Page 268 of Alchemised
Blackthorne stumbled, gasping as if the breath had been knocked out of him. His grip on her loosened, fingers sliding free an instant before he was wrenched backwards.
Helena dropped like a stone. The frigid cold drove her back into consciousness or she would have drowned. She cowered back, looking for Blackthorne in terror and spotted him being dragged by his throat through the water, a wire or rope wrapped around his neck.
The person dragging him wasn’t one of the Resistance.
It was one of the Undying. Immediately identifiable by the helmet and black uniform.
By the time the two were in range of each other, Blackthorne had recovered himself and lunged at his attacker. He’d snatched up a sword from the water and swung, going straight for the head, but the other Undying sidestepped.
Blackthorne tried again, and again. His attacks were precise, the movements of a highly accomplished combat alchemist, but his opponent simply dodged. No weapon. No counterattack. Quick and light, evading as if it were a dance, until Blackthorne left himself open for an instant. An instant was all it took.
The Undying stepped past a blow and with his bare hand, punched through Basilius’s armour and into his chest as easily as if reaching through water. A pale, long-fingered hand dripped red with blood as it pulled out a gleaming piece of metal from Blackthorne’s chest cavity.
Blackthorne collapsed into the floodwater, vanishing.
The entire fight had not even lasted a full minute.
In the chaos, no one else had noticed. Helena tried to breathe in but choked from the pressure inside her lungs. She pressed her arm against the wound, trying to prevent more air from seeping into her chest cavity.
The necrothralls began to drop. A few Aspirants noticed the newcomer and seemed confused about what had happened. Before they could react, they were dead. A weapon gleamed so quick that she barely saw it, just watched the bodies fall.
It was Kaine.
She’d never seen him fight. He’d never really fought with her. But she knew. There was no mistaking that brutal efficiency.
He was as deadly as she’d imagined.
She could see the techniques he’d tried to drill into her, the fluidity that she’d lacked, how quick he was. No movement wasted. The momentum of one kill led to the next.
Bodies fell like stars.
He stalked through the water towards Helena. Not a step wavering, cutting down everything that crossed his path.
When a chimaera leapt at him, he lifted his hand, and the instant it touched the creature, the body unravelled, limbs sloughing apart as if he’d ripped out all the invisible stitches assembling it. One minute a monster, and the next dead in the water.
It wasn’t combat, it was slaughter.
A numbers game. Minimum effort, high return.
It was impossible that he’d ever fought to his full potential before. If anyone had ever fought like that, everyone would have known about it.
He reached into a pocket, pulling out a fistful of something and flinging it outward.
They looked like shimmering bits of metal, and as they flew, she felt his resonance expand, carrying them.
The metal sang through the air, moving like an avian murmuration, and hit like a spray of bullets, tearing through the necrothralls’ skulls.
Rather than fall, the metal stayed suspended in midair, sweeping back, dripping blood and gore. Kaine drew his hand up and they came darting back, cutting through more bodies. A flick of his fingers and they shot out again.
When he reached Helena, his eyes were burning with rage behind his mask, glowing bright as molten silver.
“You idiot,” he said, and dragged her up out of the water, crushing her hard against his chest.
His resonance in the air grew heavier. A wave that swept outwards. She watched it hit the nearest necrothralls and Aspirants. They began jerking and seizing, dropping into the water. The necrothralls crumpled, while the chimaeras and those living were gasping as if their lungs were being compressed, clawing at their throats.
Helena could still breathe, although laboriously, but everyone around her was suffocating.
Sebastian was trying to reach Luc but collapsed into the water. Luc was tearing gouges down his throat as his face turned blue, eyes bulging.
