Half-Bloods R • 1: Fallen World

C • 30 : Break the Toes, Burn the Heels

He dropped to the top of an abandoned skyscraper, leaves fluttered around his feet.

Come on, Villin, we need you right now!

He forced mana into his throat and let his aura expand outward.

"Villin!" He screamed, his voice echoing throughout the miles of dead city and forest as his aura towered upward and formed a black spire that parted the few white clouds of the clear summer sky.

The wind flowed around him and a sudden ebb of energy flowed behind him. He turned around to find a half-formed shadow of his sister staring at him, her tall crown of horns rising gently from her head.

"Talv," she whispered, "I thought I smelled your scent in the woods recently. What do you need?"

"It's Christopher, and the young girl he always talked about. They need help learning to control their powers," he said in a dry voice.

"Sounds like they need your help, then. You can teach them control just fine."

"But you can teach it better. Please, Villin, come back with me."

The wind forced itself past them, carrying the sounds of howling beasts. The trees below them, rising from the ground and out of the walls shook.

"Sorry Talv, but you're on your own on this one. I can't leave, not yet," the shade began to disappear.

"No, I won't let you leave again!" He rushed toward the shade, "Tell me where you're at!"

He reached out his hand and brushed it through the shade's form, magic coursed through him. The shade disappeared and Vaelan was left standing alone, staring at his hand.

Decimii, find her.

He dashed forward and leaped off the roof. Two pairs of wings formed from his back, and he left himself with his main pair of arms as he fell, he turned upside down and twisted himself upright before he could hit the branches. He sped over the forest canopy and let his senses flow, closing his eyes and searching for his sister's aura as cool wind pressed against him while he flew through the heat. Suddenly, Villin's aura appeared three times in front of him. He opened his eyes and saw three shades of Villin in his flight path. Each of the tall, mock archdevils aimed a bow and arrow at him, their thin, inky eyes shimmering. The arrows slung through the air, Vaelan twisted around them but found his larger left-wing grazed by one of the bolts.

They're physical? He rushed forward and grabbed one of the shades. She's improved massively!

The shade wrapped its wire-like tails around his wings, forcing the two to fall into the forest and toward the grassy streets below.

"You're lucky you're not real!" He grabbed the copy of his sister and tore it in half, splashing mana across the road below, he huffed, "Though it is still traumatizing."

He twisted and landed, lowering himself to cushion the blow. The other two shades landed on either side of him and stabbed forward with thick arrows. He dodged beneath the strikes as more shades appeared.

Anger boiled up in his chest, anger that he released in a single snarl, "Stop screwing around!"

The archdevil contorted his body to defend against each shade as they came. His wings dispersed as he grabbed and threw arrows back at the fakes that shot them, he slashed and blocked his false sisters' swings of daggers and swords with his own pair of swords that he held in his second pair of arms and daggers that he kept in the third. He grabbed the shades and threw them into each other to counter, then spun around and cut through a quartet of fake Villins. He began tearing through the army of shades, ripping his blade through their fake bodies and repeatedly using his ruined left arm to use the Stance of Violence spell.