Chapter One #3
“Funny.” Shaar’s chuckle held everything but humor. “I could say the same about you.”
The roar that forced its way out of Shaar’s gnarled mouth shook the walls of the rickety buildings surrounding us. The crowd of Gladers cried out and began to run for the back entrance of town like a stampede.
But my attention remained on Shaar.
The corrupt mage clapped his hands together, and a rumble of thunder stirred beneath our feet. Loose stones began to rise a few inches from the ground, and my skin prickled as I felt all ?the hair on my body stand on edge.
Shaar’s conjoined hands glowed ?stark white, and sparks began to fly from his knuckles. Whatever he was charging was something big, and I didn’t want him to level our entire town just to prove he was better than me.
“Ellyn, use whatever you can!” I ordered my wife as I swung my sword around in a loose circle.
“On it,” the pale-haired elf said as she brewed a large fireball between her hands.
Shaar didn’t move an inch, even as he watched the inferno grow. The ground rattled even harder as the white light between his own palms grew stronger, and I could feel the static electricity gnawing at my skin.
Ellyn unleashed her fireball with a yell, but when the sphere went to hit its mark, Shaar released his hands. A large ball of lightning consumed the fire like a gaping maw, and lingering tendrils shot out and splintered the ground.
Shaar clapped his hands together again to brew another one, but I wasn’t going to let him charge up again.
I ran toward him with my sword raised and a snarl on my face. Sure, maybe running headfirst into a guy who was apparently a walking Tesla coil wasn’t the brightest idea, but it made him do a double take.
His momentary surprise gave me enough time to bring my sword down against his glowing hands and stop the charging before it was too late.
Instead of slicing through his skin, my blade bounced off ?the small orb surrounding him, but it was enough to make him drop his hands.
I gripped a fistful of his robe again, and rather than relishing at his wide eyes and lack of cocky smirk, I smashed the pommel of my sword into his face.
Hard leather met sinew, and I felt the rounded bottom slide in between his malformed and exposed muscles. I jerked the sword back with a grunt before doing the same thing again, until more of his teeth were exposed and broken like jagged pearls.
Shaar just blinked through the assault, with only a few grunts and groans slipping past his disfigured mouth.
My fist hovered in the air as I paused, and my grip on his robe turned my knuckles white.
The elven man’s dark eyes looked glazed over, and his pupils expanded and shrank like a beating heart. His gaze slowly trailed up to my face and my bloodied knuckles, and that’s when that goddamn smirk spread across his face again.
Blood drooled down his chin from his pulverized mouth, and I could see his cheekbone poking through the torn muscle on his face.
“Is that all you’ve got, farmer?” he croaked.
Shaar’s hands suddenly slammed down on my forearm, and I felt a bolt of electricity shoot through my entire left side. My muscles locked, and I jerked back from the mage who spun out of my grip with a dramatic swirl of his robes.
A flash of steel caught my eye, but just as he was beginning to swirl it around his head to fire at me, I yanked my gun out of its holster with my good arm and fired.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
I kept pulling the trigger until I had emptied the mag straight into Shaar’s chest, and with each shot, his body jolted back. His arms flung out, left to right, as if he were being pulled by an invisible puppet string.
The slide on my gun locked back as I fired the last round, and my chest heaved up and down as the adrenaline burned through my body.
Shaar collapsed onto the ground with a dull thud. His arms and legs were stretched out like a starfish, and for a moment, I had the na?ve hope that he was dead.
But as I slowly approached his unmoving form, I could see his chest slowly moving up and down. His breathing was labored, and there was a quiet gargling sound every time he sucked in a shaking breath.
Holes littered his chest, and the small black craters were still smoking through the fabric of his wool robe.
Before I could get any closer, Shaar propped himself up with his elbow at a glacial pace and stared right at me. It felt like he was looking through my soul with those dark, bloodshot eyes, and I couldn’t help the chill that shot down my spine.
“Well…” he rasped as his gaze fell to my gun. “This just got interesting.”
Bleeding and punctured, he grinned, and I knew this wasn’t the end of it.
Shaar reached into his pocket before I could stop him and threw some kind of pouch onto the ground. A plume of dark green smoke engulfed his injured frame and clogged my lungs, and I choked at the rancid taste that burned the back of my throat and burned my eyes.
I wafted my hand in front of my face to try to see through the noxious smog, but by the time the smoke cleared…
Shaar was gone.