The slaad abruptly broke out of the circling and lunged forward, stabbing low with his blade. Riven parried with one saber while slashing crosswise at the slaad's throat with the other. Azriim rode Riven's parry into a spin, ducked beneath the slash, and lashed out with a claw strike at Riven's chest. The claws tore only cloth as Riven bounded backward.
'Fun, isn't it?' Azriim asked, and lunged forward again.
Riven did not bother to reply. He would not waste his breath on unnecessary words. The slaad again lunged forward, exposing his lead leg. Riven slid to the side of Azriim's stab and slashed a blade into the slaad's thigh.
Azriim hissed and countered with a slash of his own that opened the back of Riven's hand. Pain flared and Riven cursed as his wounded hand lost its grip on his blade. The saber clattered to the floor.
Magadon was fading. He felt thick, saw dimly. He hung doggedly onto consciousness and watched Dolgan disentangle his claws from Cale's grasp. Flat on his back, the slaad nevertheless unleashed a flurry of claw strikes, opening gashes in Cale's chest, arms, and face. The slaad tore Cale's mask off, opening red furrows in his dusky flesh.
Cale parried as best he could with his arms and shoulders and answered with his own punches and elbow jabs to the slaad's head and throat. Both combatants were bleeding, gasping, shouting, striking. Shadows cloaked them both, swirled around the combat.
With a desperate heave, Dolgan flung Cale off of himself sideways and climbed to his feet. He pulled his teleportation rod and twisted the dials.
Cale rode the throw into a roll, found his own feet, and charged back at the slaad, roaring. He drove his shoulder into Dolgan's chest, knocked the rod to the ground, and wrapped his arms around the creature. Dolgan tore at the flesh of Cale's back and bit his shoulder.
Grunting, Cale picked up the slaad bodily. Magadon could not believe what he was seeing; the creature must have weighed a few hundred stones. Cale slammed him down onto the rock. They went down together in a pile of flailing limbs and swirling shadows.
Dolgan drew in his legs and tried to get them under Cale-presumably to disembowel him-but Cale clung tightly to the creature while his hands sought the slaad's soft spots. Dolgan tore at Cale's arms and chest. The flesh of Cale's arms was nearly in ribbons. The slaad chomped down on Cale's shoulder, near his neck, and blood sprayed. Cale gritted his teeth in pain but ignored the damage. He closed his hands around the slaad's throat and levered the creature's head and teeth away from his shoulder. Dolgan's jaws dripped with Cale's blood.
Dolgan squirmed in Cale's grasp, snarled, tried to twist his head enough to bite at Cale's wrists and hands. Black and red blood pooled around the two.
With his hands firmly around Dolgan's throat, Cale slammed the slaad's head into the rocky ground twice- rapidly. Dolgan groaned and his eyes rolled, but only for a moment. He recovered quickly and began again to claw and frenetically shake Cale loose. Cale hung on, his body bouncing atop the slaad, the veins in his arms and brow plainly visible. Cale slid his hands to either side of the slaad's head. His thumbs crept across the slaad's face, toward his eyes.
Dolgan's eyes widened-he sensed his peril. He railed and clawed at Cale with renewed energy, tore great gashes in Cale's flesh. Cale screamed with pain but refused to release the slaad, though his cloak was saturated with blood. He smacked Dolgan's head onto the ground twice more.
Dolgan went slack for a heartbeat and Cale's thumbs found his eye sockets.
Screaming with rage, Cale applied pressure.
Lightning ripped across the sky.
Azriim rushed Riven, trying to force him down the corridor, away from his dropped saber. Riven gave little ground. He gripped his single saber in both hands and parried Azriim's slash, spun, countered, and gave a slash of his own. The slaad answered and the dance continued. Riven opened several gashes in the slaad's hide and received a few of his own. Azriim kept up the press, preventing Riven from collecting his blade, but Riven offered enough blows to keep Azriim from kicking the blade farther away.
And Riven had other weapons he could use.
He allowed the slaad to draw in close for another exchange, parried a crosscut designed to open his throat, and maneuvered his face nearly nose to snout with Azriim. Before the slaad could snap at him with his fangs, Riven shouted directly into Azriim's face the Dark Speech that Mask had taught him.
The word hit the slaad with the force of a war hammer.
Azriim hissed, took a wild swing with his blade, and staggered backward while trying to cover his ears. Riven bounded after him, driving the slaad back a few more paces with a flurry of two-handed slashes. Abruptly, he broke off the attack and retreated to his lost saber. He wedged his boot toe under it and flipped it up to his hand.
He decided then to show the slaad another gift granted him by the Shadowlord. Holding both blades before him, he intoned a prayer to Mask, asking for divine power to fuel his blows. When he completed the prayer, both of his sabers hummed in his hands with unholy energy; both leaked shadow. He advanced on Azriim, who shook his head to clear it of the damage caused by the Dark Speech.
'I did not know we were exchanging repartee,' the slaad said as he parried a series of Riven's slashes. 'I've a word or two for you, also.'
With that, the slaad pronounced a word of power and Riven's world went dark. Azriim's spell blinded him.
He cursed and backed off several steps, his blades held before him. He tried to picture the corridor in his mind; he thought it perhaps eight paces wide, the slaad four or five paces before him.
'Having trouble with that eye?' Azriim said, laughing, still at a distance.
Dolgan writhed like a mad thing, clawed frantically at Cale's hands. Desperate, the slaad spoke an arcane word and a clashing rainbow of magic exploded around him and Cale, slamming into both of them, firing in all directions.
The chaotic play of colors made Magadon's head ache.
The shadows around Cale's body absorbed the beams that would have hit him, leaving the spell with no visible effect.
Cale gritted his teeth and strained. Veins rose on his arms. He leaned into his work. To Magadon's astonishment, the slaad's strength seemed to be no match for Cale.
Cale's thumbs sank deeper into the slaad's eye sockets.
'This … is … for.. Jak!' Cale snarled.
Dolgan's eyelids gave way and he screamed as the orbs popped. Pink fluid poured from the sockets. The scream turned into a high-pitched wail of agony. He kicked, flailed.
Cale slammed the slaad's head against the ground as he drove his thumbs all the way into the creature's skull, deep into the brain.
Dolgan's screams became a slobbery gargle, then stopped. Cale rapped the slaad's bloody head into the stone twice more. The skull cracked and opened. Black blood pooled on the rock.
Cale sat atop the dead slaad, clutching Dolgan's skull in his bloody hands, breathing hard.
'For Jak,' he said.
He pulled his gore-soaked thumbs from the eye sockets with a wet, sucking sound and stood over his kill. He looked at his bloody hands in surprise, as if they were not his own. Shadows covered him, swirled about him like a cloak in a gale.
Cale knelt and retrieved something from the ground-his mask. He donned it, drew Weaveshear, decapitated the slaad, and held the severed head in his hands. Then he chanted a prayer over Dolgan's corpse. When he pronounced the final syllable, a column of flame whooshed into being over the slaad, consuming his body. The fire lasted only an instant, but it left nothing but ashes and the smell of burned flesh in its wake. The slaad would not be regenerating.
'Erevis,' Magadon called. His voice was soft but Cale heard him and turned. His eyes glowed yellow through the black, featureless velvet of his mask. The eyes narrowed.
Cale brandished Weaveshear and advanced toward Magadon.
