Brimstone Angels

Loyal Fury,” he intoned, “aid this servant of your justice.”

This time there was a weak ringing sound, and a flash of light from the medallion spread over Mehen’s broken arm. The bones knitted with a crack and a pain that made Mehen wish he could cry out. It was still swollen, still tender, but the worst was fixed.

Lorcan peered down at Mehen. “You’re still dominated, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Mehen said irritably.

“Do it again.”

Brin began to speak the words of the prayer yet again, when Mehen felt the magic of the domination slowly begin to surge. Rohini was returning. He fought to speak, but his tongue wouldn’t move. He fought to stand, to push the young men aside, but his legs refused. He fought to shake his head, to signal them to stop, but only managed to twitch to one side.

A burst of light exploded out of Brin’s hands and over Mehen’s skin, and for a moment, the dragonborn couldn’t breathe, there were so many ghosts and promises choking off his heart. When the light cleared, he saw Brin standing unsteadily, one hand pressed to his forehead.

“That … I shouldn’t …”

The part of the spell that bound Mehen’s voice snapped, weakened by Brin’s magic or perhaps just Mehen’s determination. The power of Rohini’s magic pressed against him like a wave, ready to overtake him.

“Flee, damn it!” Mehen roared. “She’s coming!” The domination swelled again, silencing him and forcing his mind down under Rohini’s.

Coalescing into herself, the disembodied fragments of Rohini’s awareness realized first that she had no sense of how much time had passed; second, that her head ached as if it were ready to split.

The room came next, and the hand she pressed to her temple. The darkness. She sat up from the cot she lay on and made her form flow into the shape of the kind-faced hospitaler once again. The rain spattering the windows.

She remembered the rain starting. She couldn’t have lost too much time.

Rohini rolled her shoulders and stood. Killing the Ashmadai had probably not been exactly what Invadiah had planned-but that was Invadiah’s fault for not being clearer. Along with a hundred other slights. When Glasya had ordered her to serve under Invadiah, Rohini had-of course-not voiced her horror, but there had not been a second that she hadn’t suspected the arrangement was some sort of punishment for one or both of them.

She ought to be rewarded for waiting this long to lash out, she thought. If anyone got angry, she could just point to Lorcan. Simple and clean.

Almost. She was still furious with herself for picking the wrong twin. She’d held the rod, but she should have been certain. She should have been careful. She swept into the disused cell where she’d left the dragonborn, silent and waiting.

“How are you feeling?” she asked Mehen.

“Numb,” he said. She chuckled.

“Tell me, did Lorcan come by yet?”

The dragonborn gave her a jaundiced look. The domination was wearing thin. “I saw a young man,” he said. “A human, wearing black armor. I saw another who-”

“Enough,” Rohini said. “I don’t need to hear about your day.” Lorcan would come looking soon enough, and she’d be very happy to report she’d left his warlock standing outside an Ashmadai safe-house, holding Invadiah’s precious implement, and waiting for the alarm spells to call more Asmodean cultists to the dead Ashmadai’s aid. Delightful.

Mostly. There had been the embarrassing moment where she’d pointed the rod and the body hadn’t reacted. She knew how to cast from another’s body, but nothing worked. Not even the simplest spells were in her grasp at first. Because, she realized when Farideh’s spell had blasted past her and into an Ashmadai cultist, she had taken the wrong damned twin.

The body she’d taken had known how to defend itself, how to turn the rod into a bludgeon, how to twist weapons out of her victims’ hands. Admirable reflexes, she mused, remembering how she’d dodged between a pair of particularly nimble young women with very sharp blades, tripping one into the other and finishing the survivor. While Rohini worked to channel her own magic through the girl, it had been a minor thing to keep the twin’s body fighting.

And the warlock had defended her, thinking she was saving her sister. Up until Rohini turned on Farideh herself, she hadn’t suspected a thing. Of course, she’d still knocked her sister unconscious, driving Rohini out of the girl’s body. But whatever had gone wrong didn’t matter. She was surely dead by now. The Ashmadai were too quick to retaliate, and she would never have left her sister lying on the floor.

Now, she would like nothing better than to return to her normal form, curl her wings around herself, and rest for a good long while. But Invadiah could not wait. Rohini needed to find Vartan and find out whether she needed to possess him too.

“Wait here,” she said to Mehen. “Eat or sleep or whatever you need to do, but wait for me.” The dragonborn glared at her with far more venom than he should have managed. Depths of the Abyss, she was getting sloppy as Arunika. Renew that domination, she thought as she passed from the room and into the greater hall. Yet another task on her ever growing list-

“Good evening, my dear.”

Rohini startled out of her thoughts. Brother Vartan was sitting on one of the empty cots, a cask in his lap made of rough-hewn wood. He stared at her with over-wide eyes, a peculiar smile playing on his mouth.

“I brought you a gift,” he said.

Rohini had to remind herself to smile shyly instead of snapping. She doubted the box contained Invadiah’s precious aboleth-all Rohini ought to want-or an order to eviscerate Invadiah herself-which was all Rohini did want. “That’s very kind. You had time to buy a gift after delivering our offer?”

“It took no time at all,” Vartan said, his voice still strangely flat. “Open it.”

Rohini took the ugly box from him, and set it on an empty cot. “Did you bring the orcs to the proxies?” she asked. “You spoke to them?”

“Open the box first. I want to see your face when you open it.”

Lovestruck ass, she thought, a false smile plastered to her face. She hoped it was a necklace so she could strangle him with it later. She wrenched the rusty clasp open and lifted the lid …

The temple around Rohini melted with a shrill scream. Her vision went white, and the senses of her skin were gone, as if she floated in the void between worlds. There was no temple, no Toril, no Rohini.

All she knew was the song. Like a lullaby from her demon youth, the lyrics of the discordance rose, unbidden to her lips.

“The heir stands divided and the inheritance will crumble,” she heard herself say, the most perfect music she had ever heard. “The dragons scrabble at the dregs.”

She fought against the madness winding itself around her-she was Rohini, she was the corruptor, not the corrupted. Her vision crackled, and the temple returned in fits and spurts. Her feet were solid on the ground, the humid air clung to her skin.

More words, more sounds, more images swirled in her head. Rohini clasped her forehead as her head split open and sickly light poured out.

The glistening light crawled over her skin, eating away her disguise. The plain robes became tight leather armor. Her frizzy curls became a vibrant plume of red. Her ruddy skin became coppery and smooth as silk. Veiny wings ripped from her back. Her eyes, she knew by Vartan’s astonished stare, glowed ruby.

Rohini felt her control over him snap, but she could only worry about the power trying with all its might to remake her. “Spirits surge behind the surface of the world, and they may make the land anew. But a misplaced pebble will cripple the strongest charger.”

“You’re not Rohini,” Vartan said with a mad giggle. “You’re a devil.”

Rohini laughed, and the sound of her laughter blurred into the prophecies seeping up through her baser brain.

“I am Rohini!” she cried. “I am always Rohini.” She bared her teeth in a grin. “And now I am more. Such a gift.”

No, she thought, struggling to maintain herself, struggling to hold her mind together. This is not a gift, this is