Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

She shuffled her feet to get between the vord and the wounded again, panting hard, her whole body trembling with painful fear. This was hardly her forte. Where was Araris?

Twice more she was rushed by single mantis warriors, and both times she defeated them the same way she had the others, though on the last attempt she nearly dropped the sword, her hands were shaking so hard.

The vord whistled and hissed at one another, their bodies beginning to bob up and down in unified agitation. And then, moving together, all six of them spread out into a half circle around her and began to close in with slow, certain confidence.

Isana felt her eyes grow enormously round, and she heard herself saying, in a completely level tone, “This is just ridiculous.”

The vord plunged forward, all at the same time.

Isana wasn’t sure exactly when she decided to do what she did. It simply happened, coming forth from her as naturally as if she’d planned and practiced the crafting for weeks. Again, she lifted the spinning water shield to the horizontal, but this time she cut the whirling wheel of liquid into slices, as one would a wheel of cheese. At the speed the watery shield was rotating, this had the effect of releasing a series of blasts of water, each consisting of several gallons of liquid.

The flying bursts struck the vord with flawless accuracy, one after the other, the sound of it a rapid slap-slap-slap-slap . And, as soon as the bursts of water had hit one of the vord, Isana locked it there through Rill, surrounding the mantises’ rather tiny heads with globes of water.

The vord went mad, bounding about, leaping, clawing uselessly at their heads with their grasping claws, only to have them pass harmlessly through the water. Isana had no love for the vord, but she hated to see any creature suffer. Though they had no emotions readily identifiable with humanity, they felt fear as well as anything else that walked the surface of Alera—and Isana pitied them for their fear.

They collapsed, one by one, quivering still on the ground. Isana stepped forward, to finish each off as mercifully as she could, when another shadow blocked the ceiling above, and a steely figure dropped to the croach -covered floor, crushing the croach with his weight as he fell.

Araris’s blade flashed through one vord, then a second, before it slowed and the steel-skinned Knight looked slowly around the hive at the six dead or dying mantises. Then he straightened, his sword dropping rather limply to his side as he turned to stare at Isana.

“Pardon, love,” Isana said, rather whimsically. “I regret that you had to see me do anything so unladylike.”

Araris Valerian’s mouth spread into a slow, calm, and very pleased smile. Then he shook himself a little and dispatched the rest of the mantises as men in the armor of legionares —in the armor of the First Aleran , by all the furies, piled down the hole in Araris’s wake.

“Come with me, my lady,” Araris said. “There’s little time. There’s a team coming down to get you and the wounded out and back to Garrison, and another trying to find Lord Placida, but it’s going to be close.”

Amara pushed herself awkwardly to her feet. “Why? What’s happening?”

Araris walked over to Lord Antillus, sheathing his sword. “The First Aleran is about to be overrun.”

“The First Aleran,” said Isana. “If the First Aleran is here, Araris, where is my son ?”

From the hole above them came a screech of fury of such pure malice and scorn and raw, seething hatred that Isana had to flinch away from its intensity. The scream made her feel as though someone with long, dirty fingernails had shoved them beneath the skin of her back and drawn them slowly, spitefully over her spine.

Isana became aware that the men around her had gone very still, staring up toward the origin of that hideous sound.

“Where do you think?” Araris asked quietly, his voice still buzzing with that metallic edge. The swordsman indicated the ceiling with a flick of his sword’s tip, and said, “He’s fighting that .”

Tavi rolled to his right on pure instinct, and an instant later the Queen’s sword sliced through the empty space he had occupied. Her windstream was enormous, violent, and the vicious turbulence that followed her was nearly enough to send him spinning from the sky.

By the time he regained his balance, the Queen was not in sight. The Canim-wrought mist had long since cloaked the ground from view, and at the speeds they were traveling, they would only be visible to one another for a flashing instant through the haze. But Tavi could hear her, or at least her presence. The dull, empty howl of her overpowered windstream was rendered directionless by the mist and seemed to come from everywhere. But Tavi knew she was out there, somewhere, circling him.

Excellent.

Tavi drew himself into a steady hover, reached out a hand, and summoned three fire-spheres in rapid order. They appeared with a disproportionately loud boom and were followed by the hiss of mist being turned to steam. They never came anywhere close to the vord Queen. They weren’t supposed to.

The vord Queen let out another spine-shuddering shriek of hostility and rage—which grew louder as it went on. She was coming straight at him. Tavi swept his sword in a couple of swift circles and checked his pocket to be sure he was ready.

The Queen appeared: a sudden blur of white hair, glittering black eyes, and windblown cloak spreading like dark wings. She accelerated toward him with astonishing rapidity, and Tavi lifted his sword as though he meant to meet her blade to blade.

At the last second, he threw a firecrafting at her—even as she did exactly the same thing. The two craftings intercepted one another, and there was a deafening explosion of red and green flame. The vord Queen came plunging through it, the vanishing remnants of the explosion setting the edges of her cloak on fire in both colors. Her blade swept at his throat, but Tavi’s sword intercepted the strike neatly. A red, blue, and vord green explosion of sparks the size of a city market flew out from the impact, and the vord Queen shrieked again in furious disappointment as she shot past him and banked immediately, coming around to rush him again.

From somewhere below, Tavi heard the weird, ululating howl of a Cane, and the bloodstone in his pocket suddenly felt almost warm enough to blister his skin. Marok had heard his signal.

The mist all around them thickened, congealed, and dark shapes stirred within. Long, twining tendrils of reddish flesh lashed out from a dozen different directions, and Tavi’s heart lurched into his throat. No less than three of the Canim-called horrors had appeared all around him, and their questing tentacles slithered toward him, dripping a slime Tavi knew to be deadly acidic and poisonous to boot. He found himself all but holding his breath as the tendrils snaked all around him for several endless seconds… and abruptly withdrew. The protective power of the bloodstone talisman he carried had been enough to turn the beasts away—or at least enough to make them seek other prey.

The vord Queen had been swarmed by a dozen of the things.

Tentacles lashed out at her, flailing and grabbing. She eluded most of them but not all, and she shrieked in pain and anger as half a dozen dripping limbs left mild burn marks upon her seemingly vulnerable skin. The Queen spun madly in place, and her sword burst into flame as she began cutting her way free of the mist beasts.

Tavi didn’t give her a chance to get loose. He focused his concentration upon her and crafted the hottest and most violent fire-sphere he’d ever attempted. It burst upon the vord Queen in a brilliant flash of light and a deafening roar of thunder.