place, they entered the larger cavern and walked slowly and cautiously for about a hundred yards before Asla held a hand out and motioned for them to press against the wall. Devol crouched, narrowed his eyes, and peered deeper into the shadowy space. The alpha was about a hundred feet away and it was much larger than he had anticipated.

The creature did not have the scrawny frame of the flayers they had fought or even the alpha he had seen in the Wailing Woods. This one was tall—possibly eight or nine feet—but also broad with a massive carapace on its back that was wider than his entire arm span. It crouched in place and its only motion was when the head lowered and jerked up repeatedly. In the silence, the crunching sounds it made as it devoured its prey were unmistakable.

Devol turned away briefly and tried to not focus on the sounds. Asla tapped his arm and nodded to him. He looked at Jazai, who also nodded. They were ready and the beast was eating, which made this a perfect time to strike. He held three fingers up and counted down. As the last finger lowered, they all summoned their animas and raced toward the beast. The diviner blinked in front of them and thrust his arm out. “Chains!”

The alpha spun as a set of ethereal chains wound around its massive arms and head and pulled it back to expose its neck. The swordsman let his mana flow into his blade to illuminate the room and the flayer uttered an angry scream when the light burned its eyes.

Asla vaulted upward onto the flayer and drew her arms back. They glowed orange with her mana and she landed on its chest and sank her claws into the alpha’s throat to slice through it. She jumped off as the chains released and the beast gurgled as it slumped heavily. The wildkin landed and the three adventures watched it twitch, the same question in each of their minds. Had they done it?

“What in the hells?” Jazai demanded as the alpha’s head raised slowly. He pointed to the neck, where the deep wound had begun to close rapidly. “It’s healing itself.”

“That was a clean strike.” Asla gasped and thumped a balled fist into her leg. “I should have tried to decapitate it.”

“Worry about that later,” Devol ordered as he held his sword up. “Be on your guard. It looks like its—”

The beast surged forward and despite its size, it could move as fast as any flayer. It drew its arms back and slashed them forward, but not at them. They stared as the creature targeted the ceiling. A little confused, it took a moment before they realized that the attack had begun to break the gooey substance and rock apart. As the ceiling crumbled, the chamber began to shake and the entire structure collapsed on top of them.

Chapter Four

Thinking quickly, Jazai grasped his teammates and blinked them into the divided chamber. They drew ragged breaths and stared at the path leading into the alpha’s den, which disintegrated rapidly in the wake of the collapse. Fortunately, their area still seemed stable.

“It tried to crush us,” Asla muttered. “That would make us almost inedible, I think, unless it planned to pick our remains out from the rubble.”

“Well, it’s not like it needed another meal soon,” Jazai pointed out. “We have an additional problem, I think. The mana it has not only increased its physical stature but probably also its intellect. It recognizes us as a threat, or at least more important to kill outright than keep for dinner.”

“Did it trap itself in there?” Devol asked and held his sword defensively as he stared toward the collapsed chamber. “Maybe it was too desperate to understand what it was doing.”

The ground beneath them began to shake and they exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“Scatter!” Jazai shouted and they all leapt closer to the entrance. The alpha burst out of the ground, landed heavily, and focused immediately on the three young magi. “I guess we know what built the den now,” the scholar quipped and pointed at the massive beast. Its dark, blank gaze settled on him. “Frost!” A blast of frigid air and ice left his palm, struck the beast in the shoulder and arm, and rapidly created paths of ice down the limb. He moved his arm to the side and used the frost to freeze the wall and connect the flayer’s frozen arm to it to hold it in place.

Asla and Devol took the opportunity to attack as the beast began to carve the ice with its free arm. The wildkin targeted the throat once again to correct her mistake but was greeted by the razor-sharp fangs as the alpha turned its head to snap at her. She was forced to use a feint to move out of the way and the fangs only dug deep enough to inflict a light cut.

The swordsman had a little more luck and was able to slice a clean wound into its chest. Before he could drive his blade in, however, the alpha swatted him away with the back of its arm. The blow thankfully didn’t cut into him, but the strength of the beast was enough to hurl him into the ceiling. He plummeted when gravity kicked in and it looked like he would fall into a sinkhole the creature had created, but Asla had recovered enough to quickly bound across and push him out