The ones in the air — twenty, thirty, the ones who had been reaching for Mira — dropped. Like stones. The demonic energy in their legs — the power that had launched them — cut off. The blood redirected. The muscles — demonified, enhanced — went slack. They hit the ground with wet, meaty, 'thud-thud-thud' impacts that sounded like bags of meat being dropped from a height.
Helena's hand closed. Into a fist.
The ground erupted.
CRACK—!!
The earth split. Not from an earthquake — from the World Tree Sovereign's nature communion, amplified by the Demon Sovereign's authority, channeled through the proxy of Goddess Gaia. The grassland tore open. The soil — the frozen, hard, northern soil — ruptured. And from the cracks, the vines emerged.
Not normal vines. Demonified vines.
