“I should have told you,” confided Anammelech, his face inches from Marrec, his breath as rotten as spoiled flesh, “Armor is just a shape I like to take on occasion. Really, I’m much more amorphous.” The blightlord’s ‘armor’ began to writhe where it touched Marrec’s spear. A horribly sentient surge of liquid ooze ran up the spear shaft, up Marrec’s arms, and across his face.
Marrec convulsed, attempting to throw himself back. The flowing ooze had too strong a grip on him. The blightlord’s entire body opened up like a wet glove and attempted to engulf him.
Realization flashed for Marrec. He had seconds to live, and his mind was giving him the grace of slowed perception to allow him to come to terms with his fate. Nothing he did would matter; all his options pointed to his ending. He could accept that, he decided, but not without a statement.
The flowing grip of Anammelech strengthened as he was pulled more firmly into an all-encompassing grasp of living ooze.
Marrec would die, yes, but he would expire while being true to his long-hidden nature. Maybe he could do some good and redeem both himself and the sin that still stained his heart since he had slain Thanial so long ago…
The blightlord’s voice purred, close and intimate, “I told you I knew all about you.”
The unicorn warrior whispered back, “Did your damned weapon tell you about my eyes?”
“Why would it?”
Marrec’s terrible gaze was drawn out like a sword from its scabbard.
“What’s this? What… That’s not…” Anammelech tried to heave his flowing body away from the searing gaze of the cleric. Marrec’s eyes had become a strobe of light and dark illumination, blasting into the flesh of the blightlord with a transformative grasp that Anammelech was incapable of resisting.
Laughter was gone then. As the stone tide overtook the soft-bodied blightlord, one last whimper escaped the Talontyr’s servant before his voice, too, was locked in a tomb of stone.
|\flarrec can handle himself,” grunted Gunggari, not for the first time.
Elowen gritted her teeth as she slashed the length of Dymondheart through the form of yet another twigblight that had sidled too close. The creature explosively shattered with the contact. The living wood of her intelligent blade was anathema to the obscene creatures. Dymondheart’s mere touch not only robbed them of animation but violently dissembled the creatures into so much kindling. The larger ones were smart enough to stay back, but every few seconds a smaller twigblight forgot the fate of all its earlier siblings and rushed forward. Despite the dozens she had shattered, a whole herd of the constructions followed behind them down the arch-defined lane, keeping pace. Maybe that was what they were supposed to do, merely keep her and the Oslander busy.
Elowen guarded as Gunggari paused and got down on his haunches again, studying the dirt, still on the trail of Fallon, Henri, and Ash. Elowen’s training and natural abilities were sufficient to follow the trail without too much trouble, but she had to keep Dymondheart ready. Besides, Gunggari’s ability to track verged on the supernatural. He made observations about their quarry that even Elowen at her best could not deduce from simply looking at the disturbed ground.
Gunggari said, “This track is over three hours old.” He rose, continuing his swift pace. Elowen followed after, her eyes to the rear, guarding their flank.
She asked, “How did Fallon get so far ahead of us?”
The elf saw Gunggari’s shrug out of the corner of her eye. He offered, “Ususi said time was mismatched between the interior and exterior of her pathway dimension. The elf must have exited much earlier than we thought.”
Elowen checked to make sure the rustling, creaking, walking grove of dead sticks keeping pace with them moved no closer. Satisfied, she stole a glance forward along their route. The green haze was thicker, further limiting visibility ahead. The stone arches were getting farther apart, more eroded, and less able to keep out the undergrowth. Trees and other forest growth crowded into the lane from either side. Whatever property kept the lane open at the other end seemed to be failing so far into the forest. Elowen had never walked so far under the Arches of Xenosi. She was idly curious about finding the last arch.
Though the mist was thicker ahead, their passage up the lane seemed to have dispersed the haze behind, because she could see at least twice as far along their path in that direction. Still no sign of Marrec.
Elowen bit her lip. She was torn between continuing along after Ash, or going back to see what had become of the other half of their group.
“Gunggari, tell me what you think about this,” began Elowen. “Fallon and Ash are three hours ahead. That means that Ash is at least three hours out of our reach, but Marrec and Ususi are only minutes out of our reach I think we can sacrifice a few more minutes out of three hours just to make sure everything’s OK with our friends.”
Gunggari paused again, wrinkling his brow. Finally he said, “Very well. We can head back, though I have never known Marrec to fail any challenge.”
“Challenges have a way of escalating.”
“True,” responded Gunggari. He turned a full one hundred eighty degrees to face the woody facade of their chaperones. “Perhaps Marrec’s spear is not quite so deadly against these evil wood spirits as your elf blade.”
Elowen raised one eyebrow. “Elf blades have their uses, after all.”
She brought the blade in question up, then swung a wide roundhouse arc, shattering two creatures that had skittered too near into a spray of twigs. The others ceased their forward movement, while those immediately in front of the two travelers tried to backpedal. The monsters further behind failed to stop immediately, pushing yet another twigblight forward to lose its cohesion on Dymondheart’s length.
As dead twigs rained down around her, Elowen yelled, “We’re going this way.” She pointed with the tip of her sword back along their path. “If you don’t want to end today a pile of splinters, get out of our way.”
As she’d hoped, the larger, smarter creatures began to shuffle back, herding their smaller, more numerous brethren with them. That’s when all the creatures went insane.
As if in response to a signal neither she nor Gunggari could see, the enchanted twig constructs went on a rampage en masse. Twigblight turned upon brother twigblight, with the larger ones immediately tossing a few of the smaller creatures headlong through the air, but the smaller monsters swarmed the larger ones like ants on a piece of meat.
For Elowen and Gunggari, that sudden madness included a loss of respect for Dymondheart.
Despite destroying three creatures in as many rapid eye blinks, another was already slashing past her guard, hacking at her face with its sickle-like fingertips. She flinched back, only to trip over a tiny twigblight that had rushed up from the side.
Gunggari steadied her with a lightning-fast hand. He said, “Back to back. These things have lost their fear of death.”
A flailing branch scratched Elowen’s cheek. Her counterattack exploded that one nicely, but two more encroached from the left. One failed to, penetrate her armor; the other sliced her along the neck. The pressure of Gunggari’s back flexed and strained; he was fighting off attacks no less massive than she, though he did not have Dymondheart to even the odds. The sound of his dizheri swishing through the air created a strange melody all its own, almost as if it were being played in truth. She grunted as she deflected a twiggy body hurling through the airone of the big ones had thrown one its small brothers at her, but apparently by accident. She managed to clip the tumbling creature with her blade; the twigblight came apart before impacting her.