The chairs in the jury box were filled with broken bodies that my mind refused to catalog. The audience seating was even worse. The majority of the portals had opened above that section of the courtroom, and those sitting there had been caught completely unaware. Their bodies had been torn to shreds, the pieces tossed around like hurricane debris.
The only survivors had gathered in the courtroom’s far corner, to the right of the wide, empty judges’ bench. Tycho Reyes and the three sacred sages still on their feet had triggered defensive techniques to shelter themselves and a handful of other Empyreals who’d managed to survive the first wave of madness. Sanrin was with them, slumped in the corner, eyes fluttering as he tried to hang onto consciousness. A ragged gash across his face and a puncture wound on the left side of his chest leaked far too much blood. He wouldn’t last long.
A swarm of Locust Court spirits surrounded the survivors and hammered at their defenses with glowing fists of pure jinsei. Already, the shields raised by the sages were flickering. It wouldn’t be long before they collapsed and the spirits had their way with the Empyrean Flame’s most powerful servants.
I despised Tycho for the way he’d used me, but I wouldn’t let anyone, not even him, die by the Locusts.
My Eclipse nature surged within me, and I embraced it. These were the enemies I’d been born to fight.
And I would destroy them.
The Assault
I’D EXPECTED MY ECLIPSE nature to rage at the sight of dozens of Locust Court spirits. Instead, it became a still, icy presence that surrounded my core like a protective mother bear sheltering a cub. It was strangely comforting in the way it numbed me to the horrors and let me focus on the killing that needed to be done.
The hungry spirits were too intent on reaching the prey right under their noses to notice my arrival. Their single-minded lust to devour the living gave me a few moments to assess the situation and prepare myself for battle, and I took advantage of every second.
I threw bonds from the Borrowed Core technique far and wide, harnessing the courthouse’s many unseen inhabitants. We cycled our breaths together, filling my core with jinsei and my aura with aspects.
I summoned my fusion blade, called forth my serpents, and let out a long, slow breath.
It was time.
I crammed jinsei into my channels and hurled myself at the back of the Locust Court horde. My weapon rose and fell in brutal butchery. Its blade carved through screaming spirits, ripping their corrupted jinsei bodies to shreds and casting them aside in swathes of gore. My serpents speared the creatures’ cores with deadly accuracy and drained their jinsei in one greedy gulp after another.
For the first time since that fateful day in Singapore, I unleashed my Eclipse nature. My foes were not humans. They weren’t even beasts. They were evil incarnate, hungry spirits who plotted and schemed beyond the Far Horizon, their leaders bent on devouring all of humanity to fuel their wanton lust for conquest.
I was an Eclipse Warrior, and these fearsome beasts would know fear this day.
My onslaught annihilated a dozen of the Locust Court before they recognized they were under attack. The creatures withered and burst apart in blooms of gray threads as I drained their jinsei. Without sacred energy, the spirits were truly nothing.
“Mr. Warin.” Tycho called out to me in a surprisingly calm voice. “How good of you to join us. I hope you brought more reinforcements.”
“No such luck,” I shouted over the yowling of the furious spirits, slicing a cluster of them into jinsei-spurting chunks with my fusion blade. My serpents speared another pair who’d charged from my side and drained them away into gray threads. “I’m all you’re getting.”
“That’s a pity.” Despite his calm demeanor, Tycho’s face bore signs of stress. Deep shadows under his eyes showed the strain of this encounter clearly. As strong as the sages were, the surprise attack by the Court had pushed them to their limits. “We tried to summon aid when the assault began, but our attackers were clever enough to block any communications in or out of the area. We will have to make the best of it.”
The powerful Empyreals redoubled their efforts and pushed the shield they’d raised back onto their attackers. The defensive technique’s surface flared with sparks of jinsei that lashed out to gouge chunks of crystallized jinsei from the creatures’ twisted forms. The stink of ozone flooded the courtroom, and the foul creatures shrieked and recoiled from their prey.
Trapped between my wailing fusion blade and the aggressive defense mounted by the sages, the monsters split into two groups. The smaller part of the horde kept up the pressure on Tycho’s team. The others fanned out around me, searching for a blind spot. Those behind me darted in to swipe at my back with claws and stingers, then fell back out of sword’s reach when I spun to face them. It was a classic wolf pack attack that would wear me down if I didn’t end this fight in a big hurry.
Pure offense had worked while I had the element of surprise and the spirits had their attention split. Now that most of them had focused on me, I switched to a defensive stance and activated the Thief’s Shield technique. That irritated my Eclipse nature, which wanted me to keep slashing and draining my enemies to feed it, and I struggled to control its dark urge. The Shield would still steal aspects and jinsei from anything that touched me, though much slower than I could manage with my
