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

things would pop free and roll away. Instead, they looked up at Milo and widened, then Mayr fumbled for his pistol with si’lat-gnawed hands.

With a flex of his focus, he gathered what remained of the black storm into a tendril that snared Mayr’s fumbling hand. The treacherous officer screamed as the fractured edges of the condensed grit sawed into his flesh.

More of the si’lat reluctantly returned, called inexorably by his will back into the car. They poured in through the shattered windows, freshly christened with the rain outside. Milo bore down on the shades, willing them to congeal into tendrils of jagged, coagulated darkness that coiled around Mayr’s remaining limbs and then dragged him upright. The shade-animated tentacles stretched Mayr against the front wall of the car, arms and legs straining out in a tortured X shape.

The muscles in Mayr’s neck stood out like cords as the web of black sand extended his limbs millimeter by agonizing millimeter.

“Stop!” Mayr gasped. “For the love of God!! Please stop!”

Milo began to stalk toward Mayr, reminding himself that he was sending a message but wondering exactly what that message was.

“Do you think that’s what the subhumans will say when your Reich goons will come for them?” Milo asked, stepping over the soldier with the dagger in his chest. “When your bands of zealots attack them in the streets and drag them from their homes, will they call out for mercy?”

Mayr’s right wrist began to slide a little more and soft clicks could be heard, and then a sound like bone rasping against bone. Mayr started to scream, then that wrist gave a wet pop and pain robbed him of his voice.

“When you shoot the children in front of their mothers, will they say prayers to Heaven for you to laugh at?” Milo asked, hardly noticing when Mayr’s arm gave a sharp click and the officer whimpered.

“Please!” Mayr wheezed as he hung there panting and watching himself be pulled apart bit by bit. “Please, what do you want?”

Milo paused to consider the question, even reaching out a hand to still the si’lat from pulling the man into pieces.

“What do I want?” Milo mused as though the novel question intrigued him. “That is an excellent question.”

Mayr stared at him between huge heaving sighs, unable to relax since the tendrils held him fast. As Milo wiped sweat from his brow and tapped his lower lip thoughtfully with an upraised finger, Mayr strained against his broken ribs to get enough air to speak again.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he moaned, and his eyes bulged in fear when Milo looked up and leveled an icy glare at him. “I was wrong. Am wrong.”

Milo lowered his hand to rest his palm on the cane as he planted it in front of him. Sweat running in rivulets down his face, he looked expectantly at the magically racked officer.

“Yes?” he prompted in a forcedly unhurried tone.

Mayr struggled for air, the movements eliciting whimpers of pain as his ruined joints popped and ground with a sound to put teeth on edge.

“I could explain this to the others,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “We didn’t understand, didn’t appreciate your power.”

“No, you didn’t,” Milo said distractedly as his focus thrummed against the other si’lat swarm, which had gone to chase its share of soldiers into the night. The shades pressed against his control, hungry for blood, but he drove them back mercilessly. Milo felt the si’lat swarm sluggishly turn back to the train like children sulkily returning home for dinner.

In the distraction, the si’lat swarm binding Mayr had begun to gently pull again, greedily lapping up the fear and pain dripping freely from the man.

The trapped officer couldn’t manage words this time, only a whining keen as one of his knees gave a slurping pop that made the hair on the back of Milo’s neck stand up. The si’lat stopped once it felt Milo’s mind bristling at its subversive initiative, slackening the coils a little. Mayr’s head slumped forward, though his body remained stretched in four directions.

For a moment Milo thought the man had passed out, but a sob escaped his lips, and though he didn’t look up, he raised his voice in a low groaning plea.

“What are you going to do to me?”

Milo looked at the broken man hanging before him and decided he was done. He knew what message he wanted to send. He felt a twinge of guilt that it had taken him so long to make up his mind and that unnecessary pain had come because of it, but now that it was settled, things seem to take on a momentum of their own.

With a flick of one finger, another coil of black sand, smoother than the others, stretched out to Mayr. It wrapped gently around his neck and lifted his head to look at Milo. There were tears in the officer’s eyes as he looked at the wizard, fear and hate twisting together like two vipers behind his gaze.

“I am going to use you to send a message,” Milo said slowly.

A flash of hope enlivened Mayr’s gaze, all the more nauseous to witness for the man’s desperate nod.

“I can do that,” he said eagerly, his voice nearly breaking.

“I know you can,” Milo said, and at his nod, the immense si’lat pulled sharply in five different directions. There was a soggy thump as something damp and heavy hit the floor amidst the patter of additional fluid falling as freely as rain came in through the windows.

Milo turned away from the grisly scene as Ambrose and Rihyani stepped into the car from the rear. Both advanced a few steps before stopping and staring at the mess. Their eyes took in the scattered remains before settling heavily on the magus.

“What happened to sending a message?” Ambrose asked.

“More than one way to do that,” Milo remarked dryly as he walked past them to their compartment in the fifth car, the red-stained si’lat sliding along the floor in his wake.

When they rolled into