creatures!' The woman stamped her foot, and her crystal implants began to glow. Instead of taking action, she continued to shout at the spiders. The one on Warian responded by squeezing him. The arachnid closing on Zel continued its advance. The final spider turned and began to exude slender strands of crystal webbing.
Warian realized that events had spiraled beyond his aunt's control. He didn't trust her anyway, since she was susceptible to Shaddon's control-or perhaps some deeper, more corrupt entity, if Shaddon could be believed.
Warian focused his mind on his prosthesis.
Violet light took fire in Warian. A miniature sun burned a circuit down his forged arm, awaking it to something better than mere life.
Warian grinned, and with the merest flick of his prosthetic finger, propelled his eight-legged attacker off his body and out the open doorway.
He turned. The light in his energized arm was bright-brighter than it had been on the two occasions he'd called its power. He laughed, drunk on the feeling-he was faster and stronger than ever! His power was mounting, not diminishing.
Another theory immediately vied for his attention. Could it be that he was simply draining his life-force more completely each time he called on the artificial limb's hidden gift? Intuition told him that the less agreeable and more deadly explanation was the likely one.
Could he control the effect, he wondered? Could he moderate how much energy his arm pulled from his body and mind? The previous times he'd triggered his ability, he'd been desperate, as he was now. But then, as now, the arm brimmed with so much more strength than he needed. And when the implant dimmed, he felt so horribly drained.
Warian concentrated on dimming the light in his arm, imagining its brilliance damping but not failing completely.
A green and purple haze swirled before him, and a sharp nausea dug into his bowels. His breath heaved, but the radiance of his arm faded without going out.
Immediately, the sounds and movements around him returned to a normal speed.
His Uncle Zel yelled, in a voice barely distorted, 'Warian, get this thing away from me! What are you doing standing there?' The crystal-mandibled spider snapped at Zel, but Warian's uncle fought it off, just barely, by swinging his iron bar.
Warian moved to aid Zel, but fell down instead. Had he drained himself anyway? No-something tugged at his foot-he was caught!
Glistening purple strands of crystal stretched between the floor and his left leg, anchoring him in place. The spider with the prosthetic spinnerets had been busy. To Warian's horror, it spun yet another crystal strand, one end of which caught him on his crystal arm.
He flexed his dimmed prosthesis, trying to break the hair-thin strand. The web was tougher than it looked, but with a bell-like pop, the strand broke.
An instant later, two more webs landed on him from the busily spinning weaver. 'Damned beast,' he cursed. So much for conserving his energy.
Consciously, he increased the arm's radiance. Enhanced strength was his again. With a light tug, he pulled free of the strands holding his arm, then climbed to his feet. He reached down and snapped the strands still attached to his foot. Simultaneously, he tamped the radiance down to the barest glimmer. A hollow feeling was beginning to blossom in his chest, but the moment he cooled down the brilliance, the empty feeling stopped growing. Warian knew he was fast approaching the limit of the usable energy of his body.
Without pausing, he charged at the web-spinning spider. It worked its spinnerets with great speed, ready to release another entangling salvo. The spider skittered away from Warian's charge, but he grabbed hold of its fat, hairy body. It writhed and snapped, and he nearly dropped it. Instead, he whirled in a half circle. Warian released the spider at the terminus of the circle's arc with a hard snap. It flew like a ballista bolt into the wall, making a satisfyingly loud crunch as both its carapace and crystal shattered.
'Warian!'
He turned and saw a spider bite Zel. His uncle dropped the iron bar and clutched the bloody wound on his leg. The spider, its crystal mandibles stained red, moved in for another bite. Warian was too far from his uncle to do anything but stare with sick horror.
Both Warian and Zel yelped in surprise when Sevaera dashed forward and stomped on the spider with her artificial leg. The woman kicked the creature flat until little remained but a sparkling, bloody smear.
Sevaera tried to put a hand on Zel, but her brother flinched away.
She asked, 'Zel, what's going on? I know Father said to hold you, but… plangent spiders?'
Still clutching his leg, Zel said, 'Thank you for coming to my rescue. But it doesn't mean I trust you. You're compromised.' He limped toward Warian and the exit.
'Aunt Sevaera,' Warian began, but stopped. He wanted to invite his aunt to join them-but as Zel said, she was a plangent. How could he depend on her to control her own actions? Shaddon demonstrated that he could possess her at any time, and implied even more frightening aspects of the entity in the crystal.
He decided on a different tactic. 'Aunt, you must get those crystal implants removed. Shaddon has gone mad, or he's been possessed, or maybe both. He's able to commandeer the body of every plangent he creates.'
'Commandeer?'
'Possess and control every action.'
Sevaera gasped and asked, 'Did he do it… to me? Just a little while ago?'
Warian nodded.
The woman, already pale, paled further. She said, 'I've suspected something wasn't quite right, you know. Too much lost time. And every so often I'd find myself somewhere strange with no memory of how I'd gotten there, or why I wanted to go there.'
'Shaddon was testing out his new toys,' said Zel, somewhat maliciously.
'I don't… I don't know what to do.' Her last words spiraled up in pitch. Tears welled in her eyes. Sudden sympathy for his normally cruel, self-assured aunt took Warian by surprise, and he took a step toward her.
What happened next would haunt his dreams for years to come.
Sevaera's eyes widened in sudden panic, as if she spied something utterly abominable. He'd never seen such naked fear in anyone's expression. She gasped, 'Run!'
'Sevaera?' questioned Zel. But a black film glazed the woman's eyes. Humanity leaked away, and what stared out at them was the soul of the void. A grave-cold wind blew up, and Warian's hair streamed toward his aunt. She had become a deep, dark well, and a monstrosity lurked at the bottom.
Her mouth opened wide as if she were about to scream. Instead, without any visible articulation, an awful voice rumbled, 'Come to me.'
Sevaera's mouth gaped even wider, but Warian saw nothing within but darkness. As her mouth widened, the wind redoubled. Warian had to lean away from his aunt, and Zel grabbed hold of his arm. Fragments of broken crystal from the spiders slid along the floor, accelerating as they neared her. They were sucked without a trace into her mouth.
'Come to me,' said the appalling voice once more, louder.
The high-backed chair slid toward the woman. Books flew from the shelves like a converging swarm of bats. Each one disappeared down her maw, getting stuck only momentarily on the edges of her lips. The great crystal hanging from its chain strained toward her. The bodies of the dead spiders, slick with blood, tumbled into the epicenter of her influence, then were sucked down into the metaphysical cavity.
Zel shook Warian. 'We have to get out of here, kid!' Warian broke free of his horror trance, grabbed his uncle's arm, and dashed through the exit, skimming past Sevaera. He ran down the short corridor and into the workroom beyond. The radiance in his arm intensified, as did the force pulling him backward. Loose objects in the workroom began to pelt and bounce off him as they arrowed through the air toward Sevaera. 'Ouch!' A sealed glass jar filled with greenish fluid knocked his uncle down. Warian didn't stop-he just pulled his uncle forward.
He had to bat away panels ripped from the wall, sidestep sliding benches, and duck candles as lethal as crossbow bolts. Only the enhanced strength granted by his arm saved Warian, again and again, plus lent him enough power to pull his groaning, protesting uncle. The telltale tingle of his arm's imminent failure began to grow in his chest-a cavernous, dead feeling. If he allowed the prosthesis to fail now, they'd be pulled in. Warian glanced
