from Osten’s arm, anchor tendrils tearing free from his flesh with tiny sprays of blood. Then, using its grip in her neck for leverage, the whip flexed, bringing its mouth end swinging toward Lirra’s left arm. It happened so swiftly that she had no time to react, and then the beaked mouth bit into the inner flesh of her forearm and its anchor tendrils burrowed into her skin, seeking purchase in the muscle beneath.
Lirra screamed.
Elidyr’s terror was eclipsed only by his confusion. This couldn’t be happening, it just couldn’t!
He was dimly aware of the separate battles taking place around him-the volunteers going mad, the guards dying, Vaddon and the others engaging the symbiont-controlled hosts-but his attention remained fixed on the portal that had opened in the air above the Overmantle. The portal was supposed to be there, of course, its chaos energy fueling the dragonshards in the Overmantle, but it was supposed to be so small as to be invisible to the naked eye. This portal was hundreds, no,
Inhuman hands gripped the insides of the portal and began to widen it. Which was yet another impossibility. One couldn’t physically touch a hole in space, let alone make it larger through sheer physical effort. But that’s exactly what appeared to be happening.
Xoriat is on the other side, he reminded himself. The rules of existence are different there. If such a word as
But the artificer forgot all about whether or not a dimensional portal could be grasped by hands when he realized exactly who-and what-those hands belonged to: a daelkyr lord.
Nausea ripped through his gut and pain like a white-hot dagger seared his brain, as the presence of the daelkyr lord assaulted his sanity. He had to retain hold of his faculties at least long enough to shut down the portal and prevent the daelkyr from coming through, even if doing so cost him his sanity in the end.
He turned to Sinnoch. The dolgaunt was looking up at the daelkyr’s carapaced hands with wild joy. Elidyr opened his mouth, intending to call for the dolgaunt’s help, but the sounds that emerged from his lips in no way resembled human speech, and all they did was make Sinnoch laugh. Realizing he was on his own, Elidyr focused his attention back on the Overmantle and did his best to hold off the burgeoning insanity roiling within his mind.
In the end, he didn’t know whether he managed to figure out the right combination or if he stumbled upon it by accident, but when he finished touching the last dragonshard, the portal to Xoriat stopped growing and slowly began to close. The daelkyr fought to hold it open, but as powerful as the lord was, he couldn’t keep the rift open without the Overmantle’s help. As if the daelkyr realized this, he withdrew his hands, and Elidyr felt a moment of elation that he’d succeeded in preventing the foul creature from emerging into their world.
But even as the portal rapidly closed, the daelkyr shoved his arm through, hand stretching toward Elidyr until the claw tip of the index finger gently touched the artificer’s forehead. And then, just as swiftly, the hand withdrew and the portal snapped shut and vanished.
Elidyr stood frozen for a long moment, staring up at the spot where only an instant before a doorway had been open upon the Realm of Madness.
“Of course,” he whispered. “It’s all so clear now.”
And he began to laugh.
Vaddon was furious with himself for giving into his brother yet again. Though he hadn’t admitted it to the others, he’d been just as upset that Bergerron had ordered the Outguard to cease operations and vacate the lodge. Not that he cared about proving the worth of using symbionts in warfare, but he hated leaving a job undone. So when Elidyr had told him they might have one last chance to salvage a victory, Vaddon had decided to gamble on his brother a final time. Unfortunately, it was rapidly becoming clear that this was one gamble Vaddon had lost.
The guards were dead, and the four others who’d volunteered to be subjects of the experiment were either wounded or, in one case, dead, and the symbionts that had possessed them were running loose in the chamber. Worse yet, there was some kind of distortion in the air above the Overmantle, and while Vaddon was no expert in magic, he’d witnessed enough to recognize that whatever was happening, it wasn’t good.
Vaddon turned toward Lirra and was about to inform her of his orders, when he saw the tentacle whip wrap around his daughter’s throat, then detach itself from Osten and latch on to her. Lirra screamed as the symbiont fused with her flesh, and Vaddon thought he hadn’t heard a sound so awful since the dying scream of his wife when she fell at Jaythen’s Pass.
Osten slumped to the floor, unconscious. Lirra still held her sword in her right hand, and she raised the blade, clearly intending to bring it slashing down upon the tentacle whip, but the instant she began to swing the sword, the muscles in her arm locked, freezing the blade in place. The aberration was exerting control over Lirra’s body in order to protect itself, and though his daughter fought valiantly, Vaddon knew with every passing second the tentacle whip was solidifying its hold on her. If there was any chance to get the damned thing off her, it was now.
Vaddon moved forward, sword gripped tight, his soldier’s mind-honed from years of training and decades of battle experience-rapidly calculating the best way to attack. There were really only two choices: cut the symbiont off Lirra or kill it while it remained attached to her. Neither was without risk for Lirra. Given that she was now physically and mentally joined with the tentacle whip, she would feel the aberration’s pain as if it was her own, and she’d suffer the same shock to her system as it did. But Vaddon knew his daughter’s strength. She could withstand whatever he did to her-assuming he could find the strength to do what needed to be done.
The contest of wills between Lirra and the tentacle whip continued, sweat running down the sides of Lirra’s face as she fought to regain control of her sword arm, the tentacle whip lazily, almost mockingly, undulating in the air as it continued to prevent her. Vaddon knew he had no chance of making a stealthy approach-the enchanted armor prevented him from moving silently-but he hoped that the contest of wills Lirra and the symbiont were locked into would occupy them both long enough to give him the opportunity of getting in close.
Vaddon continued toward Lirra, armored feet clanking on the chamber’s stone floor. But when he was within three yards of her, the tentacle whip’s barbed tip suddenly swung in Vaddon’s direction, almost as if the aberration could sense the soldier, and it lashed out at him. Vaddon instinctively dodged to the right, and if he hadn’t been wearing armor, he might’ve been able to move swiftly enough to avoid the tentacle whip’s strike. As it was, the symbiont’s barbed tip grazed his left cheek, and Vaddon hissed in pain. The wound itself was minor, but that wasn’t what concerned Vaddon. The big question was how much venom did the barb manage to inject into his body during its glancing blow? The general received his answer a split second later when a fiery sensation began spreading through his cheek, along his jawline, and down into his neck. A wave of weakness passed through him, and his sword slipped from his gauntleted hand as he fell to one knee. He felt the venom’s fiery touch move swiftly down into his left arm, and vertigo struck him, nearly causing him to collapse. But Vaddon hadn’t survived hundreds of battles by giving up easily, and he fought to keep his head clear. His daughter still needed him, and he’d be damned to every hell that had ever existed before he failed her.
Though it took every ounce of willpower he possessed and then some, Vaddon picked up his sword, hauled his body to a standing position, and started toward Lirra once more, doing his best to ignore the poison fire spreading throughout his body.
Lirra felt pressure in her head as if there was something inside-something
She tried to ignore the voice as she concentrated on moving her sword arm so she could cut herself free of the damned tentacle whip. But no matter how hard she fought against the symbiont’s influence, she could not make her arm budge even a fraction of an inch more toward the creature. Its will to survive was simply too strong. As soon as the thought passed through her mind, she felt an answering surge of elation that she knew didn’t originate
