Disciple of War Disciple of War (Art of the Adept #4) - Michael G. Manning Page 0,223

command you, by the debt you owe me, end this pitiful human’s life.”

Will’s gaze focused on Tailtiu in alarm, and several things flashed through his mind in that instant. The first was a technical point regarding debts and the fae. When a conflict of interest between creditors came up, the one who held the larger debt took precedence. That meant that if Elthas ordered it, Tailtiu would be bound to do as she was told, but Aislinn had surrendered all of her daughter’s debt to Will.

He held precedence, but even more importantly, Tailtiu was free to do as she pleased. Her disease had made her different from the rest of her people. Aislinn had been giving up a worthless currency when she sold her daughter’s debt to Will. He had thought that sticking him with a bad deal was the entirety of her reasoning, but now he wondered.

There was no time to spend pondering the accounting of the fae. Will focused his will, trying to override Aislinn’s control over the chains. Given their proximity to his body and relative distance from his grandmother, he should have the advantage.

But the Goddess of Magic was incredibly strong. Aislinn smiled at him as he began actively trying to absorb the magical chains that held him fast. She knew exactly what was going through his mind, but she wasn’t going easy on him. The rules of her existence bound her. Elthas had commanded her service, and her iron will wouldn’t give her grandson even an ounce of slack.

The veins on Will’s temples stood out, and sweat ran down his cheeks as he fought with everything he had to neutralize the spell holding him. Tailtiu’s voice found his ears as she entreated her mother. “Surely you don’t really mean for me to kill him, do you?”

The golden chains holding him began to flicker as Will fought desperately for his freedom, and with each passing second, he became more certain. It was possible, and with confidence his will grew stronger.

Aislinn’s could see what was happening too. “Kill him. Now!” she commanded loudly.

Tailtiu was staring at the dead puppy on the ground, tears dripping from her cheeks. The Cath Bawlg yowled once more and somehow found the strength to snap at Elthas, to which the fae-lord responded by pulling his sword free and ramming it down the demigod’s throat. “Die fiend!” screamed the Lord of the Forest.

And all hell broke loose.

The chains around Will began to dissolve. The light in the goddamn cat’s eyes started to fade, but the demigod’s jaws clamped down in a deathgrip on the forest lord’s blade. Tailtiu’s head snapped up, rage on her features as she turned on her mother. Her beautiful hands shot toward Aislinn with incredible speed and wrapped around her mother’s throat. Will knew how incredibly strong Tailtiu was from prior experience. With a twist and a jerk, Tailtiu broke Aislinn’s neck with an audible cracking sound.

Will was already moving, the second war hammer still in his grasp. The spell Selene had put on it was still active, and he brought it down on Elthas as the forest lord struggled to free his sword from the demigod’s death grip.

As the hammer head contacted his opponent’s skin, the spell activated, and the heavy end of the war hammer shifted into the ethereal plane. It passed smoothly through the fae-lord’s body and when it reached the center of mass, Will let go of the weapon’s handle, triggering the second part of the spell.

Will was shifted to the ethereal plane, and the other half of the weapon shifted back to its usual plane of existence, where it now co-occupied the space where Elthas’ torso was.

The explosion that resulted ripped through everything in the vicinity. Elthas came apart like a rotten gourd, and everyone near him was slammed by a pressure wave that broke bones, ripped skin, and generally made for a very bad day. Madrok was driven back into the ground, breaking most of the bones in his body and causing his skull to collapse, while Tailtiu and Aislinn were sent flying, their arms and legs bent at impossible angles and their skin hanging in tatters.

The closest trolls also suffered horribly, but such wounds weren’t serious to them. They could heal even faster than the demon-lord. Selene and Gan were the farthest away, but they were still sent tumbling by the force of the blast. A few seconds later when the spell dissipated, Will rematerialized to witness the aftereffects.

Over the course of