Nira shouted with rage, and she tore the Chaos Shard from her pocket, holding it aloft. The twinkle within the glass burst into an eldritch light. Her mind spun wildly, seeking the paths of vengeance. It would not be easy to reshape reality for such a large area occupied by so many beings, but she ignored all thoughts of the cost and dug deep inside herself for a massive push. With a grunt, she unleashed the Chaos, but staggered back as reality exerted its inertia against her. The world resisted change, and she was trying to force a big one. It felt like she was pushing against a door that had furniture stacked against the far side.
She redoubled her efforts, groaning at the discord that built inside her. The world shifted, just a hair, but not nearly far enough. Harder! Her groan rose into a scream, and she could feel the warp and weft of the world rippling about her. The pressure was incredible. Wetness slid from her nose, and she knew that it was gushing blood. She didn’t let up. Fraction by fraction, the shape of the world shifted… and like a waterfall gushing out from behind a dam, reality snapped into the shape she desired.
From one heartbeat to the next, suddenly every single demon in the great cavern lacked both kneecaps and leg tendons. They all fell to the bloody, dung-smeared floor at once, and the cacophony of demon screams was a music to her ears. The strange animals leapt on their helpless prey, savaging purple throats and tearing at eyes and ears. “You can’t touch him!” she yelled into the din, more satisfied than she had ever felt in her whole life. I saved him! I did it!
Then Gamarron reached out and snapped both bones in her arm. The world shattered into pain, and she dropped the Shard, screaming. She couldn’t think, couldn’t even understand herself as a being – she existed solely as a function of her blazing hurt.
When she surfaced from that ocean of white heat, she found herself face-down on the floor, the Shard inches from her nose. One of Gamarron’s hands was twisted in her hair, and he ground her face cruelly into the stone. “Pick. It. Up!” the possessed man growled.
All she could do was cry. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think – she could hardly even understand what he was saying to her. When she didn’t respond, his other hand shot out and gripped her right arm directly on top of the break. She screamed again, sobbing at the pain.
“Do it!” Gamarron cried. He pressed harder on her wounded arm, and she felt his fingers brush against the bone that jutted out from the skin. It was as if lightning had struck her. She would do anything to stop that feeling, anything! It wasn’t a thought, it was simply knowledge: the human animal seeks to lessen pain. She reached out with her left hand and clutched the Shard.
The Chaos danced around her, but she couldn’t focus it. She couldn’t follow the paths of probability, couldn’t make the calculations. Her torn flesh and grinding bones kept pulling her away. The most powerful weapon in the world might as well have been a child’s bauble in her hands.
Gamarron pulled her by the hair back into the Chamber. The shrieks of the dying demons echoed after them, but the room was stark and still, its only feature the great Box with Guyrin slumped against it. He hurled her at the structure just to the left of Guyrin, who was gently rocking his head back and forth and moaning. She struck the gray surface with the shoulder of her hurt arm, sending waves of pain racing through her body like earthquakes. The gray material was slick, smooth, and harder than stone. She managed to catch herself with her left hand, still clutching the Chaos Shard, before she fell on top of her broken arm. She got her knees underneath her and tried to catch her breath.
Gamarron gave her no respite. He snatched her left wrist, keeping his fingers well clear of the Shard, and pressed her balled hand against the surface of the Box. With his other hand, he took Guyrin’s limp arm and pressed his flabby hand to the gray monolith only a handspan away from the Shard. The possessed savage gave a shout of triumph.
The sound clashed against a Pacari battle cry as Kest hurled himself at Gamarron, bowling him over. The two scuffled on the floor, but Nira couldn’t keep track of them. Her eyes were focused on the Shard in front of her, and the change it was working on the Box. She couldn’t pull her hand away – her fingers were fused to the structure. Ripples of color spread across the gray like waves circling out from a pebble tossed into a pond. The same thing was happening around Guyrin’s hand. Without Gamarron’s support, he had slumped to the floor where he was sobbing softly, but the flat of his hand was securely stuck to the Box.
A buzz of discord emanated from the Shard, and where her ripples of color brushed against the rings coming from Guyrin’s hand, the hum altered and veered into discordant tangles of noise. The colliding waves of color and sound gave rise to secondary waves of complementing natures, which gave birth to tertiary children. Touching the Chaos through her haze of pain, Nira could just barely grasp the shape of the vibrations. Disharmonic frequencies sundering bonds, she thought,
