Chapter 139

The blade faltered against her neck. “Why the hell are you here of all my family Rose. Such a waste. Such a fruitless goddam waste.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at the frozen teenager’s face.

“I lost Lyra, but that was always tempered by the existance of you, my freshly plucked spark for the stage. Gods...”

He pulled back with a groan of frustration.

“What could she have seen? Did she hear? Can I really-? She knows my habits so she would ... But then those rumours have always existed...” The Lord muttered into his hand, eyes darting side to side in thought. He seemed to brood on something for a time, his tail lashing with irritation.

“Fine. Perhaps I know a way I can more permanently fix you. Heart pins ... few know they work on levelers too just fine. Perhaps a perpetual fear of instantaneous death will improve your performance on the stage in the end, my Rose.”

He trailed off as his eyes caught on the black half formed mist that was spilling through a few rents in the teddy bear’s fabric.

“But ... what is this you have brought with you?”

He hesitantly held out the knife and prodded at the black mist. The blade passed through it pushing aside the magically frozen material. “Curious.” He lifted a hand and hesitantly touched a fingertip against what looked like the half formed skull of some carnivore floating amongst it.

A moment’s touch and he gasped in pain and snatched his hand back. He examined his finger tip which had turned red, blistering like it had been burned, the flesh visibly rippling.

“An acid? Wait, this isn’t her ability, this is-”

He abruptly jerked back from the bear.

“-another leveler hiding inside. Assassin!” He spat.

A hand came up and a fresh marble sized fireball began to coalesce, the flame compacting down into a flaring green ball and hovering over his index finger. He raised his hand, aiming the thing directly at Rose’s face, then shifted it up aiming for the teddy bear’s chest. Then, after a moment of thought, moved it to the side, aiming for its arm.

Fwhip!

The fireball launched and shot through the arm like it wasn’t even there, a straight line of destruction that blew through the front and out the back in a cloud of shredded stuffing that drifted to the ground. The fireball left a small black dot as it departed through the opposite wall.

The Lord tutted as he watched it go then turned his attention to the ‘golem’, watching carefully and expectantly. He was soon rewarded. Blood poured from a rent in the arm, spattering down in a steady shower onto the floor below.

“You found an accomplice. This would be the source of your sudden confidence and reason for coming here now of all times.”

He raised his hand and three more fireballs began to form, one fireball for index, middle, and ring finger, respectively.

“H-hey, what are you doing?” said Opal, struggling up from Lyra as she grasped what was about to happen.

Wranvyre didn’t reply. Instead, he lifted his hand and fired one of the fireballs through the bear’s gut just beside Rose, then one through its chest, and then the last one through its head.

Woolen stuffing fluttered into the air and blood flowed freely from the furred fabric now. The black slick and shiny with wet as red pooled on the floorboards.

“The question is, how large is the leveler hidden within?” he mused, three more fireballs beginning to form in his hand.

Opal’s breath caught in her throat as she watched the fireballs be put through the bear, shock more than anything stilling her. But then she began to move, rage making her fast, and she flung herself backwards, falling into shadow. She appeared far above Wranvyre, dropping from the ceiling, a black talon forming even as she silently fell toward her target.

The lord sent the three just formed fireballs into the bear to the goblin’s fury.

Both her hands took hold of the harpy talon as Opal flung her arms forward in a reckless strike, using the full weight of her momentum, a single life ending blow aimed straight at the back of the Lamia’s head without a care for her own safety.

Opal very nearly made it, the talon merely a dozen or so inches from piercing his skull, but then the chair the Lord’s tail had been coiled around was whipped up and smashed into her. She was flung aside in a hail of shattering wood, landing badly atop a nearby table with a grunt of expelled breath and a nasty thump.

The Lord set his lips in a line as he looked her over.

“I really should stop thinking of you as a goblin slave, dead useless furniture does not attack its owner like this, and more, your weapon ... it’s strange, even for an evolution.”

He lifted his index finger and a fireball began to coalesce.

Opal rose from the table, cold horror at what was being done to Rain keeping her motions efficient.

She needed more. More power.

Black mist like flame flowed from her horn and rolled over her skin, pouring down from her head, her body a bonfire of darkness. She snarled and it spilled into her free hand, a second talon forming, both swelling, one for each hand, larger talons, a Panthara’s talons.

The Lord’s eyes widened slightly as he recognised the cruel shape of them and the fireball quickly snapped forward from the Lord’s index. Opal dropped, falling down just as the fireballs passed over her head.

She came up behind Wranvyre, the momentum of her fall launching her into the air and toward the Lord. Of course Wranvyre was already turning, the black knife darting out to catch the first talon.

The two black objects came together with a crashing screech that rattled the eardrums, yet Opal didn’t give him a moment’s pause and lunged with the unexpected second talon, a sweeping cross aimed for his gut. Wranvyre lashed his tail and hauled himself back, eyes flashing with anger that a goblin slave of all things was pressuring him.