Eric De Bie - Shadowbane

“I don’t,” she said.

Lilten shrugged. “Well, I’ve been wrong before.”

She realized it was the second time he had touched her, and that only by his own initiative. She had reached for him once before and he had pulled away. Why? Did he have memories she could absorb? Things he didn’t want known?

A dim rumble sounded in the depths and the drone they had followed for the last hour grew louder. That they heard, and the rattle of talons.

“Scour comes,” Lilten said. “Best of luck with it-and with him.”

Without further explanation, he walked away. Sithe stepped aside and let the elf disappear into the darkness. The genasi had plucked up the discarded parcel and was gazing at its contents. She nodded to Myrin and held it out.

“What the Nine Hells is going on, Kalen?” Myrin repeated.

Kalen breathed heavily and rapidly, his shoulders heaving. His mouth worked. “Not-not again,” he said. “Threefold God, no. Not again.”

What could possibly drive him so completely and suddenly mad?

“What?” Myrin asked. “What is it?”

He shook his head and pointed at the package in Sithe’s hands.

Suddenly wary, Myrin crept toward the proffered package that said “SHADOWBANE.” With trembling fingers, she peeled aside the sticky paper. Blood clung to her fingers.

Myrin drew out the contents of the parcel: the hilt and handle of Vindicator, along with a hand’s length of razor-sharp steel. Two other pieces of the beautiful blade lay beneath it. All were slathered in enough blood to drown a man. On the blade, traced out of the blood with a finger, was a single word: “WESTGATE.”

“Gods,” she said. “Rhett.”

“Not again,” Kalen murmured. “I can’t … not again …”

Sithe clutched her head. “I can feel it in my mind. I can hear it screaming-for him.”

For some reason, Myrin didn’t react the way she expected to. She should have gasped and dropped it to the floor. Her heart should be thudding in her throat, her eyes losing their focus. That was how she had heard such things described in the bards’ tales.

Yet no fear, no horror, not even simple distaste compelled her. She felt these things-indeed, they boiled up and threatened to send her weeping to her knees-but she set them aside. Instead, a pervasive cold possessed her. Above that, she was filled with a sense of what needed to be done. She saw things in clear, cold equations, and pushed emotion far, far away.

The drone of the swarm grew louder, along with the clatter of a thousand sharpened legs. Myrin could see a dull red glow down the deeper tunnel. The demon was coming for them. Sithe drew up her axe and stood ready.

“Kalen,” Myrin said.

The man pulled away from her, but she pressed forward. She clasped the sides of his face and drew his gaze to hers.

“I need you,” she said. “I understand that this is awful. We will deal with it, but we can’t deal with it now. We have to focus on what’s in front of us. Can you do that?”

“Not again.” Kalen looked toward the package. “I shouldn’t have left him. I-”

“Kalen!” Myrin snapped and his eyes met hers. “Can you do that?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“Good,” Myrin said. “I have another matter-something very, very important. And I really need you to hear me. Will you hear me?”

Kalen nodded, more vigorously this time.

Myrin cast a glance back at Sithe. “If I become infected and I lose my mind to the Fury-you have to kill me. Do you understand?”

His eyes widened. “But-”

“You have to promise,” Myrin said. “If I become a monster, you have to kill me. It has to be you. Promise me.”

“I-very well,” Kalen said. “I promise.”

“Well.” Myrin nodded grimly. “We’ll talk about the third matter later, if we live.”

“Third?” Kalen asked.

Myrin pushed herself into his arms and pressed her lips to his. Blue fire sparked as their souls sang to one another. They kissed for a long, long moment before she finally pulled away. He started to speak, but she put a finger to his lips. She drew out Lilten’s crystal sphere.

“Right,” Kalen said. “Later then.”

He drew his daggers.

How dare they .

How dare they, the three with their treading feet. Every tremble on the stone, we heard them-every breath we sensed. Did they think we would not?

Shadowbane comes .

We skitter in the deep shadows of the world. We lurk beneath the skin. We are the madness over which the world stretches. Murmur warns us, but we do not listen. We are angry. We hunger .

They are enemy. They are anathema .

Shadowbane. He is here. He exists .

They come to slay us. They three. They few. They alone .

But we are many. We are thousands. We are together-forever .

They will feed us .

Feed .

FEED!

7 FLAMERULE (NIGHT)

In that moment-just before Scour burst like a raging hurricane through the tunnel and they began fighting for their lives-everything became clear to Kalen. Seeing the sword-knowing how he had failed Rhett, just like he had failed Vaelis-had undone him. His desperate patina of control was swept away in a flow of anger such as he had not known since his days as a thief on the streets of Luskan. Anger at being scarred and doomed. Anger at letting folk he cared about die. Anger at being fooled. Anger at being hopelessly outmatched.

Now, with Myrin’s kiss, all that anger collected into one hot point and became purpose. This creature was going to fall. He swore it.

As if in response, power filled him-power such as he had never known. Myrin’s kiss lingering on his lips, he drew his daggers and ran toward the oncoming death.

With the crashing roar of a thousand voices, Scour flowed up the tunnel and into the dimly lit demon temple. It shattered open a withered door like a fleck of driftwood. The braces of the portal cracked then splinted with the force of its passage. Thousands upon thousands of nightmare beasts came at them. They only vaguely resembled what they had once been-spiders, locusts, gnashing beetles, scorpions, rats, and all things that crept through the shadows and stung or bit in the dark. They had swelled to ten times the size of their mortal kin, sprouted dozens of limbs and stingers, and burned red and black like the demon that drove them. This horrifying army surged forth, laying waste to everything in its path.

Every one of its voices screamed a single word: “FEED!”

Kalen screamed right back, a sound without words.

Blazing with divine fire, Kalen leaped before the first ones could touch him, kicked off the wall, and came down in an explosion of holy force that sent the creatures sailing in every direction. It broke the wave of the swarm like an exploding stone thrown into the water.

Before more could take their place, he sprang again, his boots sparking with magic, and somersaulted free of the swarm. Two demonbeasts flew after him, their stingers flailing. He slashed one out of the air and kicked the second back as he twisted down to land on his feet.

Sithe covered his retreat. She spun her axe and whirled forth a halo of flame that sent destruction scything through the swarm. Any of the beasts that dared to bite at her, claw at her, or even approach her were consumed in her reaving flame. Not, of course, that the swarm could avoid her-more creatures kept flowing from below, pushing their brethren into the flames.

The swarm kept coming.

Kalen landed beside Sithe and immediately lashed out with his knives, cutting down a spider that leaped at the genasi as she lashed at six of its fellows. Blood spattered them, but it was demon blood, not his or Sithe’s.