Eric De Bie - Shadowbane

“Myrin!” Kalen shouted. “Spells!”

Brilliant light flashed, as of the rising sun. A cloud of spiraling, glittering sparks showered among the swarm, sending hundreds of creatures shrieking wildly into burning oblivion. Those who survived turned on their fellows dazedly, scrabbling at one another with fang and claw.

The creatures gushed from the tunnel, filling the chamber with gnashing, roaring bodies. The pestilence flowed around Sithe, even as she lashed out at it. She stood among an enormous circle of dead, growling in challenge.

The swarm kept coming.

“Fight on!” Kalen cut a demon spider down with a swipe of his blades.

“Down!” came a cry.

Sithe thrust out an arm and hauled Kalen to the floor, just as a scything blade of flame shot over them and tore into the horde. Creatures died by the scores as the fire slashed through them, then bounced off the far wall with a roaring clang and spun another rending path through Scour. Kalen saw it spinning toward them and kicked Sithe aside just as it cut through where they had lain together.

“Gods!” Kalen shouted to Myrin. “Look where you aim-” He trailed off. “Gods.”

Myrin hadn’t been hesitating in those first moments. Rather, she’d spent that time layering spells on herself. Now she floated a hand’s length off the ground, blue flame flowing around her rune-covered limbs. Bolts of magical force flashed from her seemingly without direction to strike at lunging beasts. Her hands worked independently, sending blasts of thunder or flame to strike as many as possibly at once. With every spell she cast, a new blue rune appeared on her skin. Her orb floated on its own in front of her face-the cloud within had erupted into a great storm.

He was able to steal only a glance at Myrin before he was slashing and thrusting and stomping with all the force he could muster.

“Do you see it?” Sithe asked as she cut a swath through the horde with a burst of dark force. “Do you see what I have seen in her?”

Kalen let a smile slip across his mouth. “I think I always did,” he said.

The swarm squealed in anger and-Kalen thought-fear. It withdrew, leaving them hacking already wounded stragglers, or else at the empty air. The swarm dispersed into a hundred smaller packs of creatures and backed up against the walls, as though considering whether to press the attack.

“So it fears,” Sithe said.

“If it fears,” Kalen said, “then it can die.”

The swarm drew in on itself, the composite creatures scrambling on one another and climbing onto the wall. Some clung to the ceiling, folding their wings on themselves; others spread acid-bedewed wings as though testing them for the first time. Stingers and claws clicked and made ready.

“What is it doing?” Myrin called from the center of her magical storm.

“Down!” Kalen shouted.

The swarm burst toward them like a great hammering hand. Kalen threw himself wide enough that it struck him only a glancing blow. Still, it sent him flying. Sithe was not so fortunate. The fist of Scour struck the genasi full force, burying her under a thousand biting, tearing creatures. He heard her screaming, a sound that filled him with dread.

“Sithe!” Myrin unleashed flame in a vast arc like dragon’s breath. Hundreds died, but the swarm as a whole merely turned its attention on her. An arm of creatures swept her aside like a doll. Only her shield of fire kept them from devouring her in that instant.

With a roar of helpless anger, Kalen rolled away from the swarm, but a huge crimson spider-thing lunged on him like a pouncing cat. Mandibles clicked at his face, tearing his cheek, and he buried one of his daggers in the soft spot between its head and body. The blade struck in the spider’s carapace, however. When he kicked the corpse away, he lost one of his weapons.

No matter.

He rolled to a halt against a pile of the charred beasts and pushed himself to one knee. His cloak flowed over him, casting him in shadow. Blood dripping from his cut-open face, he surveyed the battle with a quick glance, back and forth.

The swarm coalesced in the center of the chamber, a seething hive of black bodies with crimson talons and stingers. Nearby, Sithe flailed among the biting, rending hordes, screaming as they scrabbled at her. Her armor-her dark faith-had vanished from around her. Kalen realized he was not seeing Sithe, but rather the woman she was underneath-a real woman, beneath the armor of hate and loss. Her axe lay fallen at her side and she beat at the creatures with her hands and feet.

“Sithe!” he shouted, drawing the swarm’s attention. “Flee!”

She looked up at him, her black eyes swimming.

“Get out of there, Sithe!” Kalen said.

The genasi nodded sharply and shut her eyes. A scream wrenched itself from her lips, then abruptly-with a great suction of air-she vanished, taking dozens of the creatures with her. Gone.

Kalen looked desperately around. “Myrin!”

“Kalen!” A cry issued from-he realized with a chill-the middle of the swarm.

He could see her now, a flicker of blue at the heart of the horde of demon creatures. Her fiery shield was holding, but it no longer consumed the creatures. They had adapted, however that was possible. Now it was simply a matter of cracking her shell. To that end they piled on one another like bees, stinging with their barbs and hammering with their talons. Kalen could barely glimpse Myrin at the center of the flaming shield-she was screaming.

“No more,” he said. “No more!”

He looked down at the dagger in his hand. Such a little thing, that shard of steel, though it had killed scores of these accursed things. It was not the weapon of a proper warrior, but then, he was no such man either. He was the hand of vengeance.

Gray flames sprung from the dagger and he ran at the swarm.

The beasts, preoccupied with their magically warded quarry, began to turn. He kicked off the floor, his boots glowing with blue fire, and with a roar, he plunged his dagger into the heart of the swarm.

Fire exploded from his blade, coating the monsters in liquid flame. Caught in his own blast, Kalen tumbled back, disarmed and burning. The fire spread to nearby demon-spawn, dancing like a voracious thing that lived only to eat.

“The fire exists to consume,” Sithe had said. “It has no other purpose.”

Much of the swarm fell away from Myrin, retreating back toward the deeper tunnel. Kalen could see her through the teeming cloud of death, kneeling in the middle of her sphere of flame and he caught his breath. Runes coated her from fingers to shoulder, from shoulder to hip, from hip to toe. Her face was alive with a blue glow, and her eyes pulsed with darkness.

“Away!” Myrin cried in a voice not quite her own. “Away!”

The orb floating before her turned jet black.

“Myr-” Kalen started.

Darkness roared outward, sending demonic beasts flying. Kalen was thrown away as the chamber went absolutely black.

After a heartbeat, Kalen realized the blackness must not be death. He determined this because, if it was death, then death hurt more than he had expected and he had expected pain .

First, he was on fire, but he put that out without much difficulty.

Also, he heard the scuttling of fiendish creatures, so he knew Scour yet lived. How hurt it was, he could not say, but he knew that lying there offered an invitation to strip him to bones. He had to move. Where, though?

“Feed,” he thought he heard a voice whisper. But perhaps he had imagined it.

“Myrin,” he whispered. He reached out with his spellscar to sense her, but he found nothing. “Are you-?”

A blue circle appeared in the air, half a dozen paces from him-Myrin’s orb, floating of its own accord. It shed a soft light, more like a guiding beacon than a torch. He managed one knee but not the other-his left leg wasn’t obeying his commands. Using his other limbs, he crawled through the darkened chamber toward the orb.