The Choice of Magic - Michael G. Manning Page 0,203

his skin before the spell faded and fizzled out. The sorcerer looked at him in surprise, but before he could do anything else, something flashed across the lane and tore through him. Will saw a hole three inches across that went entirely through the man’s body before he collapsed.

He turned back toward Selene. “What was that?”

“Will!” she yelled, trying to warn him.

Will looked back and saw the dead sorcerer’s strange elemental just before it crashed into him. It seemed to be made of black, smoky flesh, and within it he saw claws and teeth. His sword found nothing when he tried to fend it off, and he found himself wrapped in powerful arms. Streamers of black turyn whipped around him, burning whenever they touched his skin, but they couldn’t seem to do serious harm since they faded soon after touching him. It was the claws and teeth that scared him most. He felt powerful jaws latching onto him in several places, and though they didn’t penetrate his mail he felt them begin to clamp down with bone-crushing force.

He was helpless.

Then something slammed into him from behind, knocking him free from the strange creature that had been trying to devour him. When he looked up from the ground, he saw a bizarre spectacle: Selene was battling the beast, her body covered in stone plates, while each of her hands held an incandescent blue blade.

Unlike his sword, hers worked to devastating effect, destroying whatever they touched. They ripped through the monster, and when they came in contact with other things, such as the ground, they tore through it, leaving deep grooves. Her first two attacks caused gouts of black blood to spray from the shadowy thing she fought.

Will watched in shock. What kind of elemental has blood?

For a moment it seemed as though she would win easily, but the monster wasn’t done yet. Slipping past her next swing, it fell upon her, wrapping itself around her body in the same way it had done with Will. With claws and teeth, it pried at the stone protecting her, and black mist began to seep into the cracks. He heard Selene shriek with pain and rage as the black substance touched her skin.

Her stone fists released the blue blades and they transformed, becoming broad, spinning circles that buzzed as they spun around her body, cutting and destroying anything they touched. Within seconds, they had shredded the beast clinging to her, sending bits of blood and gore all over the intersection. The black smoke slowly dissipated, leaving an odd assortment of arms, teeth, claws, and talons on the ground. Will didn’t think it would have resembled any living creature he had ever seen, either before or after Selene had disassembled it.

She sank to her knees, and the stone plates crumbled to the ground, becoming dust, while the blue circles stopped moving and rediscovered gravity. They fell to the ground like ordinary water, soaking into the dry earth.

Will ran to her side. She seemed unhurt, but her face was red and sweat was dripping down her forehead. “What the hell kind of elemental was that?” he asked.

“Not an elemental,” she panted, her breathing heavy and irregular. “A demon. He was a priest of Madrok.” Then her eyes rolled back into her head and her body began to shake violently.

He spotted something dark on her shoulder, just beneath the collar of her shirt, and he pulled it open to reveal an ugly darkness that seemed to boil beneath the surface of her skin. The black mist, he realized. He clamped his hand over her shoulder and tried to draw it out, but had no success—it wasn’t a spell. He decided to try something else, and a second later he cast the source-link spell, connecting himself with Selene.

As always, a sense of duality washed over him, and while he was able to separate his sense of self from his sense of Selene, he could feel the searing evil that was trying to destroy her from the inside out. Without any other options, he began drawing out her turyn, pulling it from her body faster than he had ever done with anyone before her.

The evil came with it, and because of his haste, his body couldn’t change it quickly enough to protect him from the inevitable turyn sickness that came with foreign turyn. Yet this was far worse than the nausea that had he had experienced after drinking his grandfather’s elixir of turyn. The same burning pain he had