by Tim Waggoner
Ksana smiled. “Unfortunately, I’ve lived too long and seen too many good men and women fall in battle-or later collapse beneath the mental and emotional aftereffects-to believe it any longer.” She came from around the desk and took Lirra’s hand, both of them, in hers. “I pray to the goddess that you don’t join the ranks of the lost, my dear.”
Lirra squeezed Ksana’s hands. “Me too,” she whispered.
“Just like old times.”
Elidyr didn’t look up from his work as he responded to the dolgaunt’s comment.
“Even better, my friend.”
The artificer sat crosslegged on the rough stone surface of the cave floor, the pieces of the Overmantle spread out before him illuminated by a stolen everbright lantern.
Rhedyn stood off to the side, the shadowy aspect granted him by his symbiont causing him to be nearly invisible in the cave’s gloom. “This is where you lived?” the young warrior said to Sinnoch. “It seems awfully … stark.”
That was one word for it, Elidyr thought with amusement. Save for the three of them, the cave was completely empty, just as it had been all those years ago when Elidyr had first come here as a young scholar in search of aberrations to study, not knowing at the time that some decades hence, he’d become one himself. Life certainly took some strange turns, he thought.
Sinnoch laughed. “What can I say? I enjoy being alone with my thoughts.”
The moment they’d entered the cave, Sinnoch had doffed the oversized robe he’d worn to conceal his body from mortal eyes and stood naked, shoulder tentacles undulating lazily in the dank air, the cilia that covered his body flowing like blades of discolored grass.
Rhedyn edged closer to Elidyr. “You haven’t touched any of the pieces since you laid them out,” he said. “Do you think you can fix it?”
The stormstalk draped around Elidyr’s shoulders turned its milky eye toward Rhedyn, and Elidyr could feel the symbiont’s irritation. It wanted nothing more than to unleash a bolt of lightning at the man, if for no other reason than to shut him up. Elidyr sympathized with his friend, but he told it to have patience.
We can always kill the fool later. Right now we have need of him.
The stormstalk relaxed, though Elidyr could sense it was only partially mollified. In some ways, having three symbionts was like having three children that needed to be placated and disciplined from time to time. But the power they granted made them worth the effort.
“I’ve been studying the remains of the Overmantle, getting a feel for what damage was done to the device and what I’ll need to do to fix it. As I don’t have proper replacement parts-let alone the right tools to do the job-I’m going to have to improvise. But improvisation is an artificer’s stock in trade. I should be able to make do.” He glanced up at Rhedyn. “That is, if I’m left alone to do my work.”
It had taken them the better part of two days to travel from Geirrid to Sinnoch’s hidden cave in the Nightwood. The horses had been near death by the time they’d reached their destination. Sinnoch had taken great delight in putting the beasts out of their misery in spectacularly gruesome fashion, though Rheydn had seemed a bit put off by the dolgaunt’s actions-especially when he began jamming bloody chunks of horse meat and organs into his overlarge mouth. Elidyr wasn’t entirely certain of the lad’s dedication to their cause. His mental outlook seemed distressingly mundane, as if he hadn’t allowed his symbiont to fully open his mind to the boundless possibilities of chaos yet. Hopefully, that would change in the days to come. If not … well, Sinnoch might get a chance to indulge himself with Rhedyn just as he had the horses.
During the trip from Geirrid, Elidyr had taken out the Overmantle a couple times and examined it, and the truth was, he was less than encouraged by its current state. Sinnoch had managed to gather all the main components of the device, and he’d had the foresight to bring along a set of Elidyr’s tools from his workshop at the lodge. But despite all his months assisting in the construction of the Overmantle, Sinnoch was no artificer, and he’d only brought the most basic of tools with him. In order to effect the kind of repairs the Overmantle required, Elidyr was going to have to redesign certain aspects of the Overmantle. And that would take time. At least most of the psi-crystals were intact and charged. They were highly expensive and difficult to come by, and without them, he’d have little chance of repairing the device. As it was, the task would take all his skill and knowledge to complete.
Too bad he couldn’t reshape metal and crystal the same way he could rework flesh. Repairing the Overmantle would be a simple matter then. Ah well. Things would be different in the world to come. Once chaos ruled the land, anything would be possible. The landscape would change at the merest thought, and every desire would become an instant reality. But until that glorious day, he’d just have to work with what he had.
Glorious? Are you mad?
Strange. The thought wasn’t his, and yet the voice was clear.
Chaos isn’t freedom. It’s slavery. The daelkyr use their abilities to enforce their whims upon others by reshaping reality as they wish it to be. People have a divine right to self-determination-a right the daelkyr would deny them. That’s the glorious future you’re trying to create, Elidyr. A future where the daelkyr rule and reality is nothing more than their toy.
Elidyr frowned. He wasn’t certain where this voice was coming from-it didn’t belong to any of his symbionts-but it was familiar. As familiar as the sound of his own voice, in fact.
When reality responds to everyone’s desires, then everyone shall be truly free, he thought back at the voice. That is the great gift the daelkyr offer. Now be silent and let me think!
Elidyr waited for the voice to say more, but it didn’t, and he smiled in satisfaction. He returned his attention to the remains of the Overmantle and mulled over various redesigns in his mind.
Rhedyn, however, didn’t stay silent for long.
“They’ll be coming for us, you know. Vaddon and the rest of the Outguard. Lirra too. Whether separately or together, they won’t stop until they’ve found us. Lirra especially will never give up.”
“You almost sound as if you fear her,” Sinnoch taunted.
“I respect her,” Rhedyn said, perhaps a bit too quickly. “There’s a difference. She’s a dangerous opponent in her own right, but now that she has a symbiont and has experienced the power of the Overmantle, she’s even more dangerous. It’s a shame she wouldn’t join us.”
“Perhaps she will in the end,” Elidyr said. “And if not, she will be one more casualty on the way toward creating a perfect world.”
Sinnoch grinned with his mouthful of needle-teeth. “One among many.”
Rhedyn scowled at the dolgaunt. “We need to be prepared in case they find us before the Overmantle is fixed. Together, the three of us are powerful, but I don’t know if we can stop the entire Outguard. Especially if Lirra has rejoined them, which I think likely. Vaddon is a highly experienced commander who could’ve easily become a warlord if he had any patience for political intrigue. He’s already added a pair of warforged to the Outguard’s ranks, probably thanks to my uncle. He’ll also recruit new members of the Outguard from the garrison at Geirrid to replace those who were killed. He might even convince Rol Amark to allow him to use the entire garrison. We could be facing a force of close to a hundred men and women. As I said, I fear the three of us will not be enough to stop them.”
“Assuming they reach us,” Sinnoch said. “This cave system is well hidden, and even if Vaddon and Lirra find it, locating us within its labyrinthine tunnels would be another matter entirely.” The dolgaunt paused then, head tilted to one side as if he was listening to something Elidyr and Rhedyn couldn’t hear. “But even so, your points are well taken, Rhedyn.” He turned to the warrior and grinned. “So it’s a good thing that I don’t live alone here, isn’t it?”
Elidyr felt the vibrations through the stone floor before he heard the rhythmic stomping of feet coming from somewhere deep within the cav
e system. He had no idea precisely how large the force was that approached, but he felt certain it was large enough to do the job. And whatever Sinnoch’s friends were, Elidyr knew he could use his flesh-molding abilities to remake them however he saw fit. Now that he thought about it, why should he have them wait until Lirra and the others arrived? It would be so much more hospitable to send Sinnoch’s friends out to greet them.
He refocused his attention on the Overmantle, and as the first of the dolgrim entered the cave, the artificer reached out and began reconnecting the broken pieces of the device.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A day and a half after leaving Geirrid, the Outguard entered the Nightwood. It was early morning, but the cloud cover was thick that day, and the forest interior was shrouded in gloom. The Nightwood lived up to its name, Lirra thought, for it always seemed to be dark within its confines. This wasn’t her first time here. She’d led hunting parties into the forests in search of symbionts on numerous occasions. In fact, the tentacle whip had been captured here during one such hunt.
Welcome home, she thought to the symbiont. In reply, it gave her forearm a painful squeeze, as if to say, Shut up. She could sense the tentacle whip’s foul mood. It hadn’t seen any action since the battle against Elidyr’s white-eyes a couple days ago, and she’d felt its frustration building ever since. The symbiont wanted to lash out, to strike at an opponent, to plunge its barb into soft flesh and fill it with poison. It wanted to wrap its coils around a tender neck and slowly squeeze. Tighter … tighter …
Lirra shook her head to clear her mind of the images. Stop that!
A starling perched on a nearby tree branch sang a few notes, and before Lirra could react, the tentacle whip unwrapped from around her wrist and lashed out at the bird. The symbiont’s barbed tip speared the starling through the breast, and the animal was dead long before it hit the ground.
The whip retracted slowly and wrapped itself around her forearm with an insolent laziness. Lirra had to resist the urge to smack it, as if it were a dog that had just misbehaved.
“Target practice?” Ranja asked.
“Something like that,” Lirra muttered.
The two women rode in the front of the Outguard, along with Osten, who had not left her side since Vaddon had appointed him to be her official watchdog. Longstrider and Shatterfist walked behind them, the indefatigable warforged needing no mounts upon which to travel-not that any horse could carry their weight. Vaddon and Ksana came after the constructs, with the rest of the Outguard following behind. Their ranks had expanded considerably in Geirrid, thanks to Rol Amark, who had allowed Vaddon to conscript half of his garrison soldiers. Vaddon had tried to persuade the man to allow him to have the entire garrison, but Rol had refused, saying he needed to keep some soldiers in town in case Elidyr and his monsters attacked Geirrid again.
Lirra didn’t blame him, but it meant that the Outguard had only sixty or so members. A decent-sized force under other circumstances, perhaps, but Lirra feared it wouldn’t be enough, not against Elidyr and the sort of creatures he could create. But it was all they had, so it would have to suffice.
One detriment to having such a large party was that it slowed their progress through the forest. The Nightwood was old, full of large, ancient trees growing close together, and while hunters and explorers had forged paths through the forest over the years, Ranja claimed this was the route that Elidyr, Sinnoch, and Rhedyn had taken, and so the sixty members of the Outguard made their way through the dense forest as best they could. One good thing about traveling with so many people was that it would discourage all but the largest and fiercest of predators, and so far their journey through the Nightwood had been without incident. But that didn’t mean any of them were complacent. Every man and woman kept close watch on the surrounding woods as they passed, alert for the slightest hint of movement. A number of soldiers rode with crossbows resting on their laps, bolts loaded and ready to loose at the first sign of trouble. Others kept one hand on their horses’ reins, the other never far from their swords. They all knew that Elidyr was far from the only monster inhabiting the forest that day.
Osten was one of those holding a crossbow, and he continually swept his gaze back and forth as they rode. Occasionally he’d give Ranja a sidelong glance, frowning slightly. He’d said less than a dozen words to the shifter since they’d left Geirrid, and it was clear to Lirra that he didn’t approve of the woman. Lirra might almost have thought Osten was jealous, that he viewed Ranja as a rival of sorts as it was his assigned task to be Lirra’s nursemaid. The thought was ridiculous, but she couldn’t shake it. For her part, Ranja seemed to delight in talking as often as possible to irritate the young warrior, a result she accomplished all too easily.
Osten glanced at Ranja again, and this time the shifter flashed him a smile that was a touch more feral than usual.
“See something you like, big boy? You know what they say about shifter women …”
Osten’s cheeks turned bright red. “No, I don’t, and I’d prefer you don’t enlighten me!” he snapped.
Ranja laughed and gave him a wink, but she said nothing more. Osten glared at her one more time before turning to Lirra.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
He didn’t need to make the question more specific. Lirra knew what he meant. He’d seen the tentacle whip kill the starling.
“The symbiont is getting a bit restless, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” She kept her tone light, in hopes of reassuring Osten, but in truth she was starting to become concerned. When the Outguard had first set out for the Nightwood, she’d thought the quiet routine of travel would relax her and help to keep her calm, which in turn would make it easier for her to control the tentacle whip. But instead the opposite had happened. The monotony of sitting in the saddle hour after hour had worn down her nerves to the point where she thought she might scream if something didn’t happen soon. When Vaddon had talked with her at the garrison barracks in Geirrid, he’d wondered aloud how much she’d been changed by hosting a symbiont. It seemed she’d been changed in ways both great and small. It was important she came to understand those changes, for the symbiont would attempt to exploit any weakness to slip past her guard and wrest control from her. And that was something she couldn’t let happen, not even for an instant. For if she did, there was a good chance her mind, her spirit, her very self, would be lost forever.
It hadn’t helped any that her mount, a piebald mare, was skittish about having a rider with a symbiont sitting in the saddle. Elidyr, Sinnoch, and Rhedyn had taken the mounts that had been enchanted to tolerate the presence of aberrations when they’d fled from Geirrid, and Lirra had been forced to make due with one of the horses from the garrison stable. Since Geirrid was surrounded by farms, the town had a number of animal handlers who could lay spells on cattle and horses to make them more tractable, and the garrison stable-master was skilled at such spellcraft. Unfortunately, he’d never had to enchant a horse to carry a rider fused with an aberration before, and while the mare tolerated Lirra’s presence, Lirra had to constantly pay attention to her mount to make sure she didn’t spook. Two days of babying her horse had worn Lirra down even further.
She sat up straight in the saddle and forced herself to take several deep, even breaths to calm herself before turning to Ranja.
“How are we faring?” she asked.
In response, Ranja raised her chin and sniffed the air. “Still on track. The scent’s good and strong, as well it should be considering that the three we’re tracking are all aberrations of one sort or another.” She wrinkled her nose. “They reek. Even if a strong rain came along, I doubt it would be enough to dampen their scent trail. How about you? Sense anything yet?”
Lirra concentrated. She felt a slight tingle at the base of her skull, and a cold flutter deep in her stomach, but neither sensation lasted more than an instant. “I’m not certain. Right now, I’d say your nose is a lot more reliable.”
Behind them, Shatte
rfist called out. “Speaking of noses, have you heard this one? One gnome walks up to another gnome and says, ‘My dog has no nose.’ The second gnome asks, ‘Then how does he smell?’ And the first gnome answers, ‘Terrible!’ ”
Lirra groaned. She almost wished some unspeakable horror would come shrieking out of the woods and tear her to shreds. At least then she wouldn’t have to listen to any more of Shatter-fist’s awful jokes. She wondered if she could convince her father that the warforged were still too close to Ranja and were interfering with her tracking. Perhaps then he’d move them farther back in the-
Tingling erupted at the base of her skull, and her gut twisted with sudden nausea as intense as when she’d sensed Elidyr’s white-eyes in Geirrid. More so, in fact, and she knew that couldn’t be good.
She raised her hand to call for a sudden halt. Vaddon saw her signal and commanded the Outguard to stop. He rode forward, Ksana riding at his side, until both of their mounts were at the front of the party with Lirra, Ranja, and Osten.
“What is it?” Vaddon asked without preamble.
“There’s something ahead of us,” Lirra said. “Something big. And it’s coming toward us. I think it’s an aberration of some sort … or maybe many aberrations massed together. I’m not sure. But whatever it is, it’s approaching fast.”
Vaddon looked at her skeptically for a moment, as if he didn’t trust her perceptions. He turned to Ksana, and the halfelf cleric raised her right hand, closed her eyes, and whispered a quick prayer to her goddess.
She opened her eyes. “I think Lirra is right. Whatever’s coming feels like those creatures of Elidyr’s we fought in Geirrid. Not evil in the supernatural sense, but definitely unnatural.”
Vaddon turned in his saddle to face the rest of the Outguard and made a series of silent hand gestures. The men and women under his command-including those who’d only just joined the Outguard-understood the code: We’re about to be attacked. Make ready. Crossbows were raised and swords were quietly drawn from their sheaths. Without a word, the soldiers moved their horses into a circular battle formation so that they’d be prepared for the attack no matter which direction it came from. Lirra and the others did likewise, Longstrider and Shatterfist stepping forward to join them at the head of the circle.