Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [50]
The next man was closer, and Morgynn had no time to cast again. She spun away, but his blade glanced across her left arm, opening a small wound that sent shudders throughout her body as her blood recoiled from the open skin. Growling another quick spell, she roared the words madly and swung her right arm around before the man could strike again.
Her fingers grew, extending into long, blackened claws like swords of shadow. She raked these across the hunter's face and chest. Like ephemeral knives of ice, they melted through flesh and bone, leaving gaping scars in his spirit and mind. The man's eyes rolled and his arms went limp. Dropping his sword, he spasmed but tried to maintain control of himself. Her claws had rent his mind and he babbled nonsense as he fell to his knees.
Rhaeme was last, just a few yards away, and she pitied him for a moment-a morbid, mocking pity as she whispered quietly to the dagger at her belt, freeing the clasp that held it in its sheath. She touched its jeweled pommel once and it flew at her command, slamming into the lone hunter's gut with a force born of old Nar magic. It knocked the wind from his lungs and laid him flat on his back. The carved figures on the dagger's handle squirmed against one another and mouthed quietly.
Picking up his dropped sword, she stopped to watch his slow agony. He refused to scream and met her gaze, grasping at the dagger planted in his stomach but unable to pull it free. Her black eyes looked straight through his, not really seeing him, focused on the branching rivers of blood beneath his skin. The bleeding streams of her eyes changed shape on her cheeks, mimicking what she saw inside him. They matched his swift pulse in a red image of twin trees, stripped of leaves and laid bare for winter.
"They barely know they're alive," she mumbled as the rage bled from her limbs, dispersed by her arcane tantrum, "then they die."
Around the pair, the locusts moved from body to body, devouring the fallen and eliciting howls from those not yet passed on. Long she stood, lost in thought as the swarm finished each body, leaving naught but bones under loose armor and clothing. Finally, they gathered in a cloud around her legs and she considered the command that would send them feasting on this last body.
Deciding quickly, Morgynn hissed a sibilant word and the swarm faded into thin air, returning to that foul realm that had spawned them.
"You serve the whores of Savras?" she asked emotionlessly, drained for the moment.
The hunter tried to spit, attempting to show some defiance to her face, but it was all he could do to breathe and force back the burning vomit in his throat. His pulse said so much about him. Strong and stubborn, righteous and honest. Qualities she could respect, but merely a nuisance for her current intentions.
The dagger responded to her twitching fingers, lifting and carrying the hunter's weight with it. His stoicism failed and he gasped, gurgling as a wave of vomit and blood flowed from his innards and into his mouth. She willed him to move slowly, allowing him a few moments to believe he would be disemboweled by the vile weapon, but it would not release him, however much he wished it might.
The blade pushed him against the trunk of a tree, pinning him to the wood. Morgynn followed closely with his lost sword. With a powerful thrust, she buried the blade just beneath his shoulder and deep into the tree. He gasped, his voice barely a whisper, his breath shallow and quick.
"You would die for peddlers of visions and prophecy? Does your life mean nothing?"
Morgynn twirled her fingers languidly and concentrated. The dagger worked itself free from his stomach and returned to her hand.
"Kill me, witch! F-finish it!" he spat through clenched teeth.
She glared at him and put a hand on