“Starting with your mind, it seems.”
“I will kill you slowly, Strong. You will beg for the mercy of death and I will deny you its release.”
“You let it control you,” I said, ignoring the threat of a slow, agonizing death…well, not completely ignoring it. “You were weak.”
“Magic is corrupt. The world would be better without it.”
“Starting with you?”
She was stalking me—even as I moved around and directed my voice at the walls to bounce the sound. She was doing the same, and getting closer.
“Of course. I’m an object lesson in the dangers of power. Watch how I destroy your world.”
“You’re twisted.”
“Am I? Ever since you fell into this world of magic, has your life gotten better?”
“Yes, and I’m happier, too.”
“Don’t insult me with your lies,” she scoffed. “Before, you may have had human enemies, but now? Monsters and gods want you dead…Kali’s Chosen.”
“I’ve been promoted, haven’t you heard? My new title is Marked of Kali now.”
“Frying pan and fire, Strong,” she answered. “The world is better off without magic—it stole everything from me, like a brutal thief. It’s over.”
Her voice was on my right, but she appeared on my left and I knew in that moment, she had outplayed me. If we were playing chess, she’d just executed a checkmate.
Except I wasn’t playing chess.
I raised Grim Whisper to fire, only to see it fly across the room, as several orbs impacted my wrist, breaking my grip. Another, larger orb, headed right for me. There was no time to dodge. So I didn’t.
I ran forward.
And slid…under the nasty-looking orb. The surprised expression on her face told me everything I needed to know. She recovered fast, but I knew she was off-balance. I formed Ebonsoul as I came out of the slide and thrust the blade forward.
In her hand she held a silver, rune-covered blade about as long as Ebonsoul, parried my thrust to the side and introduced the side of my head to a hammerfist.
“Shit,” I said as I stumbled back. I must have been wearing the same expression of surprise she had moments earlier. “Nice blade.”
I moved into a defensive stance. This had gotten worse. Much worse.
Dex’s words flashed in my mind: Unless you can think like evil, really understand it, then you’re defenseless.
I was treating her like an enemy mage, not a force of evil. I was going to need to adjust my attitude before she adjusted it for me…permanently.
“You thought you could face me?” Evers asked, circling around me. “I am a war mage. We are trained to stand and die, in any and every circumstance.”
“So I keep hearing,” I said, recovering from her strike as the familiar warmth flushed my body. “Can we hurry to the part where you die?”
“You first,” she said, moving to the side. “Didn’t Tristan show you?”
“I must have missed that lesson,” I said, reaching for the energy around me. The shocking cold erased any warmth I was feeling. “Why don’t you educate me?”
“With pleasure,” she said, stepping in with a thrust I barely parried. She was fast. “The energy we wield is a tool; what matters is the will. I don’t need orbs to destroy you. With or without magic, you will die by my hand today.”
For the first time in my life, I was thankful for the torture sessions with Master Yat. Evers was an accomplished blade fighter. She slashed, feinted, and evaded my counters, cutting me. My body healed, but this was a battle of attrition. She was good—better than me, by orders of magnitude. I was barely holding on.
In scientific language: I was getting my ass kicked.
She and her blade whirled around me. I moved, dodged, and slid away, only to find myself at the end of her blade. The expression ‘death by a thousand cuts’ suddenly held new meaning.
She slashed diagonally. I pivoted at the last second, causing her to miss, only to encounter one of her silver-black orbs waiting for me as I turned. The orb smashed into my chest with a whump, catapulting me into a column, nearly shattering it, as bits of debris exploded around me.
My body flushed hot as I fell to the ground, but I was too banged up, bleeding from too many small wounds, to recover in time. The black energy of the orb covered me and slowly evaporated.
I spit up blood as she approached.
“Have you had enough?” I asked. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
“My orb did nothing to you,” she said, driving a brutal kick into my side and cracking a rib, while stripping Ebonsoul from my hand. It turned to silver mist a second later, reabsorbed into my body. “It seems I will have to end you the old-fashioned way.”
I managed to roll out of the way as she slashed down, missing me. My body was dealing with damage overload. I was healing, but the damage she’d caused was so extensive, it seemed to be slowing the process down. I felt like I was running a fever and freezing at the same time. I stood slowly, but the situation was bad.
There was a good chance I would die here.
My curse and the energy around me fought in my body for dominance, until I stopped struggling against both. I fell back, suddenly tired, and leaned against a column, one of the few that remained intact.
“We should take a break,” I said, raising a hand. “I’m sure you’re exhausted…”
She leapt forward with a thrust aimed at my chest. I moved my hand to deflect the blade, but my reaction time was off, and I miscalculated. She stabbed right through my hand and kept pushing.
“I’ll take a break,” she said with a twisted grin, “once I see you, Tristan, and his uncle dead. Look around you, Simon. Tristan left you here to die. There is no one here to save you”—she twisted the blade in my hand and I bit back a scream—“and no one is coming. You are forgotten, abandoned…alone.”
“He is
