Though his hands were still raised toward the portals, Benin dropped to his knees, red-stained water soaking into his crimson pyromancer’s robes.
Then the emberfox barked. Swirling lines of fire passed between her and the mage on whose shoulder she clung. The orange tendrils passed through and into him in a way that was reassuringly familiar; I’d seen the same thing happen with my gem countless times, except in my case it had been neutral mana rather than fire essence.
“No!” Bekkit shouted.
The portals began to stabilize. The chaotic fire around their edges subsided, and the surface returned to its original shimmering silver. Yet Bekkit’s distress pulsed across our bond like a fresh burn.
“What have you done?” he whispered.
His face drawn, Benin stared at him blankly. “We bonded. We finally bonded. She stopped me from burning out. She saved me!”
“You added fire to fire,” Bekkit countered. “You enforced the other elements’ compliance rather than instigating balance. Opposing forces will always fight back when subdued rather than negotiated with!”
“What do you m—”
The portals flared orange. Then the roaring I’d heard earlier was back. The spinning circles grew wider, blue-gray swirls now bordering them like waves. Longshank glanced up at the portal in front of the abandoned chariot and immediately began limping more quickly toward the shore. Gneil gawked at it for a moment, then Hoppit elbowed him and the pair returned to trying to haul the ark up the bank. She called for aid and a couple of nearby warriors scurried over to help.
Benin gasped. Then the portal in front of him imploded. A torrent of water poured from the space the circle had occupied, crashing white waves looking for a moment like white horses determined to trample everything in front of them.
The mage surged to his feet and threw himself to the side, lifting the emberfox above his head with the last strength in his arms. The torrent smashed into the chariot, breaking it into pieces and carrying it away. It spread out and caught Longshank as well, the hunter managing to yell before he was swept under.
I registered a distressed cry from the bank. My high cleric was staring down at the rushing water, held back from diving in by the tribe’s general. Both were staring at the ark, which was now bobbing away from them with the current. A white-foamed wave battered the holy box, dislodging the lid. It tipped to one side; I caught a glimmer of purple, and then everything went black.
Fifty-Two
Uldrazir
Zerin / Corey
The sound of rushing water engulfed me, but it was soon swallowed by silence. I could see and hear nothing.
Then blue-green light tinged the darkness. I was no longer floating on nothingness, but standing in front of a door. It was hewn from some sort of black bone gilded with silver, and was carved with angular depictions of a woman and a spider. In my night-skinned fingers was a knife.
Unbidden, my hand twisted the dagger in the lock, and the door eased open with a quiet snick.
Just like that, everything clicked into place. The lingering confusion about who I was, where I was, was gone, replaced only with the certainty that this was me, and I’d been here before.
I stood back and nodded at the black-robed figure across the street. The roachlights on the cavern ceiling were too dim to illuminate his features—nighttime in the subterranean city of Uldrazir was scarcely brighter than the Netherdark itself—but I recognized him anyway. night elf darkvision is, after all, second to none.
After a brief nod to acknowledge my signal, the robed man—Draykon, I remembered, one of my oldest, and, let’s face it, only friends—gestured to the other figures who shared the shadows with him. Their knives gleamed dully in the darkness. One by one, they crept across to the manse and slipped through the now-open door.
Everything was going exactly to plan…
… for now.
Yes, I remembered this night. I couldn’t recall exactly how it had ended, but since I seemed to be re-living it through my former self’s very eyes, I suspected I’d find out very soon.
The High Priest’s manse was designed for show, not security. Breaking in had been almost embarrassingly easy. Furthermore, the silence from within suggested he employed no guards, or any other sort of staff who might actually fight back.
Is the man really so arrogant as to believe he’s untouchable?
I allowed myself a silent, humorless laugh at the irony of my former self’s own arrogance.
My patron had insisted the high priest was crucial to tonight’s ritual, and so here we were. If anyone caught us, it would be a short trip to a long drop—specifically, the Convicts’ Gorge—for me and everyone else involved.
But none of that would matter for much longer. Soon, I would be a god. A god!
My patron—Melakor, he called himself, I remembered now—hadn’t specified what tonight’s ritual would entail, other than that it required the blood of the high priest. I wasn’t too worried. I’d come to trust him; Melakor had given valuable advice over the past few months, and demonstrated extraordinary power of his own, all of which had led to tonight.
As the last of the knife-bearers crossed the threshold, the two figures bringing up the procession’s rear halted. Moving with the deadly grace of a cave panther, Draykon padded to my side and squeezed my shoulder reassuringly before following our underlings into the manse.
The second figure remained where she was, arms folded, a frown creasing her forehead. “‘Are you sure about this?”’ she asked for what I knew was the fifth or sixth time.
Khazla didn’t quite share my faith in my patron, asserting on several occasions that he was about as trustworthy as a tapeworm. To be fair, I could understand her suspicions.
When I’d first found Melakor six months ago—all five inches or so of him—even I had my doubts about him. But while his modus operandi wasn’t exactly conventional, that could only be a good thing given my
