A Girl From Nowhere (The Firewall Trilogy #1) - James Maxwell Page 0,120

wasn’t up to the task. The big trull swung his sword and Taimin leaned to the side as the blade whistled past his ear. Off balance, Taimin fell and was forced to roll to evade a second sword blow. The agony in his foot gave him an idea, and while he was on the ground he chopped at his opponent’s ankle. The big trull bellowed and looked down to find the source of the pain, which gave Taimin the opportunity to thrust upward through his torso. Another roll took Taimin away from the trull as he collapsed.

Taimin’s chest heaved as he climbed to his feet. He now faced the one-eyed trull with the club. The trull came at him with a strong overhead swing, and with all of his weight on his good leg Taimin knew that if he tried to weave, he would fall. He raised his hardwood sword and felt the force of mountains strike the blade. The muscles in his arms screamed.

Taimin gritted his teeth and pushed. He put all of his strength into throwing his bigger opponent back. But as he glanced at the blade of pale basalt wood, he saw a long crack appear. The crack widened.

Wood splintered and the blade broke off at the midpoint. Taimin found himself holding nothing more than a shard of wood. The trull raised his club over his head.

With a gasp, Taimin fell to one knee.

He knew it was over.

Selena felt the blood drain from her face.

Taimin’s sword had shattered. With just a wide splinter of basalt wood in his hands, he was on one knee with his opponent looming over him. The trull lifted his spiked club over his head. When it struck Taimin’s skull, nothing would save him.

Unable to restrain himself, Galen stood, eager to see the blood of the man who had killed his brother. The Protector chuckled and tapped his fingers on his knee.

The people of Zorn shouted until all their words mingled together, their pleas for Taimin to survive merging to become one. Every member of the crowd gazed down at the man below. Tight faces betrayed tension as the onlookers waited for what would happen next. The golden sun Dex was directly overhead, bathing the arena in a furious brilliance.

Looking up at the golden orb, Selena felt something terrible rise within her.

She could sense her power, trapped by the wall that the two mystics had built, confined by the pressure they exerted. Although they were behind her, she knew that Arren and Merin would be focused on the fight—as distracted as they would ever be. They weren’t aware that Selena and Taimin knew each other. They would be consumed by the prospect of death, excited that blood was about to be spilled.

Selena reached for her symbol, and as the savage emotion inside her spurred her to greater efforts she felt her ability swell. She fed her desperation to her power, and like dry tinder given to a fire, the radiance inside her blazed.

She couldn’t have calmed herself no matter how hard she tried, so she poured all of her fears into the raging inferno inside her mind. She fed it until it was too bright for her to contemplate, too huge to stay small for a second longer.

Then Selena realized what it was she had built. Rather than a moon, she had created a sun. Her sphere of fiery energy pulsed and glowed. The sphere was still confined, but inside her mind she had taken hold of more power than she ever had before.

Rei-kika had taught her to control her emotion, to be calm and at peace as she imagined the soft light of a moon pulling her out of the shell that was her body. Instead, Selena fed more power to the sun she had made. It grew as if exploding, incredibly swiftly, far too big and powerful to be confined by the wall around it.

The wall burst to nothingness, and then Selena was out of her body.

Behind her, part of her was aware of the two mystics crying out a warning, but their shouts were lost in the roar of the crowd. Selena ignored them and concentrated on the events unfolding in the fighting pit. The trull’s club was in mid-swing.

Selena left the area above her body to dive toward the trull’s snarling face. She peeled apart the layers of the creature’s mind and then plunged inside. She sensed the maelstrom of the trull’s thoughts and sent one command louder than