Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(78)
“This might sting,” Tenn said. Then he opened to Earth and drew.
It was a cheap trick, one he’d learned early on as an easy way to practice his new Sphere. He changed the pigments in Dreya’s wrist, tracing the tracking rune into her skin. It wasn’t healing and it wasn’t harming, but it still required him to touch her to make it work. It took only a few seconds. The rune stood out delicate and dark on her wrist. Devon was next, and this time Tenn changed the pigment to white, the rune glowing ghostly against Devon’s dark flesh. Finally, he traced it into his own wrist.
“Memorize these,” he said, holding out his wrist. “Once I’m outside of the circle, it’s the only way we’ll have of keeping track of each other.”
Tenn took a deep breath and stared out at the encampment. What he was about to do was suicide, but there was no fear or anticipation. Coldness filled him with a dead resolution. Jarrett’s face came to mind—is this how he had felt before leaping to his death? Is this how it felt to truly sacrifice yourself for something greater: the clarity, the stillness?
The absolute calm.
“Remember the signals?”
“Yes.”
“Then...I guess I’ll see you soon,” he said, the words tasting horribly close to a lie. They nodded solemnly, and Dreya opened to Air.
The gathered stones hovered up and twisted a slow orbit around him. The moment they left the ground, he opened to Earth and siphoned energy into each stone. The runes glowed green with life. He could tell from the sudden glaze in Dreya’s eyes that the runes had worked; he was invisible.
He jumped and dodged side to side, just to make sure, but the stones continued their rotation around him undisturbed. So long as Dreya stayed focused on the tracking runes, she should be able to keep the stones centered on him. So many shoulds, but it was the best he could hope for.
“I’ll miss you guys,” he said.
As expected, neither of the twins heard him.
He stepped out of the circle, and they vanished from sight.
For a moment, he stood there, staring down at the army, Earth fueling his senses as he sought out the huddle of Witches. He could feel them, just barely, congregated near the center of the encampment. He couldn’t tell how many were left, but he had a feeling it was a smaller number than what they’d started with.
He stilled his thoughts, gripped the staff tighter.
Then he ran down into the mouth of hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
HALFWAY DOWN THE HILL, Tenn sent a surge of Earth into the branches of the tree beside the twins, making the limbs shudder. The first signal. A heartbeat later, chaos broke out in the encampment.
Devon’s work was quick and efficient, a vicious blend of calculated destruction and artistic flourishes. The dozen or so campfires blazed into life with a roar, searing the sky with pillars of flame. Fire spread in seconds, leaping to ignite flesh and canvas. It was beautiful, in a way, the smear of orange against the dark. Beautiful, save for the scent of burning Howls. Not that Tenn had any time to admire from afar. Even though the fires made sweat drip down his skin, he ran straight into the heart of the army. Everything was sound and heat, screams and cinders, and the madness slashed a grin across his face.
Finally, the monsters would know how it felt to fear the night.
Kravens swarmed past him, but they edged around his runes like water flowing around a stone. Up close, when he wasn’t trying to kill them or dodge their blows, he saw them for their true monstrosity—graying flesh sagging or peeling off, strands of fat and blood and pus dripping from every open sore and orifice, bones broken and twisted and reshaped as talons and spikes, spines horribly bent and arms and fingers elongated. Even worse was the smell, the cloying sweetness of rot and blood that seemed to crawl into the recesses of his throat. He wanted to gag. Wanted to strike out and end their putrid existence.
He didn’t.
He just ran, ducking and dodging and waiting for a monster to stumble past his runes, but they never did. The nightmares shoved around him unaware, and it wasn’t just the kravens that sought out prey, but the more humanoid Howls—the pale bloodlings and deceptively beautiful succubi. They stood out from the throng, both crazed and aloof. But even they were repelled by Tenn’s defenses, and he marveled at how well the runes were actually working. He just hoped he worked fast enough that Matthias couldn’t read his thoughts—hopefully, it was something that could only be done when sleeping or passed out.
His luck held. He reached the Witches without being discovered. As he’d hoped, they were barely guarded—why should they be when Matthias’s entire army surrounded them? Instead, there was a single necromancer, a man in an old ski coat and knit hat. Not exactly the most intimidating or dark choice in attire, but it was cold. The Sphere of Earth glowed bright in the man’s pelvis, and he held a stone covered in pulsating runes. So that was why the guard was so loose—Tenn could feel the strands of magic twisting from the necromancer, twining into the Spheres of the entire clan.
Each of their Earth Spheres were being drained. Just enough to make them weak and tired, enough to make using magic an impossible chore. He remembered the feeling of being tapped well.
The Witches themselves gathered in a tight knot near the bonfire, the only group in the entire camp that hadn’t moved. Only a few were dressed to be out in the cold; the rest had clearly been taken in their sleep. One man near the edge wore nothing but jeans, his feet bare and frostbitten, another kid—a few years younger than Tenn—was missing his arms. Just the sight made Tenn’s blood boil. All of the Witches had a sort of stoicism to them, though, one that said this wasn’t the worst they had undergone.