Eric De Bie - Shadowbane

Eden stepped forward. “Well, Shadowbane-we’ve all arrived. What now?”

Muffled agreement filtered around the square, all eyes looking to him for what would come next. Kalen surveyed the gathered forces silently, noting how they all stood ready for a charge. At least they were not fighting yet, which he took as some small victory. It would not last, he knew. He held up his hand.

“Now I will speak with each of your kings,” Kalen said, projecting his voice to fill the open area. “Together, we will decide the new course of Luskan.”

Those words met with murmured agreement and a few shouted insults. Ultimately, the various leaders stepped forward. Kasi for the Shou, Eden for the Coin-Spinners, Sithe for the Dead Rats and Dustclaws. The Dogtooths and their ilk sent a hulking man with a great spear, from which hung many shriveled fingers. Finally, the patchwork corpse of the Master of the Throat lurched and lumbered toward him.

“All’s well,” Kalen murmured. “All’s-”

Instinct rose within him, but just too late. An arrow gleamed in the sun, hidden from his eyes until it thudded into his shoulder. Although he could barely feel the arrow’s sting, the impact knocked him to the ground. If he hadn’t trusted himself to move at just the right instant, it would have ended up in his heart.

Poison coated the arrow’s point. He could not feel it, but he recognized the effects of the paralytic venom on his body.

Kalen heard a cry go up and he looked to the gangs as they surged forward. That single arrow-like a flaming taper tossed into dry hay-had burnt up all his plans. Instantly the battle began.

With that, the world vanished.

When Kalen awoke, chaos surged in Luskan’s market square.

The Dogtooths crashed into the Dragonbloods, the Coin-Spinners hacked at red-kerchief marked Rats and locked blades with hulking Dustclaws, and the legions of the Throat fought against them all. Blades slashed, arrows flew, cries sounded, and blood flowed. Dust rose from a thousand stomping feet, covering everything.

A Dustclaw roared, charging in toward three Dogtooths, scattering them like mangy dogs, but a crossbow bolt stopped the brute dead in his tracks. The woman who had shot him fumbled to reload, her hand shaking. The bruiser lumbered toward her, seized the crossbow, and smashed her face with it. They fell together, wrestling in the dust.

Nearby, a hirsute woman-a Dead Rat, by her red kerchief and weasel-like features-leaped onto the back of a Bloodboot and tore off his ear with her teeth. Two zombies stumbled out of the dust and reached toward them both. The man without an ear, already terrified and in agony, ran. The woman, distracted with her new prize, didn’t see them coming until it was too late. She screamed as they pummeled her into the ground.

Kalen had thought he would have more time, but someone had betrayed him.

A tall, feminine form materialized out of the swirling dust.

“Eden,” he said, struggling to rise against the venom in his blood.

The priestess stepped toward him. She wore a huge smile. “Why Brother!” she said. “I thought for sure you’d have the sense to flee by now.”

A mountain-sized creature loomed out of the dust-the Master of the Throat. Eden turned and Kalen saw her coin flare with light. “Begone, in the Lady’s name!”

A storm of power lashed at the hulking zombie and its component corpses abruptly shattered into a dozen pieces, flinging congealed gore in every direction. Some of the muck spattered across Eden’s face and she laughed madly.

A hand touched Kalen on the shoulder-Sithe. Blood spattered the genasi, but Kalen thought none was her own. “Shadowbane,” she said.

“Sithe!” Eden said. “Burn in the Lady’s gaze!”

The priestess waved her hand and a lance of white light stabbed at Sithe, only to be deflected off her black axe. The genasi strode forward, setting her weapon whirling. As the women clashed, Kalen managed to get to his feet. He gazed around to take in the battle.

All was madness. Shou hacked at Dustclaw, Dustclaw at Dogtooth-hundreds of men and women lashed out at anything that did not wear the same colors. A Shou was cutting pieces off a Bloodboot, who howled but couldn’t manage to fight back. A Hide-Etcher drove a blade into a Blacknail’s ribs and stumbled to his next victim. The killer was in turn transfixed with a spear that nailed him to the ground.

Kalen had to stop the fighting. He had to get to the kings.

He cast about, searching. The Master of the Throat he’d seen destroyed. Sithe and Eden had vanished into the dust, fighting loudly with great bursts of power-and wild swirls of Eden’s laughter. Kasi of the Dragonbloods was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps that was for the best-the woman had every reason to want him dead, as a matter of honor.

The ground rumbled and Kalen nearly fell to his knees. The quake stirred up half a hundred shouts. Everywhere the folk of the battle paused in their enthusiastic bloodletting to look around wildly for the source of the disturbance.

A frozen hand closed around Kalen’s spine and fear settled in his bowels. He knew, in that moment, that he had been wrong in some pivotal way. Somehow, he had been mistaken and now they were all going to perish.

A great sound rose through the market-a chittering, chattering, deafening drone that made the gangs in the square cover their ears. The ground shifted and mounds began to rise, just as if some great hand were pushing upward through the burned and blistered soil. Cobblestones popped free of the dirt and skittered down the rising hills. They reminded Kalen of the sores he’d seen on victims of the Fury.

Gods. Kalen saw, too late, what was coming.

The top of one rising hill burst open, sending forth a surging flow of spiders and locusts, beetles and centipedes-all manner of horrors that crawled and devoured. Another of the hills burst, and another-each into a swarm of black, biting death.

“Flee!” Kalen cried, limping toward the nearest building. “Flee-!”

These eruptions contained no mere half-formed, stillborn pests, such as had been birthed from victims of the plague. Rather, the spiders were the size of dogs, the locusts like falcons, and the millipedes the length of a man’s arm. They looked like nothing born of this world-glowing with red and purple veins of fire, bristling with spines and fangs. The swarm was huge and it grew every greater by the heartbeat.

The vermin of Luskan came to play at the kingmaking, as though the city herself had decided to fight for her throne.

Folk screamed and ran, but the swarm fell on them, enveloping them in rivers of vermin that stung, bit, and feasted . Hornets and locusts scattered the warring gang members, stinging madly. A Dead Rat was subsumed and vanished into the dirt, his screams dying away to wet gurgles, then nothing. When the swarm passed on, only bones remained where the man had fought, seconds past.

Gang members died by the score, hacking vainly but ultimately overrun and reduced to mere bones within terrified heartbeats. Hundreds more fled, screaming.

Kalen, who had managed to climb onto a low windowsill, watched it all in horror and dawning realization: this was the plague. He had expected a single man or woman who controlled the swarms. But if the plague was a thousand ravening creatures, how could he hope to fight it?

A loud buzz sent Kalen dodging aside as a wasp the size of his head stabbed at him with a stinger the length of a belt dagger. He caught the creature by its wings and its slimy body thrashed, its abdomen working to thrust its stinger into him. Angry fire burned in its murderous, faceted eyes.

The wasp exploded away from his face, bloody chunks of carapace splattering the bricks. Her axe streaked with gore, Sithe stepped onto the windowsill at Kalen’s side.