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

the mud. More by luck than skill, his fingers gripped around the horny lip of the upper jaw and his feet planted themselves along the bony rim of the lower jaw. Necromistic magic rushed through his muscles and along every bone as he held on for dear life.

The gleaming eyes narrowed at him over a mustache of flailing feelers.

“THE SCRAWNY ONES CRUNCH SO WONDERFULLY,” Tsar’Vodyanoy roared gaily as it hefted its head up and stretched its jaws wide.

Milo stretched like he was on a rack, every tendon singing a song of agony, but he held his place over the yawning mouth. If he relaxed even for the blink of an eye, he’d flop down into the maw and it would be over, but with Imrah pouring energy into his sinews, he could hold.

A hellcat’s shriek sounded as Rihyani sprang from whatever illusion she’d hidden behind to fall upon the monster’s head. Talons raked it, piercing rubbery flesh and puncturing the gleaming eyes, but Tsar’Vodyanoy kept burbling merrily as it threw its head from one side to the other.

“NOW THIS IS FUN!” it chortled as it spun and flailed its limbs at something Milo couldn’t see. Without warning, it plopped down and rolled across the marshy ground.

Between the plunges in frigid black water and being raked through mud, Milo heard a pained scream and the sickening crunch of bones breaking. The monster whose face he was riding rose and tossed something into a nearby pool. With another shake of its head, Rihyani, who was back for another attack, was thrown aside.

The creature’s head reared back as it continued to try and dislodge Milo, and he saw Ambrose’s broad body floating face-down.

“ONE DOWN, AND WHAT A MEATY TREAT HE’LL BE.”

The jaws yawned wide again, and for a moment Milo, enraged and trapped, stared down the gullet of the creature. The charnel stink wafting up was like the putrid gush of a hundred floating corpses in the world’s foulest bog, but Milo grinned savagely into the miasma.

Dragging one hand across the jagged lip, Milo opened a gash in his palm. Tightening until his fingers ached with his other hand, he extended the hand into the mouth and sent a stream of his blood over the rows of fangs and down the undulating throat.

“HAHA! CRUNCHY, YOU ARE TEASING TSAR’VODYANOY!”

Milo managed to yank his hand back as the jaws snapped shut. Again he held on for dear life, using all his fortified strength to keep his feet and hands where they were.

At the same time, his mind, working at a frenzied, second-stretching pace, narrowed to a lethal bolt of focus and dove after the trail left by his blood. As he’d hoped, the essence-laden fluid had been sent down to the creature’s belly, where a host of corpses stewed in brackish juices. His essence mingled with the slumbering deathly energies of the bones, and Milo felt the flickers of the hovering shades.

He shoved aside his fear and trepidation about the wild shades and his blood called to them, acting as a catalyst and binding agent. The energies rushed into the decrepit bodies, some only skeletal claws or grinning jaws, but all sprang to unnatural animation at Milo’s command. Stoking their frenzied energies, Milo set them loose upon Tsar’Vodyanoy’s innards, clawing, gnawing, and jabbing with shattered bone spurs.

The monster groaned and began to sink to the ground. Milo looked down and saw black effluence welling up from the throat.

“You are what you eat,” Milo snarled into the glowing eyes. “And what you are is dead, fish-face!”

A trembling moan began in the creature’s chest, but it was soon flooded and smothered by the welling blood. With a massive heave it curled up, blubberous body folding around itself. Milo heard a rattling gag inside the throat and looked down in time to see the mouth opening wide, not to consume but to expel.

Milo threw himself clear as a torrent of ichor, caustic soup, and rattling bones spewed from Tsar’Vodyanoy’s gaping mouth. He danced back from the foul flood, barely keeping his feet as he slipped in the mud.

“CLEVER, CRUNCHY, VERY CLEVER,” the monster moaned, still sounding amused but very weary now. “MAYBE LATER. TSAR’VODYANOY WASN’T TOO HUNGRY ANYWAY.”

Tsar’Vodyanoy squirmed turgidly into a nearby pool and began to sink amidst another chorus of plopping bubbles. Milo thought of firing a parting shot at the creature, but if this was a real retreat, he wasn’t going to provoke it to a second round. The cane’s power had left his muscles, and he felt every single fiber shaking from the strain. If he was honest with himself, he feared he wouldn’t have the strength to point the fetish without his arm trembling.

The animated corpses, their shades still intent on expending their flagging energies, plunged into the pool after their quarry. They thrashed and splashed in the mud, each effort weaker and slower, and it was a full minute before they collapsed to float in the black waters.

“Where’s Ambrose?” Rihyani asked, limping toward Milo. Her leg was twisted at an odd angle, but as he watched, the phenomenal regenerative will of the fey restored her seemingly delicate bones.

Before Milo could answer, a piercing croak tore through the air above them, and Milo saw a familiar malformed silhouette pass through the moonlight above.

“Dead-Dead-Deadedy-Dead, meat-man is cold from toe to head,” Lempo called in a sing-song voice as he circled between the trees overhead.

I do not like that fowl, Imrah hissed in Milo’s mind, but at the moment, he didn’t have the energy to reply.

He ached all over, and he felt the soul-deep drain of working blood magic on the fly.

“What’s next?” Milo groaned, looking up at the corvid. “You looking for a fight, too?”

Lempo gave another shriek and then a hoarse laugh.

“No more fight for you, funny little man.”

The darkness of the midnight forest was pierced by a phalanx of spotlights, and Milo had to bite his lip to keep from screaming from the pain in his suddenly abused eyes.

“Surrender now or die,”