PERSIE MERLIN AND THE DYING SONG

Bella Forrest

Description

No one knows what the imperious Victoria Jules has in store for them. Though what''s a few monsters, after all? Persie eats them for breakfast, almost literally. But she''s still in for the biggest, most shocking Purge of her life yet, a Purge that will change her life in unfathomable ways.

As the threat of witch hunters circles the Institute, a mysterious illness begins to affect the Institute''s monsters, and a long-disappeared frenemy reappears with intentions unknown. One thing is clear: they''re here to stir up even more trouble among the local monsters-in-residence, and it seems like it''s working on everyone.

Persie finds herself at the epicenter of a brewing war quickly approaching its boiling point-and all her friends, enemies, and we''ll-find-outs are headed for a collision.

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798986473109
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020
Hot Pancakes Ltd
www.hotpcakes.com
Creative director: Ophelia Pickering
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1
Persie
C ome out, come out, wherever you are… I stood in absolute darkness, accompanied only by the sound of my own breath. Harsh and painful in my exerted lungs. I turned to my right and spat, hawking out the phlegm that’d gathered like blood in my throat. Not very ladylike, but niceties had no place on a battlefield.
“Where are you?” I whispered. In conflict, the waiting part sucked the most. The nerves jangling in my veins, ramping up the adrenaline so the fight half of my fight-or-flight response would be ready for action. My muscles ached beyond the point of human endurance. Even a single step or a twist of the head sent pain shooting through me, all the way down to my bones. But I couldn’t stop. I had to be patient. I had to endure. That was the way of a hunter-capture the beast or be killed. One slip and my head might roll.
A warrior of the Light is never in a hurry. Time works in his favor; he learns to master his impatience and avoids acting without thinking. Paolo Coelho’s wise words never let me down, even through the brain fog of exhaustion and agony. I was battered but not broken, and I couldn’t allow my concentration to creep elsewhere. Not with the threat all around me, lurking in the shadows, preparing to pounce.
Blinding light stung at my eyes, now too accustomed to the gloom. Squeezing them shut, I ducked on instinct. A second later, a crackling Raiju appeared out of nowhere, sailing over the top of me and making every hair stand on end. I knew these well, from monster dreams and the Institute’s entrance test, making them old favorites. White fur with blue streaks, and two glowing eyes that pierced even the darkest shadow, with the static electricity of a whole lightning storm contained inside its wolf-like form. And it could pack one heck of a bolt, to go with it.
“There you are.” I wrenched my body around to face the beast, its fangs bared. I twirled my pre-hexed Chaos staff and stowed it behind my back as I waited for the monster to strike-a four-foot pole of tempered bronze, ornately crafted to look like two intertwining sea serpents. At either end, two green glass orbs that held the power to temporarily stun small-to-medium sized monsters: a detail I’d learned the hard way, after trying it on a rock troll. It was Atlantean-made and Genie’s Christmas gift to me, sourced and sent by her father. A costly present from my best friend, in more ways than one, but now I couldn’t be without it. I’d learned through Marcel’s martial arts lessons that pre-emptive attacks and hand-to-hand combat weren’t my forte. As a fighter, I was purely reactive, and a bit of a demon with a weapon in my mitts.
Extending one hand, I beckoned to the monster. “We don’t have all day, buddy. And I don’t have that much left in the tank.” It couldn’t understand me, so speaking out my weakness didn’t matter.
With a howl that sounded like a thunder crack, the Raiju launched itself in my direction. Clenching my jaw against my screaming muscles, I twirled the staff out from behind my back. Seizing it in both hands, I struck upward with just enough pressure-not too hard to cause real pain to the creature, but not a light tap either. The immobilizing orb hit the monster in the fleshy part of its belly and a pulse of gassy green light powered outward, running the length of the Raiju. Its body stiffened mid-air and it crashed to the ground like a lump of frozen meat, skidding a yard or so before it came to a stop.
Are you going to stay down? I whipped out a practice puzzle box, courtesy of Naomi Hiraku, Chief Engineer. After all, these monsters weren’t the real deal, just full-blown, 3D, physically detailed simulations that acted like the genuine article. And so, I treated them as such.
Bowling underarm, I was about to skim the practice box across the ground toward the downed Raiju when the creature jumped up. Its eyes glowed with renewed anger, fangs gnashing in irritation. The immobilizing features of the staff’s orbs were hit and miss, depending on the monster, but it also took into account how many monsters I’d already taken down. At the latest count, I’d captured nineteen in this one session alone. I needed this Raiju to make it a full twenty before I could call it a day, as per the personal goal I’d set myself that morning. Another suggestion of Victoria’s (on top of keeping my Purge journal), that I give myself a challenge to complete each day and cross it off my calendar when I’d achieved it.
“Oh, come on.” I rolled my eyes and shoved the practice box back into my pocket, before spinning the staff in the air before me, the smooth bronze like an extension of my own arms. This thing had been an absolute godsend, taking me up a few notches in my physical-based classes. And it felt really freaking good to not be at the bottom of the pile anymore.
The Raiju settled back onto its haunches: a coiled spring. I pulled back the staff and held it diagonal against my chest, panting hard. In a lot of ways, these solitary practice sessions were harder than the ones I took with the rest of my class. After all, I was my greatest judge and my greatest enemy. I had to prove to myself that I could cope with anything the hunting world threw at me, and that was never more insistent in the back of my head than when I fought alone.
“Are we being coy today? I wonder if that’s how Naomi rigged you. More evasive than combative. It’s hard to tell.” I spoke aloud to try and make sense of my ‘enemy,’ though I doubted I would ever think of any monster-real or simulated-as that. My hunting education was a means to an end; a way to capture monsters and learn more about each kind in the hopes of, eventually, coming up with a better place for them to go. Baby steps in a brighter direction that didn’t involve glass orbs or boxes. A secret endeavor that I knew might not even come to full fruition in my lifetime, but a girl could dream big… right?
The Raiju lunged forward, sparks flying from its paws as it sprinted across the hard, wooden floor of the training hall. Unlike Marcel’s dojo, there were no mats or sprung floors to soften the landings here if I hit the deck. No, this was the realm of Tarif Hosseini-Master of the Hunt and educator on Monster Technique. When the lights were on, you could see his signature style of elegance and a love of history in the décor: armless statues from Ancient Persia, tapestries depicting bygone Arabian battles on horseback, with tall, black clay urns standing sentinel over the hall. The latter were etched with ancient symbols from Babylon, by all accounts, though Tarif never let on about where he’d acquired all of these things from. He continued to be as much of a mystery in his interior design as he was in himself. An egg that nobody could quite crack.
Patience… Patience… Patience… I waited until the last second before striking out with the staff, landing a hard knock to the back of the Raiju’s neck. A second pulse of gaseous green light spread out over the creature, its legs buckling beneath it as it careened face-first into the ground. This time, it stayed down. I pulled the practice puzzle box back out but couldn’t quite bring myself to catch the beast. Not yet. I wanted to experiment with the amount of time I had with a creature like this, between stunning it and it getting back up again after a second hit. If there was a Raiju at the end-of-year exam, I’d need to know something like that. See, there was more to these solitary fighting sessions than the act of purely capturing as many monsters as possible. This was how I learned more about the minutia of each beast, and knowledge spelled power. The staff had taken me up the class ranks, but so had my attention to detail, and my retention of those unique facts.
Where did a whole year go, huh? Six more months had whizzed by like weeks, putting us firmly back in March, where all of this mayhem had begun a year ago. We’d barreled straight through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Winter Solstice, New Year, and I’d barely realized under the hefty snowdrift of studying, training, practicing, rinsing and repeating. First years weren’t permitted to go home for any of the holidays, so they’d just passed by like ordinary working days for us students. There’d been a banquet and a party on Christmas Day, a vigil of sorts on the Winter Solstice with candles and pagan readings, and another shindig on New Year’s Eve, but that’d been about the crux of the Institute’s celebratory allowances. Being in Ireland and all, most of the people here weren’t even sure what Thanksgiving entailed beyond the need for a turkey, and they didn’t really go in on the whole Halloween thing.
Now, in just a fortnight’s time, I’d face the exam that would either guarantee my progression into second year or see me turfed out of the Institute for good. So, massive stakes, with my entire future riding on my success. First, there’d be a theoretical exam-the easy part, as far as I was concerned. Second, there’d be a practical exam: a hunt. A real hunt, with real monsters, in uncontrolled conditions. AKA, the hard part, and the reason I was killing myself with all of these extra sessions alone. If I passed, I’d be eligible for the apprenticeships with illustrious monster hunters and Institute alumni that made up the second-year syllabus.
It’ll be worth it. That’s where my real training will begin. I wanted to be out in the field more than anything. No, that wasn’t exactly true-I wanted to be out of the Institute and its surprisingly small boundaries. It had grown much too stifling, after everything that had gone on with V