The telekinetic blade that had cut through Margaret’s massive fireball continued on its path afterward. As if it had been designed to go further from the very beginning.
Margaret, who had barely a fraction of a second to react, tried to pull back.
But even an experienced psychic with dual aura couldn’t completely dodge an invisible cut launched with the force of twenty tons condensed into a perfect line.
The slash didn’t cut her in half, though that had been Luke’s intent.
Her left arm, from the shoulder down, was launched into the air. It fell among the withered flowers of the garden, still burning.
Margaret stepped back with a grimace of pain, but without screaming. Her aged face trembled between fury and wounded pride.
After cleanly slicing through the dark orbs, Luke saw that Margaret had survived, his goal had been to eliminate her with that attack.
"Not bad..." murmured Luke, like soone watching a failed chess move. He realized Margaret had paid the price of her arm, had she tried to save herself completely, she would have died.
His blue eyes showed no pity, no respect. Only technical evaluation.
Margaret glared at him; blood poured from the place where her arm had been. "Bastard..." she muttered, her voice shaking with rage and pain.
The battlefield froze for a mont upon Luke’s arrival, giving Wednesday, Charles, and the others a much-needed break.
Charles, still with blood on his face, collapsed to his knees as he felt Aldric’s psychic pressure vanish for a few seconds.
The collective ntal shield, which had required every ounce of his strength, was no longer needed, for now.
"You arrived..." he muttered through clenched teeth, a faint and relieved smile on his face.
Enid, covered in dirt and with her fur torn, was panting as she got back up. She first looked at the young Wendigo’s back. She had heard her na from Wednesday’s calls with Luke, though only her voice.
Then Enid’s eyes t Luke’s. Her heart began to race as she rembered what Wednesday had proposed. If Luke agreed... she could be with him again.
Luke only looked at her for a second, just to make sure she was okay. Fortunately, Nyra had arrived just in ti.
But for Enid, that second was enough. Because she knew him. She knew that Luke, no matter how much he seed like a cold sociopath, so much like Wednesday, did care about his people.
Wednesday, still standing but exhausted, gazed at Luke’s back with a mix of emotions: pride, relief... and quiet admiration.
"Always so dramatic with your entrances," she murmured, never taking her eyes off him.
Reina, still in her full wolf form, took advantage of the pause to tear apart one of the hooded figures and fling him against a tree trunk.
Her claws were still dripping blood when she turned to face Luke. Even in her savage ferocity, she lowered her head slightly. Recognition.
The Spellman twins looked at each other for a mont. They knew who had arrived, the nesis of their family. The one everyone hated more than anyone else in the world.
Still, they weren’t stupid enough to think about attacking him themselves. They knew Luke’s power rivaled their grandmother’s, or that of ancient demonic elders. They weren’t his match and would die before even realizing it if they tried.
"Well..." muttered Vespera, her lips tightening just slightly. "So you’re the famous heir of the Poes..."
"Though... you’re the only living Poe," she added with a faint smile.
Aldric, for his part, never took his eyes off Luke. The grin on his face widened, as if he had just been introduced to a new and worthy opponent.
Luke didn’t answer right away. His sword remained lowered, resting in his right hand, the blade still faintly vibrating with accumulated telekinetic energy. His eyes slowly scanned the three Spellmans, one by one.
Especially Alaric and Vespera. Judging by the power they radiated, they were clearly the leaders here.
"So you’re the infamous demonic Spellmans," Luke finally said, in a calm, almost disinterested tone, as if discussing the weather instead of a war between two ancient psychic bloodlines.
"The renowned traitors who made deals with beings despised by all humanity. I suppose this is the first ti I’ve spoken to one of you... at least at length," he added with a faint mocking smile.
"I didn’t get that chance with Mortir. I killed him faster than I expected... decrepit old man, with more rotten teeth than hairs on his head. We barely exchanged a few words before he was dead..."
The twins’ eyes darkened. Margaret clenched her jaw. The two remaining hooded figures paled and took a step back.
"But you two..." Luke continued, with a hint of genuine curiosity, "You’re different."
His eyes paused on Vespera, then on Aldric.
"Mortir looked like a mummy pulled out of a sarcophagus that reeked of mold. You two, on the other hand, look like you just walked out of so high-society party. If it weren’t for the stench of sulfur, I might almost believe you were thirty."
Vespera raised an eyebrow, more amused than offended.
"You’re very calm," she said in a silky, almost maternal tone, though the tension in her gaze betrayed otherwise. "And you speak with great eloquence and confidence... for a sixteen-year-old brat."
Luke observed them in silence for a few seconds. Then he exhaled softly, as if realizing sothing obvious, and a crooked smile appeared on his lips.
"I suppose it goes to your head," he said in a calm, almost conspiratorial voice, like he was confessing to a harmless prank, "when you kill so many supposedly powerful Spellmans... you start to take certain liberties with your tongue."
Vespera let out a soft laugh, elegant and sharp at once. It wasn’t mockery or contempt. It was recognition. She hadn’t expected the last Poe to be like this. She hadn’t expected soone so young to speak with the boldness of a veteran... or to actually have legitimate reasons for it.
"And do you really think you can win this fight?" she asked in a chillingly gentle voice. "Protect all of them? Your girlfriend," she added, her dark eyes flicking briefly toward Wednesday, "the professors, an injured boy and a wounded wolf..."
Luke stopped smiling. A look of mild surprise crossed his face.
"Your confidence amazes ..." he replied, his voice tired, as if correcting a childish mistake. "The real question is whether you will get out of here alive... or whether you’ll be able to protect your own."
He paused, deliberately. His gaze swept over Margaret, now one-ard, breathing irregularly, then over the Spellman twins, barely keeping their composure in his presence, and finally landed on the two remaining hooded servants. One of them was trembling slightly. The other had his hands clenched as if in prayer.
The Spellman servant had barely withstood Nyra’s strike.
"No offense," Luke added, in a tone that was equal parts sarcastic and lazy, "but if this is all you’ve got to throw at ... you might want to consider sending more demonic elders. Maybe Edward himself.
Assuming... he still dares leave his cave since 1840."
A tense silence followed Luke’s comnt.
Margaret clenched her teeth until her face twisted, not just from the pain of her lost arm, but from the humiliation implied, as if they were nothing more than flies to him.
The Spellman twins, who barely thirty minutes ago had acted with the typical arrogance inherited from their bloodline, cold, mocking, sadistic, confident in their cruelty as a tool of dominance, took a step back in unison.
An almost unconscious act.
Their faces, once adorned with sneers of contempt and twisted amusent, were now pale.
During that brief conversation, Luke’s foresight had been running in the background. Several futures had unfolded in his mind.
He could eliminate Margaret. He could fly a short distance and finish her in a second. His telekinetic flight speed was more than enough. A single direct slash would suffice, and the elderly woman with dual aura wouldn’t even be able to react.
But that wasn’t the best path. If he did that, Vespera and Aldric wouldn’t try to stop him. On the contrary, they would exploit the mont. They’d launch an imdiate assault on Wednesday and the others, just when they were most vulnerable.
Charles was exhausted. Alecto, severely wounded. Marlewe’s son could barely stand. Enid was still bleeding in her full wolf form. Even Reina, though still strong, wasn’t at 100%. The sa went for Wednesday.
So Luke chose the safer option.
With a fluid motion, he raised Eclipse and struck.
Telekinesis, condensed to its fullest from monts earlier, surged. The telekinetic blade erged with a barely visible glow, almost ghostly, as if it were slicing not air, but space itself.
The first slash was for Margaret.
An invisible wave, launched from a distance with surgical precision, shot across the blackened garden like a flying glass blade.
The second slash ca a breath later.
This ti, it split mid-air, dividing into two perfect paths aid at the Spellman twins.
His intent wasn’t to kill them, not yet. As direct bloodline descendants of the Spellmans, it was unlikely they carried self-destruction chanisms, poisons, or curses triggered upon capture. It was possible, but not certain.
Luke would make sure to keep them alive.
At the second slash, Aldric and Vespera didn’t wait any longer, the ground rumbled.
A pressure, like an avalanche, crashed down upon the battlefield. Both advanced.
Their movents weren’t fueled by rage but by controlled, devastating speed.
As they charged, the air cracked.
Each of them unleashed their psychic energy without restraint, over thirty tons of raw power each, wielded with the grace of those who had spent centuries refining their style.
Both of them were heading straight for Luke.
However, Luke had no intention of playing fair.
"Shambles," he murmured with a slight smile.
In a fraction of a second, he did it.
He swapped the positions of his allies with dust particles in the air: microscopic, invisible to the human eye. But not to him. His clairvoyance and enhanced vision allowed him to perceive them.
To the outside observer, it looked as if he had simply teleported.
Nyra and Alecto appeared midair, right in front of Aldric.
Enid and Reina erged in front of Vespera.
As for Wednesday, she was teleported directly in front of the two remaining hooded figures. Her dark hair fell with elegance, and her eyes glowed with cold intelligence as her dark scythe had already ford. Those two, traitors infiltrated from the council, were more valuable captured than dead. She knew that.
The Spellman servant, tall and disfigured, barely had ti to move. But it was already too late. The spatial distortion had been absolute. He couldn’t react in ti, and his chance to assist had vanished.
Charles, anwhile, was placed directly behind Luke, intentionally.
He was the group’s ntal shield. Aldric, besides being a physical monster, was a ruthless telepath. If anyone had to keep their minds protected, it was Charles. And Luke knew it.
Marlowe’s son... wouldn’t be of use.
Luke teleported him next to the still-living body of his unconscious sister and sent them both outside the barrier, to safety. They needed urgent care. As for their mother, Luke had already confird with regret that she wasn’t breathing. Moving a corpse was pointless.
All of this happened in less than a second.
Luke joined the attack as well. He launched himself toward Vespera, ascending with a smooth motion but with slicing speed.
He reached her first and struck with Eclipse, imbued with twenty-five tons of pure telekinetic force, concentrated like a divine scalpel, guided by his 360-degree vision and mastery over the imdiate future.
The sword descended in a perfect arc. Vespera barely reacted in ti. A shadow rose from her back, solid and dense, trying to shield her.
But Eclipse cut through it anyway.
The darkness was cleaved. The slash didn’t decapitate her, but embedded deep into her left arm, severing it cleanly.
Blood burst instantly, spraying into the air. A choked scream escaped her lips.
’I’m on a streak of severed arms,’ thought Luke, watching as Vespera retreated at high speed.
But Enid and Reina were already there to strike.
Enid’s claws ca down like a storm upon Vespera, forcing her to raise a wall of shadows that barely withstood the blow.
Reina entered from the right flank. She twisted midair and charged shoulder-first into Vespera’s small, feminine fra.
Despite her high physical strength, Vespera took the hit at high speed.
There was the sound of cracking ribs, she was sent flying, coughing up blood before crashing against a tree.
Luke landed softly, spinning his sword with one hand and letting the blood stains slide off the blade.
"I warned you," Luke said, without raising his voice.
From the rear, Charles watched everything with a mix of awe and cold analysis. The battlefield had changed. Before, they had barely been able to hold out.
And now, with just one arrival... a single ally, the balance had completely shifted in their favor.
Vespera lay wounded against a tree, her left arm severed and her ribs shattered. Wednesday had already taken down the two hooded figures.
Their unconscious bodies lay on the ground, unable to even launch a final attack. Her scythe still pulsed with dark energy.
Nyra and Alecto hadn’t injured Aldric, but they had managed to hold him off.
The Spellman twins, once mocking and cruel, had managed to defend against Luke’s second slash, but not without injury.
A red line marked one of their abdons, and the other’s thigh was bleeding.
Margaret, for her part, was still standing, but barely. Luke’s first strike had cost her an arm. The second had torn her side as it passed. Her body still stood, yes... but it was on the verge of collapse.
The battle wasn’t over yet, but the odds were now in their favor.
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