Just in time: A bolt smashes into the shimmer of Kostos' chest. The second pulls wide as the bowman jerks, sprays stone over them, and Marcus is moving. Three, four, in swallowed smoke and flame.
Cassieopeia's mark drops, choking on a crushed trachea and answering lash of force. It throws her into the ring, deep for that tangle of green. She staggers to her feet on thinning bones and something cracks. A roar of pain. Instinct pulled him behind Kostos, but Isaac knocks past him now, reaching for the familiar shape of enervation. Useless here. The ring seizes it, spins it into new decay. The break mends. The break snaps. Cassieopeia screams.
The third man's behind Marcus, plunges at his back with needle-point knives; a familiar breed of poison. Not a mage at all.
Which leaves one, advancing on Isaac with book in hand. Something of it vibrates with buzzing intensity, spirits segmented like bugs in an album. Her mouth opens, reaching for something, the shimmering grasp of Fade. She never finds it. He crashes into her, stupid and untrained. They both go down. Hands scrabble absurd for purchase, and Isaac's never been a grappler, but the noises – the sweet stench of rot –
It only takes a second to throw him off. By then, her face is mostly gone. The skin drips off her in putrid sheets of black. Spreading, rapid, as the ring feasts on his work. Isaac sprawls, breath heavy. The smears of his hands grow bony, then bonier.
Bodies behind them, around them. A guard pounds past, chased by chiming wisp, and Isaac drags himself up, away from that terrible center.
cw gross stuff
Just in time: A bolt smashes into the shimmer of Kostos' chest. The second pulls wide as the bowman jerks, sprays stone over them, and Marcus is moving. Three, four, in swallowed smoke and flame.
Cassieopeia's mark drops, choking on a crushed trachea and answering lash of force. It throws her into the ring, deep for that tangle of green. She staggers to her feet on thinning bones and something cracks. A roar of pain. Instinct pulled him behind Kostos, but Isaac knocks past him now, reaching for the familiar shape of enervation. Useless here. The ring seizes it, spins it into new decay. The break mends. The break snaps. Cassieopeia screams.
The third man's behind Marcus, plunges at his back with needle-point knives; a familiar breed of poison. Not a mage at all.
Which leaves one, advancing on Isaac with book in hand. Something of it vibrates with buzzing intensity, spirits segmented like bugs in an album. Her mouth opens, reaching for something, the shimmering grasp of Fade. She never finds it. He crashes into her, stupid and untrained. They both go down. Hands scrabble absurd for purchase, and Isaac's never been a grappler, but the noises – the sweet stench of rot –
It only takes a second to throw him off. By then, her face is mostly gone. The skin drips off her in putrid sheets of black. Spreading, rapid, as the ring feasts on his work. Isaac sprawls, breath heavy. The smears of his hands grow bony, then bonier.
Bodies behind them, around them. A guard pounds past, chased by chiming wisp, and Isaac drags himself up, away from that terrible center.