Page 51 of Soul of Thorns
Black smoke wings flash in front of us, and we both slide to a stop. I blast light at the wraith, and it screeches, flying in the opposite direction. But my hand flies to my mouth as a swarm of wraiths drop in front of us. They twist and spin together, creating a wall, rising in the sky, blocking our path.
“Fuck,” Caelynn hisses. Another wall of wraiths forms behind us.
I grip Caelynn’s hand, panting desperately. My magic is nearly full, though I suspect Caelynn can’t say the same. I can fight. I can probably blast through a set of them and maybe get us through... maybe. I pull in my magic, charging the heat, gathering it to fight for me.
The wraiths shift, each one moving to the right, forming a spinning circle around us. The wind picks up as their speed does.
“Come to die, children,” they moan.
They move so quickly around us that soon, they blur together and the wind rips at our clothes.
“They’re making a fucking wraith-magic tornado,” Caelynn shrieks. “What the fuck?”
I pull her in closer, arms wrapping around her waist. She melts into me. There’s no escape now. They have us surrounded on every side. She presses her face into my neck. I realize this might be our last moment alive.
A rush of ice-cold magic overwhelms me for one quick instant, and I yell out in surprise. Caelynn clenches my arms, fingers digging into my skin. Her eyes are pressed closed in concertation.
“What are you doing?” I call over the roar of the raging storm.
The dump of glacial magic bombards me again, only, this time, I recognize it as shadow magic.
“Caelynn!” I cry out.
She doesn’t respond. Is this another one of her episodes? Has she blacked out again?
The raging storm of wraith magic surrounds us on every side. They made a tornado out of their joint magic, and we are at the center of it. The center, which is closing very quickly.
The blur of black wind sweeps toward us in one massive surge. The roaring winds rip at our clothing. My bag flies into the storm, all of our supplies lost. I desperately grip my pocket to make sure I haven’t lost my precious stone. It warms in my pocket—or is that just my imagination?
One last surge and the brunt of the storm slams into my back, ripping through my flesh.
I scream as chaos takes over every sense. There is pain and magic and chaos and—her. Caelynn’s intense grip on my forearms barely keeps me grounded. My feet release from the ground, claws digging into my shoulder, ripping. Caelynn cries out, though I don’t even know how I could hear her in the thundering roars of the dead, but it’s inside of me. Her pain. My pain.
Our pain.
Her scream echoes through the tornado of wraiths, gripping me, burning, searing. I thrust a wall of luminescent magic around us and their magic falters. We fall back to the ground in a heap of limbs. I can do that again and again, but eventually, I’ll run out of magic and they won’t. There are too many of them.
And there is nowhere to run.
The roaring wall of wind crashes into us again, and Caelynn leaps toward me as she latches her arms around my body, and that cold shadow magic grips me again.
I’m torn apart. My skin splitting. I’m certain death has me in its grip when even my mind is split, giving way to the void of dark shadows.
