Page 14 of His Emotional Support Snack

My breath tears through my lungs in ragged, burning gasps. My left arm continues to pulse with fading silver light, the deep gash clotting almost instantly under the influence of the Wildspont magic.

The third assassin steps over the twitching body of his comrade.

His eyes are narrowed, the initial shock replaced by cold, calculating fury. He raises his venomed dagger, adjusting his grip, preparing to strike me down before moving to the child. I raise the blood-soaked candelabra, squaring my shoulders, ready to fight until the very last drop of blood leaves my body.

The grand double doors of the nursery explode inward.

Solid oak and iron hinges splinter into a thousand lethal projectiles, showering the room in debris. The concussive blast of the impact throws the third assassin off balance, his boots sliding against the blood-slicked rug.

A towering silhouette fills the ruined doorway.

The nursery instantly becomes a suffocating vacuum. Purple static crackles across the ceiling, illuminating the dust and wood splinters hanging suspended in the air.

Zuirvih stands in the threshold.

His midnight blue tunic remains torn, his hair a chaotic tangle around his face. The ghostly pallor of his skin and the black, necrotic veins pulsing up his neck are fully exposed, stripped of all glamour. He looks like a dying god dragged straight from the depths of Glacies.

Violent eyes lock onto the remaining assassin, there is no mockery, only death.

Zuirvih raises a single, trembling hand. He closes his fingers into a fist.

The shadows in the room detach from the walls. They swarm the third assassin like a hive of starving locusts, wrapping around his armored limbs, his throat, his chest. The dark elf shrieks, a high, piercing sound of pure agony as the chaotic magic twists the physical matter of his body. Bones snap in rapid succession, a sickening staccato echoing over the storm winds.

The shadows pull tighter, warping reality itself, until the assassin is crushed into a screaming, unrecognizable knot of darkness, and finally, into a shower of harmless grey ash.

10

ZUIRVIH

The chaotic compression concludes with a final, wet crunch.

I drop my fist. The shadows release their grip, allowing the ruined, ash-covered remnants of Zatori’s final assassin to scatter across the floorboards. The threat is purged. The nursery is secure. The child breathes, and the feral human standing over the first corpse remains on her feet, the silver candelabra dripping dark blood onto the rug.

My magical core shatters.

The sound is not audible to anyone else in the room. It is an internal detonation, a violent snapping of the protective containment I have maintained for a decade. The Marrow-Rot feeds on the massive expenditure of high-level magic, roaring to life with unchecked, ravenous hunger.

A spike of pure, blinding agony cleaves through my sternum.

My knees buckle. I crash onto the polished marble threshold, the impact jarring through my shinbones, but I barely register the physical blow. The internal fire is absolute. It turns the blood in my veins to boiling acid. The putrid, black lines spiderwebbing up my throat thicken, bulging against the delicate tissue, crawling rapidly down my arms and across my chest.

The necrosis consumes the last of my failing defenses. The magic I use to manipulate reality backfires, turning inward.

The air in the nursery drops to freezing. My lungs seize, locking tight in my chest. I cannot draw oxygen. The chaotic energy leaks from my fractured core, manifesting as jagged, violently unstable purple sparks that crackle around my face. The sparks drift toward my mouth and nose.

To inhale raw, uncontained magic is to invite instantaneous combustion. The erratic energy will ignite the oxygen in my lungs, vaporizing my respiratory system from the inside out. I will turn into a living bomb, detonating with enough force to level this entire wing, taking the boy, the beast, and the woman with me.

My vision tunnels, the edges bleeding into pitch black. The roaring in my ears drowns out the storm winds battering the open balcony.

I try to clamp my jaw shut, to stop the intake of air, but the pain forces my lips apart in a silent, agonizing gasp. The purple sparks drift closer to my mouth, smelling of burned ozone and impending death.

Fabric rustles sharply over the marble.

A small, frantic shape crawls into the center of my failing vision. Esmeralda. She discards the silver weapon, her knees dragging through the ash and dark blood staining the rug. Her face is pale, smeared with the gore of the kill, her eyes wide with a terrifying, desperate focus.

She reaches me before the first spark crosses my lips.

She does not pull back. She does not cower from the unstable magic tearing the room apart.