Free Wicked War of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 9) by John Corwin Page A

the air and vanished. The control room was located deep underground beneath the dead city of El Dorado. Located in the southern jungles of Colombia, the ancient civilization had once been ground zero for the Seraphim invasion, as evidenced by giant jeweled murals slaves had built for their otherworldly masters.
    I looked at the Alabaster Arch dominating the control room and wondered what would happen if I tried to open a gateway to Seraphina right this minute. If Daelissa had attuned the Grand Nexus with the Chalon, it should mean the rest of the Alabaster Arches would be attuned to the same realm.
    "Hello, Justin."
    I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned and saw Cinder standing behind me. He wore his standard gray suit—the same one favored by the gray men, the golems created by Mr. Gray.
    He tilted his head slightly. "Ah, I surprised you. I am sorry if, as you sometimes say, I made you poop your pants."
    I snorted. "I've nearly crapped myself so much lately, what's another squirt in the pants?"
    "I had not realized you were being literal," Cinder said, his face attempting to mimic a concerned expression. Instead, he looked like someone who'd just bitten into a lemon. "The cupids go through an alarming number of diapers, but I'm certain I could find a pair that fit you."
    It took me a few seconds to respond, because I wasn't sure if Cinder was attempting humor or actually trying to be helpful. It made me realize how hard it had to be for him in his attempts to act more human. An act of mad-scientist magic had given him sentience and emotion, but it hadn't given him an instruction booklet on using it and fitting in.
    "I'll be okay," I assured him and motioned toward the control room door. "I came to talk to you about the cupids."
    "Of course." He motioned toward several massive stacks of null cubes near the front of the control room. They looked as if they were made of frosted glass, but the material was designed to turn transparent or opaque to keep the horrific prisoners inside from seeing outside.
    I shivered at the thought of the creatures within. The husks—I'd nicknamed them cherubs—were all that remained of Seraphim caught in the blast when someone forcibly removed the Chalon from the Grand Nexus during the Seraphim War. The Seraphim called it the Desecration for good reason, since it had wiped out everyone regardless of supernatural or mortal affiliation and turned them into shadow creatures that craved the light from any living creature they could lay their nubby little mitts on.
    Cinder led me to the cubes. "We have finished sorting the cubes taken from Kobol Prison."
    "Excellent." I stopped in front of the stacks. The Darkling cherub cubes were stacked to the left, the Brightlings to the right. Only one cube stood apart. A device called an affinity sphere allowed us to gauge the alignment of the cherubs inside the cubes to either Murk or Brilliance and thus determine if they were Darklings or Brightlings. The cherub in the lone cube, however, had registered right in the middle—the gray—and none of us knew what to make of it. "Any idea how many cherubs we have?"
    "Indeed." Cinder paused as if accessing something. "We have seven-hundred and twenty-three Darklings, five-hundred and eighty-one Brightlings, and one anomaly. Shall we go to the cupids?"
    "Sure."
    We exited the room and entered the large cavern. An Obsidian Arch should have towered in the center. Instead, there were two massive leyworms—earth dragons. The red-scaled monster was Altash. I didn't know his purple girlfriend's name, so I referred to her as Lulu. We passed a trench carved in the rock by their smaller compadres . The cupids—infantile creatures with oil-black skin—grasped at us with nubby hands. Round, tooth-lined orifices in their otherwise faceless heads screeched with agony. "Dah-nah! Dah-nah!"
    The hairs on the back of my neck felt like they were trying to uproot themselves and run away. I was happy to get past the little