Down the Rabbit Hole - Book Four

26. Such a Cruel Contradiction

VYNDREN

I swiftly duck as Sejal swings his double-sided mace and I kick his knee on my way down. Kaleo jumps up to kick off the zombie's chest, flipping backwards before landing soundly on his feet on the catwalk we're dueling on. Sejal crashes down to his knees and Eve'Veil seizes the railing briefly as she rapidly twists through mid-air, her high heels clipping him twice right in the face hard enough to send a spray of black blood into the air.

"Nothin' beats drawlin' first blood in a fight, eh?" I smirk at Eve'Veil as she lands beside me.

"Don't get cocky!" She warns a second before Sejal summits up to his feet again with a roar of rage. Disgusting centipedes fly out of his mouth and shower us in a wither, biting mass of nasty.

I chuckle -mildly impressed- as I wrench one of the thick and withering biting bugs off my jacket and bite its head off. "Tastes real," I inform the others battling it out around Sejal.

"You're disgusting!" Eve'Veil announces as she swings her seis for the giant's throat.

"Did you seriously just put that thing in your mouth?" Even Kaleo sounds pretty revolted.

"Dudes, I'm hungry," I smirk and now tug my withering jacket off and throw it in Sejal's face, he never sees the punch to the mouth coming. I can feel some of his fangs break on impact.

"You're probably gonna get worms or something," Analia huffs as she tosses a lasso of Tarsa around the giant's throat.

"Eh, nothin' I can't Heal later," I catch the lasso she throws at me and now swiftly wind it around Sejal's wrists, wrenching him closer to slam my elbow in the zombie's jaw.

Suddenly an insanely intense heatwave rolls off him and forces all of us to stagger backwards, our flesh is seemingly melting off our bones, or almost. My vision blurs as the heat cooks up our inners, Eve'Veil and Neelam clutch the railings for support before sinking down to their knees.

 The catwalk beneath our feet heats up to such an extreme, it turns to mush, and our feet begin sinking deeper into the mesh, entrapping us in the metal-like quicksand.

"Hell," I pant as I look around, the other losers are in the same state as me with not a bright idea between us of what to do next.

Suddenly Kaleo summons his Talent in a flash of radiant silver light.

I feel my eyes widen with awe as ice spits from his frosty hands and a massive icicle stabs through the thin air and collides with Sejal's huge breastplate hard enough to hurl the zombie Shaman to his back, breaking whatever heat spell he had summoned.

Kaleo unleashes a sudden blizzard that engulfs the entire aquarium in a flurry of snow and ice, freezing the catwalk into nothing more than a brittle piece of steel we can easily break free from.

"You're an Elemental?" I pant with disbelief; my breath is a cloud before my face on the fridged air. Holy shick! Outside of being an Alice, an Elemental is the rarest type of magic-user in the realm. My sister was an Elemental too.

"Proud?" Kaleo flashes a brilliant smile.

I tear my eyes away and quickly shake my head dismissively. "Whatever," I mutter as I return my attention to Sejal staggering back up to his feet.

"Put these on him!" Analia calls and hurls a pair of cuffs at me, they're glowing from Tarsa. I snatch them and lace them across my knuckles so I can punch Sejal in the jaw as he starts to get up.

The giant suddenly spits venom and I barely have enough time to close my eyes before the venom begins to burn all of my exposed skin. I give a coarse snarl of rage and pain laced with shock and now, a sixth sense almost, warns me of new danger but the venom has drastically slowed my reaction time down.