Annihilation

by Athans, Philip

He was surrounded by the inside of the gigantic insect. Muscles and rivers of green semiliquid that served it for blood, the odd line of sheets the thing seemed to be using as lungs, the husks of other too-big insects that it had recently eaten—then another thick layer of armorlike chitin, and he was through it. He had passed through the centipede, his body more a part of the Ethereal than the Prime Material Plane.

  The centipede had no idea what was going on—how could it? Gromph knew the insect wouldn’t have been able to feel him pass through it, but the tasty morsel of drow flesh it thought it was going to bite and swallow was somehow behind it.

  Gromph caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned fast to see Nimor coming at him again. The daggers were gone, and the assassin had a few new cuts, but he was no less deadly for the experience.

  The centipede turned, moving its massive body—one that must have weighed several hundred tons—in a shockingly quick and agile twist. Gromph’s ethereal body was still visible, though he appeared ghostly, oddly translucent. The centipede didn’t seem to see him. Instead, its bulging eyes locked on Nimor.

  Nimor slipped sideways in the air again and, fast as the insect was, the assassin slipped past its jaws in time to save his own life. The centipede would have bitten him cleanly in two.

  Gromph levitated up past the reach of the centipede as his body faded back into its solid form.

  “Dyrr,” Nimor raged, “mind your pet, damn you.”

  Gromph smiled at that, but Dyrr’s response was to begin another incantation. Nimor might have been angry at his undead ally, but they were far from turning on each other. The archmage knew that Dyrr’s spell would be directed at him. Despite having spent a little time in ethereal form, the globe was still around him, so Gromph knew that Dyrr was going to be using powerful magic. The archmage turned in the air to face the lich, but all he could do in the seconds it took for Dyrr to cast the spell was hope the defenses he already had in place would be enough to save his life.

  There was no visible effect when the lich finished his spell, no trail of light or clap of thunder, but Gromph could feel the magic wrap itself around him. The protective globe did nothing to keep the spell out, but other defenses came into play, and Gromph concentrated on those. Still, his body began to stiffen. The archmage could feel the moisture being drawn from his skin. He found it difficult to bend his elbows. It was as if he were being turned to stone.

  He started to drop, and before he could take control of his levitation again, the centipede turned and bit at him. One of the insect’s pincers caught the archmage on the thigh as he dropped past. It might have bitten his leg off, but it had the wrong angle, so instead it ripped his skin open and dragged its serrated edge deep into the muscle until it vibrated against Gromph’s thighbone.

  The archmage ground his teeth against the pain. Even with his muscles stiff and his breath coming in slow, shallow gulps, he used the staff to pull up into the air away from the centipede, which came at him again.

  Blood oozed like thick mud out of the deep gash in his leg, and Gromph found it ironic that it was Dyrr’s spell that seemed to be saving his life. The ring Gromph had been depending on didn’t seem to be functioning.

  Nimor hit him again, and the cold of the magic rapier made Gromph stiffen even more. A breath caught in his throat, and his stomach convulsed until he was wrapped in a ball in the air. He tried to blink, but he had to close his eyes, pause, then slowly open them again.

  He tried to turn you to stone, Nauzhror said, his voice clear in Gromph’s groggy mind. You’ve resisted it thus far, Archmage. Don’t let it in.

  Gromph turned his head slowly to the right—all he managed from an attempt to shake his head. The globe of protective magic that enveloped him disappeared, its energy spent. Gromph saw Dyrr draw himself up, only a few yards away. The lich cast a quick spell, and a flurry of green and red sparks, each as long as an arrow, streaked at him. Gromph managed to move his leg and extend his arm but couldn’t get his jaw to open fast enough to utter the command word. The bolts of Weave energy smashed into him, burning him, shocking him, making him twitch, making his muscles extend then contract. The archmage’s skin rippled, and his joints popped.

  It was painful, and he was bleeding in wide, hot sheets across his thigh, which was open to the bone. He could move again but not fast enough to avoid the centipede.

  The insect reared up, its massive pincers wide open, and closed on him in a lunge. Gromph hung in the air barely within its reach. The pincers came down and came together over his already wounded thigh.

  Gromph felt himself tugged down by the centipede, then something gave and he bobbed back up. Before taking stock of his new wound, he levitated farther up, dimly aware that he was trailing something. He cast a spell even as Nauzhror and Prath shouted into his head. Something was wrong, but he needed to finish the spell before he could do anything else. He had to get rid of the centipede or it would eat him piece by piece while the damned lich stood by safely watching.

  Gromph looked down and saw a spray of blood play across the centipede’s wide, flat head, then fall through it as it faded. The spell took full effect, and the centipede was gone, but the blood still fell in a grisly rain onto the floor of the Bazaar far below.

  Gromph reached down to his leg and felt something hard and jagged. He cut his finger on a sharp edge—the sharp edge of his own thigh bone. His leg was gone. The centipede had bitten it off. Gromph clenched his fists in anger and looked down. He could see his severed leg lying amid a shower of blood that still rained from his open wound.

  Sparkles of light off to one side caught Gromph’s attention. Nimor threw something, and Gromph instinctively blocked his face, fearing a spell. Instead, he saw the hilt of the winged assassin’s enchanted rapier spinning to the ground far below. The trail of sparkling light was what was left of the freezing blade. Gromph’s spell had done more than banish the centipede.

  Nimor, to say the least, was not happy.

  As the assassin launched a string of invectives his way, Gromph flexed his muscles and found that the stiffening effect was gone. He was in pain but not as much as he would have imagined. His ring was already starting to fight against the grievous wounds the archmage had suffered. Gromph knew that he’d survive, but there was still the matter of the leg.

  Nimor swooped over him then disappeared into the darkness. Gromph couldn’t see the lichdrow. He dropped slowly to the floor, coming to rest in a pool of his own blood. When weight started to return to him, he staggered and had to reactivate the staff’s levitating power before he fell in a sprawl into the puddle of cooling gore. He hadn’t thought about trying to stand on one foot. Instead, he let himself hover an inch off the ground, bent, and picked up his own leg.

  It was a curious feeling, holding his leg in his hand, but the archmage brushed it off. The assassin and the lich were obviously regrouping after Gromph’s powerful spell had disjoined the magic all around him—all the magic save his own—but they would be back.

  Gromph felt the bone on his stump again and was pleased that the skin hadn’t yet begun to grow over it. He turned the leg in his hand and—

  A blast of cold air surrounded him, engulfed him, pushed him back and down, grinding him into the stone floor of the Bazaar and dragging him along. Gromph’s head smashed into something that broke, splintered, and fell all around him.

  He shook his head, and bits of giant mushroom stem and glass fell from his white hair. He was half buried in a shattered merchant’s stall, but all Gromph could think about was how relieved he was to still be holding his leg. His body was covered in a thin layer of chilling frost that was already starting to melt in the cool damp air of the Bazaar.

  The lich, Nauzhror said into Gromph’s mind, was outside the disjunction.

  I see that, the archmage answered, letting a wave of frustration follow the thought.

  Gromph looked up and around. Dyrr was casting, while Nimor arrowed fast through the air at the archma
ge. He set another protective globe around himself, briefly worrying that the staff’s power was being too quickly drained. It couldn’t keep protecting him and levitating him forever.

  The lich finished his spell, and Gromph smiled when a bolt of blinding yellow lighting crackled from Dyrr’s hands, arcing through the air and splattering in a shower of sparks against Gromph’s protective globe. Even as the lightning spent itself on his defenses, not even making Gromph’s hair stand on end, the archmage cast another defensive spell on himself. Flames flickered almost invisibly along his body.

  I see, Prath said. It worked on the huecuva, but …

  Nimor was upon him, and Gromph tucked his body into a ball against the assassin’s attack. The half-dragon’s hands were bigger than they were in his drow guise, and each of this fingers ended in a thick, sharp talon of jet-black ivory. Nimor raked Gromph’s shoulder with those formidable claws, but they skipped harmlessly along the sparking surface of the archmage’s fire shield. Bright orange flames blazed up from Gromph’s shoulder, covering the assassin’s face. Nimor roared in pain and beat his wings once so hard that stinging shards of glass from the ruined merchant’s stall whirled around the archmage. Each time one of the little shards of glass hit him, a spark of fire burst out in answer. The spell never burned Gromph, but for a few unnerving seconds he was surrounded in a cascade of roiling flame.

  Nimor disappeared into the shadows in the cavern’s vault.

  The flurry of glass and fire subsided, and Gromph worked his way out of the wreckage of the merchant’s stall. When his stump was clear, blood still oozing from it, the pain reduced by his ring to a dull, annoying throb, Gromph took a second to make sure his foot was pointing in the right direction and stuck his leg back on.

  He held it in place and closed his eyes. His breath came in short, sharp gasps as the dull throb turned into a skin-quivering shiver. The feel of the bone reattaching, each fine blood vessel rejoining its severed end, nerves blazing back to life with a wild flurry of pain, itching, pleasure, then pain again, and his skin drawing itself together made Gromph gasp and shake.

  The lich, Nauzhror warned.

  Only then did Gromph become aware that Dyrr was casting another spell. The response that came to Gromph’s mind was a powerful deterrent, one that would protect him where the staff’s globe could not. Not pausing to consider any greater implications, Gromph drew together the required Weave energy, and the antimagic field was up in time to block a huge explosion of searing heat and blinding fire.

  It also suppressed the regenerative power of the ring.

  No magic was working anywhere near Gromph Baenre, and his leg was only half repaired. He shuddered, clenching his jaw and eyes tightly shut as pain roared up from his leg to wrap his whole body in a spasm of agony.

  “Well played, my young friend,” the lich called down to him, “but that field will come down eventually. Meantime, you’ll be bleeding—and I’ll be waiting.”

  Gromph didn’t bother to consider the lich’s threat. He was in too much pain to think.

  Piet squeezed the handle of his axe, hoping that his sweating palms would still be able to grip it when the fighting started—and the fighting would start soon. He glanced at his friend Ulo and could tell that Ulo was thinking the same thing. Piet could even see Ulo’s fingers worrying at the handles of his two big knives, and he knew that Ulo’s hands were sweating too.

  They had come to the Flooded Forest to do some logging, make a couple of silvers, and mind their own business. Since they’d been there they’d seen ten of their comrades killed. Some had died in the inevitable accidents that one might expect at any logging camp, but most of them fell to the local wildlife. The swamp held all manner of arcane threats, from animated vines that dragged men down to a watery grave to lizardfolk who picked off stragglers at the edges of the clearing seemingly out of spite. Still, the ring of torches and the gods only knew what else—maybe even some sort of swamp etiquette—kept the really dangerous creatures out of their camp. The makeshift tavern where the men spent virtually all of their non-working time (and there wasn’t much of that) seemed like a safe enough place.

  Now a dark elf and some kind of huge demon-thing had smashed through the window, and all bets were off.

  Piet and Ulo faced off against the dark elf. Of the two of them, he appeared merely lethal, where the demon-thing might have really done terrible things to someone. Piet’s knees were shaking. So were his hands, and his jaw felt tense.

  On the other side of the common room four of the other loggers, Ansen, Kinsky, Lint, and Arkam, were facing down the huge demon-thing. They were all armed—no one with half a brain went unarmed in the Flooded Forest—but their weapons looked puny against the massive creature. Ansen had grabbed a torch from a wall sconce, Kinsky had his axe with him, Lint was hoping to keep the monster at bay with the spear he used to fish in the swamp, and Arkam waved a broken axe handle in front of him. They all looked suitably terrified.

  The dark elf had a huge sword—Piet had never seen a sword so big—but he was holding it in a loose grip, dangling to his right, the tip scraping the rough wood floor. The drow was wet and bleeding from his face, from his leg, and maybe other places as well. Piet had never seen a dark elf before. He’d actually always thought they were a myth, so it was impossible for him to get a read on the creature, but he seemed to be weak, exhausted, maybe even dying.

  “Who are you?” Piet asked, not liking at all the terrified quaver he heard in his voice. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  Difficult as it was for Piet to tell what the drow was thinking, the logger was convinced that the outsider understood him. The look he gave Piet in answer seemed haughty at first then wasn’t so much haughty as … Piet didn’t know what to call it. He thought he remembered a word: disdainful, but he wasn’t sure he remembered what that meant.

  The drow didn’t answer. Instead, he started to bring his sword up, and Piet, afraid the drow was going to cut him, chopped down with his axe. Piet had spent his entire adult life—since he was eleven-and-a-half—chopping wood. He knew how to swing an axe, and he did it with speed, power, and precision. Still, he didn’t come within an armslength of the dark elf.

  Piet barely saw him move. He was a couple of feet to the right all of a sudden, standing between Piet and Ulo. The drow had his sword up, but it looked as if he was defending himself, not attacking. Ulo, surprised that the dark elf was suddenly standing so much closer to him, waved his knives in front of himself madly—cutting no one—and scrambled backward until he hit the wall.

  “Stab him, Ulo!” Piet shouted, but it didn’t look as if Ulo even heard him.

  The dark elf came at Piet with his sword low, and Piet dodged out of the way instinctively. A rush of adrenaline coursed through him. He’d never moved so fast in his life.

  He changed his grip on his axe and swung it sideways at the dark elf, who leaped back to let the axe head pass a few inches in front of his face. Piet reversed his grip at the end of the swing, twisted the axe around and swung again. He knew the dark elf would lean back again and was ready for it. He actually aimed at a point several inches behind the drow’s head. The only thing he could see was the drow, and when the axe came at the dark elf’s head, Piet closed his eyes, expecting a splash of blood.

  The axe stopped, and hot, thick liquid splashed over Piet’s face. He closed his eyes tighter to keep the blood out of his eyes and tried to wrench the axe out of the dark elf’s skull, but it was stuck. The falling body dragged Piet down with in and he slowly sank to his knees. Piet’s forehead bumped the wall, which surprised him. He didn’t think he was that far forward.

  He wiped his eyes with one sleeve as he said, “I got him, Ulo! I split the black devil’s sku—”

  Piet stopped cold when he opened his eyes and saw exactly whose skull he’d split. Ulo’s dead eyes stared back at him, glassy and vacant. Piet’s axe head was jammed into the side of his friend’s head, and blood was still oozing out
from around it.

  Piet’s body shook, wracked by a spasm, but he kept himself from vomiting by pressing a hand tightly to his mouth, letting go of the axe that was still stuck in his friend’s head, and rolling off onto the floor.

  He looked up and saw the dark elf looking down at him, making no move to kill him, though the drow would have had an easy time of it. Piet met the black creature’s gaze and got the sinking feeling that the drow was not only pleased with himself for getting Piet to kill Ulo but that he was thinking about trying something like it again.

  “Men!” Piet barked, his voice cracking.

  He wanted to warn them, but his throat was tight, and he had trouble forcing the words out. Looking up at the other four loggers, Piet saw the huge, gray-furred demon rip Arkam’s throat out with one hand, as if he were digging a handful of shortening out of a pot. Blood poured out everywhere, and Arkam was dead before his gore-soaked body hit the floor.

  Piet knew the second the two bizarre creatures burst in through the window that things were going to end badly for the logging crew, but there was something about the way matters were unfolding—the casual manner in which the gray demon ripped Arkam’s throat out and the conniving, almost mean-spirited way the dark elf made Piet kill his own friend—that made it seem too personal, as if they’d come there for that reason.

  Piet’s palms weren’t sweating anymore. His jaw was still tight, but for a different reason. His blood pounded in his ears. The dark elf was watching the demon toy with Ansen, Kinsky, and Lint. He didn’t even think Piet was dangerous enough to keep an eye on.

  That, Piet thought, is your second and last mistake, drow.

  Piet coughed back the bile that rose in his throat when he put his heavy-booted foot on his friend Ulo’s split-open head and pushed while pulling on the axe handle. The axe head came loose with a nauseating sucking sound, but Piet managed to ignore it.

  Axe in hand, Piet stood then lunged at the dark elf. The slippery drow dodged him again, quickly and easily enough that Piet thought he must have eyes on the back of his head. Undaunted, the logger swung again but sliced through nothing but air. The drow danced back, not even parrying with his huge greatsword, just stepping back, leaning to either side or backward as Piet swung again and again.