Jeff LaSala - The Darkwood Mask

The bright colors of Charoth’s mask turned to face Tallis again. The sleightest flick of his gloved hand loosed another bolt of blue-white lightning. Tallis jerked his body sideways and forward, whiplash sending a blossom of pain through his neck. He felt the charge in the air as the splintering bolt streamed past him.

Tallis dived to the ground and grasped his hammer. Even as he rose, he brought the mithral pick arcing through the air-

Where it cut into the back of Charoth’s hand. The jeweled wand whirled free. There was no blood, just a gash in the glove and a glimpse of gray flesh as the wizard recoiled without a sound.

Tallis stood face-to-face with his adversary, expecting a paralyzing or fiery blast of magic, but Charoth wasn’t fast enough, not by far. Tallis struck again with his hammer, feeling it pass through invisible armor and rebound off the wizard’s own chest. The resistance of the man’s breastbone was stronger than he’d expected, but he felt it crack. The blow should be beyond painful.

Charoth made not a sound. He merely stumbled back, doing his best to get away from Tallis. Was this all the feared wizard could do?

The words of Karrn the Conqueror flashed through Tallis’s mind, from The Analects of War: “Only utter destruction prevents a foe from rising again.”

Tallis spun the weapon in his grip and aimed for Charoth’s damnable face. Come, he thought, let’s see how hideous you really are.

The mithral tip of the pick clove the darkwood mask in two even pieces.

“Stop,” the withered man whispered.

Shouts and angry voices surrounded him, but the man in the glass chair couldn’t quite hear them. The world around him struggled to merge with his thoughts, but he could think of only one thing.

“Stop!” I shout. In this moment, it is the only word I know .

Sverak echoes me. The titan’s arm stops .

Lord Charoth Arkenen lies in a sickening heap before us. Blood pools beneath him, his back arched in a dreadful angle. I cannot give voice to my horror. I cannot speak at all .

“You are free, master,” Sverak says. “Free from him.” I know my assistant is speaking to me, but I cannot bear to look at him. I made him. I made this monstrosity .

My superior stirs. He may yet be saved! I reach for the wand of healing that I’d never had to use before. As one, the magewrights rush to save him. More workers appear at the edge of my vision, warforged guards with them .

Sverak now holds Lord Charoth’s wand. He waves his thin arm in the direction of the incoming guards, unleashing a bolt of lightning. The electricity arrests the first man’s movement even as it kills him, but the bolt arcs through his body to the next, then the next, then the next. I hear a woman’s scream, but it dies as quickly as she. In a single gesture, Sverak has slain five Cannith workers .

One of the warforged nears my assistant, but Sverak shrinks away and turns the wand against it. Lightning sprays from the deadly instrument. Charoth himself had fashioned that jeweled wand for his own personal protection .

Leonus, my dear nephew, lies on the floor now too. His face is twisted in pain, frozen in death .

I look at the wand in my own hand, an instrument coiled with Positive Energy, empowered to knit blood vessels together again, to repair scorched skin, to restore fading life, but destruction is easier to deliver and so much faster .

I push the screams away, not wishing to see or hear what Sverak has planned. I am aware only that the titan is moving away from the balcony, acting on Sverak’s orders. From somewhere along the central pillar of the great creation forge, there is an explosion, quieter in my mind than it really must be. Without looking up, I can sense that the titan is destroying it .

Sverak grasps my hand. His delicate, five-fingered grip is not strong, but I do not resist. I follow, stricken by guilt. I have not the courage to end this. Wherever opposition arises, Sverak strikes it down with wand or spell. In three short months, he has already learned the rudimentary spells of a wizard .

Flashes of light play across my vision. Destruction like I have never seen. The creation forge is collapsing. Errant rays stream from the birthing pods, white tongues of energy clawing the air. Positive Energy, very deadly. Used in trace amounts, it restores damaged life, like the wand in my hand. It even gives life to the inanimate, life to created materials. Like the warforged .

But in such a deluge, unguided …

What has Sverak done? What have I done?

Time means nothing. There is only muted sound. More distant screams .

The world brightens unimaginably. Like a white burning sun manifesting before me. I feel … invigorated, invulnerable. Why does immortality feel like agony?

“Master!” I hear Sverak shout. He is screaming. I have never heard him shout or sound so human. “Master Erevyn! I am sorry! I did not mean this! I will save you. I will save you!”

Sverak is concerned for my well being, but I am all right. I am impervious to all harm .

But not pain?

Sverak is carrying me now. I cannot see him, but I can sense him. He is carrying me from ruin, delivering me from death. Can I not carry myself?

“Sverak?” I say, but my voice is louder than I remember it. “Where am I?”

Wir, the 11th of Sypheros, 998 YK

The crack of electricity brought Soneste back to consciousness. She felt like she’d been stabbed in four different places, but there was no warmth or wetness of blood. In one painful instant, she remembered where she was.

She pulled herself to her feet and looked around.

Halix leaned heavily upon the glass table, struggling to free Princess Borina from her prison. Tallis leapt to avoid a bolt of lightning, which snaked out beyond the laboratory and vanished into the factory beyond.

The Karrn rose from the floor and met Charoth face-to-face. With dagger in hand-its blade still slick with Mova’s blood-Soneste circled around the table. Her body protested every step, her head throbbing.

It didn’t matter. She saw Tallis’s weapon come away on a backswing, and pieces of Charoth’s mask fell away. The wizard fell hard to the ground without a sound.

Soneste felt her blood freeze as she advanced and looked down upon the prone man. Tallis struck again, sweeping the pick across Charoth’s midsection. The wizard’s body jerked from the impact, the sharp tip of Tallis’s weapon catching on something more than flesh and bone. With effort, the Karrn pulled it free, tearing away ribbons of fine cloth.

A skull-sized head of wood and metal looked up at both of them from beneath the hood, a ghulra carved into the forehead. Two faceted eyes of dark blue stone pulsed with a weak light. The wizard’s jaw was metal, hinged at the side of his head. Where Tallis’s pick had torn away robes, Charoth’s torso lay exposed. It was wood- darkwood -banded with strips of silvery metal and engraved with eldritch symbols.

Tallis looked at Soneste, seeking an answer.

She opened her mouth, not sure what to say. If Charoth was some kind of warforged, he was the strangest she’d ever seen. His frame was skeletal enough to pass for a human body beneath thick robes.

“Sverak … where … am I?”

Soneste turned to look at the gaunt man in the glass throne. He leaned heavily upon the arm, his sunken eyes watery as he tried to blink, tried to focus.

“Master …” Charoth- Sverak , or whoever he was-struggled to sit upright. The voice sounded like Charoth’s as she’d known it, but its timbre was sharper, more metallic, lacking the resonance and volume afforded by the magical mask he’d worn.