David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

Vulgnash glided toward the pair warily, like an eagle on the wing.

He could hear the wizard shouting his incantation:

Bright flows your blood.

And hale are your bones.

Your heart is no longer a heart of stone.

Light fills your eyes, and brightens your mind with longings common to all mankind.

Suddenly the wizard whirled and pointed his staff, and though Vulgnash was still a quarter of a mile away, too far to hurl a fireball, the effects of Sisel s spell were devastating.

A force smashed into him, like a powerful wave that smote him and washed through him. The blow was minor, not much greater than he d feel if a gust of wind hit him.

But in an instant, the world changed.

Vulgnash suddenly felt a powerful need for air.

In five thousand years, he had never drawn a single breath, and it was as if his body recognized this fact, and filled him with a singular craving.

At the same time, he was assailed by a consuming hunger. He had never eaten as humans do. He had always drawn his life force from others when the need arose. But instantly he realized that his belly seemed to be clinging to his backbone.

More than that, there was a tremendous pounding in his chest as his heart burst into motion, and every sense came alive. He felt warm wind streaming through his hair, and every follicle of it was alive. For the first time he tasted the smell of the earth-the rich humus of the forest nearby and the drying grasses of the fields below.

His own robes held the cloying scent of death, of decaying flesh, and he d never recognized his own reek.

A tremendous thirst overtook him, for he had never tasted water, and suddenly the mucus in his throat seemed drier than sand.

In shock, Vulgnash peered ahead and saw that the spell had cost the Wizard Sisel dearly. Where once his robes had been russet and burnt umber, the colors of dying leaves, suddenly they had gone as white as snow, while his beard and hair had turned to silver.

He now leaned on his staff, gasping, as if he had just run a tremendous race.

The pain that Vulgnash felt was more than he could bear. Vulgnash wailed in torment and lobbed the fireball from his hand, sent it careering toward the wizard. But he had thrown too soon. The fireball raced forward a hundred yards, then began to expand, growing larger and larger, and slowing with every second. By the time it reached the trees, it had become nothing more than a cloud of burning gas, and the wizard turned and fled, disappearing from sight.

Vulgnash went wheeling down to the earth, slamming into a tree, then falling in a tangle.

He hit the ground, and such an overwhelming feeling of illness coursed through him that he was reeling with pain.

I m alive! he realized. I m mortal.

He climbed to his knees and peered at his hands, as if he d never seen them before. There were holes in his arm where maggots had burrowed into his flesh, and everywhere that he had a hole, the pain was white-hot and magnificent.

Lying on his belly, Vulgnash collapsed among the dead leaves on the forest floor, smelling the rot of decomposing humus, the scent of mold and soil.

Blood had begun to flow from the wormholes in his arms, welling up unexpectedly.

Vulgnash folded his arms in close, and sat for a moment, rocking back and forth, mind racing.

I m mortal, he realized. I m undone.

His heart hammered with excitement; emotions that he d never felt before assailed him-dread, hopelessness, fatigue. He d never realized how powerful and incapacitating human emotions could be.

I m mortal.

It was like a slow poison.

I might live for a few years, he realized, but I will surely die.

In fact, he wasn t sure that he could live even a few hours more.

How old am I? he wondered. He had existed for five thousand years, given a semblance of life from the time that he was a stillborn child, strangled first, then stripped from his mother s womb.

No human lived so long, and indeed he had sent his consciousness through hundreds of corpses.

So if he had suffered a mortal s fate, he would have died of old age by now.

How old is the body I ve taken?

He did not know. He had taken the corpse from a tomb, where it had lain rotting. The hands looked old-with thick veins and dark patches of liver spots.

How had it died? Vulgnash wondered. There were no wounds upon the corpse, no gashes from an ax, no broken bones. Vulgnash had checked for such things before taking it.

Had it died of disease-a hacking cough, a weakness of the heart?

He had no way of knowing.

Whatever killed the previous owner could kill me, Vulgnash realized. I could die any second.

Few weapons had ever been formed that could slay a Knight Eternal. Now Vulgnash felt vulnerable.

A voice rang out from the trees. Vulgnash peered up, but could not find the source of it. It was as if the woods spoke to him, not some man. Yet it was a human voice, the crowing voice of the Wizard Sisel. "Vulgnash," he shouted. "How does it feel to be mortal?"

"Why?" Vulgnash screamed, peering this way and that, trying to find the source of the call. But all that he saw were the gray boles of trees, spotted with lichens and moss.

"You have taken countless lives," Sisel called. "And the thought occurred to me-how can he value that which he has never owned?"

Vulgnash tried to clear the phlegm from his throat, for it was thick and crusty. He wanted to shout some curse, but a great weariness was on him. He had not slept in days.

"So," Sisel said, "consider now your allegiance. You were a servant of death. Your masters fed you till you grew strong by consuming innocent souls.

"But think: there in that empire of death, what can they offer you now?

"I invite you to join us, to switch your allegiance. I can heal your wounds, help you."

There were no words to express Vulgnash s outrage. He knew curses that he could hurl, but they would do no good. He peered about frantically, searching for some sign of the wizard, but the woods were still and empty.

He peered up, realizing that the voice might have been coming from above.

At last, panting from weakness and despair, Vulgnash roared his defiance. "Never!" he cried. "I come for you, by all that is unholy I shall have you!"

Cramped with pain, Fallion Orden hugged Rhianna good-bye. They stood in the deep woods not two hundred yards from where Vulgnash roared, hidden by little more than the Wizard Sisel s spell. Behind Rhianna, a door to the netherworld yawned wide.

It was a solemn moment. Fallion did not know if he would ever see his friends again.

For her part, Rhianna stood before him, shaking, looking so weak that he thought she might swoon. All of her endowments had failed her. None gave her the strength for this moment.

"I love you," she said. "More than you can ever know."

Fallion hugged her hard. His body told him that he was being torn apart-that teeth were shattering in his head, that ears were being stripped into ragged bits, that skin was being pulled from his face by some brute who wielded powerful tongs.

But he also felt Rhianna s yielding flesh, and knew that her fierce love was true. That memory would have to suffice. It would have to be something he held on to in the weeks and years to come.

"I should have married you by now," Fallion told her. "I should never have waited, or entertained other thoughts. I should have seen that you were my destiny."

Rhianna wept bitter tears on his shoulder, and kissed him good-bye. It did not seem like a long kiss. Had she had a week to hold him, it could not have been long enough.

She has twenty endowments of metabolism, he realized. To her it seems long enough.

Grimacing in pain, Rhianna reached up and covered her belly with one hand.