Page 95 of Mantle

As he began to do so, his white power blazing as he hovered his hands over the desiccated areas of Sylas’ body, I asked Sylas, “Where is your serum?”

He moved his head and blinked, trying to gesture with very little real ability to do so.

I followed the slight movement and saw a silver briefcase open and upside down over on the opposite side of the room under the window.

I pushed to my feet and rushed over there.

There was shattered glass all over the place, liquid seeping into the floorboards. And as I picked up the case, underneath it were fifty empty syringes and a few more shattered.

“It’s all destroyed,” I told Sylas.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

There was a way for me to extract the serum from the floorboards, but as I called my magic to begin doing just that, a sharp pins and needles sensation attacked my magic.

I jerked back and watched in horror as a film marking a cloaking spell tore away to reveal sparks of blue magic all over the place in amongst the serum fluid, the glass and mess.

I reached out and performed a quick spell to identify the magical signature.

The very same one we’d come here for in the first place.

Corvin Morvain’s.

He’d contaminated the serum. I couldn’t extract it and refill the syringes now.

It was ruined. Unusable.

I turned away. “Is there anymore? Anywhere? A backup supply? Anything?” I asked Sylas.

“Coat… I was… injecting myself… when he… attacked.”

I caught sight of his coat on the floor over by the other side of the couch.

I literally leapt over there and snatched it up, reaching into his inside pocket where I knew he kept it when we were working at Arcanum Conclave. I felt it and pulled it out.

My gut twisted when I saw there was only a quarter of it left remaining.

I walked back to him, seeing that Cassius had healed his torso now, his leg, and his right arm, even his hand was back to flesh and bone. Just his left arm to go now.

“No,” he told me, his voice firmer and stronger now he was almost healed.

“Cassius can’t cure the actual infection, Sylas.”

“You can use what’s remaining in that syringe to break Corvin’s spell tracking the instrument of death for Ariana. You know it’s the Wrath of Hades. Find it first, coat it with the serum and it will break the spell, shattering Corvin’s portion of it. It will spare her.”

“If I do this, you’ll be desiccating again within hours.”

“I’m a lone wolf, Kai. Nobody is going to miss me. That’s not me being self-pitying; it’s a fact. You have finally found love and a wonderful familial unit with your foursome. And Ariana is vitally important to the world. As I told her when I conveyed that warning to her, she needs to endure, her Light is needed. She is needed.”

Cassius caught my eye.

I looked away and stared at the syringe in my hand.

“You’re a real difficult bastard, you know that?”

“What are you—”

“Of course you will be missed.”

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