With a shout, Alias leaped forward. Her movement was sloppy and awkward. Damn dream wine! I’m not sober, she realized as she accidentally kicked the sleeping Olive. The kalmari, still hovering with its tail firmly wrapped about the mage, fixed its unblinking, yellow eyes on the warrior.
Alias drew her sword but she hesitated, remembering that the barbarian’s two-handed weapon hadn’t even bloodied the monster. If the dream was true, her weapon was useless. But if the dream was true and the kalmari was indeed one of Cassana’s creatures, then according to Nameless, it could be warded off with the sorceress’s sigil on Alias’s arm. If Nameless had been telling the truth.…
Frustrated with all the uncertainties, the swordswoman stopped analyzing the situation. Still holding her sword, she raised her branded arm over her head, wrist forward. Her arm felt heavy and sluggish, as though a solid gold shield were strapped to it. Damn wine! she thought. She gritted her teeth and kept the arm up. A brilliant, blue light shot from the sigils, illuminating the campsite and making the black, smoky form of the kalmari easier to discern.
Lacking the eyelids to blink in the strong light, the kalmari’s elongated pupils narrowed to slits, and the creature floated backward the length of a sword. Its grip on Akabar was still firm, however, and it held its tail forward, using the mage as a shield.
I can keep the creature back, Alias thought grimly, but how do I get it to drop Akabar?
In her dream she had asked Nameless how to defeat the kalmari. He had told her, but the details of the dream were already drifting from her memory. Alias struggled to remember his words.
He hadn’t told me what to do exactly. He’d said something about what the kalmari couldn’t do. It couldn’t eat something. It couldn’t eat something twice. What nonsense! Alias thought. If you’ve eaten something, you can’t eat it again, can you? Unless you’re the kind of creature that regurgitates the bones of your victims.
Behind her came a high-pitched curse from Olive. “What in the burning lake is that?”
Ignoring the halfling, Alias lunged at the monster, slicing her blade through the extremity that entrapped the still unconscious Turmishman. The monster’s hissing increased in pitch and volume. It was not Alias’s sword that troubled it, though.
The closer she got to Cassana’s creature, the brighter her brands blazed. Annoyed by the intense light or perhaps, as Nameless had said, afraid of its mistress’s sigil, the kalmari retreated farther, though it did not appear ready to flee.
Alias’s eyes roamed across the floor, looking for remains of the northern warrior or other travelers already consumed by the kalmari. Finding nothing to feed the creature, she lunged again, plunging her sword into one of the monster’s eyes. Again, the beast moved away from the light of her arm, but showed no damage from her sword.
Sword. The barbarian’s sword! The kalmari had spit out the barbarian’s sword. A sword with a lion-headed hilt, just like the one Olive had plucked from the ruins.
The adventuress shot quick glances over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the rubble-strewn floor. Nothing. Alias cursed silently. It had been there before. What could have happened to it? Or who—
“Olive!” she shouted. “You found a sword with a lion’s head grip in the ruins earlier.”
“I vaguely recall something of that nature” the halfling answered.
“You must have it, damn it! Give it to me!”
“Really” the halfling huffed. “I was going to give it to you later as a surprise.”
“I don’t want to hear any excuses, just go get it!” Alias screamed.
“But it’s on the other side of the wall—on the other side of the monster!” Olive squeaked. “Why can’t you get it?”
“If I move away, it’s liable to eat Akabar. It can’t touch me, but if it asked for dessert I’d be inclined to serve you to it. Understand?”
Ruskettle muttered something that sounded like cursing in an unknown language, but she nevertheless moved to Alias’s left, swinging wide around the edges of the destroyed hostel and the kalmari.
Alias moved to her left, too, keeping the arc of her circle smaller so that she remained between the monster and the halfling. Then Dragonbait was at her left shoulder, fully awake, his sword at the ready. The sigils bathed them both in an eerie blue radiance. With Dragonbait clearing a path for her through the rubble, the swordswoman managed to back the kalmari into the corner of the hostel that still stood. Alias suspected the wall would prove no impediment to the monster’s retreat, but perhaps it couldn’t pass through the wooden beams without letting go of the mage.
There was a scrambling noise from the edge of the wall behind the kalmari. The kalmari’s hissing grew louder and more threatening. It twisted ever so slightly, keeping one eye on the two warriors, while turning the other on the halfling pawing at the rubble not twenty feet away.
Alias’s throat constricted in fear. Olive seemed to take forever pulling out the massive blade. The weapon stood taller than the halfling, and she could barely lift it. To Alias’s horror, the kalmari turned both eyes on Olive. At that moment the halfling looked up and froze.
“Olive! Use the sword!” Alias shouted. “Use it to defend yourself!”
Alias moved to her right, hoping to force the monster to turn its eyes from the bard, but the leaden feeling in her arm seemed to spread over her entire body, and she tripped over a fallen roof beam and sprawled across the floor.
Her body’s heaviness persisted; her attempts to rise were met with failure. She felt not just drunk, but as though she’d been drugged. It was an effort just to raise her head to watch the kalmari close in on the bard. “Set the sword like a spear!” she cried.
Olive snapped out of her shock and raised the sword. Perhaps she’d only caught the last few words of Alias’s command, or maybe she had some halfling-berserker blood in her, but Olive did not remain standing still, waiting for the monster to impale itself on the weapon. Instead, she charged the creature, holding the sword like a spear. Astonishingly, it looked to Alias as if Olive might succeed in skewering the monster—until the halfling slipped on a pile of broken roof shingles. The sword flew from her hands, and the bard crashed to the floor beneath the kalmari.
The kalmari smiled so broadly that Alias could see its grin from behind. The creature made the same rattling laugh as in her dream. Alias had a clear view of Olive’s terrified face as the halfling looked into the throat of the kalmari—about to become an hors d’oeuvre before Akabar’s main entree.
A blur of dark green shot across Alias’s vision as, with one continuous motion, Dragonbait dashed toward the barbarian’s sword, lifted it, leaped toward the kalmari, and plunged the weapon in the monster’s back. The sword dug into the kalmari’s form with a satisfying thuck. Dragonbait had to jerk the weapon out before he could strike again.
The kalmari made a high-pitched whine Alias hoped was a scream. Turning away from the halfing, the creature dropped the mage. Dragonbait swung again, this time striking the monster above its eyes, and the kalmari whined again, lashing out with its tail. With lightning reflexes, the lizard-warrior met the strike with the sword, severing the appendage. The monster whined again, now at an unbearable pitch, and came at Dragonbait, mouth first, obviously intent on swallowing the scaly warrior. Dragonbait threw the sword, point first, into the monster’s maw.
The kalmari’s smoky body disintegrated into a dozen tiny motes of darkness, which in turn ruptured into smaller fractions, like a drop of oil shaken in water. The bits of darkness were blown away on the night breeze. The barbarian’s sword clattered to the floor of the devastated inn.