Read Online The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension by H.D. Strozier - Free Book Online Page A

it was during the conflict that she discovered magic. The second time she felt it was right before she had to dodge a bullet from Devdan’s gun when they first met. And the third time was right before Tsubame fell out of a portal from an alternate timeline. All three events served as a catalyst or point of no return, so whatever was about to happen MaLeila knew she wouldn’t be able to turn away from it.
    “And now my help arrives,” Tsubame said.
    No sooner did the words leave Tsubame’s mouth did the distant cries and steady gunshots escalate into cries of full-fledged terror and sporadic panicked shots. Whatever Tsubame’s help was, it certainly wasn’t the average army.
    Devdan looked toward the direction of the conflict and then noticed the shadow of a rock near him. He began to step towards it, but Tsubame said, “It’s not going to work. There was a reason it was so easy for you to get here. I couldn’t have you interfering with the conflict and potentially forcing me to deal with you myself and forgo the feisty but helpless damsel female leader who cares for her people persona I’ve been careful to project to the world thus far.”
    “A magical loop,” MaLeila said. She shouldn’t have been shocked. It was her favorite trick to keep her opponents trapped whether it was so they couldn’t get away or so that she could. Most sorcerers and sorceresses couldn’t create a magical loop though because it involved having the ability to warp space and distance, particular the tears in it and in the last nearly seven years MaLeila hadn’t come across any sorcerers who could create a magical loop. It was one of the many magical theories that Claude had left to her, a technique that Bastet and Devdan weren’t even sure that he could use. The only reason it hadn’t crossed her mind that Tsubame could was that the woman never had used it, and MaLeila continued to forget that the woman was only an alternate version of herself because despite the fact that she wasn’t hiding it anymore Tsubame continued to favor her disguise.
    “But just because you can’t interfere doesn’t mean you aren’t free to see for yourself what the Thornes have decided to send to aid me,” Tsubame said as she started back into the compound. “There’s a great view from the roof. Come on. I’ll show you.”
    Boxed in and with no way to escape, Devdan gave MaLeila one last glance and followed Tsubame into the compound. MaLeila hesitated before heading to the roof herself. There wasn’t much to see at first—until she got to the edge. The battle was now taking place in the heart of the city, closer and closer to the compound.
    “What are those?” Devdan asked Tsubame, eyes narrowed as he watched the bloody fight below.
    At first glance, MaLeila didn’t see what Devdan was talking about. They all looked like regular soldiers to her. Then she took a second glance, this time with not just her physical eye but her magical one. Their soldier outfits and their guns made then look like run of the mill soldiers, but there was something just something just off about the color of their skin and the nimbleness of their movements that made MaLeila take a closer look at them with her magical senses. She didn’t fully switch her vision over to see the ethereal world, but rather a double view that made everyone look like they were puppets with strings.  Ethereally they looked like demons, but the demons possessing the human bodies didn’t have full control of the body, nor were they slowly rotting the body they possessed from the inside because of the body’s incompatibility with the energies that demons exuded. In fact, the bodies weren’t even fully possessed by the demons they hosted. If MaLeila had to describe the phenomenon, it was as though the original human souls had fused with the demonic energies.
    “What are those?” MaLeila asked.
    Tsubame didn’t answer, too engrossed with watching the conflict like it was a movie.  She