Crack the Sky: Preternatural Chronicles Book 8 (The Preternatural Chronicles)

by Hunter Blain

  “The characters can use fire, water, earth, and wind magic.”

  “Not and,” Meli corrected.

  “Huh?” Ben responded as he crumpled the now empty, biodegradable water bottle. Locke extended his hand and Ben gave him the crushed container before the wizard dropped it into a green bin that sat next to a black one alongside his desk.

  “You said fire, water, earth, and wind magic. Except for Aang, it is or, not and. The characters can only use one type.”

  “You know what I mean, sis,” Ben moaned, rubbing his tired eyes. After a few seconds, he dropped his hand and looked at Locke before specifying, “Aang can use all the types of magic. So is that what a mage is like?”

  Meli, though clearly annoyed, didn’t interject further as she looked to Locke for his answer.

  “Oh, well, then yes. That is fairly accurate. Mages can also do a variety of other forms of magic beyond elemental if they train at it.”

  “You mean become mage-wizards?” Meli asked.

  “Sort of. Instead, think of it like this Ong character—”

  “Aang. Do not get that wrong.”

  “Right, Aang,” Locke acquiesced with his palms up. “So imagine Aang doing—and I can’t believe I’m about to say this—Harry Potter spells.”

  “Ah, got ya,” Meli said, nodding her head in understanding. “Is it common for classes to overlap?”

  “Yes and no. For example, Lud…vig…” Locke’s voice got stuck in his throat as he said his friend’s name. Taking in a deep, steadying breath, Locke lifted his chin in defiance and continued, “Ludvig was a paladin-mage. Or maybe a mage-paladin, however you want to look at it. He had immense power over elemental magic while also having the amazing ability to heal himself and others.”

  “What about sorcerers?” Ben asked, surprising Locke.

  “Sorcerers…” Locke breathed, gathering his thoughts, “…are a virus. Lethal to everyone, including the host.”

  Meli tilted her head in question, prompting Locke to answer with, “No one knows for sure because sorcerers are exceedingly rare…and they don’t survive long.”

  “Why not?” Ben asked as Meli was drawing in breath for the same question.

  Locke’s gaze shifted between the two as his voice went cold.

  “The Ether—which conjurers, demons, and all manner of spiritual anomalies draw their power from—can only enter someone who has been broken to the point of being nothing more than a walking husk of their former self.”

  Locke began to ponder what Elder Gryff had mentioned about Hecate letting the Ether out of her control after saving Hayley…and her child.

  “Spiritual anomalies? Like ghosts and stuff?” Meli asked, breaking his train of thought.

  “Ghosts, mares, poltergeists, shades, spirits…the list goes on. Wandering souls of men who didn’t make it to Heaven or Hell are eventually hunted down and taken over by the Ether.”

  “But why though?” Meli asked, trying to make sense of it all. “Why is the Ether…”—she waved her hands in the air, searching for the word—“evil?”

  “It isn’t evil,” Locke corrected. “It’s simply the opposite of our world of order and the laws of nature of the universe we live in.”

  Meli digested his words, letting her unfocused gaze slide away from him as she considered.

  Ben didn’t catch on as quickly, and asked, “What is it?”

  Locke drew in a deep breath before speaking in a low, flat tone that sent shudders running up the sibling’s spines, “Utter chaos.”

  12

  Magni - Faerie

  Smoke drifted across the courtyard, carrying the ashes of the fallen Fae warriors in a hot breeze. Sizzling could be heard like whispers in the air mixed with the steady bubbling of molten lava.

  A pillar of white steam billowed from where King Taylor had been, his scream cut off as the sorcerer’s attack struck home.

  At the realization of what had transpired, the black of his eyes sucked back into the white pupils, leaving behind his normal color.

  “What…have I done?” Magni wheezed out, lowering the hand that had delivered a monstrous blow to his friend.

  “Sealed your fate,” an authoritative female voice proclaimed through the billowing cloud of steam.

  “Wha…?” Magni breathed, perplexed by the voice he didn’t recognize.

  The steam dissipated, leaving behind a melting block of ice to puddle at the feet of a beautiful woman covered in armor comprised of frost. Blonde hair was done up in a tight bun that disappeared into a crown of ice. A single line ran from an eye and to one corner of her lips.

  Behind her, Taylor remained crouched, still unable to stand on his own two feet, though the lava beneath him had been frozen by the queen of the Winter Court.

  “Who are you?” Magni demanded through gritted teeth, growing furious at the blatant disrespect he was experiencing. But it wasn’t really Magni anymore, the Ether corrupting the young man’s mind, body, and soul.

  “I am your executioner, dear child,” Queen Lilith stated in a voice colder than the ice armor that encompassed her frame.

  A pale hand flew up, making Magni flinch backward in reflex, only to be toppled by a surprise attack from behind. A pillar of ice erupted from the ground, slicing through the molten stone of the courtyard, and smashed into the back of the sorcerer’s knees.

  “Agh!” Magni shrieked as he doubled over backward, his legs screaming with a fuzzy agony he couldn’t describe. The sensation of weightlessness confused Magni as air whooshed over him.

  Everything went still, and the black irises once again flooded the entirety of his eyes, leaving behind glowing white pupils.

  A wall of impossibly sharp ice shards—like the back of a porcupine—came into view right where he was tumbling toward, and Magni shifted to incorporeal, allowing the sorcerer to pass through unharmed. His legs no longer throbbed with fuzzy pain either.

  Shifting back to corporeal and stopping his flight midair, Magni locked scowling eyes onto Lilith, who was readying another attack with hands that danced in front of her.

  Magni lifted his arm to point a finger in her direction, and a bolt of black lightning outlined in white pierced the sky with an earsplitting crack.

  Lilith swatted the air like she was only trying to rid herself of a pesky fly, and the bolt of corrupted energy bent at a ninety-degree angle, disappearing in an explosion of stone as it hit a section of courtyard wall that somehow still stood.

  “My turn,” Lilith growled with confidence as she lifted off the ground, a veil of frost trailing behind her like an airplane through a sky full of clouds.

  Lilith telegraphed an ice attack that shot from her left hand. As expected, Magni went incorporeal with an arrogant smile right as Lilith’s right hand shot toward him and a bolt of blue lightning lanced out from the sky.

  The sorcerer shrieked as the pure energy ripped through his incorporeal body before being flung through the large courtyard and crashing into an unscathed section of stone ground. A long trench roughly the size of Magni’s body formed, trailing for yards, as debris flew out in a cone to smash into the castle wall.

  “Fool!” Magni screamed in a voice that wasn’t quite his as he recovered immediately, turning to face his attacker. Dust from the crushed stones fell from his clothes in a waving cloud as Magni leaped to attack.

  Lilith prepared a countermove before her mouth dropped open in complete surprise.

  In the blink of an eye, Magni grew to over a hundred feet tall, with skin the color of midnight. Everything about him was now the blue-black of the Ether, except for the piercing white of his glowing pupils.

  Before she could recover, an enormous hand sliced through the air faster than anything that size should have been able to move, and crashed into Lilith.

  There was an explosion of stone as the Queen of Air and Darkness collided into and through the castle wall.

  An arrow tipped in lightning pierced Magni’s outstretched hand, immediately dissol
ving a huge chunk of Ether that forced a bellow from the huge sorcerer.

  Furious eyes searched and found the injured Taylor nocking another arrow into his golden bow. Moss green metal armor with brown elven etchings covered him from head to toe. At the center of his breastplate was the symbol of Yggdrasil, complete with thick limbs sprouting healthy leaves and even blooming flowers. The helmet surrounding his head resembled a fierce bird of prey ready for combat. The only break in the entire armor set was the two holes in the helm for Taylor to see from.

  Seeing him letting loose another arrow, Magni created a shield of Ether that took the attack, leaving the sorcerer unscathed; though, somewhere deep inside, he felt the loss of the material used to create the manifestation.

  In response, Magni lunged forward with an outstretched arm, letting the appendage slam into the ground. As it made contact, a black dragon with a body the size of a city bus and a hissing head atop a serpentine neck the same length as its body roared to life.

  The dragon lashed out with its head, moving as fast as a cobra striking at its prey.

  King Taylor’s armor was as strong as tungsten and as flexible as cloth, allowing him to cartwheel out of the way before launching himself into the air.

  Another arrow shot out to smash into the dragon’s head, which puffed out of existence only to be replaced by two more heads. The second dragon pulled away from the first, creating twin necks that bobbed and weaved as the monsters locked onto Taylor.

  Mouths opened as necks stretched, sending twin pillars of black fire toward the agile elven king.

  A pissed-off Lilith appeared between Taylor and the jets of flames. Furious hands grabbed the black fire, sending a burst of raging ice shooting up the pillars of flame at the speed of sound. Ice coated the beast all the way to its midsection, ensuring that no further heads would be able to grow.

  The heads froze and cracked before Lilith sent a surge of unseen energy to shatter both the flames and the beasts as if they were shaved ice thrown into a nuclear-powered snowblower.

  Magni roared in fury and pain, letting what was left of the dragon vanish back into his outstretched arm. Both Lilith and Taylor could see huge chunks were missing from his body now.

  “Do you s—” Lilith began before Taylor interrupted.

  “I see it.”

  The pair split up, with Lilith rushing toward Magni and Taylor running to and then up a courtyard wall that had been out of reach of the sorcerer’s initial blast.

  In response to the tactic of his prey splitting up to attack from different angles, Magni threw his hands to the sky and roared like a pissed-off lion.

  Thunder struck like the crack of a whip as amorphous black blobs began raining from the sky. They ranged in size from that of a house cat to full-size cars. As they struck all around the castle grounds, shapes burst from the blobs as if bouncing off a trampoline.

  Onyx gorillas leaped through the air with fists that pounded against chests sounding an erratic drum of war. Spiders, birds, and screaming monkeys burst forth from the blobs, all rushing toward Taylor and Lilith.

  The elven king’s bow vanished as an identical pair of wands appeared in both hands, already glowing with elemental energy.

  Glowing red symbols—older than any language of man—formed down Lilith’s arms, hands, and fingers. The ancient crimson script stood in direct contrast to the queen’s alabaster skin. Pale blue eyes filled with a glowing scarlet as her canines elongated.

  Taylor dared a glance at his creator, his eyes going wide at seeing the deadliest of all Fae pushing to full power. Unlike every other magic-wielding being on any plane, Lilith didn’t need wands to focus her abilities. Each finger was a wand capable of delivering a devastating payload of power that rivaled even the collective of the High Council of Elders.

  Taylor processed all of this in a fraction of a second before returning his calculating eyes to the fight ahead of him. Moving at speeds that blurred his body to the naked eye, the elven king began thrusting his wands in geometric patterns, lashing out with hungry electricity that latched onto oncoming enemies born from the Ether.

  Onyx creatures puffed out of existence as the forks of electricity sought them out, King Taylor focusing on the foreign makeup of the intruders.

  Lilith turned her attention on the enormous sorcerer with the piercing white pupils set into a body comprised of midnight.

  As Ether beasts sprung through the air toward the Queen of Air and Darkness, a fork of Taylor’s lightning lashed out in the blink of an eye, leaving behind a puff of smoke.

  Magni swung a huge arm in a wide arc at where Lilith stood her ground, her aura cooling the lava all around her until it was black rock.

  A single finger twitched, and a beam of white-hot plasma cut through the enormous appendage as if it were made of nothing more than tissue paper. The detached arm the size of a shipping container flew aimlessly through the air.

  In response, Magni dashed toward the queen, shrinking to his normal size fast enough that there was a small sonic boom where the air rushed to fill the void his body had once occupied.

  Lilith flinched at the sudden bang, and Magni took full advantage, grabbing his freeflying arm with his remaining hand as he kicked his opponent square in the face.

  As Lilith flew back, Magni swung his still enormous arm like a bat and struck the queen as if she were nothing more than a baseball with the sole purpose of being smashed into the outfield.

  In a microsecond, Lilith recovered and appeared directly behind Magni, using the momentum he had forced onto her to land a double kick just between his shoulder blades.

  Magni’s limbs took a moment to catch up to his rocketing torso, making him bend in unnatural ways.

  To Lilith’s surprise, Magni didn’t scream as the bones of his spine, hips, legs, and remaining arm were reduced to sand from the impact. Instead, the sorcerer dissolved into roiling smoke that grew to the size of a small office building, using his instantly healed arms to grab the castle wall and the rapidly cooling lava-covered ground of the courtyard. Massive fingers dug into the rock, sending up plumes of dust and debris as Magni slowed his momentum easily.

  Seeing her opportunity, Lilith unleashed a barrage of slicing attacks as her hands cut through the air like swift karate strikes, sending out arc after arc of furious energy. Magni’s arms, legs, and even his head were expertly removed from the torso.

  Taylor screamed as a stealthy spider thrust chittering mandibles into the back of one calf, tearing through flesh and scraping bone.

  With a smooth motion, the elven king circled one hand over his head and struck the horrifying spider with a focused blast of dancing electricity. It audibly puffed from existence as Taylor brought his arm back into position, continually striking out at oncoming enemies as if in a graceful dance.

  Magni’s body crumbled toward the ground before evaporating into smoke and rushing toward Lilith, who took a defensive stance in response.

  Just as the smoke crashed into where Lilith was standing, she appeared thirty feet in the air, grabbing one of her wrists while her outstretched palm sent out a torrent of white ice flames streaked with blue lightning.

  Magni, who had reformed with a jagged sword to slice the air where the queen had just been, was met with a rain of mighty cold fire from above. This time, the sorcerer shrieked in agony, prompting all the swarming creatures to immediately turn their attention to the floating Lilith, leaving the bleeding Taylor where he stood on the courtyard wall.

  “Lilith!” Taylor cried out, furiously sending blast after blast of elemental magic to explode the leaping army of the Ether.

  Seeing the cloud of obsidian creatures flying toward her, Lilith had no choice but to drop her attack and go on the defensive.

  Wriggling her fingers in a blur faster than a human eye could track, Lilith began a dance in midair, twirling in place as her hands flowed all around her body.

  Unseen power wavered the air like heat gyrating above black asphalt in a swelterin
g summer’s day. The intense energy lashed out like furious tentacles in all directions, exploding the attackers before they could even get within arm’s reach of the most powerful Fae to have ever walked the plane.

  Taylor watched in awe before movement on the ground caught his attention.

  As his eyes flowed from Lilith to Magni, the dual wands vanished and were replaced once again with the golden bow and enchanted arrows.

  Before even registering what Magni was doing, Taylor sent out arrow after arrow, each packed with alternating forms of elemental magics.

  The elven king furrowed his brow as the projectiles struck an aura of roiling black energy outlined in white.

  Magni stood at the center of the energetic flames with fists clenched and teeth bared. The cooling stone around him had once again been reduced to boiling magma, and Taylor didn’t know if it was from Lilith’s ice flame attack or Magni’s powerful aura…or both.

  Taylor’s eyes were blasted with hot air that made him recoil, feeling the moisture nearly boil away in an instant and almost making the elf fall backward off the walkway.

  Covering the holes in the helmet that allowed him to see, Taylor focused on rejuvenating his eyes so he could return to the fight.

  While crouched and recovering his sight, Taylor became aware that his calf was throbbing with intense pain. A brutal, vein-bulging scream slipped between tight lips as a trembling hand squeezed just under his knee. What truly alarmed him was the pain was spreading in either direction of the wound, and he knew he had been injected with venom from the Ether.

  “Enough!” Magni roared from inside his private inferno. The remaining Ether army faded from view under the absolute authority of Magni’s voice. Whenever supernatural entities, such as demons, lost control over their Ether manifestation, it usually dissolved into ectoplasm before evaporating. Magni had no such constraints, as his entire army’s worth of Ether slipped just out of sight in an instant.

  Lilith ceased her attack, drawing the unseen tentacles of raw energy back into herself, but left the scarlet script—which now covered her entire body—glowing.