Page 47 of Hell Sent

By the time he sensed it, it was already too late. A wave of energy passed over him, and then a magical barrier encircled him. It cut Raiya off from him, separating their hands. The sounds in the room grew muffled.

Azreth raised a hand to the barrier. The wall was transparent, but completely solid to his touch, just like the cage Eunaios had placed him in.

Dread filled him. He pounded on the barrier. Nothing happened.

Raiya was looking down at the floor beneath him. She kicked aside the long rug that ran down the aisle, and carved into the floor was a circle of runes from which the barrier had sprouted. A trap. He’d walked into a trap. Again.

He had underestimated the cultists. He’d grown too comfortable around mortals, and he’d become complacent.

Outside the barrier, the cultists surrounded Raiya. He watched them put their hands on her, pulling her away from him.

“Stop!” he shouted, pointlessly. No one heard him, or no one listened. Raiya elbowed the cultists away with surprising strength and then pointed her baton at Azreth, at the barrier. He flinched as magic exploded against it—but it remained unmarred.

“Destroy the runes!” he shouted, pointing to the floor. Raiya’s wide eyes followed his gaze. She aimed the baton, but before she could shoot again, one of the cultists grabbed her. Spells and blades flashed as Raiya twisted away from them. Azreth pounded against the barrier uselessly, furiously.

Through the jumble of bodies, he spotted the baton again, raised high in Raiya’s hand. It glowed bright, then shot a blast at the ceiling.

There was a shower of dust, then rubble. People scattered, covering their heads. A corner of the room collapsed with a crash, and the room was entirely obscured by a cloud of dust.

When the dust cleared, Raiya was gone.

Azreth’s heart pounded, silence echoing in his ears. The walls of the barrier seemed to close in, though they did not move. He watched the exit at the end of the hall, where Raiya must have run.

She was gone.

The sense of loss that filled him was a physical hollowing, like something had been torn out of his body and left along with her.

“Go after her!” Gereg said sharply, her voice muffled by the barrier. Several people were already out the door, but he didn’t think they’d catch her. Somehow, he sensed she would be all right. An empty, cold calm came over him.

Priestess Gereg’s hood had fallen down during the fight, and her hair and makeup were mussed. Another cultist dutifully began rebraiding her long hair for her. Gereg still looked furious, which pleased him.

She turned to leer up at him, her eyes roving over his body in a way that made him feel disgusting. She was admiring him—thinking of what she would use him for.

“You’ll do as your goddess commands you,” she said to him.

“I have no goddess.”

“Do not insult the dark lady in her own temple!” she hissed.

He enjoyed making her angry. It was all he had now. “Your goddess is nothing.”

Everyone gasped.

“Don’t say another word,” Gereg said, her voice low and dangerous. The edges of her face, the parts where the paint had worn away, were turning pink.

Azreth had never really tried to insult someone before. He wasn’t sure how to do it, so he simply said the worst things he could think of.

“Your goddess is weak and ineffectual,” he sneered. “I would spit on her.”

The cultists gasped again. Some of them shouted arguments back at him.

“I do not find her beautiful or strong or good,” he went on. “I do not respect her. I look down on her as I would an insect.”

Someone threw something at him—a bit of rubble. Several more followed suit. He ignored them.

“A so-called goddess who wants only death?” he shouted at them. “She creates nothing, builds nothing? Does she see nothing, too? Hear and feel nothing?”

A mage tried to levitate a set of manacles through the barrier. Azreth grabbed them out of the air and hurled them back into the mage’s face. The man fell to the floor and didn’t move as other concerned cultists crowded around him. He might have been dead—it was difficult to tell.

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