'Did you find what you were looking for?'
'No,' Bastun answered, then recalled the brief escape. A return to his village under cover of night and magic had shown him more than he'd been willing to admit for many years- that he would have left anyway, in time. 'And… yes.'
'A good answer,' Keffrass said and entered the room, sitting and lighting a candle with a wave of his hand. 'There is wisdom in looking back at every regret, every misstep, and realizing the value of tragedy.'
'I do not think I am quite that wise just yet,' Bastun said and leaned against the wall.
'There is wisdom in that as well,' Keffrass replied, his ancient eyes sparkling, though his humor faded. 'That mask… it does more than just cover your face.'
'Yes,' he said quietly, closing his eyes and feeling the second visage. 'Though I fear it, what it may become, what it will allow me to do.'
They sat in silence, no longer master and student, but colleagues and friends in the same order. Bastun flexed bleeding knuckles beneath his sleeve, the fury he had cultivated within himself always a heartbeat away, a weapon as much a part of him as any spell. Keffrass's teaching had forged that weapon, shaped it from raw emotion and skill, but Bastun had to live with it.
'You're going back, aren't you?' Bastun said, knowing the answer, but needing to hear it all the same. 'To Shandaular, to the Word.'
'Perhaps, though only the othlor can say for sure.' Keffrass stared into the candle. 'There is something out there for us all, waiting in the dark for us to discover-and fear.' He turned to Bastun, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight, full of meaning and wisdom. 'We must face it alone, that abyss, in whatever form it takes-beast, guilt, magic… or the past.
'Deny it and it will devour you. Make you forever a part of it.' He stood and made his way to the door. 'Face it, accept it, and it will become a part of you, inseparable.'
'What's the difference?' Bastun asked.
The old man paused, raising an eyebrow and looking sidelong at his former student. 'Your choice.'
Nightall, I376 DR, Year of theBent Blade
Wings, teeth, and a thrashing barbed tail descended in the wake of burning green eyes.
Bastun snapped his fingers, summoning a burst of light into the thing's face. It shrieked, faltering in its dive, but fell just within reach. He buried the flashing axe blade in hairless gray skin, bringing the struggling beast down to flop and bleed on the rubble.
He had but a moment to study the body before more creatures attacked, but it was enough: nearly the height of a man, emaciated and light bodied, with wings in place of arms.
'Varrangoin,' he murmured. He cast another spell, a brief emerald glow surrounding him as the fiend's skin cracked and popped, spraying acidic blood in all directions. Though it hissed and burned on the stone, the blood splashed him harmlessly.
The sound of fluttering wings filled the air, their echoes bouncing off one another in a frenzy. Beyond them lay the only escape-a gray light casting the unnatural flock of varrangoin in silhouette. Bastun's thumb found the worn scar in the staff. Closing his eyes, he felt the weight of his mask, heard the memory of his master's voice, and made a choice.
Exhaling a long breath, control and reason slid away, freeing his mind and sharpening his instincts. Opening his eyes, he was no longer vremyonni, no longer truly himself. He was merely the mask, the axe, the magic, and the crystal clear rage of the Rashemi.
Thrusting his arm at the center of the descending swarm, a bead of light flew from his fingertip. It disappeared among them. He ran across the broken stone, leading them in a circle. Arcane words poured from him, a harsh poetry of magic that blurred his form as he charged into the living mass. Crashing around him, the varrangoin swirled as an explosion rocked the tower, a ball of flame erupting within the flock. The ground shook, debris fell from the walls, and Bastun found himself in the chaos.
Broken bodies and burning blood rained down as he dived into the nearest of the varrangoin. Caustic fumes burned his nose as stone melted. The survivors rallied quickly, and still more broke free of icy prisons above.
Claws raked his arms and scraped at his mask and leather armor, but they brought the varrangoin too close. His blade slipped through their forms, hissing with the blood of one even as it slew another. Stingers struck stone where he'd been standing, claws found only air as he sidestepped. The rage consumed him, filled his body with strength and his spirit with bloodlust. He reveled in the freedom-in the rhythm between steel and magic. He shouted in their fang-filled faces, laughed as they spit streams of acid from glowing maws. His laughter became a chant and the chant became thunder.
Lightning blasted outward, leaving the twitching fiends to fall and flounder.
As the blue-white glow faded, others escaped, clinging to walls, their green eyes full of hunger and violence. Turning slowly, whispering spells through a grim smile, he watched them regroup, shrieking at one another in a fiendish tongue. They leaped from the walls from all directions. Waves of tingling energy washed over him as his stomach lurched and gravity changed direction.
He plummeted upward, the fiends screeching as they fun-neled into a flapping spiral in his wake. From a pouch, he pulled a fistful of pebbles, shaking them like bone-dice as he chanted and scattered them like seeds. The tiny rocks grew into boulder-sized chunks of rock and plunged through the tornado of leathery wings.
Emerald light filled the darkness beneath him as the fiends scattered, smashed by the falling rocks and crushed against the ruin below. Their shrieks reached beyond the stone-cold demeanor of the mask to the calm that dominated the center of his being. He stopped his freefall, drifting toward the wall and rolling on the stone before finding balance again.
Standing, his senses swam with a momentary vertigo. The tower appeared as a long tunnel, pale light behind and crawling darkness ahead. Shaking his head, he waited as the survivors, those still able to fly, rose from the chaos to find him. He couldn't let them escape-a small flock of varrangoin could become hundreds within months, thousands in a year.
Less than a dozen remained, slow in their ascent and splitting into groups. Directing each other in their odd croaking language, it seemed they were regaining their wits after such a long hibernation in the ice. Letting go, gravity turning in his gut like a giant's fist, he fell to the far wall. Two varrangoin fell to his axe, a third scoring his mask as it spun out of the way. He led the others back down, leaping from wall to wall, before changing direction and ripping through two more as he ascended.
They floundered behind him, diving beyond reach of his axe, though the unnerving sound of beating wings grew uncomfortably close. A sudden impact nearly took his breath, and he tumbled with the fiend, freefalling toward the top of the tower. The varrangoin's stinking breath burned his nose as he fought to breathe. It raked his shoulders, teeth snapping just over the handle of his axe. He growled as he fought to keep the fangs at bay, shifting the fall and pushing it toward the stone.
Just before hitting, his defense slipped and he felt the hot piercing sting of the fiend's barbed tail bite into his side. There was no time to cry out as they slammed into the stone. He managed to swing his axe as reality twisted and rolled around him. He heard the varrangoin scream and saw it falling away, one slashed wing twitching as it disappeared into darkness. He quickly rose to one knee and winced at the blinding pain in his side. Looking over his shoulder, the top of the tower lay far closer than he'd expected after the last fall.
Rising to his feet, aching joints screamed in pain as the beast's poison took hold. Spasms wracked his muscles and he struggled to hang on, to ignore the pain long enough for one more effort. Screeching in excitement, the rest of the flock drew closer, their chase almost at an end.
Breathing raggedly, he fumbled in his robes for a small clump of rose petals. He forced out the words of the spell, intoning them carefully and timing the syllables to the nearness of the varrangoin.
Just as their eyes dimmed in the light of his axe, their needle-sharp fangs glistening and long tails twitching, he tossed the petals in the air before them. The air shimmered and grew thick, slowing the creatures. They sniffed and blinked, wings beating at the air sporadically, faltering as they shook their heads, making sneezing noises. Drifting back, one by one, their glowing eyes fluttered as an arcane slumber overcame them.
Bastun wheezed as the rage left him. He lay shaking in a pain that grew by the heartbeat. He crawled, barely hearing the faint sound of bodies smashing against the rocks below. The gravity spell kept him from joining the fiends, but it would not last indefinitely.
