Get—
Out!
The fury and despair made pain shriek through his formless existence. The pain did not have a source, he had no limbs, no body to feel pain with—yet it hurt. The agony only made him thrash harder. This empty void had limits. It wasn’t infinite and he wanted to be free of it!
He focused all of his energy, calling on his nola and willing himself free. The pain grew worse. He ignored it. Pain meant nothing, protecting Sarai and the others was the only thing that mattered.
It felt as if he was being ripped in half but he persisted, slamming his self against the walls imprisoning him.
With horrible sense of tearing flesh he exploded into the real world. A smoking ruin burned itself into his vision. In tao form, he floated above the floor of the decimated corridor, hundreds of tons of charred composites and metal lying in piles. The place where Sarai and the others had been was now a crater in debris.
He had no throat to swallow with, or heart to hammer, but his intangible form burned with the sight. He rushed down to the collapsed bodies.
Flesh torn, clothing burned, and skin blackened the team should have been turned to ash, but they had somehow managed to shield themselves from the majority of the explosion’s force.
Sarai lay next to her mother, her beautiful face streaked with blood and burns. It filled him with a great horrid sense of dread.
She was so still.
No. Please. No. He dipped into her with his nola, fear churning in his whole being. Please, let me find a spark.
The body of his love felt tepid. Her heart was nothing but a feeble vibration, her blood going still.
He jerked his senses back. Frell. Frell. Frell! He needed to treat her, but he was only a tao. He couldn’t risk using his nola to heal her in this state. If he did it wrong she would die for sure. He spun around, was anyone else alive? Kalindinai was critically injured and in need of aid. Wren and Daena were badly injured but alive, the steel hard bodies of the first ones able to withstand fearsome punishment. Vulcindra was likewise unconscious, heavily injured but no doubt protected by the powerful magics she surrounded herself with. Corim, Vera, and Bhaal were buried under tons of metal. The two Kriar seargas were also down, a strange crimson glow surrounding their bodies.
The Kriar! They had emergency healing artifices, that silver disk that Marna used on Gaea. Eclipse told him that all warriors carried them! He rushed to the male Kriar searga grasping at the kit on his belt.
He yanked his hand back as the metallic box sizzled in response to his contact with it. Damn! The thing was made of metal! Why did the Kriar make so many things out of frelling metal?
He needed a way to get that case open—something organic. He grabbed the Kriar’s hand and pressed it to the latch, clumsily manipulating the fingers with his will. The latch was some kind of squeeze mechanism. It required too much finesse! Damn it. Damn.
Panic making him burn, he scanned the hall for something—anything that might help him get in that case. His gaze went to the door into the genemar containment area. The shielding had apparently only given the Daergon guards partial protection. Two of the four were definitely dead, ceiling debris had crushed the head of one, and the chest of another. A third was down and also had that red glow around him. The last one was dragging himself along the ground, heavily injured but still functioning.
He would never persuade one of these murdering sycophants to help. Sarai and Kalindinai were fading fast. He needed a body. The Daergon was conscious and mobile.
Resolved, Bannor raced toward the weakened Daergon warrior. For some time, he had known the power of a savant’s tao and its ability to dominate a weaker spirit. Daena had used the superior power of her tao to capture his.
He had no desire to live in the body of one of these ruthless traitors, but Sarai and the others were depending on him and he couldn’t chance the Daergon getting control back.
Bannor plunged his intangible hand into the Kriar’s spirit core and clamped down.
The warrior let out an incoherent scream.
What he was about to do was unforgivable.
The Kriar writhed and thrashed, howling in pain.
This was so wrong. It was this or letting Sarai, Kalindinai, and his unborn child die.
He closed his fingers and yanked the Kriar’s spirit core free.
The gold creature’s motions halted like a puppet with its strings cut. Feeling sick to the root of his being, he shoved himself into the Kriar’s now empty shell.
The sense of coming up from the bottom of an ocean washed over him and an indeterminate time later, he opened his eyes. Ow. His left arm and side were in agony. This Daergon had been badly injured, broken ribs for sure. The arm was a piece of meat.
He found the pouch on his belt and manipulated it open. It took a few tries. This body felt totally different from the others he had been in. He found one of the silver emergency healing disks. Good.
With an effort that felt like being sawed in half he clawed his way up the wall and forced himself to stand. The legs of this body shook, the flesh scored and burned by the blast. Step by staggering step he clambered through the debris and down into the fused crater where Sarai lay. He tore open her blouse, pulled the silver disk out of the container, fumbled the protective backing off the disk and pressed it between her breasts.
Nothing happened.
Argh! Spit. Why didn’t it work? Oh frell. Oh frell. What did Marna do? She pressed a button on something on her arm. He went to the two downed Kriar, they had similar armbands to what Marna had used. The damn things had all kinds of buttons. Which one was it? Think! He racked his mind. What had it been?
He scanned the array of black buttons with symbols on them and a small blinking crystal which displayed lines of Kriar writing. To the left of these were six larger buttons. Marna had touched near the edge of the band. These buttons were colored: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and white. Press them all and hope? No, damn it, who knew what these things did? Which had it been? He gripped his head—which one? Damn, he hurt. He drew his hand back and noticed it was covered in white.
White.
Kriar had white blood.
Human healers used red to indicate healing objects. Red—the color of human blood.
He rummaged through the two searga’s pouches, and pulled another of the patches and applied it to Kalindinai, hoped, and hit the white button.
At first nothing happened, then both patches glowed and let out a rasping sound. Both Sarai and Kalindinai twitched and gasped for breath. Within instants, their open wounds began filming over and their breathing became more noticeable. They both needed a healer badly, but this would keep them alive a while longer.
Now, to get them out of this mess. He went to Wren. She still held the shaladen Garadhyr in her hand. The powerful weapon wasn’t even blackened by the blast.
“G—” He made a squeak of a sound. “Ga—” Ow, the effort of talking hurt. He knew Kriar could talk because Marna, Eclipse, and Quasar did it all the time. Perhaps some trained to do it but others never developed the skill. Talking aloud was inefficient compared to mindspeak, so it only made sense that most never bothered to learn it. However, he needed to speak aloud. “Gar—urrr…” He struggled to make the sound. “Gar—ad—ummm—Garad—urrr—Garadhyr!”
Closing his eyes, he pressed his hand to the shaladen. Fortunately, the blade remembered him and didn’t shock him dead. He pushed his will into the weapon.
There was a muddled response. The warrior was alive—though from the weakness of the thought, barely.
Bannor focused his will and his desire to have Zortach and its wielder at his side. With rasp of eternity’s energies, a horse-sized silvery blob appeared nearby amid the debris. What was that? Only by dipping into his thread sight did it become clear. The blob was the shaladen. Corim had wrapped it around
himself, and probably Vera.
He staggered over and grunted out the name of Zortach, and requested contact with it then pressed his hand against the silvery mass. He concentrated and willed Corim’s weapon back into sword form.
The metal withdrew and collapsed into the elongated blade of Zortach, revealing a battered Corim with his arms still wrapped around Vera. Like Corim, the G’Yakki woman was bruised, crushed and torn, Xersis strapped to her now mangled arm, the limb twisted askew. Both fighters were seriously injured. The shaladen had only partially shielded them. At least they survived.
He separated the two with effort. Corim could only grunt. What consciousness existed was minimal. He slapped the silver emergency patches on both Corim and Vera and activated them.
He touched Xersis and transformed it back to a band on his arm.
He felt a shock of sadness from Gaea. Once the misunderstandings had been cleared up, Bhaal had been a loyal and dedicated supporter. He felt the goddess draw on her resolve and control herself.
He paused hearing the sound of metal sliding. He looked around and saw nothing; probably just the debris settling.
He turned and looked through all the shattered windows. He looked down to Corim, the pained look on his bruised and torn face, remembering the panic in his voice.
A numbness spread through him.
He felt warmth spread through their telepathic link, the all-mother probing his being. He experienced a wave of concern and fear that Gaea capped.
He clenched a fist in frustration, his left arm only able to twitch. He looked around at the wounded, feeling nearly as helpless as he had been in the sword. He drew an aching breath, realizing that there was a pounding in his chest and his lower abdomen.
A few moments passed and new thought voice filled his head; the silky essence of Vatraena Solaris.
He didn’t hesitate.
Bannor felt the Kriar matriarch flood into his mind, a gentle but overwhelming torrent of self and knowledge. In an instant, his vision and the sensations of his body changed. With Marna in him, his view of the surroundings sharpened, and there were words in the Kriar language superimposed over the images in his sight.
She directed him to kneel down and drape his mangled left arm across his knees. The Kriar that he had taken over wore the same arm-band that he had used to operate the emergency healing artifices. With their good right hand, Marna punched rapidly on the band’s buttons, watching the display.
This meant nothing to him.
He felt an icy sensation claw through his body. He swallowed as a gold hand thrust up out of the mangled remnants of the building structure.
No. Oh no. No frelling way.
Marna was obviously focused on getting the information that the Kriar guard had stored away. He felt her attention shift in response to his words.
He rarely witnessed any surprise or fear come from the Kriar matriarch. The sight of that hand and what it symbolized sent a bolt of raw fear slicing through her.
The force of his determination brought Marna back in focus.
A red glow radiated from his skin and a prickly warmth spread through him. In a matter of instants, the open gashes in his arms and legs started filming over.
Through the window, they glanced up and saw more debris sliding away. Garfang would be free in a matter of few breaths.
He took a moment to study his good arm and mirror the patterns in his nola. He focused on the Garadhyr and pressed his nola into it and behind it.
Make this possible.
He checked on Garfang. He had an impulse to simply rush over and try to finish the creature before it was fully mobile, but instinct said its defenses were up. He needed to be as strong as possible before confronting that beast.
He turned his attention back to Garadhyr and willed the shaladen to change. He didn’t convert the infinitely mutable weapon into a band, or armor, but into a replacement for his damaged flesh. The metal flowed up his arm and into the open wounds and into the marrow of shattered bones.
It felt like being stabbed with a thousand knives. Pulsing gold flesh straightened, bubbling and creaking as sinew, nerve, and bone were forced back into the proper configurations and permeated by magical metal.
Teeth gritted, perspiration pouring down his face, hearts thundering in his torso, he shuddered and moaned as the transformation finished. After agonizing mom
ents, the pain finally subsided.
The gold color of the skin on his left arm had been replaced by mirror polished metal. He focused on his left hand. At first nothing happened, and then his fingers twitched, a few more attempts and he was able to open and close his hand and move his arm.
He heard the awe in Marna’s thought.
Seeing Sarai’s torn and partially healed face made anger drill through him. His dipped his thread sense into her body to their unborn child. Vhina’s life remained strong. One thing that child had inherited from him—his stubborn streak. Through all the violence she had hung on to life and grew stronger. He wondered if these experiences before her birth would affect her as a person.
She wouldn’t get to be a person if he didn’t get them out of this situation. Garfang wasn’t the only threat, the Daergons had other agents. They simply considered their team dead, and had not dispatched more warriors to the area.
He kissed Sarai. “I love you,” he whispered. “I’ll protect us somehow.” He kissed Kalindinai on the forehead. He spoke Melakanir’s name and pulled the shaladen from her fingers.
He gripped the weapon in both hands.
Koass answered in his mind.
The sound of that deep voice, confident and calm, steadied him.
With a groan, Garfang pushed himself to his feet. The blue gem in the thick collar around his neck flashed, his cold white eyes narrowed and he made a rumble deep in his throat.
Bannor swallowed.
Xersis flared blue-white, then Garadhyr and Melakanir joined it. Bolts of Eternity’s power stabbed down into the core of his being, forging anew the bindings linking him to the source of life and balance. As the change coursed through him, he hung onto his focus, redirecting some of the enormous surge with his nola, pressing the pure power of life and magic into the bodies around him, reinforcing the sparks of their lives and bodies.
Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator Page 50
