Sunscorch (Rise To Omniscience Book 8)

by Aaron Oster

  Another burning lance of pain drove through her leg, dropping her to a knee, but she slashed out with her Reality Blade, slicing through the ankle of one of the Cultists and taking them down with her.

  “She’s down!” one of them shouted. “Kill the elf bitch! Then we can get out of here!”

  Katherine turned on her knee, then hurled her Reality Blade, taking another dwarf through the chest and dropping him like a boulder. This left her unarmed and still facing half their number, although a couple of them bore a few minor injuries.

  Blood was seeping from her side where the spear was still lodged, but Katherine knew better than to pull it out. Right now, the spear was preventing her from bleeding out, and although it hurt more than any single injury she had right now, she ignored it.

  Blinking sweat from her eyes, she tried to stand, failed, then tried again. One of the Cultists saw this as a sign of weakness and tried to rush past, only for her to snag him by the leg and yank him off his feet. The gnome cried out as he went down, and Katherine dragged him over to her, pulling the small dagger from his belt and driving it through his neck.

  The rest of the Cultists decided to take advantage of her distraction. Two flanked her from either side, trying to split her focus as they should have been doing from the start. Clearly, this wasn’t the brightest bunch, which was probably why they’d been sent out ahead. If this commander of theirs had had the foresight to send their forces here, more would be coming, and Katherine knew that this was her only chance at getting away.

  Yanking the dagger from the gnome’s throat, Katherine hurled his body to her right, then lunged to her left. The dagger sank deep into the calf of one of the Cultists, who screeched in pain. She wrenched the blade to the side, cracking the bone – and the dagger along with it – as she did. This left her with a useless hilt, which she threw as hard as she could, trying to knock the other Cultist out.

  She missed and was forced to lunge back, driving a shoulder into Beatrice and rolling her out of the way of the beastman’s descending boot. Seeing as Elyssa was still tied to the Southern Queen’s back, she rolled right along with her, and Katherine hoped that however badly the elf was injured, this didn’t make it worse.

  Instead of doing the smart thing and continuing to go after Beatrice, the Cultist turned to attack her. She lunged, slamming her shoulder right under the beastman’s knees and taking him to the ground. She then pulled herself up against his body, driving her elbows into soft spots and breaking several bones before she reached his catlike head.

  Katherine screamed, shoving her fingers into the beastman’s mouth. She ripped his lower jaw from his upper, before proceeding to bludgeon him to death with the bone. She heard a scream from behind her then and whirled to see Beatrice, trying to ward off the acidic, green fists of the remaining two Cultists.

  She cursed to herself once more, then lunged back, throwing the bloody jawbone at the nearest one. They recoiled in horror, and this gave her the chance to take them down as well. This time, she broke the bones in their legs instead of trying to kill them. It would incapacitate just as well.

  She whirled then, trying to find the last one, only to see them with a boot on Beatrice’s shoulder, pinning her to the ground face-first, as the elf raised a spear to thrust through both Elyssa’s chest and the South Queen’s back.

  Katherine knew she had no time left, so she did the only thing she could. With a scream of agony, she launched herself forward and took the spear through her own back. The white-hot agony lanced through her as the blade punched through her ribs, right beside her spine, and exited from just below her chest.

  Her hand flashed out, catching the spear before it could descend any further and hit Elyssa. Katherine stared, finding herself just inches from the elf’s, and she stared at her pale face. Her breath rattled in her lungs as she breathed in, feeling the agony as the Cultist tried to pull it out. Her hand, clutched around the haft, slick with her blood, prevented that, but the pain was excruciating, nonetheless.

  The elf tried to pull the spear back again, and Katherine threw herself back, using the Cultist’s momentum to her advantage. A cry of agony tore itself from her lips as she twisted hard to one side, shattering the haft of the spear in the elf’s grip.

  The elf fell back, eyes widening as Katherine bore down on him, the bloody half of the spear she’d pulled from her own body clutched in her fist. She slammed into him, bearing him to the ground and plunging the spear through his eye.

  She lay there for several seconds, panting hard as blood pumped from the gaping wound the elf had inflicted. Katherine forced herself to roll off the dead Cultist and tried to crawl over to Elyssa and Beatrice, but she only made it a few steps before blood loss and exhaustion caused her to collapse.

  She found herself looking up into the elf’s face once again, and for some reason, she smiled.

  “I think this makes us even,” Katherine croaked.

  She slumped forward, the world beginning to dim around her.

  54

  Grace emerged from the portal, followed closely by Lumia. They had been unable to enter directly into the battlefield, as spatial travel had been locked down for a radius of several miles. Nathan and his troops had come through five minutes before, which had been another concession she’d been forced to make to be allowed to tag along.

  “Can you sense them?” Lumia asked as the portal closed behind her.

  Grace nodded. She could sense all of them. The conflict was in full swing, with Garrison Blue engaged with the enemy on all fronts. The one thing she couldn’t sense was Elyssa.

  Her presence should have been easy to pick out, as it would be the only purple light among a sea of red and blue.

  “I can sense the battle,” she said, turning to face the drake in her humanoid form. “But I can’t find Elyssa.”

  She was worried that they’d been too late. Worried that in her haste to spare the lives of the Southern forces, she’d inevitably cost the elven queen and that of her friends who’d been trapped along with them. Had she made the wrong decision?

  “Maybe we just need to get closer,” Lumia suggested, and Grace nodded in agreement, but deep down, she was terrified of what they would see.

  Lumia scooped her up into her arms, then flapped her powerful wings and took to the sky. They streaked over the darkened landscape, the sky growing lighter as they approached the battlefield. Even from there, Grace could see how badly things were going. Dozens of men and women from Garrison Blue lay dead, their corpses strewn about the battlefield.

  That wasn’t to say they were the only ones, as Nathan and his forces were giving as good as they got, but for some reason, Grace had thought that they would swoop in there, defeat the enemy with no casualties, and rescue their trapped friends. Reality was rarely so kind, and for the first time, Grace realized that despite all of their efforts, Garrison Blue could still lose.

  “We need to get them some reinforcements,” Grace said, her eyes sweeping over the battlefield.

  “One thing at a time,” Lumia said. “Can you see any signs of Elyssa?”

  Grace shook herself, then concentrated on the battlefield and began looking once more. Her Aura Sense showed only a field of red and blue, but despite that, her eyes kept moving and landed on the caved-in bunker.

  “No,” she whispered, feeling her body go tense.

  They were too late. The bunker had already been breached. The reason she couldn’t sense Elyssa was because she was dead, and it was all her fault! If she’d only just gone to the South and called on their forces, they might have been able to do something. Maybe they would have gone to slow them down while reinforcements arrived.

  After all, there were people trapped from three of the Five Kingdoms, which meant they could have had help from pretty much everyone. Instead, Grace had gone running off to the North, taking an obscenely long time, and now, they were all gone.

  “Calm yourself,” Lumia said, sensing the building emotional turmoil. “If
they are already dead, why are the enemy forces still here? They must still be alive, so concentrate!”

  Grace took a deep breath, swiping at her eyes, and nodding quickly. What Lumia said made sense. If they were already dead, there was no reason the Cultists should still be there, which meant they had to be alive.

  She used her Echolocation, snapping her fingers in the direction of the bunker. The soundwaves echoed off the stone, flowing over the landscape and coming back to her in a rush.

  “There’s a tunnel!” she exclaimed, feeling hope blossoming in her chest once more.

  “Which way does it lead?” Lumia asked, and Grace pointed her in the direction.

  She continued snapping but felt her heart stop when she felt it. The tunnel had collapsed, and worse, she could feel a body. Grace felt her throat tighten up once more as hope fled in the face of reality, but before she could break down crying again, a tiny violet spark lit up in her Aura Sense.

  She leaned forward, her eyes raking the darkened mountainside as she desperately searched for a sign of life.

  “Down there!” she cried, finally seeing something.

  Lumia’s nostrils flared, and she angled downward, slamming into the ground and dropping Grace.

  Grace felt her heart rising into her throat as she ran to the bloodied and battered women lying on the ground. There were corpses everywhere, blood and gore littering a horrific scene of carnage and death. Worse, at the very center lie a woman, golden hair streaked with blood and a massive hole through the center of her back.

  Next to her, lying face up with her eyes closed, was the Queen of the Elves, and beneath, lie a half-conscious Beatrice.

  “Lumia!” Grace cried, crouching next to them and trying to feel for any signs of life.

  Both Elyssa and Beatrice were breathing, but Katherine was not. Worse, she couldn’t see any sign of Hilda and had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach about the body still trapped in the collapsed tunnel.

  Lumia came running over, and when she saw the bodies, her own began to rapidly expand.

  “Get them onto my back. Quickly!”

  “Can you carry them all?” Grace asked, already moving to do as she was told.

  “Not in the air, but I can run,” she replied.

  Grace used her Expand Blows skill and used her oversized hands to scoop Katherine up onto Lumia’s back. Her hands became slick with the woman’s blood, but she ignored it. Despite the woman’s not breathing, there was still a faint spark of red inside her. Her core still burned, but just like Elyssa’s, it was beginning to sputter.

  She had no idea what they’d all been through over the last few days, but whatever it was, Grace was determined to get them somewhere they could get a proper healer.

  Getting Elyssa and Beatrice up on Lumia’s back was a bit awkward, but in the end, Grace managed it just fine.

  “We need to let Nathan know that we have them,” she said, quickly scrawling a message into the ground using a discarded dagger.

  “Lumia, can you…?” she began, only to have Lumia tilt her head and unleash a stream of Crimsonfire into the sky.

  It blazed with the power of a sun, and Grace shielded her eyes so that she could maintain her night vision. Lumia’s stunt would attract attention, but right now, that was exactly what they needed.

  “Let’s go!” she shouted, using her Body Shift and Sound Burst to leap onto Lumia’s back and get a firm hold on the bodies perched there.

  Lumia took off at a bounding run, her gait unlike anything Grace had dealt with before. It was difficult to remain perched on her back as Lumia’s spine coiled and uncoiled, sending her glittering form forward with far more speed and power than Grace could have guessed.

  “Do you have the scroll ready?” Lumia called to her.

  “I’m working on it now!” she shouted back, pulling a scroll, a board of thin wood, and the glowing blue vial from her pack.

  Seeing as they’d need to use it in a hurry, activating the portal on the ground would be impossible. They were improvising, with Grace trying to activate the portal by continually dripping liquid mana on the scroll until they reached the range of the spatial lockdown.

  Her Aura Sense flared a warning, and Grace half turned, feeling a group of five coming right at them. It was during times like these when she wished she had more power or a better-ranged attack, especially seeing as all five of their pursuers were absolutely terrifying.

  “We’ve picked up a tail!” Grace called, “We need to move faster!”

  Lumia, who’d probably smelled them coming long before she’d sensed them, put on a small burst of speed and started to pull away from them. Grace was jostled and bounced as she tried to activate the portal scroll, missing more than she hit with the glowing blue vial. She cursed to herself as the vial ran out with no results, and she began fishing in her pack for another.

  A bright, orange light split the ground before them, and molten stone erupted upward, trying to hem them in.

  “Hang on!” Lumia called, then inhaled deeply, doing something Grace had never seen before.

  The wall of boiling stone froze, the heat being leeched from it and hardening to a solid sheet in an instant. The drake lowered her head, smashing through the brittle stone and continuing to run.

  “Wow! That was amazing!” Grace exclaimed, only to have the ground to their left split and begin to spew forth even more lava.

  “Is the scroll working yet?!” Lumia shouted, pulling the heat from the wave of molten stone and freezing it in midair.

  “Not yet!” Grace called back, dripping a new vial onto the scroll.

  The ground before them split wide open again, and this time, the lava streaming out turned into a lake. It spread rapidly, expanding hundreds of feet per second, and even as Lumia sucked away the heat, it continued to grow, closing in behind them as well.

  “How the hell is one person doing all this?!” Grace exclaimed.

  She’d known there were powerful fighters out there, but this attack was on a scale that she’d only seen Morgan pull off.

  “They’re not,” Lumia called back. “I have a feeling this is a combination of several skills joined into one!”

  Grace looked over her shoulder and, for the first time, got a good look at their pursuers. There was a single fighter from each of the five races of Faeland, all standing on a single, solid piece of stone and rocketing toward them with a wave of lava at their backs.

  She quickly went back to the scroll after that, her panic redoubled as she dripped more and more mana on the paper.

  “Come on,” she muttered, looking back to see that the enemy was gaining on them by the second.

  “Come on!” she yelled as a small spark flickered across the scroll.

  Grace felt her heart leap into her throat as a massive wave of lava rose before them, towering over thirty feet into the air. There was no way Lumia would be able to dodge this, and while she would be fine, none of her passengers would.

  “Come on!” she yelled again, dumping what was left of the vial onto the scroll, and finally, it worked.

  A blue light flared to life as a hole in space was torn open. Taking a firm hold of the board, Grace tossed it forward.

  “Shrink!” Grace yelled as the portal landed, right in front of the massive wave of lava.

  Thankfully, Lumia understood what she’d been told, and taking one final leap, her body rapidly shrank down to its smallest size. At the same time, Grace used her Expand Blows, using her oversized hands to pull her friends close, and together, they fell through the portal, just as the wave of lava crashed down around them.

  They fell through and into the throne room of the North Kingdom capital, the place that had leaped into Grace’s mind immediately before its activation.

  “Close the portal! Close the portal!” Grace yelled, rolling several times as lava came pouring into the throne room.

  Several beams of power slammed into the spatial tear, stopping the advance of the molten stone. Secon
ds later, the portal slammed shut, leaving Grace staring up at the ceiling and heaving for air, despite not having done anything to exert herself physically.

  She heard the stomping of boots as people came running over, felt the bodies of her friends being pulled from her hands, and saw the face of Bell, Katherine’s personal aide. It was only once she saw her that Grace was finally able to relax.

  She’d done it. She’d managed to get Katherine and Elyssa both back there alive. The healers could take it from there, and if everything went smoothly, the rulers would be back on their feet within the next day or so. But all Grace could think as she lay there, staring up at the ceiling, was how proud Morgan would have been at what she’d accomplished.

  55

  Morgan was forced to stand back and watch as his younger self, a body no older than six, went on a rampage, his body no longer his own. It was controlled by the mind of the beast, now standing beside him. There was no refinement to his movements, no rhyme or reason—just brutal savagery in its most simplistic form.

  The six-year-old Morgan shot from the balcony, slamming headfirst into the chest of one of the hooded men. There was an ugly crunch as he impacted, taking the man to the ground along with him. Morgan dug his fingers into the man’s stomach, ripping downward and pulling his intestines out in a gruesome display of savagery.

  The hooded men nearest him rushed in, daggers gleaming with poison, but the Beast King possessing Morgan was too fast. His hand flashed out, and he caught the first man’s arm, then pulled him to the side, causing his friend to stab him in the shoulder.

  The man let out a cry of pain as the blade sank deep, then the Beast King reached up and did something unspeakable. Morgan winced, and the Beast King cackled with laughter as both men staggered back, clutching between their legs, and blood streamed to the ground around them. The smaller Morgan latched onto the neck of the downed man, still writhing beneath him, and proceeded to rip his head from his shoulders.

  He then threw it at another hooded man, one trying to run for the door. The head exploded upon impact, throwing him forward and sending him face-first into the wall. But even as he was getting his face caved in, Morgan was already moving to the side, ripping one of the bleeding men in two, hurling one half of his body up where it stuck in the rafters.