Liliana - Mana-sensing/Durability/Zombie Control

  But even as it squeezed, bruising him to the very bone, the undead froze. Rigid, they formed a motionless carpet of corpses across the landscape. Only their rotted eyes moved, as they gawped into the fury of the punishing storm.

As a goddess striding from the heavens, Liliana appeared on the raging winds. She stood, arms outstretched and head thrown back in potent ecstasy, held aloft by the crackling black aura that flowed effortlessly from her pale skin. The tattoos burned with dark fire on her back, as though her skin had opened to reveal an endless void beneath. Ignoring the storm, she gently descended until she set foot upon the vile ground; her hair and tunic lay perfectly still, indifferent to the tempest around her.

  “Uh …” Jace began.

  “It’s incredible!” Her voice, though a whisper, carried clearly over the howling winds. She turned to him, and Jace would have fallen back were he not held fast by the grip on his leg. Black mists poured from her eyes, which had themselves grown dark as moonless night; from between her lips as she spoke; even from beneath her nails, flowing out to join with the inky aura that had borne her aloft.

  “Oh, Jace, you have no idea! The power in this place …” Her smile widened further still. “I’ve never felt a concentration of manas like this, never knew it could exist.”

  Jace, who felt only a fraction of what Liliana was drinking in and found it terrifying, could only shake his head. “There’s no light, Liliana. No life in these magics.”

  “I can live with that,” she told him bluntly, her tone somehow jubilant and cold at once.

***

Agents of Artifice, Chapter 25