Page 59 of Stone Seduction
I’d willed this power to work differently in my hands. Plus, the liquid snack part didn’t sit right with me.
I stared at the damage, utterly enraptured by my awesome skills.
The beams of light returned, the elevator vanishing into the floor.
“How are you feeling?” Luna asked.
Slowly, I turned to face her, incredible energy thumping in my blood.
“Ready for more,” I purred.
She looked to Seth.
He nodded.
A minute later, the roof slid open, the walls sinking into the ground. Daylight stung my eyes, cold air whipping my hair.
Interesting.
As my eyes adjusted to the brilliant sunlight and the clear azure skies, a bunch of pink motes drifted past my face.
“We’re outside,” I stated the obvious, taking in the ring of mountains around me.
A rocky, snowy landscape flowed to the base of the circular range, crawling up the sides to the white peaks.
Where were we? How far had we flown from Brinecrest?
My eyes found the terrifyingly delicious sight of a hunched cornucopia bursting from the ground, yellow fungi growing around its opening.
A mote vent.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Never mind the location,” Seth replied.
The three of them were no longer behind a screen.
How brave of them to think they were safe.
Hot air belched from the vent every thirty seconds or so, carrying a sickly-sweet stink. Motes came from the deepest parts of the earth to wreak their chaos.
“And why are we here in this mysterious place?” My foreboding tone frightened me a little.
“Training, of course,” Seth answered.
I flexed my fingers, once again resisting the temptation to hurl something at him. My new addition might be an entertaining spectacle for a few minutes.
The next burst of hot air shook the ground, a ball of orange motes flying out of the darkness. They floated a few feet away from the vent, slowly falling to the floor. Brightening, changing, on the cusp of making a monster.
I activated the power to devour the motes. A magnetic buzz sucked them over, the particles sticking to me as if I werecovered in glue. They glittered angrily, tugging in a bid to pull free. But I absorbed them, consuming their magic. Ending them, their deaths a painful assault on my body, like a bunch of tiny blades plunging into each spot they occupied.
“Fuck…” I wheezed, falling to my knees. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
My veins filled with fire, my chest ready to collapse. Mote death after mote death trapped me in a vortex of pain, the destruction of their magic an abomination, a sickness growing inside me.
Abomination.
The word pulsed in my skull, my temples throbbing in agony.
