Without pausing an instant in his labors, Glaeken glanced down at the huge eye pressed furiously against the membrane.
"You've already promised that, Rasalom. What have I got to lose?"
"I won't kill you, Glaeken! I'll let you live on, just barely. I'll make you witness, see, feel everything that happens in my new world."
Glaeken said nothing. He had almost cut through the first arch. With a final thrust, the blade angled through the underside and came free.
The central portion suddenly sagged a half a foot under him. Glaeken hurried to his left, toward the next support.
"Glaeken, NO! That island I promised you—you and the woman and your friends—"
Glaeken shut his mind to Rasalom's rantings and drove the blade into the second arch. More flashes and oily smoke. He worked the blade ferociously, gasping with the stench and the exertion, and eventually it worked its way through.
The center sagged again, its free edge lurching downward almost two feet this time. The two supports he had cut wept dark fluid from their truncated ends as they remained suspended above the void like severed arms reaching for something they would never again possess.
Supported now on only one side by the two remaining arches, the center tilted at a steep angle. Glaeken's feet slipped on the smooth surface as he hurried toward the nearer remaining arch.
And again he drove the blade deep into the substance. As he worked it through, he felt an impact on his right leg. Reflexively he pulled away as searing pain flashed up to his hip. He caught a flash of movement and he rolled away from the center.
It was a huge hand, but it resembled a hand only in the vaguest sense—black as the night above, and only three fingers, each as thick around as Glaeken's waist, each terminating in a sharp yellow talon. Blood dripped from one of those talons—his own.
Rasalom—it had to be. Rasalom in his new form. Glaeken could not see the rest of him, most of which was no doubt still in the sack below. Had his new form finally matured, or was he breaking free before the process was completed in order to stop Glaeken?
It made another swipe, blindly, in his direction. Glaeken ducked under the talons. The sudden move sent a fresh surge of agony through his wounded leg. As it came for him again, he slashed at it with the weapon and felt the blade dig deep into the inky flesh.
Light exploded above him, a flash of brilliance that dwarfed all those before it. In his mind he heard Rasalom cry out in shock and pain. When his vision cleared he saw the taloned hand waving above him, one of its thick fingers swinging madly back and forth as it dangled from its smoking stump by a few remaining intact tendons.
Glaeken straightened and limped to the other support. He had been able to cut only part way through the third and it was unlikely he'd get a chance to finish the job within Rasalom's reach. He'd attack the fourth—but not near the center.
His move must have surprised Rasalom because he was half-way along the arch before the voice sounded in his brain.
"Don't run off, Glaeken. We've only begun to play."
Glaeken didn't look back. He continued his torturous trek toward the far end of the arch. Within a dozen feet of its origin he stopped and turned.
Rasalom's amniotic sack still hung from its lopsided platform like a gargantuan punching bag, but now a sinewed arm with a wounded hand protruded from the rent made by the weapon. It raked the air above it with its two remaining talons. And the eye…that malevolent eye was still pressed against the membrane, glaring at him.
"I'm not running far," Glaeken said.
With another burst of light and bloom of oily smoke, he drove the weapon deep into the arch beneath him and began to work it back and forth. The support was thicker here near its base, but he could afford the extra time it would take because he was out of Rasalom's reach.
"Glaeken," Rasalom said to his mind, "you'll never learn. You are forcing me to…"
Ahead, over the center of the pit, another arm clawed free of the membrane, then ripped a talon down the surface of the sack, opening it like a zipper. Tons of black fluid poured from the rent, spilling into the bottomless glow of the depths below. The rent parted, widened, and then…
Something emerged from the sack.
Glaeken knew who it was, but could not be certain what it was. It had arms, that he knew. And a huge eye at its upper end. But in the dim glow leaking up from the pit below he could be sure of little else as it crawled from the sack and hoisted itself up onto the sagging central platform. Legs…now he could see legs, very much like the two arms, but the rest of it was encased in an oozing gelatinous mass that dripped off the platform in amorphous globs and tumbled into infinity. There was a larger shape within the mass, something with a head and a torso, but Glaeken could make out no details. And now a pair of thick tentacles wriggled free of the gelatin below the arms to twist and coil in the air.
It began moving his way, crawling upward toward him along the fourth arch.
Glaeken redoubled his efforts with the weapon, widening, deepening the cut in its upper surface, thrusting the blade through to the underside. Rasalom's incomplete new form was cumbersome, his progress slow, but he was sliding steadily closer. He soon would have Glaeken within reach of those talons.
Suddenly an explosive crack echoed through the cavern as the fourth arch shook beneath Glaeken's feet and broke part way through like a green sapling. Its distal segment sagged. Glaeken paused and watched Rasalom claw frantically for purchase as he slipped back along the decline toward the central disk. He gave the monstrous form no time to recover, however; immediately he renewed his hacking assault at the remaining splinters holding the arch together.
"Give it up, Glaeken! This is an exercise in futility! You cannot win!"
Rasalom's voice was no longer in his mind. His new form was speaking in a startlingly powerful voice. Even muffled by the gelatinous coating, it was still loud enough to shake the walls of the cavern.
Glaeken ignored it and forced his wearying arms to maintain the assault on the arch. The reflexes were still there, the arms knew what to do, but the unconditioned muscles were sagging with fatigue. Yet he couldn't rest, couldn't even slow his pace. He closed his eyes to blot out all distractions and kept hacking.
"GLAEKEN!"
The stark terror in the voice and the ripping sound that accompanied it jolted Glaeken. He looked up.
Rasalom was near, clinging to the arch, his outstretched talons only a few feet from Glaeken's face, yet he was receding, falling away. And then Glaeken saw why. He'd cut through the remnant of the fourth support and now Rasalom was dangling over the pit, clutching frantically with arms, legs, and tentacles to the swiftly tilting remnant.
The entire structure—the new Rasalom, the central disk, and the remnant of his sack-like chrysalis—was now supported entirely by the third arch. And Glaeken had already damaged that near its union with the disk.
After all these ages, Rasalom's end was at hand.
Or was it?
Rasalom was suspended head down over the pit, but he was scrabbling backwards along the remnant of the arch, up toward the disk.
"You cannot win, Glaeken! Not this time! It cannot happen! I won't allow it! I'm too close!"
His movements were shaking the entire structure, exerting enormous pressure on the lone arch. It began to bob like a fishing pole that had hooked an enormous Great White. As Glaeken hobbled back to the rim of the cavern and made his way toward the final arch, he heard it begin to crack where he had started a cut near its distal end.
Rasalom must have realized it too, because even in this dim light Glaeken could discern a frantic desperation in his movements. But it was too late. The end of the arch was splitting, angling down at its wounded tip. Breaking…