Ghost in the Winds (Ghost Exile #9) - Jonathan Moeller Page 0,133
a single tremendous burst. Kylon directed his will towards the power, trying to channel and direct it, to hold it back for a moment.
He couldn’t. It was just too strong. Perhaps someone like Annarah or Lady Claudia could have managed the necessary level of control, but Kylon could not. The veins in his hands started to glow with silver fire, and he felt the power building to its climax, preparing to release itself in an explosion, and the strain of holding back the power filled him with such blinding agony that he almost collapsed.
His arcane skill was not enough to hold back the Elixir. The Huntress would find him lying unconscious on the floor. Kylon needed something else, something to hold back the reaction…
His fingers still grasped the hilt of the valikon.
Ghostsilver was proof against sorcery.
Kylon shoved the empty vial back into his pouch, grasped the valikon’s hilt with both hands, and stabbed the blade into the wound in his stomach.
He didn’t think he could have been in any more pain.
He had been wrong.
He had been very wrong.
His scream rang through the ruins of the Crows’ Tower, and the burning sensation redoubled.
Yet the silver glow faded from his veins.
###
Kalgri stepped into the ruined hall, her boots making no sound against the stone floor. Once the place must have been an armory, though now it was nothing but an empty shell and some rubble scattered across the floor.
It would make a fitting tomb for Kylon of House Kardamnos.
She reached out with the Voice’s senses, savoring his pain and agony, and then her eyes fell upon him.
Kalgri laughed aloud with delight.
Kylon slumped against the wall, battered and covered with blood, shuddering in pain as he tried to draw breath. His right leg was a bloody ruin. Even better, the valikon jutted from his stomach, both his hands grasped around the hilt as he tried in vain to pull the weapon free. It was marvelous. That damned valikon had caused her so much trouble, and now it was buried in Kylon’s gut.
It was perfect. It was absolutely perfect.
She walked forward, raising the sword of the nagataaru, its harsh purple light throwing stark shadows across the walls. Kylon looked at her, trembling, his teeth bared in a rictus of hate as he stared at her. She watched him for a moment, looking for any sign of a trap, but saw none. In fact, he couldn’t use any sorcery so long as that valikon was buried in his stomach.
“Oh,” sighed Kalgri with pleasure, moving to stand over him. “Isn’t this just a horrible way to die?”
She laughed, and the Voice hissed its triumph.
###
Kylon stared at the woman who had murdered his wife and unborn child, who had tried to kill Caina, who had carved a trail of death and misery across the decades, who had come at last to kill him.
She had almost come too late. Kylon felt coldness settling within him, felt numbness creeping through him despite his agony, and knew that he was but a moment away from death.
“A horrible way to die?” said Kylon, his fingers tightening against the valikon’s hilt. His voice was a shaking rasp. “Let’s find out together.”
With the very last of his strength, he ripped the valikon free from his stomach, the bloody sword clattering on the ground next to him.
The Huntress frowned in confusion.
Then the silver fire, suppressed by the valikon, came roaring back to life, his veins shining like a silver inferno.
He just had time to see the look of chagrined alarm on the Huntress’s face, and then silver fire erupted in all directions like a thunderclap, filling the world with blazing radiance.
###
Kalgri just had time to realize that she had made a mistake, and then the wall of silver fire slammed into her.
Pain erupted through her limbs, and she felt herself flying, tumbling through the air like a broken toy. She hit the ground hard, and something punched through her back and out her chest, her head cracking against a stone.
Everything went black then.
Later Kalgri woke up, fires crackling around her. She had landed on a broken beam jutting from the rubble, and it had impaled her. The explosion of silver fire had burned her horribly, and what she could see of her limbs was charred and blackened.
The agony was nightmarish.
The agony was beyond enduring.
The agony was…exquisite.
Kalgri groaned in pleasure as she feasted upon her own pain.
It was a pleasure beyond any she had ever known in a long life of feasting upon such pleasures,