Some kind of idiotic survival instinct made me throw out my other hand like that would stop a bullet.
“Moldering Bones!” I yelled, infusing the block with another wall of Miasma.
The pistol ball flew a lot slower than a bullet from a modern handgun, and there was no Metal Spirit directing or protecting it. Moldering Bones blasted the ball with time and age, rusting, corroding, and scouring it with millennia worth of wear in less than a second.
The ball puffed into red dust an inch from my face.
The space moth’s eyes bugged out. “That’s not right! He’s supposed to be some wussy Spirit type like Lost Memories or something! I scanned him!”
Without Last Light, Last Breath blanketing me in emotionlessness, I probably would’ve slumped in relief and lost any intimidation factor I’d just gained.
With it, I scowled and aimed my hand at the space moth like I was about to use Moldering Bones on him.
Something purple flickered near his left side. Sushi took a chomp out of the corner of his wing.
The space moth freaked out and darted away, swooping over the bank of monitors toward the exit.
Sushi grinned at me, mouth full of space moth wing, then disappeared again.
Dead Reckoning launched me away from an overhead attack. A glowing pink net shot past my head. A second later, nets were everywhere, coming at me from all sides. I managed to avoid most of them, but one slammed into my back, catching on my shoulder and arm. Immediately, I felt a paralyzing poison sink into my skin. I ripped the net off and triggered a blast of Corpse Fire, burning the poison off as fast as it could sink in.
A hawk guy banked around to face me, a new net forming in his feathered hands.
“Should’ve killed you in the swamp,” he said.
“Weird, that’s what I was thinking.” I planted my feet and covered one arm in Death Metal. The other one, I stuck out to my side.
The scythe ripped across my skeleton and poured into my hand, ready for another aerial attack. My T-shirt’s sleeve flapped around the bones in the breeze from the hawk guy’s wingbeats.
But he didn’t dive at me.
“Come on!” I yelled at him.
He smirked. “Not on your life. There’s only one way to deal with a Death cultivator—nuke them from orbit.”
Letting out a bird screech, the hawk hurtled high over my head out of the scythe’s reach, net held wide. At the same moment, Dead Reckoning freaked out, letting me know someone was coming at me from behind.
I sucked down a ton more Miasma and sent it crashing off me in three directions. Three Corpse Sickness solidified into almost-human masses.
Stop the hawk! I thought as I spun around to meet the other threat.
A blast of orange Warm Heart Spirit riffled my hair as it sliced past my head. I looked up in time to see the blast nail a levitating squid in the face, hammering him out of the air. The squid hit the floor and skidded to my feet. I knocked him out with a work boot to the head.
I scanned the place for Rali and found him at the top of the stands with the green girl.
“I’ll hold the elevator,” he yelled. “You get Warcry.”
“Got it!”
They disappeared behind the monitor bank, and I spun around to find Warcry.
Across the room, some bruisers who didn’t look like Heavenly Contrails attacked Warcry from the ground while a pair of beetles the size of bears harassed him from above. Warcry was holding his own, but it was only a matter of time before they wore him down.
I let the scythe go and sprinted around the top of the stands, taking another hit from Hungry Ghost as I went.
When I was within range, I sent a forest of invisible Death Grip reaching up from the floor around Warcry to grab the bruisers by the ankles. They tripped up, and Warcry went to town on them with a barrage of flaming kicks and punches.
While he dealt with the bruisers, I tried to destroy one of the beetles’ wings with Moldering Bones.
Their chitin must’ve been resistant to that sort of thing, because the wing wasn’t damaged. The beetle had sure felt it, though. He buzzed around, looking for whoever had attacked him.
“Over here!” I stuck out my right hand and called the scythe back.
A blast of shiny greenish-black Spirit shot at me from the spot between the beetle’s eyes. I ducked under that attack, but another one slammed into me from the opposite side. The second beetle had flanked me while I was focused on the first.
The second the beetle’s Spirit hit, my whole world blacked out. I couldn’t see or hear anything.
Last Light, Last Breath evaporated as panic flared up in my stomach. Both hands clutching the scythe, I set my feet and threw out a concentrated blast of Dead Reckoning. I gave the early-warning system tons of Miasma for a wider circle of protection. I wanted plenty of notice before one of those guys hit me.
My left side pinged first, and I jumped out of the way, slashing with the scythe where Dead Reckoning told me to aim. The blade sheared through something tough. Chitin.
Behind me, Dead Reckoning sent off another warning, and I spun, scythe out. It whiffed, nothing but air.
The chitinous body of a four-hundred-pound beetle rammed into my side, knocking me over. I stumbled and tried to catch myself, but the heel of my work boot caught on the top tier of benches, and I stacked it, landing hard on my back.
The blackness cleared like a phone light timing out, and sound rushed back in.
Shiny black beetle mandibles chomped an arm’s length from my face. I slammed the scythe handle between its mouthpieces. Gnawing noises battered my eardrums, but the handle held. Spiny beetle feet trampled my stomach and chest. One scraped off my thigh, ripping a
