Page 34 of Infernal Crown (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #3)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

LYSITHEA

We enter the fight for our lives as we leave the armoury.

We’ve made more noise than a dragon crashing into an ocean of broken glass.

This is easier than fighting Tenebris Vinculum, but also more fun.

These creatures are no more powerful than me, and they grin, teeth bared as they approach, thinking I’m going to be a pushover.

I let them get close. Close enough to see the overconfidence in their glowing red eyes. They’re bigger than me, broader, armed with jagged swords that hiss with heat.

One lunges.

I don’t scream this time. I whisper a single note. It’s quiet, intimate. For his ears only. The demon’s charge falters. His eyes glaze over. Blood trickles from his ears, his nose. He drops his sword with a clang and collapses, his own internal structures ruptured by the sound.

His companions hesitate, their grins gone.

That’s all the opening Dathan needs. Shadows erupt from the floor, grabbing their ankles, pulling demons into pools of inky blackness that swallow their screams. Evren is at the edge of the fight, his knife flashing, severing spines and throats with a chilling lack of fanfare.

Verik is in his element. Demons in his path simply combust, hellfire consuming them from the inside out.

I take a step forward, my voice still humming with power. The remaining rebels back away, fear finally dawning in their brutish faces.

I let the real music begin. It’s not a scream. It’s a symphony of annihilation. We carve a path through corridors of obsidian and bone, leaving a trail of ash and terror in our wake. We head up a grand staircase, slaying demon rebels as we go. We’re a storm. A perfect, four-person apocalypse.

“Hey,” Dathan calls out as he strangles a rebel with his magic. “How come the four of us are getting rid of these fuckers, and your family couldn’t?”

Verik growls.

His growl isn’t just a sound. It’s a wave of heat that ripples the air. He doesn’t answer Dathan’s question with words. He answers with violence.

He grabs the rebel Dathan was toying with, yanking it out of the shadows.

“Because they grew complacent,” Verik snarls.

The demon in his grip screams as hellfire pours from Verik’s hand, not burning the rebel, but calcifying him.

He turns to a brittle, obsidian statue. Verik shoves it, and it topples down the grand staircase, shattering into a thousand pieces.

“Point taken,” Dathan says, a wicked grin splitting his face.

The remaining rebels at the top of the stairs see this display, and their bravado crumbles.

They turn to flee. Big mistake. My voice catches them, a low thrumming note that liquefies their knees.

They collapse in a heap, unable to run, unable to stand.

Evren is among them, a second later, silent, deadly, ending their panic.

We take the last few steps. Before us stands a set of doors carved from the lava. Two hulking guards, twice the size of the others and clad in scorched plate armour, block our way. The throne room.

“Oh, they’re large,” I mutter.

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Verik says, his fist igniting with hellfire.

“And the harder they hit,” I manage to get out before they lunge for us.

Meanwhile, this has given the rebels a chance to regroup and attack us from behind.

Outnumbered.

But not outpowered.

Remember that.

I draw in a deep breath and sing the song that Clara used to torture me with.

It stops the regular demons in their tracks, swaying on their feet as I hypnotise them. As they listen, their brains are melting, their eyes are turning to goo, their insides are liquefying.

But the two brutes by the door just shake their heads, the sound barely affecting them.

They charge. One goes for Verik, the other for Dathan and Evren.

I have to hold the song. The rebels behind us are still a threat, twitching and swaying, their minds caught in my lethal melody. I’m a fixed point in the chaos, a deadly siren holding the line.

Verik meets his opponent’s charge with a roar. It’s not a battle; it’s a collision. Hellfire against brute force. His fists glow white-hot as he dodges a war hammer the size of my torso. The impact sends shockwaves through the stone.

The other guard swings a massive axe at Dathan, who dissolves into shadow a second before it would have split him in two.

The axe head embeds itself in the floor.

As the demon struggles to pull it free, Evren is there.

He flows around the demon’s legs like water, his knife finding the unarmoured joint behind the knee.

The demon bellows, dropping to one knee. Dathan re-forms behind him, shadows wrapping around the guard’s helmeted head, muffling his shouts, filling his mind with pure terror.

Verik ends his fight. He sidesteps the hammer and drives his flaming hand straight through the demon’s chest plate. There’s a sickening sizzle. He rips his hand back out, holding a fistful of burning heart.

The guard Evren crippled is still struggling against Dathan’s nightmares when Verik turns and blasts him with a wave of fire.

The throne room doors are clear.

Or so we think.

The carved lava on the doors moves. Not just glowing, but flowing.

The intricate patterns liquefy, pouring from the obsidian surfaces onto the floor.

The molten rock pools and rises, coalescing into two new figures, taller and broader than the guards they replaced.

They are constructs of cooling rock and burning magma, their forms constantly shifting, their eyes twin points of white-hot intensity.

“Magma Golems,” Verik spits, the name a curse. “My father’s design. Mindless. Relentless.”

Dathan’s shadows lash out, but they find no fear to grip, no mind to invade. They slide uselessly off the golems’ incandescent hides. Evren darts in, knife flashing, but the blade just scrapes against cooling rock, leaving not even a scratch.

The golems take a step, the floor cracking under their immense weight. One raises a fist that drips liquid fire.

“They have an obsidian core,” Verik shouts over the roar of their internal furnaces. “The fire animates it, but the stone is the anchor.”

Verik unleashes a torrent of hellfire, not to burn the golems, but to shape them, wrestling for control of the very element that gives them life.

I take a breath. I find the frequency of obsidian, the vibration that will turn it to dust. I open my mouth and sing a note of pure and lethal intent.