Sassy Saturday! Every week will be an excerpt from one of my novels showcasing a kick-butt heroine. If you want read about the original blog hop the link is here.
The previous Sassy Saturday post can be read here: Young Blood vs Old Spirit
The context for this post: Gruffle has gone One-Winged Angel. It's time for the final boss fight. Eric's party members include Annala, Kallen, Perrault and [[ SPOILER! ]]]
Special note: This will be the final Sassy Saturday until I publish another book. I'm thinking about doing a different excerpt series. This one will be about magic in fiction having rules, i.e. it is not a story breaker concept if an author thinks it through. Instead of just excerpts, I will use those excerpts to illustrate the point of a specific rule.
If you like the sound of this, please let me know in the comments.
Second special note: Outside of anything to do with video games, there is something here that references the inspiration for the scene. Can you find it?
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Annala
intercepted him with a jab to the stomach, and just as quickly, he flew in the
opposite direction. Then she turned and blocked Samael’s Reaper Cleave. The
Right Hand of Death pressed down with all her divine might, and Annala grunted
with the effort required to hold her back. Her body trembled but ultimately
held firm. Samael and Gruffle disappeared, and she and Perrault became golden
blurs as they fended off attacks too swift for mortal eyes to follow. Five
seconds later, all four reappeared and Annala was only slightly winded.
“I
just shared a special moment with my boyfriend, no, my fiancé,” she declared. “My love amplifies the divine chaos within
me, which has already been amplified by direct contact with Lady Chaos herself.
It would take a million reapers to challenge me now!”
Gruffle
snarled. “A million? A million! A MILLION! A MILLION! A MILLION!”
He
raised his scythe high and it fired a necrotic beam into the sky. At its
highest point, it stopped and sent out a
pulse. Then it fired a new beam southeast. There it connected with the Grand
Obelisk in Latrot’s capital.
“Execute
Reaper Command: Royal Rite of Annual Decimation!”
“Wish
Reaper Gruffle!” Samael shouted. “You are not permitted to use such authorities
until you have formally been sworn in as this world’s resident reaper. Either
refrain from this action or renounce your Final Wish. Persisting on this path
will violate your probation.”
Gruffle
didn’t look at her. He didn’t acknowledge her. He only had eyes for his scythe
and the action he had primed it for.
“REMOVE ONE-TENTH OF THE POPULATION!”
The
Grand Obelisk released a pulse that combed the country. Every city, town,
village, farm and hermitage was analyzed
to account for every living thing within its borders be it animal (human or
otherwise), plant, spirit, or bacteria. It calculated how much each area could
lose before its local stability was affected. Then one-tenth of them fell dead
immediately. Their kon and paku traveled to Gruffle and flowed into
his scythe. From the scythe, it coursed
into Gruffle himself. The look on his face was euphoric.
“Mom!”
Kallen shouted.
Nunnal
stepped out of Albatross IX. “Yes,
sweetie?”
“Grab
Emily and fly as fast as you can. She will not survive being near this fight.”
Nunnal
nodded. Transforming herself into a dragon, she grabbed both Emily and the
wrecked airship and flew away at the speed of sound. The sonic boom she created
rattled the stone pillar, and a bigger wave was incoming.
The
numerous lives augmented Gruffle’s power far beyond anything he’d ever dreamed
of. The total number of stolen years reached the thousands. The teeming souls
melded with his own spiritual body and transformed it.
It
grew fourteen times bigger. It grew more limbs in more places and all of them
as rotten and decayed as the original pair. It grew more wings, each as ratty
and bat-like. It grew two more heads; one at the front center of mass and one in the back. Gruffle roared like a
monster and his Divine Presence rippled through the area on seven planes of
existence. The monstrous reaper faced down the trio of chaos warriors, who
braced themselves against its power.
[[[SPOILER! ]]]
Tasio
played a brief tune on his ocarina. “Final Boss Fight: Gruffle the Rogue
Reaper!”
By
the time Tasio finished speaking Gruffle had regrown all his limbs, and this time, each of them was curved like
his scythe. With them, he attacked all four of his enemies at once.
They
dodged, deflected, and blocked, but the sheer number of attacks made completely
avoiding injury impossible. They took damage at an alarming rate. If this
continued, then, godhood or not, all of them would die.
“Annala!”
Eric shouted. “Medic duty in the rear!”
“Got
it!” She dashed to the far end of the platform away from Gruffle and prayed for
the good health of her companions. Immediately, their wounds healed and their
stamina rebounded.
Eric
thrust forward his right hand and created
a dark fire wall to burn away limbs that
tried to entangle him and then flew away from Gruffle’s scythe combos.
“Perrault!
Cover me!”
“If
you insist...” She reverted to her wolf form and watched for attacks on Eric
instead of opportunities to strike Gruffle. Spotting seven, she lunged so
quickly she appeared to teleport as she bit through them.
“Kallen!
Attack from the other direction to split his attention.”
“So
this is teamwork...” she muttered as she teleported to Gruffle’s back side.
Once there, she alternated between white fire blasts and mana bolts tainted
with chaos. She kept her distance so she would have plenty of room to dodge his
counterattacks.
_______________________________________________________________________
Transcending Limitations, and the rest of the Journey
to Chaos series, is available for purchase at Amazon as an ebook.
The series is also available in Kindle Unlimited. The paperback format is
available at Amazon and also at Createspace.
To learn more about the heroines of Journey to Chaos, visit the Tvtropes character sheet.
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