Chapter 236: Fracture XLI
A light blue spectral tear zig-zagged through the air, sporadically pausing at seemingly random intervals before it shot forward again, zipping from rooftop to rooftop, thousands of others like it in the backdrop of sky. Its exterior was almost gaseous, trailing wisps like see-through cilia, while its interior was dark, implying the presence of something less ethereal within.
With no warning it plunged downward and slammed into the skull of a fleeing tradesperson, sending a concussive shockwave that reached nearly thirty-span away.
The man should have been dead. But he wasn't. Instead, he writhed on the ground as if swarmed with countless insects, hands plastered over his face—no, his eyes—where a frigid blue-light radiated from beneath them.
And behind him, further down the street, there were at least ten others locked in the same throes.
It didn't take much to put it together. Draugeblod. Wispy entities attacking random people. The talk of possession so recently in mind. The other disasters I'd experienced cycled aggressively through my mind. I let them come, filtering out the fear, leveraging everything I'd learned.
The severity of anything approaching this scale was decided in the first hour. When there were thousands of lives on the line, and imminent danger, people died quickly.
There was no time to think. To ponder why this was happening now.
I opened my mouth, about to give the order to restrain the fallen people long enough for Maya, Vicant, or any of the healers to establish what was happening to them, when armed men rushed the streets.
Blackshields and regular rank-and-file rushed the streets, organized and assembled. But the bigger surprise was the mages. Every member of my father's personally trained honor guard was flanked by a member of the Crimson Hand. They operated in tandem, Blackshields restraining the fallen, while the Crimson Hand chanted incantations over wands or tomes.