slightest chance Elidyr didn’t know they were coming, the Outguard would remain silent.
The tunnel continued to slope downward as they progressed, and Lirra tried to use her new senses to feel the way ahead, casting about for any hint of symbionts or other aberrations. The base of her skull tingled and a familiar nausea roiled in her stomach. She could feel the presence of corruption somewhere out in front of them, and it was strong-far stronger than anything she’d ever felt before. It was repellant, but at the same time strangely alluring. Part of her wanted to turn back and flee in terror, while another part of her wanted to run forward to reach the foul presence as fast as she could.
She leaned close to Osten and whispered in his ear.
“Do you feel that?”
“I feel
A second voice whispered in Lirra’s other ear. “It’s good to know I’m appreciated.”
Lirra turned to her right, startled to hear Ranja speaking, but no one walked there. At first Lirra feared she’d only imagined the shifter’s voice, that perhaps it was a new sort of mind trick the tentacle whip was playing on her. But then she realized what Ranja had done. The woman had used one of the magical toys she employed to render herself invisible, and then she’d sneaked past the other members of the Outguard until she’d reached the front of the line where Lirra and Osten were.
Lirra smiled. When going into battle, it was always good to have a surprise or two prepared for your enemy, and with any luck, Ranja would prove to be one hell of a surprise for Elidyr.
They continued onward, and the tingling in her skull and her nausea grew stronger as they walked, along with the strange compulsion to keep going forward. She raised her hand and made several gestures to let her father know they were getting close, even if she wasn’t entirely certain close to what. Vaddon answered with a single gesture that meant Message received, before silently relaying Lirra’s message to the warforged, who passed it back to the soldiers behind them, and so on. Within moments, everyone in the tunnel knew the time for battle was close at hand, and they did their best to mentally prepare themselves for whatever lay in wait ahead. Lirra had experienced the last few moments before battle more times than she could remember. Some soldiers became nervous and had to work hard to calm themselves. Others drew on their nervous energy to get their minds and bodies ready to fight. Still others attempted to visualize what the intitial encounter with the enemy might be like and what moves and countermoves they would make. Some simply emptied their mind of all extraneous thought, trusted in their training to carry them through the battle to come, and concentrated on simply putting one foot in front of the other.
Lirra became aware of a light not far ahead of them. At first, Lirra thought it was the glow from an everbright lantern, but the color was all wrong. Instead of a yellowish hue, this light was a shifting combination of colors, something like a kaleidoscope. She feared that they were too late, and Elidyr had activated the Overmantle, but then she remembered that the device’s crystals had pulsed with blue-white energy. What they were seeing ahead of them looked very different.
Ranja’s voice whispered once more in Lirra’s ear.
“Want me to run ahead and take a look?”
Lirra was tempted. Intelligence-gathering was more often than not the key to victory. But she didn’t fully understand the scope of Elidyr’s new powers, and she didn’t want to risk the shifter being detected by him. What good was a secret weapon if it was no longer secret? Better that Ranja approach Elidyr with the rest of them. That way, even if her uncle did possess some means of sensing the invisible shifter, there’d be a chance he’d be too distracted by the appearance of Lirra and the others to notice her.
Lirra shook her head once to let the shifter know she should stay close, and they continued cautiously moving down the tunnel toward the shifting lights. The tingling and nausea increased to the point of pain, and the feeling that she had to go forward and see what lay ahead became so strong it took all of her will not to break ranks and dash down the tunnel. It helped that she knew it would only be a matter of moments before she finally saw whatever it was that both repelled and attracted her so.
They reached a bend in the tunnel, and when they turned, they saw that the tunnel opened upon a large cave, roughly dome-shaped, with long stalactites hanging from the ceiling that reminded Lirra too much of teeth. In the center of the cave stood Elidyr, Sinnoch, and Rhedyn, the Overmantle lying on the floor next to them, its glowing crystals filling the cave with shifting, multicolored light. Lirra knew that the Overmantle was the source of the dueling impulses she felt, and she sensed that something was different about the device now. Different, and very, very wrong.
“Welcome everyone!” Elidyr called out. “You got here just in time! Come in, come in! You don’t want to miss the show, do you? Not after you traveled all the way from Geirrid to get here.”
Lirra and Osten stepped into the cave, and the moment they crossed the threshold, Lirra felt better. The tingling at the base of her skull and the nausea were still there, but they’d lessened. Lirra assumed Ranja accompanied Osten and her into the cave, though since she couldn’t see the shifter, she didn’t know for certain. Vaddon and Ksana came next, followed by Longstrider and Shatterfist. Vaddon ordered the warforged to remain with him, and he commanded the rest of the Outguard soldiers to spread out around the cave and surround Elidyr and his companions, and they hastened to do so.
Elidyr watched with amusement as the soldiers took up their positions, but he made no move to interfere.
Vaddon stepped forward, sword in hand, but held down at his side.
“I’m going to give you one chance to surrender, Brother. Shut down the Overmantle and come with us- please.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Elidyr reached up with his crawling gauntlet to scratch the head of the stormstalk draped around his shoulders. “It’s a little late for that, Vaddon.”
Lirra felt the presence of new aberrations approaching, but she couldn’t see any. There was something strange about the way the light given off by the Overmantle played upon the cave walls though. It made the stone seem hazy and indistinct, as if it were mist instead of solid rock, and she thought she could almost make out amorphous, shifting shapes within it. A strange mixture of scents filled the cave as well, the smells at once foul and sweet, stomach-turning and enticing.
“What’s the Overmantle doing, Uncle?” she asked.
“I’m so glad you asked,” Elidyr said, smiling. “It was too damaged for me to restore it to full functionality-not with the tools and equipment currently in my possession-so it’s unable to open a portal to Xoriat. However, I was able to make some alterations so that it can do the next best thing. Here, in this cave, our plane of existence and Xoriat’s intersect. A permanent crossing cannot take place, but within the confines of this cave denizens of both dimensions can coexist and interact, for as long as the Overmantle is active, that is. Not exactly what I’d hoped for, but then it should prove sufficient.”
“Sufficient for what?” Lirra asked.
Elidyr’s smile turned into a grin. “To see all of you dealt with. Then, with no one hounding me any longer, I’ll have the time I need to completely repair the Overmantle so that it can open a true portal to Xoriat.”
The sensation of approaching aberrations grew stronger, and Lirra looked about the cave, searching for any sign that something was coming. There could be other ways in and out the cave that were hidden from her eyes. With the strange visual effect caused by the Overmantle’s light, it was so difficult to tell … Then she noticed a pair of large round shadows on the walls on opposite sides of the cave. Shadows that were cast by nothing she could see … shadows that grew larger with every passing second.
Lirra shouted a warning but it was too late. A pair of large floating orbs emerged from the walls as they crossed over from Xoriat to this in-between place that Elidyr had created, stone walls parting for them as if they were nothing more than curtains of cloth easily brushed aside. The creatures were eight feet wide, with a single central eye and a large tooth-filled maw. Ten stalks emerged from the top of the orb in a hideous parody of hair, and atop each of the stalks was a smaller eye. Lirra recognized the monsters from Elidyr’s briefings in the early days of the symbiont project-beholders.
The creatures knocked down a handful of soldiers as they entered the cave, and they immediately spun around to begin attacking those members of the Outguard stationed around the cave’s walls. Rays of energy lanced
