The thing was on my head now. I could feel fingers like tentacles encircling my skull. And if I thought this was the worst it could possibly get, I was about to be proved wrong. In my mind grew darkness so profound, so overwhelming, that I felt paralyzed. I thought I had been struck blind and moaned in anguish. And then something vanquished the darkness. What I saw next made me wish the darkness would return.
It was every nightmare I had ever had times a factor of a thousand. From my earliest memories to seemingly the last sliver of my life, every painful fragment of memory I had ever experienced exploded onto my consciousness with the force of a million colossals crashing on top of me.
And then, even surpassing those horrible visions, were images I had never seen before, but which now flooded my brain.
Everyone I had ever loved — my parents, Virgil, Calliope, John — was running away from me. When I tried to go after them, a serpent came out of a dark hole in the dirt, wrapped itself around my ankle and started pulling me down. I cried out for help, but my family simply ran away from me faster. In another nightmare, Krone was lifting the ax high above his head and when it came down, two heads rolled off the block — mine and Delph’s. Our heads lay there staring lifelessly at each other.
And then I was reaching out to my parents on their cots in the Care. But in my hand was an open flame. When I touched them with it, they burst afire. They screamed at me, tried to escape, but couldn’t. Their flesh turned black and then fell away until there was only bone left and then that too vanished. Their screams, however, continued to ring in my ears, each burst like a knife between my ribs.
The last image was somehow the worst. I was on a flying steed, dressed all in chain mail, like the female I had seen. I was fighting. I had a sword in one hand and the Elemental in the other. Bodies were falling all around me as I cleaved and thrust my way through a horde of attackers. And then it hit me directly in the chest. The light entered me in the front and left me in the back. The pain was unimaginable.
I watched myself look down at the wound. The mortal wound. The next instant I was falling through the sky, down … down … down….
I tried to scream but nothing came out. I felt the creature on my back tightening its grip around me. I swung my arms back and tried to hit it. But in hitting it, I was only striking myself. I had thought fighting in the Duelum was hard. I would take a thousand Nons trying to crush my skull over this. This was so awful, all I wanted was to die.
The thing was gripping me so tightly I could barely breathe. My chest was rising and falling in increasingly constricted space. I knew at some point soon it would have no more latitude to operate. But I didn’t care. Right now I had no desire to live. The nightmarish images became darker, smaller, but their potency somehow grew immeasurably with each passing moment. I was being dissolved from the inside out.
I’m not sure how it came to me because I don’t really remember doing it. My hand reached down to my waist. My breathing was so labored now that any upcoming breath could very well be my last. I managed, despite the crushing weight I felt, to slip Destin free.
I gripped it in both my hands, which of course were now part of the creature’s hands. I flipped it upward over my head and felt it settle around the creature’s neck. I crossed my arms as fiercely as I could. This, in turn, made Destin replicate that movement. It encircled the creature’s neck and then tightened. If this didn’t work, I was truly lost. I pulled with all the strength I had left.
I heard a gurgle, the first sound the creature had made since it stopped crying.
The next thing I saw struck me first with horror and then with relief as the chain grew lax. The thing’s head hit the floor in front of me, bounced once and then lay still. Slowly, an inch and a sliver at a time, I felt the grip of the thing begin to ease and then fall away. In three excruciatingly long slivers, it was gone. My mind cleared. I rose on wobbly legs.
I didn’t want to because I thought it might have turned back into John, but I finally had to stare down at the evil thing that had very nearly killed me. It was turning black and was shriveling up before my eyes.
I turned and ran as fast as I could. Only this time I knew where I was going because the darkness inside wherever I was had started to lift. It was as though the evil dead thing was absorbing all the blackness in here into itself, allowing the light to shine once more.
When I saw my reflection just up ahead, I sped up and leapt, my hands outstretched. I flew through the looking glass, tumbled to the hard marble floor, and was up in an instant. I turned to stare back at the looking glasses. All of them were starting to fade. In less than a sliver, they disappeared. But I had glimpsed once more the intricate designs on the wooden frames. And this time, I remembered where I had seen them before.
The Adder Stone safely in my pocket, I raced down the steps and out through the side door of Stacks. Freed from the place, I soared into the air, Destin in fine working order after being freed from the glass. I had to get back to hospital as fast as possible.
QUADRAGINTA UNUS: Slivers Too Few
SLIVERS LATER, I landed as near the place as I dared. I sprinted the rest of the way, pushed through the doors and raced down the hall. Another sliver passed and then I was back in Duf’s room. Breathing hard, I skirted around the sheet that hung from the ceiling giving the space some privacy.
Then I stopped dead. The cot was empty. The room was empty. Delph and his father were gone. I rushed back down the corridor, thinking only terrible thoughts, the next worse than the previous one. There were no Nurses or Mendens in the passageways, so I started poking my head in each room I came to.
Wugs in various states of ill health or injury peered back at me from their cots. Heads bandaged, faces red and swollen, lungs hacking, legs bound in plaster, arms tethered to bodies — none of them was Duf. I had to believe many of them had been injured on the Wall construction, yet none so badly as Duf.
When I came out of one room I heard the scream. I looked wildly about because I recognized the voice. I hustled toward the sound, rounding one corner and then another. The screams kept coming and then they abruptly died out. I reached a set of double doors, pushed them open and hurtled into the room, panting from being out of breath, my broken nose pouring blood and throbbing. I slowly straightened and looked upon the horror in front of me.
Duf lay on the table, a sheet covering the top of him. As I looked down below, my stomach gave a lurch. There was nothing there. His legs below the knees were gone. Duf was covered in sweat and unconscious, something for which I was dearly grateful.
Delph was just standing there, his big hands tucked into fists, his great chest heaving, the tears spreading over his cheeks as he peered at what was left of his father. I looked at the Menden who stood there with blood smeared across his white gown and a vicious-looking saw in one hand. A Nurse stood next to him, staring anxiously at Delph.
I drew closer to the cot. Where Duf’s legs had been were just stumps. I could barely find the breath to keep my lungs going.
“What happened?” I asked breathlessly.
“Cu-cut ’em off,” said Delph. He was teetering. “Just cu-cu-cu —”
I gripped his hand and looked at the Menden. “When did you do this?”
He was staring at my injured face, but then focused on my question.
“Finished about a sliver ago. Delph didn’t want it done, but it had to be done. Otherwise, we’d have a dead Wug.”
“A sliver?”
The Nurse pulled me away from Delph and said in a low voice, “He tried to stop the Menden.” She pointed to his torn gown and battered face. “It took five Wug orderlies to manage him while the Menden performed the amputation. He said you were coming with something that would help Duf. And we did wait, for a bit, although we knew that was nonsense. You never came back, so we had to get it done. You understand. Medical matter.”