slashed on one sleeve, and she was actually bleeding from a razor-slice on her shoulder. Her gorgeous hair was disheveled, spilling around her golden face, a novel sight for Sysquemalyn. The monster laughed like rocks splitting in frost. 'A simple elemental, Polaris?' the monster-mage chided. 'You can't stop that? How about this? The best for last!'
Polaris panted spells, but nothing worked. Her anger was gone, washed away by terror. Never had she fought anyone so fearsome. She might even be killed! And now, cornered on this mountaintop, rattled so badly she couldn't think straight, her repeated shift spell failed too. Somehow, without anyone suspecting, even those idiot mages employed to spot traps, Sysquemalyn had ringed the mountaintop with an anti-shifting sphere such as protected floating enclaves. Polaris despaired, ready to run for the first time in her life, but couldn't! And now She shrieked as something warm and wet slithered down her back. It tingled and burned as it touched her skin, and for a second she feared the black ooze. Then tentacles slimed her neck. Grasping, screaming, she caught the slippery pod in both hands and yanked. The thing clung to her skin. She glimpsed it, a bright golden color, and instantly knew it. A laraken, a swamp parasite that fed on magical energy. And Polaris was charged with magic like a mythallar engine!
Sight of the parasite blotted out as a squirming tentacle covered her eyes. A tentacle tip bored into her ear like a slimy tongue. Another slid down her shorn gown, and oozed between her breasts to fasten on the skin over her heart. The thing would suck her dry of magic and life like a golden leech. She shrieked, voice cracking, 'Get it-t o-off! Get it off!'
'You didn't say please!' crowed Sysquemalyn. The archfiend laughed so hard she almost fell. In three years of suffering hell, she'd imagined this revenge a million times, but reality was far sweeter than any dream. To have Polaris scream and beg for mercy was utterly delicious!
From the corner of a bulging eye she caught movement. The last ship yanked its gangplank to lift off. Its commander was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid, for he'd waited to scoop up everyone still living. Sysquemalyn fixed that.
She clapped stony hands, arched the fingers to a point, and thrust toward the ship. Before her, a dent creased rock. Like an invisible knife, the crease enlarged as it slashed stone like cheese. The phantom plow was nine feet wide when it struck the ship. Wood splintered, copper-riveted boards split and sprung loose. People were either chopped in half or pulped with bone-crushing force. Screams echoed within as the magic cleaver chopped the keel, a curve of oak fourteen inches thick, and broke the back of the ship. As the ship died, so did the magic. The shorn hull fetched on a spur of rock, then, with a grinding roar, slid down the mountainside on a path of blood before tumbling out of sight.
The fiend from hell surveyed her work. In a black pool fragments of soldiers dissolved. The stone mountaintop was furrowed as if by giant carpenter tools, yet pools of ice water remained, and someone had drowned face down. Two burning hulks gave off greasy smoke from charred flesh. Blood, shorn limbs, dropped weapons, and splinters littered the ground. A hole showed where the elemental crysmal had burrowed away.
A frenzied squirming and mewling was the only action left. Lady Polaris lay on her back and wrestled with the laraken. Thriving on her personal dweomer, the parasite had expanded as large as a wolf, and now engulfed Polaris's torso like a giant ball of snot. Tentacles flailed for her arms and legs like some grotesque dance. Voice broken, she whimpered pitifully.
Plucking thorny feet from black ooze, Sysquemalyn loomed over Polaris. The archwizard's beautiful face was scratched, sweaty, scraped. Her hair was dirtied and dull, her eyes wild and bloodshot with fright.
'That's better,' cooed the monster in a rasp like a file. 'No longer high and mighty? Afraid? Suffering? Worried about dying? Oh, believe me, Great White Cow, Greasy White Sow, Gorgeous White Mistake, there are worse things than dying. Much, much worse. Having your skin peeled from your body, for one. Would you like that?'
A claw like an iron nail lovingly touched Polaris's cheek. She recoiled, but the throbbing laraken pinned her tight. With ease, Sysquemalyn drove the nail through Polaris's cheek. The archwizard screamed, but a thumb and finger like pliers snagged her tongue, pierced it, yanked. Polaris had to spit out blood or choke.
'We could do this all day. We might yet,' crooned the fiend. 'But I want you whole, to feel the touch of your pet.' With a snaky hand, she caressed the laraken. It perked up, sensing more mystic energy, but Sysquemalyn flicked aside a questing tentacle. 'Stone skin has advantages, see? I'll tell you what's going to happen. This laraken grows by consuming your dweomer. You'll weaken to a shell, utterly helpless. Then the laraken will move to its next task. You see, they don't mate, but reproduce themselves when they find plentiful magic. You'll serve nicely. The laraken will open a cavity in your body, plant an egg, and wait while it hatches. It will keep you alive while the offspring grows inside you, feeding off you. Slowly. Over months, or years. Oh my, I expect it'll hurt terribly! You'll feel yourself consumed from within! That almost pays us back, dear Lady Polaris, but come with me.'
Grabbing the archwizard's white hair, Sysquemalyn dragged her to the black cavity left by the departed crysmal. She tipped Polaris and the laraken at the edge. Even in near-mindless fright, Polaris felt a bitter wind blow from the hole. The crysmal had bored back to its own plane. This drop would take her far from anything she'd ever known. Better to die-but would she die?
'This little friend will devour you,' Sysquemalyn cooed, 'but you needn't watch. Lie in darkness, deep in this mountain, never to see light again. And while you lie there, and shrivel, eaten alive, dream of revenge. As I did.'
And the monster tipped parasite and prey over the edge.
Dazed, in shock, Polaris barely felt her head strike stone, her face rasp as they slid down the corkscrew hole. Too, the plump laraken absorbed some blows as they tumbled and rolled. Horror overtook Polaris, and she wished to find death quickly.
Yet part of her native intelligence fought back, calculating, though fear almost drowned out reason. For Sysquemalyn had made a mistake.
By her words, the monster assumed the hole simply dropped into the mountain like a mine shaft. But Polaris had felt the alien breeze, knew it traveled to another plane where she'd never survive. If so, there'd be an instant crossing of border to the next plane. And at the junction, the anti-shifting sphere around the mountaintop would end.
And so, despite grinding, pitching, and rolling, Polaris repeated her shifting spell over and over. Blackness wrapped her, the laraken strangled, rocks bruised, she grew dizzy, would soon black out — then the spell took hold.
Sunlight dazzled Lady Polaris. Or twilight, for the sun glared on the western horizon. Feebly she shielded her eyes, and found her hand free.
She was aching, and stiff with blood and slime. Sand clung to her face, clotted in blood at her punctured cheek. Her clothes were shredded, every inch of skin burned or scraped. Thirst throbbed as if she'd swallowed fire. Crawling, rolling over, she fought to locate herself.
Thin yellow grass clumped around, and she parted it to see. Through bloodshot eyes, she recognized a gray lump lit by dusky fire. Widowmaker Mountain belched smoke, spilled yellow-red lava down cracked sides, whirled ash into the air for miles. Sysquemalyn had turned the mountain into a blazing torch to celebrate her victory.
Polaris fell back, sucked dry of magic by battle and the laraken, but her final spell had worked. She'd shifted and left the parasite behind. She was alive, and whole in body.
But her spirit was shattered. The twilit sky seemed too big, the land too wide, the world too large. An overpowering ache possessed her, homesickness, the desire to snuggle in a dark apartment to eat, and drink cool wine, and rest.
Polaris, one of the highest mages the empire boasted, was surprised not to lust for revenge. Sysquemalyn and her hell-spawned powers were too great. Let others, a conclave of great wizards, punish the fiend. Lady Polaris only wanted to get home, take a bath, eat, and rest.
Yes, she'd stay home from now on.
Chapter 17
'Orcs!'
