Chapter 24: Break on Through

The first few seconds were an abstract nightmare, but I pushed through the unfamiliar. At that point, everything I did was within my mind’s eye. I was one with darkness. I had to trust that all my movements would play out as planned.

I immediately performed a push spell, forcibly casting with both hands, hoping to repel the boars farther back into the distance. It was hard to explain how, but I sensed the weight of the push, so it must have done something.

I quickly edged to my left. Tiny Jem had stopped me a foot from my original destination, but I mapped where I needed to aim. There was a large branch that I’d initially been prepared to propel into him, but now I needed it for something else.

I reached out, ensnaring the wood with my magic, and drew it to me.

Somehow, I knew I had it in my hand. With my senses gone, I couldn’t verify that I was holding anything. I put my faith in correctly assessing my memory and even more in casting my next magic spell.

Using my free hand, I quickly flashed through the hand ballet to summon fire, using the branch to create a torch.

Will my magic fire give me light?

At the end of the hand dance, a tiny spark transferred from my fingertips to the branch. I concentrated on the fire, and the spark grew into a brighter illuminating torch with each thought. Although my vision had returned, it was not normal. Instead, my surroundings looked like a watercolor painting with black, gray, and red hues. My new visibility covered as much of the area as the natural light, but everything had an afterimage that shifted off and snapped back. But I had sight.

Yes!

Unfortunately, my improvised gambit only gave me the light to witness my death. Two of the boars had just lunged into the air at me. Their glaring red eyes glowed with bloodlust, and saliva spewed from their mouths. I didn’t know if it would be their teeth or their claws that would deliver the death blow. I wish I could say I reacted swiftly, but I fell backward, terrified.

Before gravity pulled them down onto me, Hellie ferociously rammed into the boar on the right, careening it into the other.

I quickly stood and took stock of everything.

The other boars were not within the lit area. Maybe I had pushed them back. The large, dead tree that Tiny Jem had leaned against was gone too.

Damn, that was a hell of a push! Could the tree have pinned them?

I looked over at Hellie’s fight with the two boars. It was brutal. Her clothing was ripped as well as her flesh, and she was gushing blood—it had a bizarre, resonating, luminous tint that popped against everything it splattered on.

I concentrated on her, and through our connection, I knew she had the power to kill them. Although the boars were hungry for me, she held them back, ripping into them and pulling out chunks of meat, crippling them.

But there were two other boars out there in the black. Hellie was handling two. But there was no way, even in her superior human form, that she could beat all four at once.

I had to return the favor and keep the other boars off her—give her time to take her current opponents down.

Where are the boars? Are they in front of me? Had they flanked us?

I needed more light. Using the fire I’d manifested, I pushed embers into every loose branch I could see from the woodland floor, creating an arsenal of torches. I then stabbed the base of my original torch into the ground. Once again, using both hands, I focused on the torches, slowly lifting them and moving them out in a circle around me.

My field of vision had become twenty times greater. The torches enabled me to see deep into the woods all around me.

The dead tree’s massive trunk had carved a path deep into the forest. I deduced the boars might be at the end of it. I floated several torches along it, illuminating the destruction. I was hoping the boars were dead.

Before I moved down the trail, I plunged all the torches behind me into the ground with my right hand. That gave Hellie plenty of light. I couldn’t tell through our connection whether her human form made her susceptible to losing her senses.

Content with my decision, I picked up the torch at my side and slowly advanced. With my left hand alone, I could maintain the levitation of the torches in front of me. I moved them down the path of the carnage.

I can’t believe the devastation I caused with that two-handed push.

The path was sixty yards from where I stood and was still extending. Suddenly, a few of the torches jostled and sparked into embers. The boars were alive. I could see an outline of the pair charging in the distance.

It was my turn to protect my companion.

I ran, screaming headlong at the boars. But my battle cry only echoed in my mind.

Thinking myself clever, I dispatched half of my torches as projectiles into the devil creatures, but they burst into splinters against their hides, similar to wood hitting a combine, instantly extinguishing the fire.

Shit. How can I defend myself against Gluttony’s pets?

Maybe I couldn’t. My main goal was to keep these bastards off Hellie, but I wanted to stay alive.

When I was about thirty feet away from the boars, I took a hard right, stretching the distance away from Hellie.

I’ll get them away from you, girl.

I physically forced myself harder than I ever had, running my ass off. The sad thing about it was I couldn’t feel any of it—not my heartbeat, my feet hitting the ground, or my chest heaving. I imagined my body had to be at the point of fatigue.

One by one, all the torches except the one in my hand lost their magic. I must have been exhausted.

I looked back once to ensure the boars had followed me. Yes, they had, galloping hard, phasing in and out of the darkness at the edge of the light. They were gaining, closing the gap. It was only a matter of minutes before they were within striking distance.

Ahead of me, I spotted a tree with a massive trunk towering above the others. Maybe I could devise a plan if I got to higher ground. But there was no way and no time to climb. So, without thinking, I just instinctively performed the push spell on myself.

As I lifted into the air, spinning like a rotor blade haphazardly upward, I focused on the strongest branch to land on. But I wildly overshot my target and slammed into a thicket of branches.

Fortunately, I caught my footing and secured myself. Unfortunately, I had dropped the torch. Looking down, I saw it lodged in some branches below me.

Even farther down, one of the boars kept aggressively trying to climb, but it wildly fell backward after each attempt. The other boar circled the tree, staring up—no doubt communicating through their movements, working out a way to either get up the tree or bring it down.

I had to think of something fast.

I tried to pull the torch to me, but that was when I discovered I had tapped out my magic.

Do I have a magic gauge bar?

I started to move away from the spot I was holding, hoping to get to the torch, but I stopped once I saw my hands, arms, and legs wearily swaying.

My body had to be dazed by the awkward landing, but I had no sensation of it. Afraid I would unknowingly succumb to exhaustion, I doubled down on my spot and hugged the branches.

After I settled my thoughts, I spotted the tree limbs shaking around me. I immediately looked down from my perch and saw the boars ramming the tree.

F#@k!

At some point, if they keep doing that, this tree will collapse, but before that, the torch will fall, taking away its light. And I’ll lose the only advantage I have right now.

Even though death seemed imminent, having those fleeting moments of safety gave me time to think.

Replaying my memories, I realized that Tiny Jem said he used rune magic to set his deprivation spell. In The Lords of Omni, rune magic had two fatal flaws. One, it relied on proximity—meaning the runes had to be set within the forest. Two, if the runes were destroyed, so, too, was the magic.

As I worked out the details, I noticed it was getting harder to think clearly. My thoughts spaced out, like I was intermittently losing consciousness.

I was on the verge of blacking out.

I focused every vestige of my willpower onto Hellie, prodding and poking into her mindscape until I sensed her anima and her rage.

Hellie, seek the runes. I know you can track the magic. Then destroy them so you can transform and kill these motherf#@kers.

From that point forward, my fate was in Hellie’s hands.

I floated from watching the boars rush into the tree, chipping away chunks of bark and its inner layers, to what had to be sight through Hellie’s eyes.

Is this real?

She had either left or killed the boars and was cutting through the woods at a blurred pace. She carried one of the torches I had left for her, and the flame’s magical properties made it seem like she was dashing underwater.

That’s it, girl! Find the runes! Destroy them!

When I flickered back to my eyesight, I saw my torch finally dislodge and fall. As soon as one of the boars passed over it, either the fire was extinguished or I blacked out. It didn’t matter either way. I succumbed to the darkness.

Am I dead? The faint words of my final thought faded out to nothingness.

In the next I-don’t-know-how-many-moments, it felt like I was in the stillness of the void again—the place where I created Hellie. I was everything and nothing until it all burst outward like a tidal wave.

First, I felt pangs in my body pulsating all over. Then I heard the gurgling of my breath, followed by the metallic taste of blood, which I coughed out so I wouldn’t choke on the large amount that had pooled in my mouth. Then, a short moment later, the pungent smell of rot and filth forced me to open my eyes and see the vastness of the night sky filled with stars above.

I was no longer in the tree. The boars had toppled it, and it leaned into its neighboring trees. I was oddly slumped over my backpack, still secured to my back.

As I moved to sit up, I immediately saw guts roll off my body onto other fleshy pieces surrounding me. The disemboweled remains of the boars were splashed in a circle all around me. Despite this being my second time waking up to dead things, I vomited.

Holy shit! How did I survive? Hellie.

She was sitting just beyond the edge of my feet, guarding me. She hadn’t moved since I returned from unconsciousness. I struggled to my feet and took a few steps till I collapsed into her back, hugging her blood-soaked coat. I immediately reeled back in disgust to wipe bits of moist fleshy tissue and gnarly innards off my face and Hellie’s fur. Then I re-embraced her.

I held her tight and stayed there for a few minutes, doling out love and compliments. I was grateful that she had heard my thoughts and kept us alive.

I twisted around in front of her, and she looked down, her eyes glowing white.

Staring back, I said, “Let’s go kill that gluttonous bastard, Tiny Jem…Gula…or better yet, Hellhound Food.”