The blade embedded between the demon’s ribs with a squelch. Senka doubled over, gasping. Black goo gushed from the wound,coating her hands, and spilled onto the cold stone floor. But Destonne wasn’t done and twisted the blade for good measure. It should have been a fatal blow.
And it would have been if she had a heart.
Her wet hands slipped on the knife’s hilt as she tried to wrench it free. Before Dez could retreat, she sank her claws into his wounded arm. She shrieked as her hand tangled with his thorns. Crimson sprayed as Dez staggered back, roaring through clenched teeth. Senka studied her mangled hand and a sinister viciousness settled into her stare.
The guard’s hold on the blade at Emmery’s neck slackened as they fought to decipher the bigger threat. Emmery took advantage of that brief flicker of hesitation, stole the moment, and seized her magic. It sprang to her hands and she let thekhaosflame become her.
Let it bleed into her bones.
Let it burneverything.
Her fire feasted on the damp air. She cast an untamed tornado of fire, sent it whirling, and engulfed the guards. Their screams tore from their throats, brief, almost inhuman, like the man she’d seen burn at the stake those years ago across the gate. But now, she held the guards’ pain in her hands.
And that control felt too good as the fire consumed them. They fell down, gurgling, their armour melting, merging with their skin in a hot molten mass, metal becoming man, and man becoming metal. They writhed helplessly against the flames and crashed like brittle towers, as they struck the ground in a motionless puddle of blood, melted flesh, and gold.
The sight should have struck Emmery with remorse, disgust, some glimmer of emotion, but her vision blurred as anger burned through her, and she became a severed limb, still twitching but no longer anchored to her body.
She sucked air between her teeth as she called her flame. Begged it to come back to her. Begrudgingly, her magic obeyed but threatened to overtake her at the next slip.
Senka ripped the knife from her chest and tossed it aside. The steel clattered to the ground and burst into a cloud of dust. Her eyes set on Destonne. He clutched his arm though blood seeped between his fingers and he stood, spine straight, unfaltering, unfearing, but vulnerable, and weaponless.
“You will pay for that,” she hissed, her pale eyes glowing. Something in her gaze shifted, pulsing likeKennamagic, but much more sinister. Insidious.
Senka’s magic unleashed. Darkness shadowed the braziers, snuffed the flames, and plunged the room into shadows.
And she shot that nightmarish darkness at Destonne.
For a brief moment, Emmery thought he would be alright, and he could fight it with his stubborn will and fearless stare.
But then his back arched in an unnatural curve, and he choked like his throat turned inside-out, his organs rearranged, intestines jerked from his body like sausage links and tied in a tidy, meaty bow.
He fell to his knees. His bones cracked on the slab of stone and Destonne clutched his temples. His fingers impaled on the thorns and his face contorted in pure, unadulterated agony, his mouth agape as if he needed to scream, as if the pain was too much to hold inside his body and he needed to expel it.
But no sound came.
Emmery sprinted, not a second thought given to what she would do when she reached them. All she knew was she would torch that demon bitch.
Blood ran down Dez’s fingers and chest, soaked the stone floor as his thorns wrestled in his body, like they tired of their cage and craved freedom. He crumpled. His forehead struck the floor.
“Get out of my head!” he bellowed, pure suffering soaking his words. Nothing could compare. “Get out.Get out—Get out!”
Then he screamed.
It was unlike any sound Emmery had ever heard. It wasn’t human or monster. It embodied pain, agony, and was laced with demons and shadows and a penance for existence.
Senka drank it in, became drunk on it, as if this was the only meal she had ever consumed, and she’d start a war to taste this sweet nectar.
But the demon became so intoxicated by Dez’s pain, she didn’t see Emmery coming. It was her first and last mistake.
Emmery leapt at Senka. Herkhaosflame flared as her hands curled around the demon’s throat. Her fire trailed her arms, joined Senka’s body where their limbs met, but the demon's magic kept its grip on Dez.
And as he screamed and screamed andscreamed,it was Emmery’s name he cried,until she was sure his vocal cords shredded. The need for destruction tore through her, wrenching loose a desire she could no longer contain.
Senka’s skin charred beneath her grasp, flaking off in black sloughs. “I see you,” the demon hissed. “I see what you have done. Who you are. What lives inside you. You are a monster like me.”
If she was a monster, so be it. She would drag this one to the depths of the Hollow with her if it meant the demon’s end.
The shadow inside Emmery reared its head, as if awoken from a long rest. The same shadow that had edged her vision the day Dez was attacked by Hollowhounds, and the day she’d fought the siren in the dark water.