The remains of the blazing coal looked like a speeding comet hurtling across the water, with small explosions still coming off of its surface. It was the biggest damned fireball I’d ever seen, and I was sorry that Pritkin wasn’t here to see it, too. It was his favorite spell.

And when it hit, Aeslinn staggered, toppled… and went down.

I had to shift again to avoid the tidal wave that the huge body sent up, and when I reappeared on the bank, he was still floundering about in the water. So, I pressed my advantage, using my stolen energy to hurl any and everything I could find, battering him with planks of wood off a barge, with the barge itself, with the remains of buildings, some still on fire, and with the cargoes of a dozen boats, including one filled with a mountain of gravel headed to the port to provide ballast for ships, and now providing a million little projectiles that left Aeslinn a bloody mess.

In return, he was churning up the water, creating huge waves that forced me off every perch I found and threatened to drown me. Water, fire and smoke were everywhere, confusing my senses; adrenaline was coursing through my body, further throwing off my aim; not to mention that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But Aeslinn didn’t seem all that skilled, either.

Huge and powerful yes; practiced and finessed, no. He looked like a kid who’d been given a new toy that he didn’t quite know how to use. And like a BB gun that was cracking windows instead of finding its target, the energy bolts he was throwing missed as often as they hit, skewing wildly or sizzling off into the sky. They were frying the few remaining birds still airborne, and sending up geysers of steam whenever they hit the water, but not doing much else.

Maybe it wasn’t so easy for the gods to work through our limited mortal faculties, after all, I thought.

That had been true for the mage I’d possessed, and why Mircea had been able to distract Ares long enough for me to get away. The same shouldn’t be true here, with Aeslinn being a demigod, or so the rumors went. Yet he was acting just like that mage, as if Zeus was giving him pointers, but they lagged behind my attacks. It wasn’t by much, but it was enough to give me an advantage, and I tried my best to capitalize on it.

Unfortunately, I was running out of projectiles that were still in a condition to do any harm.