Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

through ruthlessness and strength. Stand against us, and discover that nothing and no one is safe from our wrath. Think of all you have to lose, all that we could take from you if we become your enemies.”

Mayr gave the woman and child he’d threatened a pitying look.

“Better to run with the wolves than cower with the sheep, no?”

Mayr’s face lit up with an idea, and a tight, cruel smile opened under the amphibian’s hungry stare.

“Don’t,” Milo warned, but that only made Mayr’s smile wider.

“Oh, come now.” Mayr chuckled darkly. “I think it will serve as a perfect lesson about who we are and what we are capable of.”

“Do—” Milo began, but Mayr drew his pistol with startling speed and snapped off two shots, punching gory holes in the child’s back and her mother’s face.

Fear and outrage should have erupted across the car in the wake of the pistol’s crack. Children should have wailed as men and women screamed and shouted in terror and anger, yet no voice was raised. There was a deathly stillness across the entire car.

Milo felt Rihyani’s will ripple through the Art she’d stretched across the car, and a grim smile spread across his face. It was time; no turning back now. Mayr and his soldiers stood looking around the car for a moment, suddenly unsure as every cowering face turned to them with a dead-eyed stare, the woman and her daughter among them.

“It's your turn for an education,” Milo said, his razor focus raking across his slumbering horrors. “Now you will see who I am and what I can do!”

The soldiers opened fire as Rihyani released her illusion in a befuddling eruption of broken images.

The car was revealed to be empty of passengers or seats or anything but a drift of black grit. The soldiers began shooting despite this, rifles going off in a crazed series of blasts that chased the fractured visual stimuli Rihyani had spread around them. Glass shattered and shots gouged and ricocheted about the interior as the rain and wind began to pour in. Mayr was shouting something, but it was lost as an incredible shivering buzz filled the car.

At Milo’s command, a storm of si'lat emerged like an abominable locust swarm from a mad sea and broke through Rihyani’s now-dissipating illusion, engulfing the soldiers. Not bothering to take concrete shape, the necromist creation swept over the terrified bullies, making a mockery of their attempts to fight back as it drove them toward the front of the car.

Like men trying to grapple with an attacking swarm of bees, the Germans screamed and swatted and reeled, but their antics only allowed the flurry of black grit to gouge and rasp exposed flesh with greater speed. Every way they turned and every movement they made opened new avenues of attack as the shade-driven particles slid under clothing and dug into orifices.

They began to huddle and press against the door to the next car, but if they hadn’t been tearing at their own eyes, they might have realized that there was no safety beyond it as the soldiers left there faced another colossal si'lat.

Milo stood, sweat beading his brow as he sought to keep his creations in check. He heard movement behind him and Ambrose’s bellicose roar, but he couldn’t be bothered to turn around. The si'lat required all his attention lest they fly free and kill every enemy at hand. A typical si'lat was more than capable of killing a man and ripping him to shreds in short order, much less these huge expansions, but Milo didn’t want to kill everyone on the train.

He wanted to send a message, which he supposed would be easier if there were any to carry it.

Behind him, Milo heard the bark of a gun firing an instant before the viewport at his back exploded in a crash of broken glass. Then a man screamed, but the sound seemed to move quickly away from the train before ending abruptly. With the viewport gone, rain and wind sent shivers over Milo’s back, and his mind was nearly knocked off point by the sudden chilling stimulation.

Focus, Imrah growled, and the wizard could feel the cane trembling in his hand.

Milo had herded animated corpses before, but this was something else entirely. The shades within practically exploded to inflict themselves on the world around them. Inside each, he could feel the bound soul wells like throbbing dark stars. Without the intimate connection his blood gave the magic and the assistance from Imrah, Milo knew he wouldn’t be able to control the living, slashing storms of sable sand.

There were further sounds of smashing glass, and Milo looked up to see the soldiers hurling themselves out the windows. The si’lat chased them, tearing off strips of cloth and flesh as they fell screaming. As the sand left to chase the fleeing Germans, he could see more of the car.

One of the soldiers lay on the floor with a trench knife buried in his chest. Another looked like he might have fallen asleep, but Milo knew better since he saw the man’s face and arms scoured until pink-stained bone gleamed in the lights of the car. Milo felt a twinge of sympathy for the men and then noticed the one with the knife in his chest was the sadist who had walked along knocking hats off. He turned away.

True, the hats and their wearers had all been part of Rihyani’s masterful illusion, but the soldier hadn’t known that, had he?

As he considered and more of the si’lat swarm slid from the car into the night, Milo saw that there was one more figure left in the car with him. Legs out before him, Mayr leaned against the battered train car portal. His face looked like he’d tried to shave with broken glass, and blood dribbled freely from a freshly broken nose whose shattered bridge pressed jaggedly against the skin.

The toady’s eyes were so swollen and moist that Milo wondered if the slimy