Soul Tied - Book One ✔️

Chapter Eighteen: Mammon

I slept like a baby sleeping in Asmodeus's bed. I get ready for the new day and as soon as I get my last sneaker on I'm teleported. As my feet are set down I notice there is a large portal. The portal looks like a large TV screen that has no frame and sparkles azure blue on the outside. The inside shows a clear crisp image of what's exactly on the other side. In this portal is the sun beating down at an extreme heat. I can see the heat waves rising in the distance. There is what looks like a large body of sand judging from the people I've noticed it's quicksand. 

The closest person to the portal is a man with only his face visible. Only his head is tipping up towards the sky. There are a lot of others in the quicksand hands sticking out the top. Peoples faces out screaming for help. People up to their stomachs panicking and start sinking faster. Drowning in sand. It's horrible. I gauge my surroundings. I'm happy to see Asmodeus. Asmodeus has on a black dress shirt rolled up to his elbows and black pants. No vest today. I pretend Sam isn't here. Why am I not surprised that this task would be deadly?

Well, might as well do what I'm here for. I walk through the portal and I then walk over to the edge of the quicksand. My hands change into to dark smoky swirl rotating around each finger.I let out a few pulse blasts from my wrists. It's like a straight laser that ripples in a row slicing through and across the sand. The pulse blast looks like a black swirled beam when released. It's like the blast radiates the sand to bounce off of it. It spreads the sand out so I can see the bottom of the sand pit. It has the effect that I want it to. I need to give it more power to keep out the amount of sand needed. I try to fly but I can't. Seriously? I make a pulse shield that's similar to the pulse blast. The pulse shield encompasses my body. Then I start walking to the edge of the sand.

"Xirasti, no," Asmodeus says coming through the portal. Sam pulls him back in by part of his shirt still out of the portal. He elbows him hard and nods for me to continue. The sand does what I want it to but it doesn't give me enough space. So I made the shield bigger around my body. Then I increase the force at which the sand will rebound off the shield.

I notice that the sand is running downhill like it's going towards something. I walk further down to where the stream of sand looks like it's going. I peer over and it's gigantic like a waterfall but it's sand, a sandfall. I notice that the sandfall is very gradual not fast like a river would be. Mammon is in the path to easily go down it while he sinks once I cut the sand. I go back to where Mammon's face is in the quicksand. I send blast pulses out where I think a hand would be. "Hey, hey, hey careful I almost have the diamond don't lose it." Mammon chastises me.

"Would you rather stay here?" I make it as if I'm going away.

"Don't leave, don't leave." He rushes out.

"That's what I thought," I say.

"Careful with all my money he says while looking around him. "Don't steal any." His face narrows and gets furious. I realize to him it's an illusion. I touch the middle of his forehead so he can see all it is, is sand."No! What did you do to it?" He yells. I blast out where his hand would be. I was right that is it's where the chains would be his are looser than the others were. He is reaching his hands out to where I'm standing. I blast the sand where he's reaching. There it is a diamond the size of a fist on a chain directly in front of him. He can almost reach but what he doesn't realize is there is just the right amount of chain to never let him reach it.

I notice the same type of chains are being used as with the other seven. So I have to blast the sand away to see all the runes. Then I remove the spells on the chains. I use the pulse blast to scour the sand away so I can slice the chain. It worked so I moved to the next hand and did the same. The legs are going to be worse there's more sand to pulse through.

This is going to suck. I radiate the pulses from inside my body out. So it vibrates and spreads outward. I swim downward in the sand. The pulses around me are moving the sand, shifting it and causing it to rebound off me. I give it more oomph so that his whole foot is clear. I look for all the runes but it's difficult so I sink more. I remove the spells then I slice the chains off of one and then the other. I use a location spell I sense where Mammon is lift him out of the sand and levitate him toward the safe side of the sandpit.

."Get the diamond, get the diamond!" Mammon shouts from the side of the sand pit. I barely hear him cause my head is now under by a good deal. I move over to where it's chained and my pulse shield is making it fly away whenever I try to get close to it. I let go of the pulse aura and grab for the diamond. I get it. By doing this the pulse shield bubble stopped and now I'm sinking further.

I activate the pulse bubble again but I have sunk further and am to pinched in. I'm starting to lose my breath. I try to not move as much because if I do I'll sink quicker. I feel the sand starting to cage me. I can feel myself getting closer and closer to the edge of the sandfalI. I shouldn't think about how deep I am in the sand now but I do. I start to panic. Think. Think. The sandfall reminds me of an hourglass with the sand. Then I recall that I can stop time on the sand. So then I do. Then I think but how do I get out? That was when it hit me when I almost drowned I used a force spell to propel myself out of the water. I fist my hands at my sides. I put a lot of power into my hands in a burst so that it launches me high up. I blast off and shoot out of the sand like a rocket. I use more force blasts to get myself to the ledge. I land on one knee gasping for breath. Once I can breathe again I exit the portal.