A Long Road Chapter 15 Ficbit – Timing

Wen Ning’s head snapped aside, toward the three boulders that sheltered a local trysting nook; a move so inhuman it made Crathach’s own spine throb in sympathy. So why was the man smiling-?

No gathering himself, as a normal man would. No coil of desperate muscles. Just a leap, fast as an arrow’s flight, wreathed in black mist.

Crouching, Wen Ning grabbed granite and heaved.

That… is not possible, Crathach thought, stunned. You’d need a team of Ashkevron warhorses to even shift that weight, much less lift-!

Hefting it as a mortal man might a sack of grain, Wen Ning threw.

The snap of bones left a Healer wincing, even if they were long-dead.

“The groundskeepers are going to love that one,” Elcarth muttered, as lightning-laced water writhed and flailed under cracked stone. “But it’s mist. How-?”

“Oh, Bright Lady.” Shielding her eyes with one hand, Kais squinted into the wind, blonde braids whipping her shoulders. “That’s what they meant!”

Paper fluttered and burned, as Mina squinted into the gale. “That’s how his cultivation works. Turning resentment against itself.”

“Like a Fetcher can stop another Fetcher, or….” Jaim gulped, hiding behind Theke’s solid frame. “Or a Mindspeaker can shield others out.”

Not quite the same, Crathach considered, risking a half-step into Healing readiness to sense an eerily familiar flow of energies; the earth to Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian to the ghosts. As Healers of legend had fed energy to wounded on the battlefield, granting them the strength to defy death. But it works.

Ghostly hands pulled the river-haunt fully from the Terilee’s edge, bones and mist still cracking around the shattered boulder. Something was pinned beneath stone; something the monster would not or could not sever itself from, even as the rest of its form flowed and bunched like storm-clouds.

Nie Zonghui bared his teeth. “Now!”