It had been so long since I had used a
sword to uphold the honor of my G’Yakki
heritage. It is my curse that G’yaku
Vulcindra interfered before I could complete
my mission and accept my honor back…
—Takara Vera no Hoshihana,
Former Hoshin G’yaku Master
Vera stared at Vulcindra. The dark elder stared back, crimson eyes burning in the gloomy corridor, shadowy hair twitching in the hush of air coming through slits in the corridor walls. Bannor felt little Vera tremble, and by far the most powerful emotion he had seen the detached woman ever express welled up in her. It burned; a horrible sense of despair and naked hatred. He didn’t understand why Vera was suddenly so angry… robbed?
The little G’Yakki jerked her gaze away from Vulcindra, transforming the shaladen back into a staff and spinning it to a butt down position on the floor in front of her. She gripped it with both hands, knuckles going white around the haft.
Vera flinched as a cold hand gripped her shoulder. “You don’t think that elf witch could return your honor do you?”
Vera’s throat ached. She swallowed hard. “I not find out now—will I?” It was a hard voice, one that Bannor never imagined coming out of this otherwise meek lady.
“Fah, a trivial intervention,” Vulcindra crooned. “She won’t be concerned with it.”
Vera gritted her teeth, hands shuddering with a desire for violence. “I am.”
Bannor understood now. Vulcindra interfered on purpose, for no other reason than to spite Vera for helping Kalindinai. The G’Yakki sense of honor was so strict that allowing interference in the completion of a mission voided the contract. He felt sorry for Vera and felt only contempt for Vulcindra’s deliberate intrusion into something so important to the woman.
The little G’Yakki glanced both ways down the hall and pressed her forehead to the staff, and pushed her will into the shaladen, urging the weapon to bring Garadhyr to their location.
Bannor felt a tug as the two shaladens joined their powers briefly across space. An instant later a shimmering opened in the air near them, and the two Kriar Seargas jumped out, followed by Corim, Daena, Kalindinai, Sarai, and Bhaal. Wren came through last, her skin glowing green, blonde hair dark with the All-mother’s power.
Kalindinai nodded to Vera. “Excellently done, Vera,” the Queen lauded. The little woman looked away. Bannor didn’t see Kalindinai look around but what she said made it clear. “What are you doing here?” Kalindinai asked.
“I go where I want, Child,” Vulcindra answered in that heavy cold voice.
“If that wont is to tread on Su’Ko’s honor, I take issue with that,” Gaea’s deep echo resonated in the hall.
Vera looked around to see Gaea frowning at Vulcindra. In Wren’s powerful physique, eyes smoldering with Eternity’s energy, dark hair writhing in the corona of her power, the goddess looked truly daunting.
“Take issue as you like, I—uck!”
Vulcindra’s words were cut in mid-sentence as all of her magical defenses shredded away in a rainbow of color as Gaea stepped forward and shoved a green-skinned hand against her throat.
Gaea pulled the dark elder close. Nose to nose with the powerful savant, her words made the walls tremble. “You are lucky I don’t have the time to deal with you right now. Misstep again and I will sever you from Eternity like a bad piece of meat!” She shoved the woman back a few steps. She turned and stepped over to Vera, brushed aside her hood and ran gentle fingers through her hair. The little G’Yakki looked up at Gaea, both the image of her friend and her goddess. She nodded. Gaea sighed, gave Vera’s shoulder a squeeze and turned toward where the genemar was being kept. “Come children, I feel them mobilizing.”
Vera glanced at Vulcindra who was leaning against the wall gasping for breath. The elder didn’t believe Gaea existed. From her wide crimson eyes and slack jaw, she’d be revising that opinion.
Sarai came to walk next to Vera.
Vera only nodded.
Gaea turned the corner into the next hall with no care for stealth, and the Kriar guards, probably already alerted by the ruckus in the hall were waiting with weapons out.
The all mother looked through the crystalline windows into the space beyond. She raised a hand toward the guards as a hail of energy shrieked out from their weapons and hammered against a wall of threads swirling in front of her.
The auburn-haired ascendant stepped up, her green eyes blazing and thrust both hands forward. The barrier around the Daergon guards lit up, the surface looking much like a soap bubble caught in the wind, the surface flexing inward as Daena threw her power against it.
Daena looked up at the attacks continuing to burst a short ways away.
Gaea glanced up at the conflagration only a few finger lengths from her hand.
The Kriar inside the barrier were yelling on the comm-links. They knew they were in danger. They couldn’t hit Gaea or the people her power defended, and they already knew the strength of the allies of eternity.
Vera relaxed her will and let him guide her, pushing down in the deep strands of the eternity’s primal threads. As he guessed, the shield was an even more powerful version of what had been employed to block the garmtur and Bhaal’s claws. The threads of the shield were packed so tightly he couldn’t reach through to get hold of anything on the inside. He had perverted the external rules of the power that fed the portable shields they had used in Kul’Amaron, giving Bhaal an opening at the soft meat inside the hard nut of their artifice magic.
It didn’t seem possible to bend the threads or reach through them. It was easy enough to find the artifice creating the barrier and locate the redundant strings of energy feeding it. What he didn’t like were the artifices arrayed around it, and the nasty feeling they gave him. Chaotic balls of unstable threads wrapped in fragile wrappers that could release huge amounts of power suddenly; a trap—and a nasty one.
Vulcindra offered in a dry tone.
Gaea looked b
ack to the elder.
He paused.
He focused out through Vera’s senses, the complex interweaving of metal, unnatural composites, and energy. Maybe if he knew more about what he was looking at, but not like this.
Gaea growled, and the floor beneath their feet rumbled.
A gate. Nothing could hurt a gate because it was immaterial; it was a gap in space joining different locations.
Daena exclaimed.
Gaea grunted as whatever was hitting that corridor shield hammered home again, making the metal of the walls and floor glow red. The air grew hot, and the hair of the team members seemed to come alive and flutter in the air as though suspended on strings.
Vulcindra said.
Kalindinai declared. Swinging her shaladen around, she started casting.
The male and female Kriar seargas raised their hands and a glowing red surface appeared between Gaea’s shield and them.
Gaea dropped her hand and focused her attention on the corridor barricade. She ducked her head down and braced. For an instant, it seemed like everyone blurred, after images distorting and flickering as an even stronger hit ruptured the corridor walls, shafts of blue energy slicing through into the floor and ceiling around the area the goddess had reinforced.
The All-mother let out a pained yell and rocked her head back. She gasped for breath.
Bhaal extended her claws with a rasp.
Gaea swung her arm and the glowing blue field dropped.
Even to Vera’s eyes, it appeared as if the blue-haired Lokori vanished, there was only the crack of air in her wake and the screams of opponents getting cleaved by irresistible claws.
Kalindinai finished her spell and the gold diamonds began appearing on the foreheads of everyone in the group.
Corim converted his shaladen into a large shield and stepped over to cover any shots coming from the open corridor. Daena moved with him, putting a hand on his shoulder and another aimed at the corridor opening.
Sarai drifted over and gripped Kalindinai’s shaladen.
Vulcindra came to the middle of the group. Spreading her hands and making a circular gesture. She looked up, blinked her red eyes, then looked down to the floor. She pointed a finger and swung around, a white line appeared in the air, describing a flat square beneath their hovering feet. She made a shoving motion and a silvery sheet of swirling nothingness appeared below and above them.
Gaea made a similar gesture, inscribing a white line in the air along the edge of the overhead gate edge, down through the air, across the bottom gate periphery then up to join the start of the line. She shoved her palm forward and a silvery surface shimmered into being.
The Kriar seargas dropped their shield, the enemy shots rained toward them unabated. The door guards did not continue shooting for more than a few instants because it was easily apparent such attacks were fruitless. Each blast of energy hit the facing gate and exited the gate on the opposite side. To direct fire of any kind, the space where they stood did not exist.
The blasts in the far corridor had stopped—leaving nothing but an unsettling silence. Why didn’t Bhaal come back?
Vera thought to them, leaping off the gate platform to the floor with the shaladen transformed as a shield. She zigzagged up the corridor, dodging through the shots fired by the door guards.
She didn’t get more than half way to the turn in the hall when a single figure strode in from the passage, dragging the Lokori’s limp form by the neck.
Vera slid to a stop still a half dozen steps from the gold skinned creature. It looked like a male Kriar with gray hair, but Bannor knew in a heartbeat this was something else—something far worse. It was not his size or build which were only a little over average, or the shimmering silver-eyes that burned with a cold light. He did not have any armor, and came dressed only in one of the blue-black Daergon uniforms that was now shredded in several places from what must have been hits from Bhaal’s claws. The gold skin underneath the cloth wept trickles of white blood from shallow scratches.
The Daergon door guards behind them stopped firing, no doubt to avoid hitting one of their own.
The creature turned its head in a slow, almost mechanical motion, and its gaze fixed on Vera. A blue-jewel set in a thick black collar around his throat flashed. He jerked and twitched his head letting out a growl. He gritted his teeth and his silver eyes narrowed. He dropped Bhaal to the floor with a thud, and turned to face Vera.
A glossy black spiral tattoo on the left side of the Daergon’s face came into view as he stepped forward. A blue shimmering pulsed from the emblem, at that instant Bannor saw hundreds of Eternity’s primal threads begin to spin and dance around the enemy’s body.
There was a gasp from those still with Gaea. Corim’s deep voice clearly heard even to where they were standing. “Oh frell!” He came blasting through the gates toward them. “Vera run—that’s Garfang!”
&
nbsp; Garfang?
It happened so fast that Bannor didn’t really see it. Keyed up as he and Vera were, his nola instantly snatched at the oncoming hand hardened with eternity’s energies that exploded forward with such speed the air boomed like thunder.
Vera turned inside the hurricane force of the strike, her clothing shredding away under the terrible velocity of the attack. Bannor was certain that it was more instinct than conscious thought, she whipped around with her own incredible speed and crashed home a pulverizing elbow into the attacker’s exposed midsection.
Bannor had no doubt the hit, impelled by shaladen strength and G’Yakki martial training, would have knocked down a castle. There was no possible way at the speed both opponents were moving to control the reaction caused by the impact.
Garfang deflected and went straight into the crystalline screen guarding the genemar chamber. The chaotic weave of threads surrounding the creature’s body tore through the hardened material like paper.
Bannor had only an eyeblink to realize their error as a roar whited out the hallway…
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* * *
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kaboom? Not funny, not funny at all…
—Bannor Nalthane Starfist,
Prince Conjugal of Malan
In the terrible instant between instinct and tragedy, Bannor and Vera had no time to even curse. A single attack followed by a single counter, a crash through a trapped window, and then an instantaneous flare of light. In those fractured hairs of time, neither of them tracked the third body that hit them from behind, or the choking metallic embrace that engulfed them in darkness.
The next heartbeat was a punishing slam that knocked Bannor down into emptiness.
As he floated in the void, a horrible sense went through him.
Oh, no—Sarai!
The terror shrieked through him. Did Vera die? Had his wife-to-be, his mothers, friends and child all been destroyed? They hadn’t finished the shield!
Damn his being in this stupid bloody sword! He needed out. What if someone needed his help?
Must—
Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator Page 49
