Chandra screamed as the entire snake went into her hand, its form bulging beneath her skin as it began to slither up her arm. The pain was like nothing she had ever known.
“Dirk!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Get in here now!”
Without any further promting, the two guards entered the room. “Get this thing out of my arm,” she cried. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
The guard called Dirk gave the command to the Enervant to do as she said. He produced a knife and made a small inciscion just above the snake’s head, which emerged without prompting. The Enervant took hold of it with his withered nails and pulled it out, spilling blood and interstitial fluid heedlessly. Both guards’ faces went ashen. Chandra was sure the one behind Dirk was on the verge of fainting. For her own part, the only thing that kept Chandra conscious was a fury as pure the heart of the volcano. But she knew she could not let this show. Instead she let her head drop as though she’d fainted.
The guard called Dirk collected himself. “Well, out with it, then. Where’s the scroll?” When Chandra didn’t answer he nudged her, but she still gave no response. “Get some water,” he told the other.
Dirk unshackled her right wrist and let her wounded arm hang. Although it was throbbing, Chandra didn’t feel like there was lasting damage. She remained motionless with her head hanging until the guard came back with a pail and ladle. At that, Chandra raised her head weakly and looked at the guard. He held the full ladle out to her and she cupped the bowl in her hand, bending her head over it as though to drink, her hair falling around it to obscure the ladle from view.
Chandra focused her rage on the water and called on her power to heat it. Within seconds, the small amount of water had come to a boil, and she threw it into the guard’s face, blinding him and scalding his flesh. He stumbled back into the Enervant, who dropped his knife and fell back, disrupting the path of the other enervants. The effect was immediate. Chandra could feel her strength returning, her power blossoming like a flower at the base of her skull and racing out to her extremities.
When the fire came to her like this, it was as if time slowed for Chandra. Everything around her moved in slow motion, while she was able to think and move freely. Even as the others in the room were still trying to make sense of what was happening, Chandra grabbed the knife on the ground with her free hand and used it to pry the shackles on her left arm loose. Before the Enervant knew what was happening, she had released herself and was on top of it, driving the knife into his neck in the soft spot beneath its jaw. The snakeman went slack like a bag of grain.
She turned to deal with the other soldier, but he was was on his knees like a penitent, pleading for his life. Chandra ignored him and shifted her attention to the remaining six Enervants.
They were hissing noisily, their heads weaving and bobbing on necks that were much longer than they had originally seemed. They were moving to surround her, but Chandra noticed they were regulating their spacing and their movements were synchronizing again. She sensed they were trying to begin another ritual to drain her of her power. She had to act fast.
Chandra realized she was sweating and panting. The brief use of her power had already tired her far more than it should have, thanks to the Enervants’ work. Searching for one act that would affect six adversaries, Chandra called on her remaining power to produce a sheet of fire between herself and the hissing snakes. As she had hoped, it halted their advance toward her.
However, they were still between her and the door. Not only could they prevent her escape, they could also leave the room and summon help. Fortunately, they were wholly focused on her, and they were obviously unwilling to pass through her fire. She needed to move quickly, though, before they were able to act in concert again to sap her strength.
Fighting exhaustion and struggling hard to call forth more power in her weakened condition, Chandra spread her arms, then uttered a short spell that Mother Luti had taught her. She simultaneously clapped her hands together as she stared hard at the six wizards, keeping them all in focus. Her sheet of fire sprang around them like a trap, coiling to encircle them.
Their menacing hissing grew panicky as the fire closed in on them. Chandra clasped her hands together and squeezed hard, commanding her flames to embrace and consume her enemies. As the giant hooded snakes and their robes caught fire, their bodies writhed frantically. They clawed at each other, and their gaping jaws opened wide in agony, exposing their terrible fangs. The stench was unbelievable, and Chandra found it somehow disturbing that they didn’t scream or make any noise beside that tortured hissing.
The burned soldier was still howling in pain, and the cowed one wept, openly terrified. The Enervants were still alive, but writhing in their death throes as the flames consumed them.
With her captors all but vanquished, Chandra fled past her fatal fire and out the door of her cell. Fortunately, the soldiers had left it unlocked when they entered.
Beyond the door was a narrow corridor that led in two directions. She looked to her right and could see a dead end. She had no choice but to go left. When she reached a corner, she was spotted by two soldiers standing guard in the intersecting hallway.
“Prisoner escaped!” one of them cried.
She ran straight into them, hurtling her full body weight at them before they could unsheathe their swords. Her best chance of staying alive now was to planeswalk out of Kephalai, and she needed to conserve what was left of her power if she was to enter the?ther. She knocked one of them against the wall as hard as she could, and stomped on the other’s stomach when he fell. Hoping that would at least slow them down, she ran onward.
She saw a stone staircase at the end of the corridor where four more guards waited.
Behind her, the soldiers she had just knocked down were shouting, “Prisoner escaping! Prisoner escaping!”
The soldiers she was approaching clearly heard. One of them, at the top of the stairs, shouted this same phrase through the bars of the door up there and called for help.
Another of the soldiers guarding the stairs saw her and warned her in a loud voice, “Within moments, thirty soldiers will come through that door! Surrender now!”
He was wrong. It didn’t take moments. He had barely finished speaking when the door opened and armed soldiers began pouring through it.
And, if anything, he had underestimated their number.
Chandra turned around and ran back the way she had just come.
Fortunately, the two soldiers she had just knocked down hadn’t expected her to turn back and trample them again. This time their feeble interference barely slowed her down as she dashed past.
Chandra knew she couldn’t deal with all those reinforcements. As Gideon so obviously had understated, she had made herself conspicuous. She had to assume this was just the first wave. Now that the alarm had been sounded, the Prelate’s entire army would be devoted to keeping her a prisoner or dispatching her. And in her current condition, they would succeed-not immediately and not without pain, but they would succeed.
She didn’t have time to search for another way out of the prison. There might well not be one. And even if there were another way out, she had no chance of evading dozens of soldiers while she looked for it.
Her only remaining choice wasn’t a good one, but at least there was a chance she would survive.
She turned a corner and ran back to the large cell where she had been held captive. Behind her, she could hear the footsteps, rattling swords, and shouts of a lot of soldiers.