Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8) by Brad Magnarella (best e reader for academics txt) 📕

“Vigore!”

Raw energy poured through my casting prism, but instead of blowing my container open, the power from my blade shot along the cord to Arnaud. Infernal power pushed back. At the same time, I felt currents of elemental energy running from Jordan’s, Seay’s, and Gorgantha’s containers toward us.

I pulled back in horror, understanding now what Malphas had created.

We were the five elements of the Aristotelean Set, alright. Only this living alchemical symbol hadn’t been designed to create balance, but opposition. Between light and dark, Heaven and Hell, Spirit and Infernal Fire.

Through my blood line, I was connected to Michael, a First Saint. Arnaud was bound to Malphas, a demon master. The other three—Jordan, Seay, and Gorgantha—were acting as earthbound grounding elements, their containers bolstered by the druids and half-fae, who must have been on a lower level, as well as the claimed souls of the merfolk. Their job was to hold the Aristotelean Set together while I channeled high-octane Spirit energy and Malphas pushed back through his line to Arnaud with Infernal Fire.

That opposition, pushed to its limits, had created the implosion I felt. The energy of the implosion had overwhelmed Forneus, whose toxins had induced my hallucination, and who had likely been speaking right above me the whole time, goading me into attacking, but it hadn’t touched Malphas.

It had freed him.

Above, a deep tear sounded.

From the center of the rotating sky, winged figures began to appear. Shriekers, by their piercing cries. The first of Malphas’s arriving legion. I strained against my confinement, but I couldn’t move.

The visions had been telling me something, dammit. In the one behind the Met, Malphas had pierced my forehead with a talon, rendering me powerless. I assumed he’d smashed my casting prism—but he’d thrown it wide. An aim he just achieved by getting me to believe I could destroy him through Forneus.

I turned to Dropsy and shouted, “Can you get me out?”

I didn’t know what the enchanted lantern could do, but she’d surprised me before. She hopped around my confined body as though assessing the situation. High above, the ripping continued. More shriekers and winged devils circled like arriving carrion birds. And now I could see a pinpoint of sulfurous yellow light.

Shit. The opening of the portal.

Dropsy turned suddenly, her light illuminating the demon Forneus. His spider legs had twitched under his torso, and he was pushing himself upright.

Okay, this isn’t good either.

Dropsy drew back in a contraction of light. Forneus lurched for a few steps, then fell, catching himself against my cocoon, his head poised above me. I recoiled, but the eyes that peered into mine weren’t demonic. They were watery gray and benevolent.

“Malachi?” I said.

He gave a pained smile. Using the razor-sharp edges of his front legs, he began sawing the length of the cocoon. When he reached my midsection, I pushed with my hands, creating an opening large enough to wriggle from. Thick liquid dripped from my body as I gained my feet and retrieved my sword and staff from the goo.

“You all right, all right, are, are, are?” Malachi shouted above the hellish racket.

I turned to find four of his legs braced against the cocoon for balance, while his hands steadied me. Forneus had been blown from his demonic form, but some patchwork of what had been Malachi remained.

“Yes.” I gripped his forearm. “Thank you.”

With a network of cords running between everything, the Night Ruin looked like a cross between a spider’s web and a mad alchemist’s lab. The druids and half-fae were arrayed on lower levels, along with a multitude of pods holding sickly colored liquids. Mediums for Malphas’s claimed souls, most likely.

Ley energy gushed up from the foundation, supplemented by the reclaimed energy beaming in from the four locations I’d seen in the hallucination. Supercharged by all that raw energy, the elements of the Aristotelean Set had performed their parts well. Too well. Ultimately, the opposition of Spirit and Infernal Fire had collapsed the space that separated Malphas from the time catch.

Which put him a stone’s throw from the present.

Above, the portal continued to open. A pair of eyes peered in now, enormous and demonic.

“He’s coming through!” I shouted to Malachi.

“Balance!” he yelled back. “Sustained, through, through, the portal is, is, is, balance!”

He fell to the platform, pulling me down into a kneeling position beside him. His hands were cold, and his eyes had gone glassy.

“Hold on,” I pled. “We’ll help you.”

Dropsy, who had been peering out from behind my cocoon, hopped forward. Malachi’s gaze drifted toward her light. He tried to smile as he mouthed, Balance.

As the glow fell from his eyes, I slipped my hands from his dead grip and peered skyward. Malphas’s appearance was kraken-like—enormous and incomprehensible. Harsh bursts of energy highlighted the contours of a craggy face as more of him pushed through. The rupture created by his violent passage wouldn’t end with him. Many, many more would enter. A demon apocalypse would ensue.

My instinct was to thrust my sword skyward and unleash the full force of the banishment rune. But that was what had created the portal in the first place. When deep laughter rumbled like thunder, I heard Malphas’s voice from my vision:

This was inevitable, Croft. You were inevitable. The great savior.

I had acted predictably, according to my nature. Just as he’d known I would. Anything I cast in the name of Spirit would be met with a counterforce of Infernal Fire. A force Malphas commanded.

The portal is sustained through balance, Malachi had been trying to tell me.

What if I were to cast a force that went against my nature? I thought suddenly. That upset that balance? I eyed the runes of my blade, then dropped my gaze to Arnaud.

When my magic nodded, I swore.

That was going to mean accepting his demonic deal, shredding my promise to Vega. I imagined her face when I told her I had not only released Arnaud, but promised to never seek retribution against him again.