IMPERMANENCE

chapter twenty nine - the switch

Once Alessia's power had dwindled down to nothing, she made a quick visual examination. Lennox's blood-stained leather and hunched over position caught her eye abruptly.

One wave of her hand had him healed.

violence ahead

She didn't care that she was using her power, it had no impact on her body. She chose not to obliterate all of the soldiers into ashes, for the underlying fear that it would do severe damage to her power depletion. She chose to spread them out evenly, and injure them enough so she and the others could hold their ground.

Alessia stalked forward to the corpse of the skull-impaled general stuck to the wall. Alessia ripped the Guntheran blade out of his head and watched his body slump down onto the tavern floor.

She slicked the coated blood off of the sword with her hand and threw it into the pile of streaming blood, his blood, on the wooden floors. As she did so, Alessia examined the Guntheran soldiers who moaned and groaned against the ground from her powerful blast. She had to make sure she injured them all properly and spread each of their bodies out efficiently so each person had about two or three soldiers to take on directly.

"Kill them all," she commanded her back turned away from the group as she watched the poor soldiers attempt to recover from the impact of her power.

When nobody moved, she grew furious. They only had a certain amount of time before the strongest of the soldiers made an effort to pull themselves together enough to fight.

"That's an order," she said coolly with her head turned over her shoulder once she realized nobody had moved yet. Alessia turned her head back to face the fallen soldiers as she felt the harsh winds of Thea, Zane, Lennox, and Ivan whip past her and into the clearing to fight.

"Dagger, stay here with Naomi," Alessia ordered as she stepped over the fallen wooden rubble of the tavern and onto the grass of the clearing.

"I want to fight," Naomi spoke out, her voice trembling. Alessia could feel her eyes burning up, the light circulating her vision, and heightening it to its fullest ability.

"Stay here or I'll kill you myself," she threatened. Naomi offered no retort or whines of protest. Smart girl.

Alessia took a powerful lunge to launch herself into the middle of the clearing. She shot so high into the air, she could see above the trees. With every usage, she felt she discovered new elements of her abilities. The ground shook from the impact of her landing. Most of the killings would be done by her, to properly ensure that each person had ultimately two people to duel against at once, four to start with and injure. She didn't have to explain it to them, they understood her plan.

At one point, Alessia saw Dagger's dark hair breeze past her, Naomi and her tattered blue dress nowhere in sight.

She didn't have time to bark orders at him or condescend him for disobeying. He was helping. Not abided by the royal contract to assist them in any way, but upon his own free will. Battling against his own.

Alessia's eyes burned and burned, the urge to kill dangled over her head like a piece of sweet dessert that she'd been craving. The anti-climactic end she had brought upon Julian left her feeling hungry for enemies who dared for a fight.

Once Alessia began her killings, she wouldn't stop. She wouldn't stop until they were all dead. Only her enemies, never those alongside her. At least she had that much awareness and control over herself.

There was no time to think, feel, or question. All she could focus on was ripping the life away from the soldiers who thought they had the upperhand.