Axel expected Teclos to kill him.
Instead, the darkness around his limbs tightened.
The old man's body slowly lifted from the ground and hung several feet above it, his arms pulled behind his back while black tendrils wrapped around his chest, waist, and throat.
Teclos stood before him in silence.
The clearing was utterly quiet again.
Count Aweq lay dead in the grass, surrounded by the bodies of his wife and daughter. The last traces of Teclos's red-black aura had faded, but the pressure it left behind still clung to the air.
Axel looked at him carefully.
There was no relief on Teclos's face.
No satisfaction at all.
Only exhaustion and dark, dangerous malice buried deep beneath it.
"You should kill me already," Axel said.
Teclos's eyes shifted toward him.
"I won't lie. I have thought about it..."
The tendrils jerked.
Axel was slammed into the ground.
The impact drove the air from his lungs.
