Marsheila Rockwell - Skein of Shadows

As the chunk of bloody flesh fell to the floor with a wet plop, the black Khyber shard still twinkling in its midst, Brannan stepped back with a growl and his humanity fell away, revealing the feline features of a tiger standing on two feet, dagger held in a clawed hand whose palm faced outward instead of in.

Brannan ir’Kethras was a rakshasa, an ancient servitor of the demons bound below Khyber long ago by the dragons of Prophecy.

“Not Brannan. Shakvar,” the fiend snarled, lunging again.

Sabira twisted out of the way, forgoing a riposte as she moved into position on one side of the rakshasa, allowing Elix to step up on the other, broadsword in his hand.

Shakvar laughed, and suddenly Elix stiffened, a look of grief and terror on his handsome face.

“The richest wine cannot compare to the taste of a mortal’s fear,” the rakshasa purred, his feline mouth splitting into an evil grin made even more demonic by the ruined half of his face. “And the best part is, when he recovers from the illusion of watching you die, he’ll get to experience the real thing.”

Sabira stabbed at him with the spear end of her urgrosh, hoping the dragonshard would have the same effect on the fiend as it had had on Tilde. His backward hand closed around the sharpened crystal and pulled her close as he stabbed out at her with the dagger in his other claw. As he did, she noticed the color of the fur on his wrist didn’t quite match that on his hand and she suddenly knew why he’d been so interested in the gnoll’s paw back at Zawabi’s Refuge. Then his blade caught her in the shoulder and bit deep. Shakvar twisted it back and forth, laughing.

His laughter was cut short as a thrum sounded behind him and the head of a crossbow bolt protruded suddenly from the arm that held the shard axe. He dropped his hold and yanked the dagger from Sabira’s shoulder, turning. As she stumbled backward, she saw Greddark leaning against the door jamb, crossbow hanging down from his good hand and blood seeping from a knife wound in his chest. He took a step forward, trying to raise the crossbow again, but it slipped from his weakened grasp to clatter across the floor. Then Greddark followed, falling to his knees and then forward onto his face, his hand outstretched, reaching for Sabira. Then he shuddered once and lay still.

Shakvar snorted and tore the quarrel from his arm, tossing it aside. He turned back to face her and Sabira could only watch in horror as the wound sealed, striped fur closing over it as if it had never been. A quick glance at his face showed that even the wound from her own enchanted urgrosh was beginning to heal over, though much more slowly.

Shakvar saw the look on her face and sneered.

“Your petty weapons can’t hurt me,” he crowed. “You might as well-”

The rakshasa’s gloating cut off abruptly as Elix appeared, Greddark’s blow having disrupted the fiend’s illusions long enough for the dark-haired Marshal to break free of them. He lunged forward and suddenly there were three rakshasas facing him, all laughing scornfully.

Elix didn’t waver, thrusting the length of his cold steel into the Shakvar in the center, the one who’d first taken the dwarf’s quarrel in his shoulder, though none of the three showed any trace of that wound now.

It was a mistake. Though Sabira would have made the same choice, from where she stood, she could see what Elix couldn’t-dust motes dancing in the wan light of the everbright lanterns, disturbed by the movement of the rakshasa on the right and not by the other two.

Not by Elix’s target.

She didn’t stop to think. As Elix’s blade slid ineffectually through nothing, Sabira darted forward, not even having enough time to raise her urgrosh in defense, intent only on coming between him and the claws heading for his unprotected throat.

Shakvar’s razorlike talons caught her in the same shoulder he’d skewered, gouging out chunks of flesh as she tried belatedly to bring her shard axe up to block.

Sabira cried out in agony, and in relief. She knew that the blow that had all but left her arm useless would have torn Elix’s head from his body, and that realization nearly buckled her knees beneath her.

She’d almost lost him, like Ned and Orin and all the others. Almost had her worst nightmare made real, and all without telling him how she really felt.

As a regret deeper than grief and more painful than any physical torment she’d ever experienced coursed through her, she cried out again, this time in fear. Fear that she’d never get to tell him what he most needed to know. What she most needed to say-out loud-to him, to herself, and to the world.

“Elix! Ye-”

She was interrupted by a bark of laughter.

“Oh, now that is delicious,” Shakvar crooned, his feline grin marred by the exposed jawbone, which even now was regaining flesh, muscle, and fur. “Your fear is even sweeter than his. As your despair will be also.” His smile widened. “He can’t hear you. He’ll never know. I’ll make sure of that.”

Sabira risked a glance from the smirking rakshasa over to where Elix stood, once again transfixed by Shakvar’s phantom images.

The rakshasa laughed again, and Sabira did indeed feel a rush of despair as she realized she couldn’t hurt him. He would kill her, and Elix. He would release the Spinner, and whatever destruction Tilde might have wrought would pale in comparison to the devastation She left in her wake.

She looked at Elix, frozen, tears rolling down his face as unimaginable horrors unfolded before his eyes. She looked at Greddark, unconscious and maybe dead, sprawled out on the floor, his gold bracelet shining in the light of the everbright lanterns. And then she looked back at Shakvar, smiling his smug, inhuman smile at her.

“Giving up so soon? I’d expected more from the vaunted Shard Axe, the precious Daughter of Stone and Sentinel.” He gave a small, unconcerned shrug. “But, then, I suppose you’re in a hurry to give your pitiful life its only true measure of significance.”

To Dolurrh with that. She might not be able to save Eberron, or Elix, or even herself, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

With a growl to match his, she reversed her hold on the urgrosh and charged, swinging as she came.

It was a wild blow, born of fury and futility, and she knew she’d never land it even as she brought the axe-head down. Shakvar didn’t even bother to move, pivoting on one clawed foot to avoid the too-wide swing and plunging his dagger under her ribs and up into her lung as she rushed by. He stood back as she stumbled forward and fell, collapsing to one knee on the floor near Greddark. She dropped the shard axe and grabbed her injured side with her hand.

And with her other, she reached out and snatched a certain silver charm off the dwarf’s golden bracelet, feeling it grow in her grasp. She thumbed a switch on the slender rod, then broke it off so it couldn’t be moved back. Then, rolling to the side, she threw.

The wand caught the surprised rakshasa in the chest and he fumbled to grab it with his backward hand. As his claws closed around it, he triggered the sensitive mechanism, and with a flash of colorless light, he was gone.

In the silence that came after, she heard a small gasp, and then Elix was kneeling at her side.

“Saba…,” he moaned, the nightmares of his visions coming to life before his eyes.

“Healing potions…,” she reminded him through gritted teeth. “In the back…”

He was gone and back again in moments, holding her gently in his arms as he poured a thick, sweet concoction down her throat.

Warmth coursed through her, starting in her belly, then spreading to her shoulder and out to every abused extremity. A soothing drowsiness descended on her and she moved in Elix’s arms, trying to get closer to him.