Chapter 25
Energies vibrated through me, filled me with a false sense of optimism. I managed to rise to my feet as bolts of blue fire bounced around the inside of the rude little manse. I struggled to control it, aimed it at the two of them and saw it bounce off what was obviously a shield of some kind.
Their faces wore snarls; they huddled behind whatever was protecting them and shrieked for guards. I risked a glance behind me and raised a barrier to spare me from a sword to the back.
Coelanth retaliated with some kind of energy of his own and the place lit up like a payoff to a Vegas jackpot.
"You don't possess enough power to destroy us!" The king snarled and pushed Coelanth to the foreground. Fire scorched my back and tilted me forward. I turned my head over my shoulder and mages of their own kind were pointing staves at me from which bolts of fire flared; were able to breach my shield and set my clothes aflame. I doubled my efforts and saw the walls melt around us; the sky opened up to reveal great gray clouds that roiled in angr y malevolence and threatened to hail on us. Their own clothes burst into smoke and arrows began to rain down around us, forming a circle outside the barrier of magical force so that the ground looked like a hedgehog. None of them penetrated the circle I was in or theirs.
I felt an escalation of the power within me, felt the ground under us begin to fall away.
The very fabric of reality began to break up; I tried to hold it together as more forces battered me from the rear and the left. I reached inside myse lf and saw the strings, heard them stretching and breaking with an awful crescendo that I could not only hear but also feel on my skin. I grabbed the whole entire massive bundle of Druz with the coin in both hands, tore it loose from its anchors, and ripped it to shreds with a fury I did not know I possessed. My broken arm could not hold, and I dropped them where they whipped around like a fire hose and wrapped about me, tearing me off my fragile perch on the only stable piece of firmament. I fell a long way; the only reality to my existence was the coin in my fist and the torn strands of the Druz lines. They dragged me down yet I was afraid to let go of it, afraid it would cut me into ribbons or strangle me. I saw no sign of king or general, only knew I held their lifelines in my hand.
The Seillach coin flared, burned in my fingers, but I did not let go. It tugged subtly in my grip and began to pull me in a direction not down but sideways until my feet hit solid ground. I closed my eyes and ears, when I opened them, I saw pavement beneath me. I was standing on a street corner under a light post with the noise of bombs falling around me.
"Holy crap!" I said and ducked, knocking an iron bench into my broken arm. I looked up, saw both the general and his king were only yards away, and possessed of more mundane weapons like AK-47s, automatic rifles and handguns I'd only seen in SWAT sniper control.
I opened my hand, the Seillach coin was still there, still humming along like a cherry bomb. Strands of their lifelines were wrapped around various parts of my body, limp, torn and inert. I stood up, cradled my broken arm and glared at them while bullets and mortars went by over my head and exploded near my feet.
Clutching the coin in my hand, I reached into the heart of the Tree and tore loose a great big wad of its energy. Channeled that through the coin and cached it with all the hate, anger, despair, pain and desperation I'd ever held inside me since I'd sat in my mother's blood. I yelled, "Why don't all you Druz go to Hell!"
They disappeared. Without a whisper of a moan or even a word. I looked around. The rest of wherever this was hadn't stopped, mortars, bombs and bullets were still flying the not so friendly skies. I squatted and ran for the nearest building, changed my mind and hugged the sides of the street where abandoned and destroyed cars lined the curbs. The storefronts for the names of the businesses in Arabic and Farsi. I automatically translated to read, Tobacco, Bakery, Greengrocer, Cobbler. I was stuck in the middle of what was either the Afghanistan or Iraq war zone. I turned the corner ran smack into a man's chest, we both grunted and mine became a muffled cry of agony is a hit my broken arm. I fell, said 'shit' faintly and passed out.