Hexomancy Read Online Free PDF Page A

infantry. The units were small, ten to fifteen each, but they added up to a messy melee right quick.
    Lucretia was still a ways off, standing on a ledge above a lava flow, red contrails of magic swirling around her like a music visualizer.
    A squadron of heavy infantry stepped into their way, two-handed weapons ready. Her skirmishers wouldn’t last long against the armored opponents. It was her turn again.
    “Step aside!” she said and took her staff in both hands like a lance. She tapped out her barely-recovered mana pool to toss a trio of fireballs. A couple of the soldiers dove out of the way, but the blasts caught the rest of the squad, setting them alight.
    In the game, they’d just burn up and drop to the floor. Here, she could smell burned flesh and slagged steel. And hear their screams.
    “Fucking hell,” Ree said, terrified of what she’d done even as she knew that the soldiers were nothing more than magical constructs. She’d been killing digital men for decades, but never had it felt quite so real as now.
    Focus, kid , she heard in Eastwood’s voice, her mind internalizing his advice. Her skirmishers dove on the remaining heavy infantry and put them out in moments.
    They regrouped and pushed on. “We need to get to that caster. Cut me a path!” she said.
    Lightning split the air, and when the flash receded, Lucretia’s Incarnate form loomed over the field, thirty feet tall, glowing red. It looked like a cross between Lucretia and a Fade spirit out of Dragon Age . Lucretia had chosen the artillery-esque Doombringer, surprising absolutely no one.
    The Incarnate reached forward, and a red vortex formed, charging with the sound of a thousand stones grinding against a thousand mills.
    That’s my cue to take cover , Ree admitted, jumping behind a rough outcropping of volcanic rock. According to video game logic, the cover should protect her, even if a real explosion would still envelop the area. To be safe, she cast her Shield spell again as the blast hit.
    Her mana pool gave out as the blast faded. She was two-thirds of the way to her Incarnate spell, and she’d been casting almost all-out. Lucretia must have used an artifact to charge her spell this fast. Or she’d cheated. Same difference. The likelihood that the Auctioneer was going to step in, even if Lucretia cheated, was about zero.
    Reassuringly, this wasn’t too different from being a late twenty-something with two jobs and a life trying to play an FPS with teenagers who basically lived on the multiplayer queues. She just assumed everyone knew more and had more stick time, and she made do.
    Ree peeked out from the rock formation to see Lucretia Sauron-ing her way through Ree’s army, knocking cavalry and Treefolk aside like they were LEGOs.
    She called up her Mana Sink spell, designed to damage Incarnates, and saw that her pool was still empty. She needed to rack up some minion kills to speed her mana recharge, or find another way to take on Lucretia.
    Neither option seemed terribly viable with her Doombringer dominating the field. Ree snuck around through cover, hoping that Lucretia was focused enough on rampaging that she wouldn’t notice one little sorceress wandering around.
    A searing bolt vaporizing a pillar in front of Ree told her that those hopes were entirely, head-deskingly unrealistic. She broke into a sprint, slaloming her way between rocks, trying to make it harder for Lucretia to aim her blasts. The detonation of a fire burst seared her left side before Ree could dive between the seams in one of the mini-volcanoes.
    Falling down toward the lava, Ree activated a levitation spell (which was blessedly free, mana-wise, unless you wanted to ramp up the speed), which let her drop back onto the ledge. The heat was nearly overwhelming, but Ree forced herself to remember that it was all special effects. Spectral effects, maybe, but still not really real.
    But real or not, it wouldn’t take long for Lucretia’s Incarnate to close the