Roger screamed again: “Ogu Zvoguuz!”
The death-curse was high and sharp, and Edric felt it pass above him in a wave of deadly cold. There was another scream, but not Roger’s. Edric focused on the mouth-bearing tentacle he had formed. He poured his strength into it. Roger yelped and pulled. Edric frantically reassembled himself, willing bones and joints into the limb. They formed, and he tugged, flexing the joints. Now he needed a spine. He concentrated, assembling himself as fast as he dared. Heart and lungs had to stay together, separate from his intestines. Insides had to stay on the inside, that was very important, he thought blurrily. Now, long bones and muscles, skin over them. Edric stood up and blinked, all his eyes pointing the same way again.
Roger was struggling to his feet, ankle bleeding where Edric had bitten him. But Roger was staring past Edric. Following his gaze, Edric saw Callahan’s body, lifeless, eyes staring up in death. Water dripped from his hands, their flames at last put out.
And beyond him, a fiery shape crouched over the last charred wight. A pair of white-hot eyes blazed out, dripping tears of magma.
“I think you may have made a very serious mistake,” Edric said.
She screamed like a wounded forest fire and leaped past Edric in a searing blast. The girl-shape elongated, reaching for Roger and stuck, wrapping him in a fiery embrace. He had time for a strangled scream, his arms flailing through and wrapped in the grasp of his foe.
Then Roger Shrewsbury was no more than a pile of bone and ash. The girl-shaped fire-spirit stood and gave Edric a look from alien, white hot eyes. Tears of glowing lava ran from them.
“Please,” said Edric. “We need your…”
But she was gone, leaving only a shimmer of heat behind.
Edric blinked against the after-glare of her passing. He still had four eyes. The two new ones were just outside his normal ones. His wider field of vision made him stagger. Carefully, he closed the new eyes, and the world came back to normal. His palm itched. Looking down, he saw that a sharp-toothed, boneless mouth nestled there. Try as he would, he couldn’t reshape it as he had in the stress of combat. And yet he had, then. Was he learning to control this curse? Was that a good thing?
Is this where I become a monster?No time for such thoughts. Callahan was gone. Edric was alone. Vulnerable. Gathering up Callahan’s stave and his own, Edric staggered off in search of any allies he might be able to find.
Groans and growls echoed around the arcing halls of the sixth circle. There was a sound like someone hammering a half-dozen quick blows, and then silence.
“Stop right there.” Edric froze at the growled command. A muscular figure slipped from a side door: one of the wolf-boys. His yellow eyes fixed on Edric. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” said Edric. “Tallmadge introduced me.”
The boy bared his teeth. “Someone who looked like you, yeah.” He stepped forward, blocking Edric’s path. “But seems to me that the Dark Lord probably knows how to metamorphose his followers. How do I know it’s really you?”
Edric’s temper flared. “How about you ask Roger Shrewsbury if it’s really me?” For a moment, the smug expression left the young wolf’s face. “I left him and Callahan back at the last staircase along with what’s left of the undead. There’s nothing else left: now do you want my help, or don’t you?”
Slowly, the boy’s arrogant sneer reasserted itself. “Might not need it. They haven’t dared show their faces.”
“Do you really believe that?” asked Edric. “The Dark Lord commands hundreds of wights, but won’t face a half-dozen teenage werewolves? Harmony Farmwell is either right behind me or coming through your friends.”
The boy licked his lips. “If you and fireboy could take Roger, we can handle one smartass bitch.”
A wet cough sounded behind him and the wolf-boy whirled. Horrified, Edric stared at Vyelka, staggering around the arc of the corridor. She clutched at her belly, and a stream of blood spurted through her fingers. The boy ran to her, and she screamed at his touch. The scream dissolved into paroxysms of coughing. Blood ran from her lips, and she spat a smoking fragment of tarnished silver onto the floor. “Run,” she gasped. “Vulk. Run!”
A clear, cruel voice rang out. “Has it finished running? Or has the she-wolf led me to more cubs?”
“Run!” screamed the wolf-girl.
It’s too late to run.Edric thought.
He panicked, and his body dissolved in agony, organs and limbs sprawling into chaos. A single eye floated in the mass, giving him blurred vision.
Harmony leveled a nickel-plated semiautomatic and shot the boy three times through the belly. He screamed and folded, smoke pouring from his flesh.
Harmony put a last round through the back of the girl’s head.
“Nice wards,” she said. “Quite effective against magic. But I keep saying, would the mundanes have conquered the world if we couldn’t learn from them? And they wondered why I took Mundane Studies. This was a special project,” she said, slamming a magazine home. Absently, she regarded Edric. “Hmmm,” she mused. “Messy. Roger must have been a little rushed with this one.”
Suddenly, a shapeless purple light filled the corridor. Harmony lowered her weapon, and bowed. “My lord.”
A thin, high voice spoke up. “Hazadral is having trouble at the West Stair.”
“Trouble?” she asked.
“He and his wights have been petrified. His followers are cowering with their hands clapped over their eyes. I am quite displeased. Show them how displeased I am.”
“Lord, I have cleared your way here. You may assault the next stair.”
“Clever girl,”said the deadly voice. “But their real sorcerers await us there. I wish the children dead first. Nor do I intend to leave any cowards or traitors alive to witness my transcendence. We shall kill them now.”
“No trouble, Lord.” She muttered a spell and shining discs gathered around her head; then walked off, gun at the ready. The purple light winked out.
As soon as she was out of sight, Edric began to reassemble himself. They didn’t see me, he thought. I fooled them both. I survived.
But Gwen and Ian. They would be next unless he could do something.
He would have to race her around the hub, not knowing what was between him and the others.
And he would have to know how to deal with her when he got there.
By the time Edric reached the staircase Nyctera and Karen were supposed to be holding, he had reshaped himself into what he hoped was a passable imitation of a walking corpse. It was surprisingly easy. All he’d had to do was relax his morphic field and watch his body swell, fester, and flow.
As he approached, he saw a group of the Dark Lord’s sorcerers huddling around the exit from the stairwell leading upward. Their wights milled around them, groaning. They all stared at the black surface of Nyctera’s field.
Edric shambled forward at a steady pace. In front of him, a wight shuffled into Nyctera’s field. Paused, halfway in.
And then it disappeared. Sucked in without a trace.
“What in damnation is that?” hissed one of them.
If Edric’s jaw hadn’t already been hanging slack, it would have dropped. Whatever Karen and Nyctera were doing to the undead, it was completely invisible, and therefore absolutely terrifying. It had an entire force of the Dark Lord’s sorcerers and wights completely stalemated.
If Edric hadn’t been so terrified, he’d have laughed. Instead, he focused on shambling, one step at a time, hoping they wouldn’t notice him.
“Hey, what’s that? Asmod, is that one of yours?”
A chill ran through Edric’s blood. “Not one of mine. Rynulf?”
“Naw. Must be a spare from one of Hazadral’s.”
“Hell, I’ll fix it anyway,” said Asmod. A crawling sensation played over Edric’s flesh. “Thanatodiatazei.”
Edric willed himself not to respond. Step. Step.
“Thanatodiatazei, wight! Turn, I say!”
<
br /> He wasn’t going to make it. But if he ran, he’d be dead before he got three steps. Plod. Step.
“Turn, damn you!”
Liquid ran down Edric’s leg. He wondered what had struck him and then realized that he’d simply been frightened enough to pee himself.
Rough laughter sounded behind him. “Asmod, I think you’ve got enough undead to handle, now. Leave it alone; we’ve got a job to do. Leave it!”
Step. Shuffle. Edric managed not to sob with relief. As silently as he could, he mended his body. Rearranged it, remembering Harmony’s gun. He shuddered with the effort of it. If he could beat Harmony around the sixth ring, he might just be able to turn the tables on her. He ran.
He almost made it. Edric had a moment to see a forest of statues fill the corridor ahead of him. Twisted human shapes, committed to marble, their faces a horror of pain and hunger. The Dark Lord’s curse had been more potent than he’d wished, perhaps. Edric drew breath to warn Gwen to close her eyes.
Then Harmony popped up from behind a statue. “I’ve had about enough of this,” she snarled. And she faced directly down the corridor, gun out.
And she did not petrify. Shining disks protected her eyes. Two more of them slid into position just outward of them. Edric realized what they were just as Harmony fired.
Mirrors. She’d made herself binocular periscopes out of pure magical force.
Gwen screamed. Edric stared. Then Harmony was looking at him. She blinked. “I know you,” she said. “You’re Edric. You wanted help with Theriomorphosis.” The voice that had been welcoming now dripped with contempt.
Edric’s heart thudded, and he stiffened. Where was Ian? Had he run away? Did Harmony know he was there?
“Why?” he asked.
Harmony snorted. “You literally could not understand my reasoning. But a Porcinoma student, here. And still alive. That’s got to be a good story. Did you really beat the Living Spell?” Her eyes narrowed. “No. You’d never have needed my help if you could have done that. And you wouldn’t have known to come here.” Her eyes brightened. “You tried the Theriomorph transform. It wasn’t theoretical.”
Edric’s breath accelerated. “Did you do it on purpose? Did you sabotage me?”
Harmony shook her head. “No. Poor boy. Nobody understands. They all think that somehow the problem is my explanation rather than their own stupidity. Still,” she gave him a measuring look. “You’ve survived this long. And survived your own mistake. Obviously, you’re not hopeless. You could join us.” Without pausing, Harmony raised her right hand and fired once, angled downward. A spray of blood erupted two feet from the gun. Edric screamed. Ian’s body slammed into the floor, visible in death, the back of his head blown out.
Harmony looked down at the small corpse. “Really, you thought you could sneak up on me because you were invisible? Henry Mason has an invisibility cloak; I got used to listening for him in the shower, the little perv.”
Harmony turned back to Edric. “But he is a gifted little perv. I’ll talk to him. What do you say, Edric? Join the survivors of Porcinoma? You can be Owltalon House all by yourself. Just you, me, Roger and Henry.”
Edric gaped. She’d just killed Ian. Polite little Ian. And she spoke as though she’d swatted a fly. “Or just you and Henry,” he managed.
Harmony blinked. “What did you say?”
“Roger’s dead.” He held up his left hand and bared its teeth at her, advancing. “I held him down with this. While he burned.”
Harmony’s face went white. She brought up the gun and shot Edric twice at twenty paces. Spikes of pain slammed through his chest, but Edric kept walking. Harmony shot twice more, eyes widening, then shifted her aim and put the last round into Edric’s skull. There was the sharp ping of a ricochet.
Harmony Farmwell dropped the pistol and fell, blood soaking her chest.
She struggled to focus her eyes on Edric. “No shield…” she murmured. She reached for her stave, but Edric took it from her weakening fingers.
Edric leaned over her. “The theriomorph shattered my morphic field,” he told her.
“You killed me…” she gasped.
He tapped his skull. “You killed yourself. Solid bone. My brain and heart are in a dozen other places, now. I don’t think I could put them back if I wanted to.”
Her mouth formed an “o” of realization, and then she died.
“Edric.”
Edric whirled. Ardmoor stood looking at him. His robes were blackened, and his left arm hung limply at his side. “I thought you were dead.”
Edric looked down at the holes through his body. How badly was he hurt? Healing the wounds seemed now a matter of reshaping the blood vessels and muscle. Painful, but he could do it.
Ardmoor stared at Harmony’s body. “By God, son,” he said. “You may have just given us a chance.”
Edric’s mouth worked. “Where have you been, sir?”
“The Dark Lord has more experienced friends.” He was breathing hard. Something fierce flashed in his eyes. “Or at least, he did. But he himself won’t be held much longer. Did anyone else make it out with you?”
“No, sir. Karen and Nyctera…?”
“Waiting for us at the sixth circle stairs. Come with me.”
Ardmoor took Edric’s hand. There was a lurch, and the teleport was over. They were in a length of corridor almost the size of a ballroom. Karen wheeled over to them.
“Where have you been?” Her voice was sharp with fear.
“The wards are coming down.” Nyctera’s voice sounded calm, but tense. Her sphere of darkness was nestled at the far end of the room.
“Are you wearing your ring?” asked Ardmoor.
“Yes.”
Quickly, Ardmoor handed Edric and Karen each a silver ring. A sharp blow rang against the door.
“What’s this?” asked Karen.
“No time. Put it on when the lights go out and you will see.” There was the sound of rending wood. Nyctera’s darkness raced away from the splintering door. “Now!” roared Ardmoor.
The bubble of darkness expanded, washing over them. Edric was utterly blind. He forced the ring onto his finger.
And suddenly, he could see.
He could see himself, from outside his body. He stood there, in bloodstained robes, a stave in each hand. The teeth in his palm bit down on one of the staves. His ears had flared out, batlike, to catch sounds in the dark, and his skin bubbled and oozed. Beside him stood Ardmoor, and to their left sat Karen, one hand on a wheel of her chair and the other holding a staff leveled at the door. But where was Nyctera?
I’m seeing through her eyes.That was what the ring did. It linked them to her strange darksight. It was actually beautiful. He’d assumed that all would be gloomy to her, but there were no shadows. Everything existed in brilliant, unshaded color. He turned his head. What he saw didn’t change, but he found that he could focus on the edges of her vision.
“Remember, Nyctera. Stay back and watch our targets.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door exploded inward in a vortex of clashing magics. Wights stumbled in, but whatever senses they possessed besides their eyes, it was plain that Nyctera’s unnatural darkness still affected them. They stumbled about, bumping into one another.
Edric raised his stave and Callahan’s together. It was bizarre, directing himself as though he were a character from a video game.
“Lysei!” he shouted, and actinic light melted the flesh from the bones of the wights. They collapsed. It was surprisingly easy. Karen held a gravity staff like a rifle. Each of her targets was yanked off its feet and slammed into a wall, leaving a thin paste of blood and crushed bone. And Ardmoor…
Edric had never seen a full-fledged warmage cut loose. Even one-handed, he whirled his staff, and slammed lightning bolts into the horde, convulsing them, shaking them apart. Screams outside told him that Ardmoor’s bolts were arcing into living flesh.
But the ease of their victory was short-lived.
Choking clouds exploded into the room.
“Don’t breathe!” screamed Ardmoor, and conjured up a silvery shield that held the fog back mere inches from Edric’s flesh. He felt a sizzling and an itch on his arm. Backing away, he caught a glimpse of himself through Nyctera’s eyes. His skin was blistering. A hail of dark-red arrows exploded into the room. They pierced Ardmoor’s shield, and two of them struck the wizard. The shield flickered, and then a gust of wind tore at everyone in the room. The remnants of fog were flushed out, but Ardmoor groaned in agony.
“Karen,” he choked. “Cover us.”
Karen looked back at him. Her face went grim, but she nodded. And she unbuckled herself from her wheelchair. Then, one at a time, she unstrapped her feet from their rests. To Edric’s astonishment, she rose onto her toes, and for an instant stood perfectly still in her red shoes.
Another wave of wights flooded through the door. Their eyes glowed, and they moved with a deadly speed. Taken aback, Edric raised his staves.
Karen exploded into the wights, legs moving like steel batons. Every step was a dance, and every kick was devastating. She spun into them, shattering skulls, legs and ribs. The wights did not die, but they were reduced from their deadly agility to a pathetic crawl. Karen’s own face was rapt with the ecstasy of her dance, the shoes carrying her into combat, her staff scattering foes as if they were feathers.
That’s her curse, Edric thought. The wheelchair was her cure. She was both beautiful and terrifying. Edric had never even heard of such a powerful cursed item. Then he was lashing out with beams of fire and ice, no time to think.
A robed shape appeared in the door, clad in deadly violet light. It raised a staff and hissed in no language Edric had ever heard.
And his vision was wiped away. Blinking in the sudden light, Edric once again looked through his own eyes. A high, tearing scream split the air. Nyctera, fully visible, her veil of darkness gone, shuddered and collapsed.
Ardmoor staggered to her side and practically flung her at Edric. “Get her out of here! Down the stair! Go!”
Fantastic Schools: Volume One (Fantastic Schools Anthologies Book 1) Page 22
