“Thank you, Kri. Moorin taught me a great deal-”
“Of course, of course.”
“-but you’re right. He was holding me back. Nothing is going to hold me back anymore.”
“That’s exactly right,” Kri said. “Nothing can.”
A shadowy form loomed up right behind Kri, great black wings rising up behind the priest like a dark angel. Crimson eyes smoldered like hot coals in its face, and veins of scarlet crystal flowed through its body, suffusing the whole creature with dim red light. Albanon yelped and loosed a bolt of arcane force that struck the monster and tore wisps of its shadowy substance away.
Kri’s eyes widened in surprise, but his body froze as the shadowy demon’s hands clutched at his head. At the same time, a second creature swooped out of the darkness at Albanon, stretching huge, dark claws toward him. Albanon felt irrational fear surge through him, chilling his body and setting his pulse pounding in his ears.
The demon seemed energized by his fear, and some part of his mind that clung to rational thought in the face of it could discern how the creature was drawing on his fears and shaping them into a weapon to wield against him. Understanding the process didn’t help him face it, however, when his nightmares took shape before him, where a moment before the shadowy demon had stood.
He saw a towering figure, rippling with muscle and covered in skin like the thorny flesh of a rose’s stem. Its face was covered with a mask made from a beast’s skull, but the demon’s smoldering red eyes peered out through the mask at him. Enormous antlers rose from the figure’s skull, and it clutched a hunting spear with a jagged head like a whaler’s harpoon. The baying of fey hounds surrounded him, and Albanon’s fear sapped the strength of his legs out from under him. He scrambled on the ground, trying to get away from the nightmare huntsman.
“Albanon, my son,” the huntsman said, “you are a disappointment to me.”
Albanon spread his fingers and bathed the figure in fire, but it strode forward as if completely oblivious to the flames, its flesh showing no signs of scorching. It lifted the spear and aimed the terrible point at Albanon’s heart.
A burst of light like the dawning sun exploded around Albanon, tearing through the huntsman in front of him. As Albanon stared, its thorny flesh came off its bones in long ribbons as it howled its agony. Then it was only the shadowy demon again, and it appeared significantly diminished by Kri’s radiant assault.
The light drove Albanon’s fear away as well. He found his feet and drew in a breath, sensing in an instant the location of both demons-no, all three-another one was approaching. He paused a moment, until the third demon was close enough, then engulfed them all in an inferno of arcane fire that spread out from his outstretched arms and washed harmlessly around Kri. The demon nearest him crumbled away to ash, leaving a scattering of red crystal dust in the air that blew away in the wind.
The two remaining demons scattered to the edges of Albanon’s light, gathering their strength or reassessing the threat that he and Kri posed. Albanon laughed at them and sent another magic bolt streaming into the nearer demon. “You don’t want to fight us,” he said. “You can’t handle us.”
As if in response, the two demons flew near each other and seemed to flow together, combining their substance into one larger form. As Albanon watched, the form twisted and changed, taking on the likeness of the demon they’d fought at Sherinna’s tower.
“They chose something we both fear,” Kri said.
“Less emotional impact, but probably more physical power,” Albanon said.
“Good thinking. So we don’t let it get close enough to exert that power.”
As one, Albanon and Kri unleashed a firestorm of devastation on the demonic figure. Lightning crackled over its limbs, fire erupted in the air around it, thunder crashed and battered it, and divine radiance tore at its substance. As spell after spell erupted around it, it took a few slow, pained steps closer to them, then toppled to the ground. Its hulking body melted into the two smaller shadows, then their shadowy forms dissolved, leaving only crimson liquid, like crystalline blood, that pooled on the ground and then seeped away.
“And
Albanon laughed, exhilarated from the sensation of all that power coursing through his body. “That is the doom that awaits all the creatures of this abyssal plague,” he said.
Kri stared darkly at the blasted circle of earth where the demons had died. “All will perish,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Shara stared in terror at the apparition before her. It was Jarren-not as she remembered him in life but as she dreamed of him in her worst nightmares, his insides torn out by the claws of the dragon, his neck broken and his head lolling, his eyes fixed on her. “You fled the battle,” he said, his voice harsh and rasping. “You left us to die.”
“I–I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Tears streaked her face and her sword clattered from her hand onto the road by her feet.
He stepped closer, reaching a hand toward her hair. “I loved you, Shara,” he said. “I put my life in your hands.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to flee. We-Uldane and I, we rolled away from the dragon’s breath, toward the river. We didn’t know-none of us knew the river was so far down!”
“I trusted you, Shara. And now you’re giving your love to him?” Jarren’s bloody finger pointed behind her.
For a moment, Shara didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she remembered that Quarhaun was behind her, and all at once she realized where she was and what she was doing. They’d been attacked-
And the thing in front of her wasn’t Jarren’s ghost. It was a demon, preying on her fear, giving form to her worst nightmares and using them to weaken her.
She roared in fury as she snatched her sword up from the ground and whirled it through the apparition of her lover. The ghost’s eyes widened in shock at this new betrayal, but Shara ignored its face, concentrating on the movement of her blade. She sliced and stabbed until no semblance of Jarren remained, just a gaunt creature of shadow with glowing veins of liquid crystal. Then even its shadowy substance dissipated and the red crystal turned to dust, scattered on the ground.
Only then did she see Uldane, standing behind where the creature had been, daggers in his hands and a grin on his face.
“I wondered when you were going to snap out of it,” the halfling said. “But now we’d better help Quarhaun.”
She whirled around and saw the drow standing transfixed, staring at two smears of shadow in the air that reached dark claws toward his head. “Quarhaun!” she shouted. Her sword cut into both demonic shades, and Quarhaun seemed to come to his senses.
Quarhaun’s sword burst into purple flame as his face twisted with fury and he lunged at the nearer of the two shadows that had held him entranced. Shara found herself wondering what he had seen, what terrible fear had paralyzed him, even as she helped him destroy the creature that had pillaged his nightmares. Two more shadowy figures appeared on the road, reaching their claws toward her, and she felt them in her head, trying to sift through her mind.
A racket on the bluff above her jolted her back to full attention, and she looked up to see a dragonborn sliding down the bluff, bouncing and rattling down the steep slope with a sword in his hand and a roar in his throat.
“Roghar!” she cried, delight at seeing her friend driving away the last tendrils of fear that had worked themselves into her mind.
Quarhaun looked up as well, then gave her a quizzical glance. “A friend?”
“Yes,” she said. Her joy gave strength to her sword, and the demons fell back from her assault. “A paladin of Bahamut and a strong ally. These demons are doomed.”
“If he doesn’t kill himself on the way down,” Quarhaun muttered.
Shara laughed. Then Roghar was beside her, hewing into the demons as divine light flared around him. The
