Darkvision

by Bruce R Cordell

The giant’s eyes sparked, and lightning sprouted from every nearby surface, each bolt skewering Prince Monolith. The electricity seared through his mineral nerves, locking him in place. He strained, threatened with his booming voice, and tried to call upon his power to move through stone, but the electricity held him caged.

  The pain crept toward intolerable.

  Ususi spoke the words of a protective spell, and her sense of touch dulled as her skin protectively hardened. Monolith obscured her vision of Pandorym for a moment as he charged, but then her view was clear again. As terrifying as the force assembled before them was, her percipience allowed her to see that Pandorym’s true strength lay beyond the portal it maintained in Deep Imaskar. Destroying the creature would cut the puppet strings of all the servitors it had transferred there.

  She saw Iahn take up a position on top of an unjacketed canister and fire his newfound weapon, one bolt after another. The others also advanced, but she couldn’t take time to watch their progress.

  The wizard spoke a spell of wind, hoping to disperse or at least disturb Pandorym’s cloudlike form, and so disrupt the portal into Deep Imaskar, but the entity held its form.

  If she couldn’t close the portal, could she block it? Ususi spoke the short, sharp syllables that beckoned a solid magical wall. Before she could finish, a hail of serpentine, night-dark rays emerged from the creatures at the room’s hub. Her eyes narrowed with concern as the shafts fell against her hardened skin … then she sighed. Her protective magic was diminished, but it held.

  The wizard finished her utterance. She felt nothingness coalesce toward solidity. Though normally invisible, this time she saw her wall take shape in her star-bright gaze. She thrust it into the portal Pandorym hid at its core. The plane of force slapped into place.

  Pandorym’s vaporous emanation writhed and bucked. The entity didn’t like the obstruction. Immediately, she sensed her blockade come under attack. Pandorym sought to eject it. The wizard gasped and tightened the clamps of her arcane will more securely about her magical construction. Her spellcraft was tested nearly beyond its limit as she struggled to hold the wall in place.

  The portal at Pandorym’s heart hazed, warped, and wavered, but held. She had hit on a workable strategy! If she could maintain the blockade, Pandorym’s portal into Deep Imaskar would fail.

  Then she saw crystal-faced Shaddon Datharathi, back on his feet, running at her with the speed of a zephyr.

  The pathetic man, utterly encased in his own folly, was Pandorym’s perfect avatar. Bleeding cracks fractured his human carapace, and the radiance emanating from his mineral skin was dimmer than before. Prince Monolith’s initial strike had seen to that. Unfortunately, the man was still very much in the fight.

  Shaddon loosed a barrage of pitch-black tendrils from one outspread hand. Ususi sidestepped a handful, but several chewed into her stony skin, nearly exhausting its protection. She dared not relinquish her wall … but Shaddon advanced on her!

  Ususi muttered a prayer of thanks when the elf swordswoman intersected Shaddon’s path. Kiril slashed with her sentient blade with a power equal to Shaddon’s malevolent vitality. Shaddon’s left hand and forearm sailed through the air, leaving a spray of blood and darkness. The Datharathi elder screamed, his voice suddenly quite human.

  Ususi sidled to the left, trying to maintain her line of sight with Pandorym and the gap in its defense. She sensed the intradimensional portal weakening. All she had to do was maintain her plug of force, and Deep Imaskar … what remained of it … would be saved.

  Kiril maintained her two-handed grip on Angul’s hilt as her foe’s severed hand and forearm spun away. The crystal-encased human partially freed himself from Pandorym’s control, enough to emit a pitiful scream. Too bad. Kiril took advantage of the distraction to plunge Angul directly into Shaddon’s chest. Most opponents would have perished immediately upon receiving such a mortal blow.

  Violet light flared anew in Shaddon’s eyes, and scything ribbons of darkness spewed from his mouth. Where the darkness touched the elf’s flesh, they burned like ice and burrowed in.

  Angul shored up her will to ignore the pain. It was only skin deep, as yet. Mere pain couldn’t hinder her righteous power. She pulled the Blade Cerulean free of Shaddon’s chest, then swung it around in a neck-high arc. Shaddon’s inhuman speed saved him from her first slash, and her second. Ribbons of darkness cut into her arm and leg. She felt nothing.

  Pain was a luxury. So was injury. Blood loss, shock, and dismemberment couldn’t prevent her from accomplishing what Angul demanded.

  With her third swing, she decapitated the man. The body fell.

  Shaddon’s head, free of its body, remained aloft, its virulent hate undiminished.

  Warian’s hair stood on end in response to the electrical storm near him. Blue-white bolts burned through the advancing earth lord … over and over. Prince Monolith was caught in a chain of lightning that pinned him for painful moments. Charred, smoking rubble blasted from the earth elemental’s form like shrapnel, and Monolith yelled out, furious and hurt.

  The green-skinned giant was … some sort of titan? A storm giant? Something nearly godlike, Warian’s subconscious gibbered. They couldn’t face something like that!

  Could they?

  Could he? Warian clenched his prosthesis, and time floated down a slower path. Even the lightning encircling Monolith seemed to linger in its smoking trails.

  Warian moved toward the giant, dodging mantis-men and other horrors. Most did not see him, barely noticing his passing, while others tried to track what must have been a crazy blur.

  His dash ended with a magnificent punch to the giant’s shin. He rotated his hips and shoulder into the punch as Zel had once taught him, transferring all the power of his arm into the knuckles of his prosthesis.

  Nothing happened. Warian allowed himself to fall back to normal speed.

  The giant’s electrical cage winked out, and it grunted as its leg collapsed. The creature went down on one knee. Warian jumped away, nearly evading the giant’s grasp. Greenish fingers closed around him, holding him, then squeezed. Even with the power of his prosthetic girding his strength and endurance, Warian gasped in pain.

  Thankfully, the momentary release from the lightning was all Monolith needed.

  The elemental noble crashed into the giant and grasped the bigger humanoid with his huge, earthen hands.

  Warian fell several feet as the giant dropped him. It needed both hands to resist Monolith’s elemental hug.

  The vengeance taker aimed, fired, loaded, and cranked the mechanism. Again. And again.

  The mantis-men were especially vulnerable to Iahn’s deadly aim. As soon as Iahn saw a servitor’s amulet, it was as good as out of the fight. If the way each creature screamed and collapsed was any indication, a servitor severed from Pandorym’s control was dealt with permanently.

  An insectoid broke cover, dashing from behind a canister. It hurled a spear, its aim perfect, and its speed lethal. Iahn slipped left, and the spear whispered its regrets in his right ear as it flew past. He wondered if the creature’s speed was the result of its own skill or was an enhancement of Pandorym’s power. No matter.

  “Got you,” he grunted as the mantis-man’s amulet shattered, speared by an answering bolt from Iahn’s new crossbow.

  His was a winning strategy. “Break their amulets!” he yelled to the others, trying to project his voice above the din. “It’s their connection to Pandorym. Break—”

  A gray-skinned creature appeared from behind a large canister and loped forward, much larger than the mantis-men he’d so far eliminated. A mountain troll, like the one he’d faced days earlier. Iahn took aim … where in the name of the Great Seal was its amulet? He spied a chain, but no crystal.

  He fired a bolt directly into the charging creature’s forehead. The troll’s head rocked back, then forward, a grin on its face. Blood trickled toward its mouth, but the troll roared and accelerated.

  The vengeance taker shot
one of the creature’s eyes before it reached him and snatched at his legs. He skipped left, then right, careful to keep his footing on top of the tall cylinder. The creature was so big, it easily looked over the top the cylinder on which Iahn stood.

  The vengeance taker holstered his crossbow in his thigh sheath. When the creature lunged at him again, he launched himself into the air.

  He jumped up and forward, rotating into a somersault so that as the troll moved below him, the vengeance taker’s legs flew high and his hands were free to grab the troll by its filthy black hair.

  Before the creature realized where its target had gone, Iahn was on its back, securing his position with one arm snaked around the creature’s thick neck. He squeezed.

  The troll’s rubbery flesh was resilient. That didn’t prevent the vengeance taker from crushing its trachea. The troll squeaked and started to stagger. But Iahn knew the troll’s body would repair itself in an instant. He kept squeezing, making certain that the troll couldn’t get a breath. Nor could it roar, scream, beg, or even gasp.

  The vengeance taker rode the troll down as it collapsed first to its knees, then onto its face. Even then, Iahn didn’t relinquish his hold. Instead he yelled, “Ususi! Give me fire!”

  Ususi heard the vengeance taker’s command, but she couldn’t afford to break her concentration. The wizard didn’t turn or even process his words. All her energy was necessary to maintain the blockage she’d thrown down Pandorym’s throat. The shimmering portal through which Deep Imaskar’s plight was visible hazed further. Its wide diameter fluctuated, and the surrounding void black vapor whipped and lashed as if struggling to maintain its shape in a stiff wind.

  Something punctured a small hole in her barrier. Her spell didn’t collapse, but she spied something moving from the opposite side of it into the weapons cache.

  An Imaskari man appeared in the gloom of Pandorym’s form, stepping out of the portal. Had an ally arrived? Ususi didn’t recognize him, but her eyes widened when she saw a bloody, oozing object impaled through the palm of the man’s hand. A Celestial Nadir crystal was punched all the way through. Was Pandorym overwhelming Deep Imaskar by forcibly converting citizens to be its servitors? The wizard nearly lost her concentration in horror.

  The newly arrived Imaskari focused on Ususi. In his hand he clutched a sliver of Celestial Nadir crystal, carved like a small throwing dagger. He raised the sliver high, its needle-sharp end aimed at her head. Did the man mean to launch the crystal at her from across the room? Worry pinched Ususi’s forehead.

  What would happen if she were infected by a Pandorym-controlled crystal?

  The giant was strong—as strong as many of Monolith’s noble brothers and sisters who cavorted yet, uncaring of the fleshy creatures that haunted the earth above the mantle. But Monolith was renowned in the wide Earth Court for his strength and solidity.

  Monolith grappled the giant around the legs in a great hug. He powered the legs together even as the green-skinned storm lord smashed at the back of Monolith’s head. Uncaring, the prince pushed the giant over on his back.

  A pale-skinned servitor of Pandorym, one hand pierced with crystal, the other holding a crystal dagger, appeared in exactly the wrong spot. The falling giant crashed down directly upon the man, smashing him flat just as he tried to hurl his dagger across the chamber.

  The giant’s fall cratered the floor, and Monolith was on his adversary even before the shock of the impact vibrated through the giant’s full length. He had to keep his weight on the giant’s torso.

  The giant was down, but not out. The earth lord fended off a staggering blow and took a few directly in the head and face. Fortunately, his body was more resistant to pummeling than living flesh. And as mighty as the storm giant was, it was still a creature more like a man than an elemental.

  The giant turned on its side, trying to get away from the prince’s grapple—a fatal mistake. Though the giant was stronger than the elemental, Monolith was practiced in centuries of contests with his heavy-limbed kin. As soon as the giant gave the prince his back, the earth lord straddled the giant, grabbed him around the neck, and pulled. The giant’s lower back was pinned under Monolith’s boulderlike weight.

  With a savage jerk, Monolith broke the giant’s back.

  Warian danced away from the titanic figures, barely avoiding the same fate bestowed on Pandorym’s newly summoned stooge. Four or five mantis-men remained near the core, not to mention the great smudge of steaming evil that seeped from the cracked silo—was that Pandorym itself? Kiril Duskmourn had just cut down Shaddon, but the Datharathi’s head still threatened her. And …

  A creature, half bone and half void, stepped out of Pandorym’s shrouded portal. Blood slicked its shadow-tipped claws, and gore crusted its body in horrible textures. The creature was fresh from a slaughter. Warian moved, and the world around him slowed again, though not as dramatically as before. He was tiring.

  The creature whirled, not as befuddled by Warian’s speed as he would have hoped. It clawed at him, each hand like a fistful of swords. Warian ducked right. His left shoulder was scored, but his prosthesis withstood the cuts.

  His crystal hand formed a fist, and he slammed it with all the force he could muster into the creature’s eyeless, bony face.

  The monstrosity exploded under Warian’s phenomenal strike, blasting motes of shadow and splinters of bone in every direction.

  Warian gasped. The radiance of his arm failed. He’d used all his reserve, holding none back. Exhaustion curled into his limbs, and haze narrowed his vision. Nausea took him to his knees. He didn’t have the strength to be sick. He didn’t have the …

  Warian reeled into oblivion.

  The Cerulean Blade tore through several razor-sharp, soul-burrowing strands that spewed from Shaddon’s mouth. Turning those strands into so much dust, Kiril tried to plunge Angul into the decapitated head, but Shaddon darted outside her arc.

  She missed a few strands from Shaddon’s next volley. Angul refused to let her feel the pain.

  Without consequences, anything was possible—any feat, any good work.

  And any atrocity.

  Her sword bristled in her hands at this wayward thought, and some of the pain of Shaddon’s blows touched Kiril. She gritted her teeth and muttered, “Let me fail here, and these abominations survive.”

  She deflected another burst of night-black tendrils. Her hands wavered on Angul’s hilt, but his fire flickered brightly. Shaddon’s dead eyes glinted, uncaring, as he vomited up another torrent of darkness.

  A ribbon cut her cheek, and pain flared.

  “Damn you, Angul, help me now without messing with my head, or lose your last tie to the humanity your forsook!”

  The blade flared—in anger? Doubtful Angul could feel that emotion. Shaddon’s head, sensing weakness, darted forward, its mouth eagerly wide, its crystal flesh oozing inky death. The head moved close to deliver an awful coup de grace that only physical contact could allow.

  Angul didn’t let her down. Shards of Shaddon’s skull and crystal rained across the chamber.

  Now … what was the vengeance taker bellowing for? Fire? The blade flared its blue flame anew. Kiril yelled a battle cry and ran to the Imaskari’s aid. Her blade hadn’t abandoned her. Besides, igniting trolls was something she and Angul could both agree on.

  The murk of Pandorym’s form strained and quivered. The portal at Pandorym’s heart wavered, narrowing further.

  Ususi didn’t falter. She imagined the wall she held blocking the passage to Deep Imaskar as a gag—a gag she continued to cram down the throat of a desperately struggling assassin on whom the tables had suddenly turned.

  With the ragged edges of her percipience, she noted Shaddon was no more. Zel summoned the courage to enter the room and tend to his fallen nephew. The elf swordswoman torched the body of a gray troll. Iahn stood nearby, firing crossbow bolts at the mantis-men if they dared to poke their heads from cover. The earth lord, Prince Monolith, stood over the body of
a fallen giant, near the gap where Pandorym’s influence seeped from its jacketed silo.

  Pandorym’s influence … something nagged her. She turned the full attention of her star-bright eyes, Qari’s gift, on the boiling darkness of Pandorym and saw the façade for what it was.

  What she perceived as Pandorym was only the entity’s evil nimbus—the true mentality of the creature still lay entrapped in the partly disengaged canister, thick with the entangling magic of an ancient era. The nimbus wasn’t Pandorym—it was Pandorym’s herald. But left to fester, it would eventually leverage enough power to pull itself free of its containment. On the other hand, if Pandorym’s canister could be resealed in its silo, the nimbus that leaked from the gap would cease.

  “Prince Monolith, seal the gap!” Ususi yelled, straining to maintain her spell.

  Hearing her, Pandorym redoubled its struggle. Her barrier nearly skittered from her mental grasp. She sensed dozens of powerful presences gathered just on the other side of Pandorym’s portal—Deep Imaskar’s attackers had returned to the edge of the bridge through which they’d arrived. Trolls, mantis-men, shadow efts, and other creatures pressed against the wall. And an illithid! All were trying to cross the gap and defend their master. Ususi was determined they would fail.

  She wouldn’t let them through.

  “The gap?” The earth lord took a tentative step toward the raised circle in the floor, through which Pandorym’s influence streamed. “This?”

  “Yes! Close it! Quick!”

  Ususi stumbled, one hand out, the other on her forehead as her spell came under even more violent attack. “There are dozens, maybe hundreds of servitors on the other side of the portal, in Deep Imaskar—they’re trying to return here. And they will if they break through my containment!”

  The earth elemental shook his head, not understanding what the wizard was saying. But he squatted next to the gap to study it. Iahn ran forward, as did Kiril, though Ususi doubted either’s strength would matter. From wherever it had been hiding, the crystal dragonet darted down to land on the earth elemental’s shoulders. It chimed encouraging tones into Monolith’s ear.