Grey Spatium 31

Black flames erupted around her, throwing Arthur back and sending metal spikes raining in every direction. Even as they fell, though, they were swarming together, combining, and building on each other to form shapes.

Arthur vanished again, reappearing in the air where Perhata had been, but the Wraith was no longer there. Instead, Arthur was surrounded by several dozen armored forms, each one identically molded out of hundreds of tiny black spikes. Even as Arthur’s gaze swept across them, each figure darted away, flying in a different direction.

Arthur flashed to one retreating figure, conjured a blade, and sliced it in half. The spikes splashed apart, falling to the ground below like deadly hail. There was no flesh beneath them.

As the rest of the armored figures spread out across the sky, a couple dipped lower, flying directly toward our weary group. Beside me, Tanner shouted. Someone else screamed, and everyone began to run, splashing into the water or sprinting along its shore.

I could only watch until Tanner’s arm wrapped around my shoulders and he pulled me to my feet, supporting me, but it was already too late. Tanner spun me away from the nightmarish amalgamation of black spikes, putting himself between me and them.

Time seemed to slow. I felt the trembling of his tense body, saw how the spikes seemed to flow over each other like liquid, pulsing with such monstrous mana…

But my eyes were drawn to Arthur in the distance.

He was falling through the air as if sinking down through water, his eyes closed, his expression focused, thoughtful, almost peaceful.

His eyes opened with a golden flash, and his blade blurred in a sweeping cut.

A bright beam of violet energy stabbed out of the air, slashing sideways and bisecting the armored figures. Black spikes burst apart, spraying the ground in front of us and churning the soft soil to mulch.

Similar violet flashes appeared all across the battlefield, and a dozen other retreating forms came apart. The blade reversed direction, cutting back across the air in front of Arthur, and I saw this time as the blade itself seemed to vanish, and a few more of the conjured suits of armor collapsed as they were simultaneously struck all across the sky.