“Damn right, there isn’t.” Lumil raised both fists and summoned the spinning red runes.
A sleepy-eyed Bhandi stared at the flashing portal ridge and her mouth dropped open.
Lumil turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “You ever fight one of those things?”
“I don’t even know what the fuck it is.”
“Fun stuff.” Lumil let out a blood-curdling battle cry and darted toward the second tentacle sneaking out from between the black stone columns. Her first punch ruptured the in-between monster’s appendage, which burst into millions of glittering black shards. “Huh. That was easy.”
Cheyenne could only stare at her mom, who was still jerking where she stood, her feet magically glued to the grass beneath her. “Mom? If you can hear me, what the fuck?”
A black tentacle had snaked across the grass toward Bianca’s ankle. Cheyenne sent a crackling sphere of black energy at the thing and shattered it. A warbling scream rose from the in-between creature trying to free itself from the portal, and the ground trembled.
“Was that thing reaching for your mother?” Corian asked.
“Yeah.” Cheyenne summoned an energy sphere in each hand. “What the hell?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t change anything. Let’s take ‘em down.”
The nightstalker darted away from her in a zigzagging streak of silver light and slashed at the next tentacle crashing toward him from the air.
As L’zar’s rebel magicals darted into the fray, blasting in-between monster parts to small bits, Yurik stared at the portal ridge. “This is the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”
Rhynehart drew his fell pistol. “Guess I forgot to brief you on this part.”
“You’ve seen this before?”
“Couple nights ago. Get moving.” The team leader stepped toward the ridge and fired shot after shot.
Another bellow from the in-between split the air, and a massive, constantly shifting form rose above the highest stone pillars. The FRoE agents unleashed their fell ammo at the wavering shapes. Corian and Maleshi darted about in flashes of silver light, slashing and severing tentacles into huge chunks that disintegrated into the air before they hit the ground. Byrd and Lumil screamed and fought together, punching with red fists and launching green flame into the portal ridge. Persh’al’s whip of blue magic cracked against a huge pincer darting out of the portal and snapped one half cleanly off.
Cheyenne launched black energy spheres at the much thinner, faster tentacles snaking out of the portal and lashing at Bianca’s arms and legs. Why do they want her? She has nothing to do with this!
A long, thin black barb shot from between two stones toward Cheyenne’s face. She ducked and launched another attack. Glowing red eyes appeared beyond the wall of flashing lights in the portal, followed by a hulking, undulating mass without any real shape except for dozens of flailing tentacles and a mouth that looked like a blooming flower.
As she aimed an energy sphere at that mouth, the weirdly shaped feature burst open and sprayed a dozen more glistening barbs at the halfling. Cheyenne raised a translucent black shield in front of her and her seizing mother. The barbs pinged off it like metal pellets, and a second later, she felt the cold, tight grasp of a thin tentacle coiling around her ankle.
Snarling, she flung an energy sphere at the tentacle as it jerked her off her feet and sent her crashing to the ground on her ass. Blinking at the shock racing up her spine, Cheyenne unleashed orb after orb at the hulking black thing. The monster’s scream of pain and fury was echoed by two more from farther down the portal ridge, where the other magicals battled the more easily shattered creatures.
Cheyenne tried to get to her feet and had to abandon that idea when another spray of barbs headed toward Bianca. She raised another shield in front of her mom and was whipped off her feet again by another darting tentacle. “Come on!”
Bianca let out an involuntary hiss as her body trembled on the grass. The flashing lights pulsed faster, growing brighter by the second. The rest of the in-between creature with the open petal-like mouth lurched between two stone pillars with not enough space for its body. The air filled with the sound of tearing flesh as pieces of the creature broke off. Cheyenne hurled attack after attack at it, trying to get to her feet and keep the lashing tentacles away from her mom at the same time.
The broken shards of the in-between monster rose into the air like hundreds of tiny flying war machines and buzzed in a swarm toward Bianca.
Cheyenne studied them and blasted them out of the sky at the same time, but most were fast enough to avoid her attacks. And the activator’s not picking up a thing? Does it only work on these in the in-between or what?
The flying shards raced across Cheyenne’s body, peppering her face and neck and the top layer of her trenchcoat with slicing cuts. She hissed and stepped in front of her mom, glancing briefly at the shredded sleeve of her jacket. I’m so fucking done getting my clothes ruined by this bullshit.
It only took a split-second’s thought of the Nimlothar seed that had bonded to her before her drow magic blazed even hotter inside her. Black flames rippled across Cheyenne’s flesh and burned behind her eyes. As she went to fire a column of drow fire at the emerging monster ripping itself to shreds to emerge from the portal, a streak of black and white darted past her.
A brilliant flash of purple light ignited inside the monster, then L’zar slipped back into normal speed and looked over his shoulder at Cheyenne. Shattered monster pieces spilled from his clenched fist like water. “They’re trying to take Bianca.”
“You think?” Cheyenne’s voice didn’t sound like her own, but she ignored it and shot a spray of black flames inches away from L’zar’s head to join his purple magic blooming inside the monster. The second her magic hit his, the creature ignited in a burst of purple and black, spraying
