Sweat poured down my face as I wrenched my strained Gift open as wide as possible, drawing in as much magic as I could without giving myself to the Worm. Even without touching the flesh some of my magic was being drawn off and devoured.
The Magash Mora was a simple creature, its mind easier to infiltrate than a still-living human. These pitiful remnants lacked the walls of will and self-consciousness that resisted mental intrusion. I sent out a pulse of anger to draw the attention of its many conjoined minds. “Over here, you stinking carcass!”
My ploy worked far too well. It only took a dozen steps before my feet were sucked beneath the surface. I waded through jellied meat, managing another few paces before something seized my feet from below. I screamed as it sucked on my Gift.
Sudden terror made me lash out, trying to dig myself free using Dissever, as I had with the lesser monster. As quickly as the flesh parted it flowed back, and only then did I think to fear that this far more potent monster might have damaged Dissever’s enchantments, but the spirit-bound blade held firm.
A woman’s supple hand with too many fingers dug jagged nails into my leg. I flailed wildly, leaving the arm a twitching stump. A nightmare of teeth and gnashing jaws rose from the living ground. I dodged, barely managing to save my face from being torn off. Tendrils wrapped around me as it gathered itself for another attack. I was dead. The thing launched itself at me, jaws gaping.
A flash of steel and its head flew to one side. Eva entered the fray like a storm of slaughter. She was shaking and bleeding everywhere. This was her last great surge of strength, only a temporary reprieve. The sanctors still had a way to go and she was already slowing.
In blind panic I lashed out with my mind. Every bit of power I possessed slammed into the mass of minds – and slid straight through the Gift-bond into what was left of Lynas. Mental shock exploded through the remains of my friend and cascaded though the entire creature. A fit took the Magash Mora, hundreds of limbs shaking and flopping uncontrollably, eyes rolling, mouths drooling. Its bite on my Gift disappeared.
My power twisted deeper into the mass-mind, tearing and cutting, sowing confusion. I could only compare what I found to invading a hive of bees. Deep in the centre of the thing was a searing source of alien magic – the queen of the hive-mind. But it rebuffed my probes.
There were too many people absorbed into the beast for me to contend with for long. Thousands of minds gathered scattered thoughts and desires and threw them against me in instinctive self-preservation. What they lacked in finesse they made up for in numbers. I grimaced, eyes screwed up tight, and drew even deeper on my magic. The Worm of Magic howled for release. I held on for a few more moments as the living cavern shook around me. Run, Martain. Faster!
I screamed inside and out as my already-strained Gift threatened to tear apart. And then blessed relief bloomed in my mind. I opened my eyes to see the sanctors had finally made it to the heart of the beast. Dozens of Gifted minds died as the weight of tons of magic-less meat crushed down on what was left of their human selves. Tentacles and hands slapped blindly at the source of death, but the sanctors skilfully dodged. Their power couldn’t reach every Gifted mind but it was a dire blow.
The grip on my legs slackened and I hauled myself out, clamping down on the flow of magic before the strain tore my Gift apart. But I couldn’t stop the leakage entirely. My Gift was damaged and magic seeped through the cracks, however hard I tried to stop it. Glutted on magic, I grabbed Eva and dragged her towards the inhuman heart of the beast. She could no longer stand but that didn’t stop her sword arm.
My thoughts were too embattled to speak anything of sense so I let Dissever show Eva the way by slicing a doorway into the throbbing wall. Her sword proved far more effective, cleaving a full five and a half feet of meat and bone with each stroke. A hazy light shone through walls of palpitating tissue. It was grotesque butchery, hacking an orifice deeper into the centre of the monster.
A crystal the length of my forearm and thick as my thigh, banded with gold graved with elaborate eldritch runes, was embedded in a socket of bone and cartilage at the very centre of the Magash Mora. It throbbed with sickly yellow light that hurt my eyes and mind. The raw potency of magic seared my skin and Gift. Eva gurgled and forced herself up onto her feet. She hefted her spirit-bound blade and smote the crystal a tremendous blow. Her sword exploded into a thousand pieces. The spirit in the sword screamed in agony, flickering in and out of visibility as its magical life-force was devoured by the crystal. The spirit dissolved with a soft sigh.
Eva stared at the smoking hilt in her hand for a moment, then crashed to the floor. I didn’t have time to help, instead busied myself hacking away at bone and cartilage until the crystal wobbled when I booted it. The heartbeat steadied around me. Flesh pulsed faster and squeezed in to smother us. The tunnel we’d cut was healing up. It was now or never, time to do something stupid – I stowed Dissever away, then grabbed hold of the crystal and pulled.
All my magic drained into it. We were one, and countless howling insane minds tried to consume me. Among the mass of once-human and once-animal thought were three coherent minds directing the beast from someplace else. One was a vast and potent force, something human, or had been once – a god, that Hooded Bastard surely. Fortunately it didn’t hold the reins of the beast and could do little more than dribble its power into the other – a magus. Harailt. The third was something utterly alien and incomprehensible. I didn’t have time or power enough to fight all three mind-to-mind.
I set my feet and pulled, arms and legs shaking with effort. “Come on, you bloody thing. Move!” I growled, heaving until every muscle shook with the effort. The crystal finally broke free in a welter of blood and the screams of thousands pounded my skull more franticly than ever, then… ceased. Lynas’ presence quietened and faded, a soft mental exhalation of all purpose and direction. One by one the sources magic died. I grabbed Eva, and somehow we marshalled enough strength to get out of the collapsing tunnel. The huge crystal felt unnaturally light in my hand, and also strangely right.
The sanctors were already fleeing by the time we emerged from the cavern of flesh. Rivers of blood and fluids burst from the walls as the thing’s weight crushed down. The ground decayed quickly, making our footing slippery and treacherous, but we made it back onto solid ground before whale-sized ribs snapped and the mountain of flesh collapsed in on itself.
The Magash Mora was dead.
Now you can rest in peace, my old friend.
It was a small but comforting mercy.
Chapter 32
I lay gasping for breath, drained of all strength, a gentle breeze cooling my sweat-slick skin. The crystal was hot in my hand, pulsing with life, its alien whispers stroking my mind as it fed on my magic. The traitor magus, his pet god, and that other thing flailed away in the back of my mind, crude but strong, their grip on the Magash Mora’s core slipping with each second it spent in my hands.
The mountainous corpse of the Magash Mora twitched and jerked, jets of blood still spurting but weakening. To our relief it showed no signs of reviving.
Eva lay unmoving, and with my magic leeched away I couldn’t be sure if she was still amongst the living or if her agony had ended with her mission. I was too exhausted to feel more than a numb sense of loss. Numbness was the mind’s way of coping, and that scab would fall off soon enough. Her bravery didn’t merit this kind of fate, but then neither had the countless thousands of other lives devoured today – I swallowed and avoided thinking about that.