to shift.
'Why?' he asked, forcing himself to meet Khanda's repulsive eyes. 'Why would they summon you?'
Khanda grinned, an inhuman rictus from ear to ear. 'I don't believe I'm going to tell you that.'
'Why not?'
'Because you want to know.' That awful grin grew even broader. 'And because, ultimately, it doesn't matter. You humans are such petty, insignificant schemers. You think you're playing games, but you're all just pieces.'
Corvis forced himself to smile. Across the street, Irrial had dizzily crawled through the dirt to the boards, begun laboriously to dig toward whoever lay moving beneath. Keep his attention… 'Are we? It seems to me you wouldn't be here without one of those 'pieces.' And I know a little something about summoning incantations, Khanda. You don't exactly have free rein. If you did, you'd have had more than enough power to find me long ago. You're limited here, demon. You're human.'
The world briefly vanished behind an array of blinding suns as Khanda struck him across the face. 'Why, Corvis, such language.' He sighed theatrically and settled himself on the ground, sitting cross-legged as though beside a comfortable campfire. 'But you're right, of course. I don't have anywhere near my full might. Even when I was living inside a pendant and a slave to your every primitive whim, I wasn't at my best. There's never been a demon freely unleashed upon your world, not in your recorded history anyway. Even the most maddened conjurers aren't that crazy. And that, old boy-not revenge, though I certainly welcome it, and not my orders-is why I've come for you.'
'I thought,' Corvis grunted, struggling to get his feet under him so he might rise, 'that you weren't going to tell me what this is about.'
'I'm not going to tell you what they want,' Khanda corrected casually. 'But I want you to understand what I'm doing. It's so much more fun if you know enough to be horrified. You see, you have something I need.'
He leaned back, waiting, clearly content to let the former warlord ask-or figure it out for himself.
It doesn't make any sense. I don't have anything… The demon couldn't use the Kholben Shiar; Khanda knew more or less everything Corvis knew, up until six years ago. There was nothing.
Except…
'Oh, gods…'
Khanda actually clapped like an excited schoolgirl. 'I knew you'd get there. You really were almost competent at times, for a human.' He leaned in, voice marred by excited breathing. 'I can't use my own power against him. The summoning and binding spells won't permit it. But someone else's magic, an incantation that doesn't draw on my own abilities? That's something else entirely. And I was around you, and your pet witch, more than long enough to learn human methods of sorcery.
'Think of it, Corvis! With that spell, I can force 'Master' Nenavar to release me from my bonds, to grant me not only my freedom but my power! Enough to make this wretched dung-ball of a world my plaything-to make Selakrian look like a charlatan. You remember what Mecepheum looked like six years ago? That was nothing!' A narrow string of spittle dangled from the corner of the demon's mouth. 'And you kept the invocation when the rest of the tome burned to ash. You made it all possible.'
A soft clatter sounded from behind. Wooden planks cascaded away in a small avalanche beneath Irrial's chapped and bleeding hands. Khanda started, began to look around…
'It's gone, Khanda!' Corvis shouted triumphantly in his face. 'I burned the pages years ago. You've wasted your time!'
'Oh, Corvis.' A hand shot out, clutching Corvis's chin with bone-bruising strength. Khanda made a soft tsk, tsk, wiggling the man's jaw until the joint very nearly separated. 'All this time, and you still don't understand me at all. I don't need the pages. The words are written down…' He released his grip and jabbed a finger into Corvis's forehead hard enough for the nail to break skin. '… here. I tried to get what I needed from Audriss first, you know. Would've saved me a lot of time. But there wasn't enough essence left in his skull.' He shrugged. 'What are you gonna do?'
It was rhetorical, of course, but Corvis answered anyway. 'Stop you,' he said simply, his confident tone hiding-or so he hoped-the gaping, empty abyss that had opened in his gut. 'We've been through this, Khanda, a long time ago. You don't have the willpower to get into my mind.'
The demon leaned even closer, until their noses nearly touched. 'That was, as you say, a long time ago. I'm stronger now. I'm a lot angrier at you. And,' he said, straightening up again, 'if you prove too stubborn, I'll just make you watch while I do all sorts of unpleasant things to Mellorin.'
Corvis's breath slammed into a brick wall at the base of his throat. His face, corpse-pale already, went whiter than the helm he'd once worn.
'Oh, my. Did I not tell you she was here? I'm so sorry; how utterly thoughtless of me. Still, perhaps it won't be too unpleasant for her,' Khanda continued lightly. 'She's really very fond of me. She might even enjoy it, as long as I don't tell her you're watching.'
He never realized the scream was his, never remembered lunging at the hell-spawned monstrosity. All Corvis knew was that suddenly he hung in the air, feet kicking, Khanda's fist about his throat. The demon was standing now, and a missing lock of hair suggested that Corvis's speed must have surprised even him.
But it was all for naught, all just another dance at the end of Khanda's strings. For in that moment of mindless, bestial rage, Corvis had not been, could not be, thinking of anything else.
And with all thought discarded, all effort and concentration gone, Khanda had slipped easily into his mind like a worm eating through an apple.
He felt the obscene presence sliding inside him, a slick and slimy thing, a tongue running across his thoughts, tasting his dreams. Images flickered, reflections of the recent past, and all were tainted and rotting at the edges where Khanda had touched them.
/Really, Corvis./ The voice reverberated in his mind, so much worse than the phantom echoes of the past years, eclipsing his thoughts entirely. /Another noblewoman? Since you didn't prove up to conquering, are you trying to fuck your way to the throne now? Or do you just find that the inbreeding makes them more docile?/
Corvis could only gurgle. Even if he could have forced the words past his tongue, his mind thrashed too violently to form them.
More movement, more images. A nauseating stench began to permeate his memories, corrupting even the most pleasant into something foul, something better forgotten. /The dog? Seilloah's the dog?/ Corvis's head felt as though it would burst as it filled with a cruel and hysterical laughter. /Well, I always said she was a bitch, didn't I?/
On it went, and on, farther and farther back. Through Corvis's recent travels; the life he'd made and the plans he'd pursued as part of Rahariem's Merchants' Guild. And farther still, through his nightmarish experiences in Tharsuul, land of the Dragon Kings, and his all-consuming eldritch studies-not to empower his new plans, as he'd maintained and even believed, but as a means of escaping the pain of Tyannon's rejection.
He would have threatened, demanded, cajoled-even, gods help him, begged for it to stop. But he could not. Khanda hadn't even left him that.
Until… /Ahhh. There it is! And just in time. If I had to relive any more of your pathetic existence, I might just vomit. And you call my home 'hell'…/
Corvis saw the words flash across his mind, one at a time, and Khanda peeled them off like scabs. Gradually, inevitably, the entire spell began to form, until the demon was but a single passage from the end.
The scream, when it came, sounded in Corvis's mind and ears both, threatening to shatter hearing and sanity alike. A geyser of pain erupted from his gut even as he fell to the street, a motionless rag doll.
Khanda stood, his body rigid, jaw agape in astonished agony. A mask of blood and ruined, splinter-coated flesh peered over his shoulder from behind, and the wavy blade of a demon-forged flamberge jutted obscenely from his ribs.
'I don't know precisely what you are,' Jassion rasped, viciously twisting Talon in the wound. 'But I heard enough.'
The world held its breath. Corvis gawped up at the two men he hated most in the world; at Irrial standing behind them, her hands raw and bleeding where she'd dug Jassion free; and Seilloah slinking at her feet, one paw twisted at an impossible angle and clutched painfully to her chest.
Slowly, Khanda looked down at the length of hellish steel that had skewered him like a haunch of pork. And then, finally, he spoke.
