Paul Kemp: The Hammer and the Blade

They flew on in dour silence, chasing the sun, chasing the sisters, heading to the center of the binding cross, to the glass sea, where sat the prison of Abrak-Thyss.

Nix stayed as high as he was able, hoping thereby to avoid the swarms of fiendish, bat-like creatures that patrolled the night skies of the Wastes.

They eyed the air ahead, looking for the sylph and its cargo, their speed westward stretching the day's length. Frustratingly, they saw nothing. After a couple hours in the air, Nix felt his body tingle. He knew what it meant. He tried to curse, but the beak allowed only an angry squawk. He angled downward for the earth. The tingling increased and his body started to shift back, the magic unable to maintain such a foreign form for long. Egil followed him down and they alit on the rockscape of the Wastes as their bodies painfully reverted back to their normal form.

"Shite!" Nix shouted.

Egil held out his arms, checking his form, his gear. "What? Change us back. You still have the wand."

"I need to touch the thing into which I change us, Egil. You see any gulls about?"

"Shite," Egil said. He started to say something else but Nix held up his hand.

"Don't! Don't!"

"Damned gewgaws," Egil said with a grin.

"Fak you."

"I jest because this problem is easily solved," Egil said. "We find a flock of those winged things we encountered before. Touch one of those. Change, and continue the pursuit."

"You call that easy? A flock of those nearly killed us all."

"Aye," Egil said. "You have a better idea?"

"No. Let's go find some. Wait…"

"Wait what?"

Nix checked his body, saw that the cut in his stomach was healed, most of his burns. "My wounds seem healed. Reconstituting after the transmutation must help the body heal."

"I take back what I said about your gewgaws," Egil said.

With that, they readied weapons and stalked off. The sun stared at them, red and orange, just hanging on over the horizon. The both knew that nightfall would bring the Thin Veil, and the Thin Veil promised horror.

"The roads here aren't roads," Nix said to Egil, making conversation to distract himself. "They're the lines of a binding cross. I could see it from the air."

Egil stared at him. "So what does that mean?"

Nix made a helpless gesture. "I don't know."

"Bah. Then stop worrying about it. It's ancient. Whatever happened here happened long ago. Ponder it when we next sit at the Altar of Gadd in the Slick Tunnel, yeah?"

Nix nodded slowly, letting go of the problem. He appreciated his friend's pragmatism.

"Aye. Let's find a hole and get airborne."

They kept their eyes open for Vwynn, but saw none, saw nothing but the cursed red earth of the Wastes. After about a half-hour, they located a likely hole in the ground. The soft mound around the lip of the hole, bones and bonemeal, was spongy under their boots. Warm air emanated from the aperture, carrying with it a fetid, organic stink. Nix could hear distant rustling, a faint squeaking.

They looked west, where the sun was about to fade under the horizon. Nix held the wand in one hand, his hand axe in the other. Egil had shed his cloak and held it in one hand. The priest looked to Nix.

"We grab the first one we can, before the whole swarm gets clear," Nix said. "We change and we get the Hells clear."

"Aye, that," Egil said. "Try not to get carried off this time."

"I'll do what I can."

The priest cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted down the hole. Squeaks and intense rustling sounded from deeper down in the hole. Nix had the eerie sensation of the entire earth shifting below his feet.

"Ready, now," Nix said, tensing.

They could hear the creatures moving, shrieking, but none emerged from the hole. Egil, holding his cloak at the ready, looked over at Nix with raised eyebrows. Nix shrugged, leaned over the hole. Lots of movement somewhere below, but nothing coming up.

Suddenly the swarm burst from the earth ten paces to their left, a dark cloud of flapping wings, scales, and fanged mouths. A cacophony of their angry shrieks polluted the air. The cloud of the flock turned and wheeled toward them.

"Shite!" Nix said. "There, Egil!"

With nothing else for it, Egil and Nix ran straight toward them. Immediately Nix was swimming in an ocean of wings, shrieks, claws, and teeth. The creatures ripped clothing and flesh, tearing holes in Nix's skin, drawing blood. Nix flailed frenetically at the creatures, threw one to the ground, stomped it, struck another from before his eyes, took another by the throat and held it before him. He drew the wand and spoke a word in the Mages' Tongue. The wand warmed, the golden tip glowed, and he moved to touch the creature he held, but another of the creatures, perhaps drawn by the light, snatched the wand from his hand.

"The wand!" Nix screamed, lunging after the creature. But the weight of the creatures that clung to him proved too much and his leap turned into a stumbling fall. He crushed a few rolling on the rock, but dozens more took their place and tore at any exposed skin. He rose to all fours, trying to spot the one that had taken the wand.

Egil, covered in the creatures and bleeding all over, dove after the winged fiend bearing the wand, his cloak spread wide like a scoop. The priest enveloped the creature, hit the ground in a roll, his body crushing half a dozen of the creatures, and rose, soaked in his blood and theirs. His cloak, looped into a bag, bounced about from the movement of the creature's he'd caught.

"Here, Nix!"

Scores of the creatures swarmed them. Nix climbed to all fours, the creatures tearing at his flesh. He could barely see, so thickly they flew before his face. He stood, flailed through a fog of them.

"Keep talking!"

"Here, over here, here," Egil said.

Nix grunted against the pain, killed the creatures where he could, and kept moving. He took care only to protect his eyes. Egil met him halfway and Nix stuck his hand into the priest's makeshift bag. He felt the wand and pulled it free, taking a bite on the hand from one of the captive creatures. He touched the wand's end to one of them and, without hesitating, touched the glowing end first to Egil then to himself. When his skin started to tingle, the magic taking hold, the swarm of creatures shrieked and fled off, perhaps sensing the unfolding magic.

Bleeding, gasping, the two of them stared at one another as their human forms sloughed away and they transformed into creatures small, scaled, and winged.

Nix's vision was not normal, nor sharp-eyed like the gull's form, but was instead a field of reds, oranges, yellows, blues, and blacks, and it took him a moment to realize that he was "seeing" temperature differences. He adjusted to the new sense as best he could, shrieked at Egil, and took wing to the west. He hoped the magic would last long enough to get them to the sea of glass.

Of course, he wasn't sure what they'd do if they caught up with the sylph. They'd be stuck in the form of the scaled, winged creatures. Nix supposed he could annoy them to death with his shriek.

Anticipating Egil's commentary, he rebuked himself.

Damned gewgaw s, he thought.

The sylph bore Rakon and his sisters west, back over the cracked earth of the Wastes, knifing through the sky at speed. Rakon stood in the center of the sylph's swirl, supported by an invisible pillow of air.

Winds howled and gusted all around him, the sylph ecstatic in its joyous, rapid flight. Rakon, too, was exultant. He held the Horn of Alyyk in his hands. Made by Abn Thuset, a note blown from the horn was said to break the strongest of binding wards.

Perhaps Abn Thuset had intended to use it on the great ward of the Wastes, as a way to unleash the Vwynn on Afirion enemies. Perhaps the wizard-king had used it to free the creatures bound in the Wastes from time to time.