Hellish Crone Finger

15:20pm Sunny Day Mall. Ground Concourse. 'Ye Olde Book Store,'

Once again Mara stood before the door to 'Ye Olde Book Store,' The raw, cold mana harvested from the two extinguished futures thrummed within her, a dark, potent battery of death energy. She closed her eyes, her lips moving in a silent, guttural chant, the words of the summoning a foul, metallic taste on her tongue. The power coalesced, drawn from the void she had created, and focused on her left hand. A cold, searing agony shot up her arm as the flesh of her index finger withered, the skin turning a sickening, mottled black, the nail shrivelling and crumbling to dust. When the pain subsided, she was left with the Hellish Crone Finger, a gnarled, wizened digit of pure, concentrated Death Miasma that hummed with a malevolent, anti-life energy. It was a beautiful, terrible thing.

She raised the transformed finger, its tip glowing with a faint, sickly green light. The wards on the door flared to life, a complex, shimmering web of protective magic, a formidable fortress of arcane energy. But it was designed to repel attacks, to withstand brute force. It was not designed to withstand a controlled, surgical rot. Mara touched the tip of the Hellish Crone Finger to the centre of the lock. With a soft, insistent hiss, like acid eating through glass he wards convulsed, their intricate patterns unraveling at a terrifying speed, the threads of magic dissolving into nothingness as the very concept of their existence was consumed by the concentrated entropy. With a final, pathetic sputter, the last of the lock's magical defences gave way. The lock mechanism, now just a collection of dead, rusted metal, clicked open.

Mara grinned and stepped into the bookstore.