Jak Koke - The Edge of Chaos

The elixir would protect her. Gregor’s concoction would keep her alive through this. She had to trust him.

She did trust him. Didn’t she?

The last segment of her right pinkie finger spun away like a tiny fleshy mote. She watched it in silent fascination. This time there had been no pain when the churning magic had severed it from her hand. And as she looked down now, she wondered in amusement at the blood.

So unpredictable. So incomprehensible.

Screeching leather on steel filled the air, and Slanya was suddenly upside down, floating. How was it possible? It was as though the storm had picked her up and was examining her like a trapped insect before squashing her. Slanya found herself floating toward the campfire, which had grown to the size of the monastery funeral pyre. Blue mist and white fog burned gauzy sheets across her vision.

Was it her imagination or did she smell burning bodies? An intricate weave of palest blue gauze blanketed the camp, permeating all things. Slanya could not help but breathe it in-inhale disease and exhale fire.

The rational, objective part of her mind knew that this was too much exposure. Pilgrims to the changelands tried for the briefest of touches-a kiss of spellplague, an oblique lash of blue fire.

But this … this was like bathing in it. Drawing it in, spellplague permeated her whole being, and she could not run. She could not escape or withdraw. She had to endure, merely endure the choking and the disintegration.

The campfire’s yellow and red flames belched black smoke as they beckoned to her. Give in, they said. Abandon reason.

Slanya listened. Why not? She had lost, so why not embrace the changelands? Twisting in the air as she floated, Slanya danced. Whirling and spinning and throwing herself in writhing, acrobatic circles, Slanya took in the pain and the chaos. It was the true power of nature, and she could not force it to make sense. She felt her mind unhinge, and she did not care.

If Kelemvor meant for this to be her time, then she would celebrate.

Slanya watched, detached, as she reached into the fire with her maimed hand and moved the flames. Her arm lit up and with amusement she waved it around in her dance. The entire camp was ablaze in glorious yellow and red, with constellations of tiny blue electric balls unraveling pale strands throughout Slanya’s personal sky.

Abruptly, her world went dark, and Slanya felt herself falling … falling.

Was death coming?

She wondered if she should be afraid. Most people were afraid of dying.

In fact, Duvan was the only person she’d ever met who did not fear dying. Where had he gotten to?

The truth was that at this moment, Slanya had no fear. Something told her that she was ready, that she had prepared for death, and that Kelemvor would have a place for her in the City of Judgment.

Blackness and silence filled her senses until she knew no more.

Slanya!” Duvan yelled into the swirling darkness. He forced himself to sprint, back toward the campfire. Fear of what he would find clamped down on him as he ran. Swirling wind and dust pelted him with needle sharp fragments of stone. Pale blue threads lit up the night around him like ball lightning, itching at the periphery of his sight.

Duvan sped back the way he’d come. Or so he thought. It seemed to be taking too long to find the camp. The changelands were tricky and shifting. Rule number one was to never separate. He shouldn’t have left the fire.

But she had made him so angry. Nobody can understand what it was like to lose a twin like that. If he’d stayed with Talfani, maybe she’d be alive now. It was his fault that Talfani was gone.

Just as it would be his fault if something had happened to Slanya.

Duvan slowed his frantic, headlong crashing through the swirling darkness. “Slanya!” he screamed. “Slanya!”

But no answers came through the howling wind. No voices reached his ears, save the growling, mocking laughter of the storm.

Maybe I’ve lost her too, he thought. Maybe I’ve given her to the storm.

Ribbons of blue fire seared the air around him, but none touched. In the flashing, eldritch light Duvan caught sight of red embers and the square shadows of two backpacks in the blackness.

He ran toward the fire, stumbling over a dark lump. “Slanya!”

She lay motionless and silent, curled into a fetal position on the rumbling ground at his feet.

“Slanya?” he gasped. “Slanya, can you hear me?”

She said nothing in response, but he saw that her body started making gentle rocking motions. “Alive,” he breathed quietly. “Alive.”

But when he saw the web pulsing inside her like veins of blue light, he gasped. Not again, he thought. This is not happening again.

Duvan had lost one soul under his care to spellplague, and it had devastated him. It had, in fact, defined his life. And even though he knew that to be true and knew that he should move on, he could not simply shed his guilt and his responsibility. His failure had led to Talfani’s death, and now it would result in Slanya’s.

No, he told himself. No, it would not.

“Slanya,” he said, not sure if she could even hear him. “I’m going to get us out of here if I can. If we stay here you will surely die, and I won’t let that happen.”

The gentlest hint of a nod from Slanya indicated that she’d heard him. He took quick stock-she looked physically whole. There were no major wounds he could see. There was blood coming from her right pinkie finger where it had been cut at the last knuckle.

Duvan grabbed a bandage from his pack and strapped it around her finger. It would help stop the bleeding, at least. That was the only part of her condition that he had any treatment for.

Tiny, translucent blue stars of magic twinkled at hundreds of points on Slanya’s skin. But Duvan could do nothing to address it. Slanya would have to mend herself. Duvan found himself hoping that Gregor had not been lying, that his elixir would save Slanya from the funeral pyre.

He quickly assembled their things, stowing all of Slanya’s gear inside his own backpack. He would also have to carry her, he knew. They had to get out of the Plaguewrought Land before Slanya grew any worse.

“I am going to carry you,” he said. “We’re just going to the edge of the mote for now. I have to see where we are and where we’re headed.”

Duvan put his pack on backward so that it rested on his chest instead of his back, then lifted Slanya across his shoulders and stood up. She was larger than he was but weighed about the same.

The rim of the mote was no more than forty or fifty paces away, but he didn’t want to take the chance of losing Slanya. When he reached the edge, he lowered her to the ground and stared out at the maelstrom.

Their mote seemed to be caught in an ever-tightening vortex, spiraling down.

Duvan watched another mote ahead of them reach the center of the vortex and plunge down abruptly and disappear into the fabric of the land.

Time to vacate this mote, Duvan decided. But how?

He considered the glideskin in his backpack. If he’d been alone, using the glideskin might have been ideal for flying off this rock and drifting down on the gentle winds. But he wasn’t alone and the winds were far from gentle. Slanya’s weight in addition to his own would be too much for the glideskin to hold for long, even in ideal conditions. This storm was far from ideal, and falling here would mean death, or worse, surviving and landing in the Underdark.

An entire realm of vile and hostile creatures, the Under-dark could be more dangerous than the Plaguewrought Land. Duvan had heard enough from Tyrangal to know that he did not want to go there, ever. Armies of drow elves, cities of mind flayers, hungry beasts-even Tyrangal wouldn’t travel the Underdark. Duvan and Slanya would never make it back to the surface alive.