“Thanks, I already ate,” I smirked at the revenant, having no clue what it just said. I glanced over at Sayuri curled into a ball and shaking and gritted my teeth. Oh, there’d be a reckoning all right.

“Do not use your magic!” Carrisyn cried to me, still attempting to unravel the magic around the tome.

“Just hurry the fuck up!” I yelled back, dropping into a defensive crouch as the revenant moved forward. “I’ll handle this asshole! Defensive formation!” I ordered nonsensically. We’d never discussed any defensive formation or anything of the sort. In hindsight the rule of the party seemed to be haphazardly laying about with everything we had and hoping for the best. My best hope was they knew what I was talking about more than I did.

Oddly enough Sascha and Alarice flanked Zelaeryn as the husks flooded into the room while Lysabel struggled to pull Sayuri away from the oncoming melee. I felt the magic inside me rise like a wave, rushing and roaring through my body like water pouring into an empty pitcher. I grinned at the oncoming revenant as a sign of confidence I felt wholly unprepared to back up, magic erupting from my fingers and racing down the chains to my daggers.

“I said not to use your magic!” Carrisyn shouted again, her voice barely registering in my head as skills I never knew and battles I’d never fought rushed through my subconscious. I’d have to trust my instincts, the magic I had been specifically told not to use, and Ashvallen’s body and experiences to see me through.

“Tá mé tagtha ar do shon, mo bhanríon,” the hateful creature hissed.

“Veni Vidi Vici, bitch,” I grinned, spewing the only Latin I knew. I leapt to the attack.

The revenant hefted the massive scythe into the air and brought it across in a vicious arc that would have decapitated me cleanly had I not already taken one step onto the ground and jumped in a different direction. My foot lighted briefly along the haft of the scythe and then I was tearing into the cowled face, the green fire encasing my daggers exploding like miniature suns as they tore into the invisible face beneath the hood. A moment later I was past the revenant but already spinning, dancing wide of the monstrosity’s awkward swing and leaping forward again.

Once more the green fire exploded into the revenant’s face as my daggers cut and stabbed. The revenant staggered slightly, and I drove forward harder. I pressed my daggers into the empty cowl and screamed incoherently as my fire surged like a waterfall through the formless body. The revenant grabbed for me, but I was already gone, my form slipping away from its grasp like mist in the morning sun.

I landed lightly and dodged blindly left, the scythe tearing a 10cm groove in the solid stone floor where I’d been a moment earlier Ashvallen’s experience and heightened senses allowing me to dodge out of danger. Once more with a grunt I leapt forward, going low this time as the revenant sought to protect its face. My daggers raked and tore along its ethereal body, leaving flaming gashes blazing with emerald fire. Before the monster could recover, I had already landed and leapt back to the attack, my daggers ripping into its robed legs before I was once more past and crouched, breathing heavily, my heartbeat thrumming in my ears.

The revenant straightened, the scythe blazing brighter with lurid purple light, the coals of its eyes blazing brightly through the green fire still raging through the dark hood. The flaming gashes I’d opened in its body sputtered and died and the monstrosity stalked forward resolutely, a silent shadow of death among the cacophony of battle.

“Oh, come the fuck on,” I growled irritably. “Seriously?” It was like shooting rubber bands at a brick wall at this point. Still, I thought, I had a few tricks up my sleeve. Probably.

I waited a second longer for the giant scythe to begin its killing arc before my daggers flicked up, digging themselves into the stone ceiling far above my head. The mechanisms on the bracers I wore kicked in immediately and I was suddenly flying upward in the blink of an eye. I flicked my wrists deftly again and the daggers slipped free of their moorings, and I plunged back toward the ground, both daggers pointing down as I slammed into the revenant’s head, driving down and through the cowl and into the monstrous chest. I gritted my teeth and sent emerald fire roaring through the spectral creature.

It screamed horribly as the fire raced through its entire body, sending blazing cloth and mist in all directions. I bore down, closing my eyes and tapping reserves I had no idea I even had, and the fire strengthened, brightened, and exploded in a maelstrom of flame and fury. Finally the flames died down, leaving nothing but blazing cloth fluttering toward the ground in an emerald shower.

“Haa,” I breathed heavily, sinking to my knees in exhaustion. “Ha! I beat you, you evil shitmonkey!” I slumped onto the ground, feeling drained and shaky. “That’s what you get for fucking with me.” I closed my eyes and felt the world spin grotesquely. Whatever reserves I’d tapped were now just about as exhausted as I was.

“Is liomosa tu, anois,” a raspy voice whispered. I opened my eyes painfully to find the revenant standing several meters away, looking none the worse for wear.

“Are you goddamn kidding me right now?” I gaped at the revenant in disbelief. It was dead! I had obliterated the fucking thing into tiny little gross bits! How the hell was it looking like it was about to go to a creature from hell tea party still? I dragged myself back to my feet, scowling angrily at the monstrosity stalking toward me.

Somehow my body was up and moving, tumbling deftly backward as the scythe cut through the space I had recently occupied. I was back into my crouch, the emerald fire blazing to life once more. Low reserves or not the magic seemed content to respond to my call and I took the chance I had. Once more my daggers flicked out, burying themselves into the wall opposite me.

I was airborne for a brief moment before I pulled one dagger free and embedded it into the wall behind me, releasing the dagger in front. My feet impacted the back of the revenant’s head and drove forward, every muscle in my body tensed and coiled like a snake before unleashing the stored energy into the monster’s robed form, driving the revenant to its knees.

I turned on a dime and leapt over the revenant again, slashing and cutting. Unfortunately, it seemed I’d used that tactic once too many times as the revenant’s spectral hand caught me in the ribs, smashing at least two and sending me flying against a bookshelf against the far wall. I grunted in pain as I felt the sharp ends of the shattered bones shift and puncture one of my lungs.

As I lay dazed on the ground for a long moment, I felt rather than heard a faint murmuring of what sounded like thousands of voices speaking to me. They came from everywhere at once, whispering in a language I couldn’t quite understand yet seemingly familiar and welcome. One began to speak above them all. A voice quiet and confident. Filled with authority and gravity. The voice rose above the very nearly inaudible din of the others, whispering of power untapped, of magic mine for the taking.

I staggered to my knees, gasping in pain, and stared up through a haze of exhaustion and agony as the revenant stalked forward. My fingers still held the daggers, but they were trembling and weak on the hilts. I closed my eyes with a long sigh and listened.

The scythe swung down toward my head, and I let the ancient voices which seemed to whisper to me from the walls and floor and every mote of dust roiling through the air take control. I seemed to be watching my body from a vantage point which was everywhere and nowhere at once.

My body blinked out of existence for a moment before reappearing behind the robed revenant. Without a word, magical bolts roared from my hands, striking the creature with crushing force, staggering it. The revenant tried to turn but again the bolts exploded from my hands and crashed into it. Not giving the beast a chance to counter I began to blink from place to place, each time I appeared emerald fire lanced out from my fingers and slammed the robed body with crushing force.

My body appeared above the revenant, suspended by magical forces I had no idea even existed and my arms came down in a smashing motion, forcing the revenant flat against the hard stone floor, its scythe skittering away from its spectral hand uselessly. I raised my hands above my head again and slammed them downward with more force. With a groaning crack that echoed through the library the two-meter-thick stone floor cracked and exploded, sending the revenant down into the level below. Crumbled and blazing stone pummeling the robed body.

I turned toward the surging waves of husks, emerald fire blazing from my eyes like acetylene torches. So hot it seemed the very air around me was catching fire. With a swipe of my hands a wave of fire roared through the husks, burning them to ash in an instant.

“Mo bhanríon!” The revenant’s raspy voice cried as the monster knelt on the floor below me, arms outstretched as if to accept some great boon.

 My body gathered itself before plunging through the hole in the floor like a missile, crushing the struggling revenant like a bug. A moment later I blinked away from the library, reappearing in a bed chamber I’d never seen before.

“Your anger is misplaced,” a vice that was mine but also was not whispered, staring down at the desiccated corpse lying in an unnatural position on the rotting bed. “Now rest, Faelar Naexirym.” My hands touched the corpse’s shoulder and emerald fire raced through it, turning it to ash.

A second later I reappeared in the library, the magic coursing through my body guttered and died like a match in the wind. A brilliant emerald fire roared up from the hole in the floor as the revenant exploded and vanished soundlessly.

I swayed brokenly yet managed to stay upright somehow. My body ached and my mind, though my own once again, reeled from what had just happened. I sheathed my daggers and let my arms fall to my side in exhaustion, staring at the now silent library around me. The voices had vanished as quickly as they had come and even the sounds of my companions rushing toward me were muted and distant, as if I were hearing them through a swimming pool.

“I told you not to use the fucking magic!” Carrisyn folded me in her arms, holding me tightly. She leaned back and took my cheeks in her hands in frustration. She stared into my eyes, searching for something. “What the hell have you done?”

“She saved our asses,” Alarice mumbled. “But what is she? What have you found, Carrisyn?”

“She is exactly what I said she was,” Carrisyn snapped irritably, looking over her shoulder venomously at Alarice.

“No,” Alarice shook her head. “She most certainly is not.”

“Are you ok?” Carrisyn demanded, conveniently ignoring Alarice. I nodded, my head bobbing like a doll. “How do you feel?”

“Like I wanna diddle your skittle,” I replied honestly.

“What’s that mean?” Alarice glanced at Carrisyn’s bright red face.

“Doesn’t matter,” Carrisyn shook her head. “Her libido’s in overdrive again but she seems, somehow, to be otherwise ok. Stupid and dangerous as shit, but ok.”

“Everyone!” Lysabel called from where she knelt beside Sayuri. “This is bad!”

I followed the others as quickly as my shaky legs could manage as they crowded around the silent form on the ground. Sayuri had been so badly wounded I found it difficult to believe she was still alive. Blood had pooled beneath her body and the skin around the gaping wound in her shoulder was turning black, a faint mist curling up. Except for the shallow, ragged rise and fall of her chest she was unmoving.

“Is she ok?” I asked uselessly. She was plainly anything but ok. Sascha felt along the edge of the wound, a faint golden light playing on Sayuri’s skin wherever she touched. Almost immediately the wound began to close before being quickly overwhelmed by the rapidly spreading wispy black discoloration.

“She’s been poisoned,” Sascha shook her head. “Or…cursed…or something. I don’t even know what’s going on. I’ve never seen it before.”

“You can fix it, right?” I peered down at the still form of the cat girl with fear and dread.

“No,” Sascha whispered. “This is far beyond me. I have no idea how she’s not already, but she’s dying.”