Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
But right now, he gathered it all and sent it inward, a torrent of ghostly flames swirling into his chest, through his body, and down his back, into the seal branded there.
The scars ignited.
Agony.
Familiar. Welcome. The price he paid. It hurt the same every time, never less than the first moment the brand had sizzled as the white-hot wires burned their way into his flesh.
Woodward’s words skimmed the surface of Augustine’s awareness. He was insulting Diana, an obvious baiting tactic. Augustine glanced at her. Her eyes glowed with magic, brimming with power so bright, the entirety of her irises and sclera were pools of gold. Somehow he saw understanding in that radiance. They didn’t need to talk. They were perfectly in sync.
His back was a pit of pain, so intense his vision wavered. He called up the complex lines of the Phantom House spell in his mind, channeling the magic through the seal in a specific pattern to recreate it.
Diana stepped forward. That same otherworldly predatory grace he saw on the hill suffused her movements. Her voice was low and steady. She spoke with the absolute authority of a Prime.
“You think you’ve improved on nature with your imitations.”
“I know I have.” Woodward’s voice rang with arrogance.
She swung her sword, and there was something shockingly feline in the movement. It was as if she’d shed her human skin and become a predatory cat without shifting a single muscle.
He’d pumped so much power into the seal, he no longer felt his body, just a swirling mass of magic and pain. In a moment, it would break past his control and erupt. His fingers squeezed the metal spheres of the bouncers in his pocket.
One more breath. Hold.
“Today I will teach you the difference,” the human panther promised.
The constructs lunged forward in unison. She had given him a clear shot at Woodward.
Augustine hurled the bouncers into the space between them and Woodward. The walnut-sized spheres bounced and exploded in fans and pulses of sound, light, and heat, spinning and rolling in random directions.
Woodward flinched, clamping a hand over his left eye.
Augustine grasped the scalding current of magic emanating from the seal on his back and slammed it into the chaos of heat and light. In an instant, he was a shadow, a faceless dark phantom in the shape of his body. Pools of darkness spawned across the floor, birthing shadowy doppelgangers, one after another, all charging in random directions.
Augustine sprinted left, reached again for the searing magic still streaming from the seal, and pulled it around himself. It sank into his skin.
He vanished.
“How thrilling!” Woodward screamed into the cacophony. “I feel honored. You showed me your power. I will show you mine!”
Augustine was almost to him.
“See what all of this was for. Witness it. Understand it, and despair!”
Woodward ripped off his clothes. They came free like they were tissue paper. His legs, the left half of his torso all the way to the collarbone, and his arms were an amalgam of metal and high-performance plastic, woven together with sick artistry and bright blue magic. His right half was still mostly human but protected by ornate skin-tight armor. Long scars cleaved Woodward’s neck.
It was exactly as Augustine feared. The moment Woodward walked in, the wrongness of his posture, the oddness of his stance, combined with his obsession with animals and bodies, all pointed to this conclusion. Woodward had found a way to fuse a construct to himself.
It shouldn’t have been possible. And yet here it was.
The phantoms flittered around Woodward. One of them punched him, and Woodward staggered back. Shock slapped his face.
Iillusions had no substance. It was a known fact. But these were not regular illusions. They were House Montgomery phantoms. That punch was a concentrated knot of Augustine’s power, and Woodward’s human brain and senses recognized it as a threat.
Woodward’s construct limbs split, releasing seven-inch-long daggers. He sliced at the incoming phantoms in a frenzy. The clinical part of Augustine warned him that Woodward was faster and stronger.
Time slowed, the seconds crawling by, as Augustine closed the distance between him and the animator. No opening. No target for a knife. But Woodward still needed an intact brain and a functioning spinal cord.
He was almost to Woodward now. The air smelled of blood. He caught a glimpse of Diana tearing at the constructs. Somehow she had managed to shred both of them with her ferocity, her frenzied strikes keeping both panthers in states of partial collapse. Any other time, the beauty of her violence would have been incredibly erotic; however, he saw only blood. It saturated her torn clothes. She flung it to the floor with every strike. Constructs didn’t bleed.
Sometimes victory required sacrifice.
In front of him, Woodward swung wide, slicing a phantom in half. For a fraction of a breath, the animator’s arms were open, his chest exposed.