In truth, Elora thought much the same.
They both forgot the maxim that Drumheller had repeated so often: immune she might be to spells, but she was still a living woman, existing in corporeal form in a physical world. The pure spell might do no harm, but the collateral damage—its tangible consequences—could be fatal.
A knot of sorcerers, from at least three separate disciplines, all of them magi in their own right, at the peak of both craft and art, conjured a melding spell, sacrificing their own individuality in favor of a gestalt that would increase the raw power and lethality of their abilities tenfold. They tore a ragged gash in space before them and a frightful howling was heard; a hurricane wind suddenly sprang into being within the atrium, as though this other place they’d contacted was utterly empty of everything, and all the sum and substance of this reality was flooding through the hole to fill it. At the same time, as the poor souls closest to the opening were plucked off their feet and hurled into what was hopefully oblivion and even the Caliban’s massive feet began to slip ever so slightly across the polished floor, the edges of the melded wizards began to blur and crumble themselves. This last-ditch attempt to destroy their foes was consuming them as well. The race was to see who would perish first.
Amidst the chaos, with lesser but still fearful spells flying thick and fast, only Elora noticed a wall bow ever so slightly. Only Elora heard a jangling tone that was the closest the Crystal Palace could come to an outright shriek. She beheld how the patterns of force and energy were being twisted by the gestalt and, far more alarming, that once the life energies of the melded sorcerers were bound into the portal they had opened, the spell would become self-perpetuating. This gateway could never be closed. To save the world, they had set in motion the means of its total destruction.
She cried to them to stop but even if they heard her over the unholy din she knew they were beyond hearing, or caring.
She lunged for them, although she had no idea what to do to shut them down. Too late, she realized someone else had been pacing her thoughts, step for step. Only when the Deceiver acted it was with characteristic ruthlessness. Elora was searching for an answer that might somehow save the men involved. The Deceiver preferred them dead.
They were so focused on their purpose, they had neither wit nor assets to spare in their own defense. The Deceiver merely gathered up the cell of acid air and puffed it straight for them.
The cloud and Elora arrived together.
For the three sorcerers in the meld, it was like touching a match to a grand illustration outlined in Chengwei thunderpowder. There was a cascading rush of sound and light and color that filled the atrium with a brilliant succession of rainbows, a series of escalating explosions that taken as individual events were no more than a sequence of pop sounds. Yet as an aggregate, the force of their annihilation flattened every figure remaining in the room, save for the Caliban and the Deceiver, who too late saw that her stratagem had claimed one unintended victim.
At the moment of contact, Elora lost all capacity for thought and thankfully for sensation. This experience was too far beyond her mind’s capacity to comprehend. As if she were someone else, watching from a safe remove, she saw her gown shrivel, its threads instantly burned to cinders by the caustic atmosphere. Her skin didn’t fare much better and for the first time, she saw that argent perfection—which had withstood every insult since her initial transformation without a flaw or scar—utterly ruined. Raw welts appeared along the length of her body as animal reflex wound her into a tight little ball. The flesh was being seared like meat on a roasting spit, right down to the bone.
She wanted to turn away. She wanted more than anything to sever the link binding this spirit form of hers to its physical host. The alternative, returning to her body, was unthinkable. She didn’t know if she possessed the power to heal such frightful wounds, she feared suddenly more than anything that she did—because to do so would mean having to experience the agony that the paralyzed pain receptors in her nerve endings had thus far spared her. Better to embrace death.
Sacred childe, she heard from a familiar voice, there is an alternative.
A new figure revealed itself to her bruised perceptions.
It stood alone yet was the embodiment of its entire race. Daikini in basic form, though no Daikini was ever so tall nor so lean, and precious few of the High Elves of Greater Faery, either. Here was something that relished the delights of the flesh and saw no purpose in denying any of them. There was an overlying air of softness and corruption about him, like looking at something dead before its time, but Elora recognized it as a deception. It moved too easily, its strength well masked but unmistakable, its fundamental nature that of a predator too long absent from the hunt and eager to pick up where it had left off. It was a presentation in chiaroscuro, stark contrasts in black and white: alabaster skin, ebon hair, jet nails sharpened to dagger points, lips and eyes defined by dramatic sweeps of paint. In presentation, it was a disconcerting mix of genders. Both form and ensemble created an androgynous combination that proved irresistibly enticing to either sex of any living race, from either side of the Veil.
Its clothes created the sense that it was cloaked, gathering portions of darkest night, allowing only the barest, tantalizing glimpses of the form within. Watching, Elora felt a disturbing mix of sensations, the enticement of gazing upon something utterly forbidden vying with the certain knowledge that it was wrong. However, those many, intricate folds couldn’t disguise the flash of sigils and mail, the shimmer of personal defensive wards, the outline of hidden weapons. It was extraordinarily well protected against attacks both temporal and magical. Despite its languid manner, it looked eager to join the battle, sad that such was still impossible.
Still, if it could raise a champion to stand in its place.
“What do you want from me?” Elora demanded of the Malevoiy, hating the tingle the sight of this ancient creature inspired in her. It had presented himself in the form and manner that would prove most attractive to Elora, reaching out on levels she didn’t even know existed within her. The terror she felt at her own response was as unbearable as it was delicious.
Thy destiny was its infuriatingly amused reply.
Two howls came to her dimly, as if from the greatest imaginable distance. Elora turned her phantom head, saw twin masks of shock and horror stamped across the features of both Thorn and the Deceiver, as if they were twisted reflections in some macabre funhouse mirror. Wholly different beings manifesting an identical emotion, torn without warning or mercy from each of their souls. They reacted as one, casting forth waves of energy that wiped the contagion clean from around where Elora’s body lay. Powerful though the Chengwei sorcerers might have been, this casual display of strength put them in their place—and at the same time cruelly humbled both practitioners, for that was the extent of what they could offer in Elora’s aid. She was immune to magic, and for all their good intentions—in this one, unique moment where circumstance demanded they work in concert—they could do nothing to reverse the terrible effects of the acid mist. Those wounds were purely physical; Elora would have to manifest any healing herself.
Their attention was focused on Elora’s body, and the young woman realized neither was aware of the Malevoiy’s presence.
Thorn reached her body first but could not bring himself to touch it, on his knees before the utter ruin of her flesh, his own hands trembled with a helplessness he’d never felt before, not even when he beheld the scarred landscape where once had stood the fortress of Tir Asleen. His eyes were wide with shock and the kind of madness that comes to those who’ve tempted the Abyss for too much of their lives. The only difference between his gaze and the Deceiver’s was that she had long ago embraced this madness, clutching it to her more passionately and completely than any lover. It was what had allowed her to survive all those bleak and bloody years, and to do the things she felt were required of her to save her wor
ld.
The melded wizards mistook this instant of stillness as the perfect opportunity for a final attack, but they’d reckoned without the Caliban. It struck with hands so massive they could enclose a man’s entire head, backed by the strength to crush bone like eggshells. Which it did, with ruthless, implacable efficiency and afterward breathed in the heady essence of the slain men’s souls, as if it were the most intoxicating of fragrances, adding them to its trophy collection of chimes.
“No more,” moaned the phantom Elora.
The power to end this conflict can be thine, Sacred Princess.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, reacting to the Malevoiy’s mild words as though they were a burning lash across skin already tormented beyond endurance. She knew it spoke of far more than just this battle. It offered her victory.
Wouldst dissemble, at this juncture? Thou know’st full well what is required of thee and what thou wouldst gain in return.
“They don’t have to fight, Thorn and the Deceiver.”
But they shall. They know no other path.
Anakerie leaped forward in a mad dash, rolling under the Caliban’s sweeping left arm to bring herself right up against Thorn. She grabbed him by the arms and tried to pull him clear, only to learn the utter futility of trying to move a Nelwyn who wasn’t in the mood. Easier by far to shift a mountain bare-handed. Sadly, that left both of them at the mercy of the Caliban, who of course had none.
“Stop this,” Elora commanded of the Malevoiy. “Save them!”
The creature opposite her merely laughed, that dry, malevolent chuckle that carried with it the sense of bones cracking between predatory teeth.
To claim thy birthright, Sacred Princess, it said at last, thou must accept all the Great Realms within the circle of thy dominion. Shall We who are the greatest Realm of the Circle of the Flesh, who stand sentinel at the gateway to the Circle of the Spirit, be denied Our true and rightful place because of what once was?
And do it quickly, Elora told herself, before these lives you hold dear pay the forfeit. It wasn’t just Anakerie and Thorn who were at risk. She sensed without looking—for some instinct of primal self-preservation mandated she not take her awareness away from the Malevoiy—that Khory was moving forward to confront the Caliban, sword at the ready, futile though the warrior knew her gesture would be.
Elora’s thought of Khory transmitted itself to the Malevoiy, for the creature drew itself up and away, mouth curling in a sneering rictus that was the embodiment of hatred and disgust.
It didn’t need to state the terms of this alliance, they were utterly clear as could be in the inhuman gaze that met Elora’s, and the young woman had to marvel at how it could so closely mimic the Daikini form and yet retain an essence that was wholly alien to it, and inimical.
The world is in thy charge, Elora Danan. And the future.
It said no more. It didn’t have to.
She had no choice. There’d been none from the start. As the Malevoiy said, there were twelve Great Realms. They were one of them. They had to be embraced. By her.
Whatever the cost.
It smiled, as radiant an expression as Elora Danan could remember seeing, and she felt a thrill of horror at how naturally that word could be applied to a creature so quintessentially baneful.
Then she smiled back, matching its welcome with one of her own, and felt a warm explosion of excitement deep within her belly. Something new and fearsome reared up, swelling like a riptide to fill the casement of her spirit.
On the floor of the atrium, her left hand spasmed closed. A small movement, that should have gone unnoticed beneath the looming bulk of the Caliban as it closed on Thorn and Anakerie and Khory. Except that as her fingertips scraped across the gleaming crystal on which Elora lay, her nails suddenly elongated into claws and they made an awful, keening noise as they gouged deep runnels in a surface that had thus far remained pristine and unmarred, even by the acid.
Those wizards who still survived, who called the Crystal Palace home, shrieked in concert with that sound, adding to the general bedlam. They reacted as if they’d been stabbed by ice picks and the more powerful among them clutched at themselves as great wounds opened in their bodies and blood and life fled from them as from their Vicar-General.
With a lurch, Elora Danan shoved herself to all fours, revealing that her front had suffered from the acid as badly as what could already be seen. Even Anakerie, the most hardened of campaigners, choked back a wail at the sight. Thorn had no words to offer, not comfort, not rage, not grief; all that came from him were tears, representing a sorrow that had no truer expression.
She answered both with a grin, revealing fangs that stood out with supernal purity against her charred skin.
The Deceiver released the greatest cry of fury any of them had ever heard, as if she’d somehow tapped into all the rage of all the beings who had ever walked this world since time itself began and given it full voice. That outburst brought her to the attention of the Caliban, who had ignored her before now. It seemed somehow to recognize her as prey that had once escaped, and appreciated the opportunity to finally claim her.
The blow it struck at her never landed.
As she had in Sandeni, Khory straddled Elora’s hunched and blistered form, and by doing so placed herself between the Caliban and the Deceiver. Her Chengwei blade burned the air with the speed and force of her attack. She struck true, with all her extraordinary skill and strength—and the blade snapped cleanly in two.
Still, the impact was sufficient to stagger the Caliban. That was all the opening Khory needed as she reached down and scooped Elora into her arms. Her intent was to pick up where they’d all left off a few minutes before, and find a way out of this charnel pit.
She never got the chance.
Elora used a move that Khory herself had taught, to tangle the taller woman’s legs and shift the balance of their weight in Elora’s favor. Revealing a power that easily eclipsed both Khory’s and Elora’s herself, she pitched the warrior over a hip, allowing the momentum of that throw to carry them both across the sleek crystal floor away from the others until they dropped beyond sight over the edge of the dais.
Darkness flared, a shadow so intense it hurt the eyes to behold it, so that even the Deceiver was forced to squint. It refracted crazily from every facet of the wall and floor and ceiling, from pillars and decorative arches, from each piece of crystal that had been scored or chipped or broken during the battle, as though lines of blackest paint, composed of such fierce energy that their merest touch raised burns, were being drawn in the very air.
In the heart of this maelstrom, Elora and Khory reared up together into view. Elora’s hand speared upward; it was impossible to tell whether or not it held a weapon until Khory’s reaction made the answer plain. The warrior spasmed forward, her face twisting into a fearful rictus of pain, and she filled the room with such a scream that all the others who still survived paused a moment, shocked to stillness even in this slaughterhouse by such primal agony.
Elora scooped up her companion and held her aloft, the young woman illuminated by such sable glory that her very silhouette appeared to melt. Savaged flesh desiccated to ash and flaked off her body, as though the darkness itself carried with it the force of a wind, revealing underneath the sleek, seamless perfection of obsidian.
She held that pose for a moment that seemed to last forever, and then cast Khory Bannefin to her feet, into the heart of the darkness that had claimed her.
As before, Elora Danan best resembled a sculptor’s casting brought to life—only the nature of the material had undergone a fundamental change. Where before she was silver, of a glistening argent purity, now she was a being of absolute ebon darkness. Nothing about her was comforting or even remotely kind, her every aspect bespoke the power and nature of a huntress.
She offered the room a lazy, inviting smile and took th
e measure of every being before her, lingering longest on the Deceiver, then the Caliban, then Drumheller.
“Elora Danan,” Thorn managed to say, amazed that he still retained the power of speech, “is that you?”
There was pity in her eyes but not from gentleness. It was the look seen by prey at the outcry of a last, futile plea for mercy.
“I am Elora Danan,” she said, sucking hope from the hearts before her as she might soon the marrow from their shattered bones. “I am Malevoiy.”
For a timeless moment, nobody moved. Nobody dared. Thorn’s hand was in his pocket; at his fingertips, a set of acorns that he always managed to carry with him. They were his ultimate defense, charged with ancient enchantments so virulent they could transform any living being into stone. They’d saved his life on more than one occasion but in his most miserable fantasy, he never dreamed that the day would dawn when he’d even consider using them against Elora Danan. Yet the moment she sprang for him, he knew he would hurl them without hesitation and pray for their success.
Elora ran her tongue over her teeth, savoring the sensation of her fangs, adding to an expression that made everyone present wonder how eagerly she anticipated the crunch of flesh and bone between her jaws and the taste of hot, fresh blood. Her fingers ended in claws and a line of equally wicked spurs flared up the leading edge of her forearm to the elbow, creating the indelible image of a creature who was all spikes and edges, who could not be touched without the risk of harm. The shape of her body, the way she moved and carried herself, bespoke a grace that transcended description, yet the purposes to which that grace and movement were dedicated could not be more deadly. Nothing that walked the world, on either side of the Veil—nothing ever created, or even conceived of, in those myriad Realms—came close to matching the elegant perfection of her form. She was beauty, in the fullest sense of the word. At the same time, though, nothing in reality, nothing in imagination, appeared more terrible.
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