James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

Only Kri seemed unchanged from his new perspective. He remained a thing of madness and nightmare, an intrusion into this reality from somewhere else. He reached a slimy tendril out past an eladrin globule and dipped it into one of the circles of Albanon’s power and siphoned off some of his magic, turning it into a blast of fire that leaped at him and washed over hounds and eladrin in its path.

Albanon had no hand to raise in warding, no mouth to give voice to a spell that might counter Kri’s attack, no mind to channel his magic at all-but he had will, somehow, some ability to desire and to effect that desire. And the slightest exertion of that will caused a whirling circle of magic to flare into life as the fire crossed it. The fire dissolved back into the magic that made it, reabsorbed it into Albanon’s own power.

“That’s not possible,” Kri said. “Your mind should be broken by now, your power shattered.”

Shaping his will into pure defiance, Albanon reined in his mad perceptions and reshaped his sense of reality, forcing his mind to see stone and eladrin and hound and Albanon again in place of the abstractions he had created. One more figure emerged from the Vast Gate, a tiny dragon-Splendid! The dragonet swooped in and perched atop the gate, surveying the scene.

With a jolt like an arrested fall, Albanon began to think again, and suddenly he realized what Kri’s weaving tentacles were accomplishing-more than fending off attacks and tangling footsteps, they were feeding , sipping from each glowing orb of life and magic, the soul and power of each eladrin and hound arrayed against him. The more opponents he faced, the stronger Kri became.

So Kri had been right. Albanon had summoned Immeral and his hunt to their doom, because their presence only made Kri stronger. Unless …

Albanon loosed his grip on his thoughts just slightly, let them wander where they had begun to stray earlier, and let his mind fill with seemingly random patterns-the branching and weaving of Kri’s shadowy tendrils. He sank back against the wall as dizziness overcame him, but he saw the patterns, like looking down onto a network of streams and rivulets flowing into a river and feeding the sea. Seeing, he understood, and his understanding gave him power.

An eldritch word, an effort of will, and the focus to keep the patterns and equations fixed in his mind cut off the flow of energy. A second word reversed it, and the backlash was so enormous that every other creature in the room-eladrin and hound and dragonet alike-was hurled away from Kri and sent sprawling to the floor. Albanon screamed a third word to moderate the flow, but it was too late. His allies were reeling from the sudden influx of energy, energy that carried some taint of Kri’s madness with it.

Albanon’s own mind was nearly overwhelmed by the power flowing into him from Kri, and his perceptions fluctuated back and forth between normal vision and the mad abstractions of crystal, flesh, and magic. His thoughts were a flow of formulas and patterns that sometimes seemed like a stream circling the quivering orb of his flesh. In a way, the mad view of things was helpful, because he could separate himself from that flow of thoughts-it became a resource he could draw upon, instead of a torrent that overwhelmed him.

What his eyes showed him only served to create a current of fear that churned the stream of his thoughts. Kri had erupted in fury at the loss of so much power, and he retained enough might to wreak havoc among the hounds and hunters surrounding him. Three hounds and a huntsman lay dead or dying on the floor, blood pooling around them. Kri was pulling the slimy tentacles back to himself, trying to contain the leakage of his power, and lashing out all around him with bolts and blasts of dark energy and thundering booms.

Power spun around Albanon in ever-widening circles of blinding light, fueled by the energy he’d stolen from Kri, the touch of his dark god. He drew a deep breath and watched the eddies of air and magic around him as he stilled his thoughts, he dipped his mind into the current of patterns and numbers, and he spoke a string of arcane syllables. All the fury of a summer thunderstorm erupted around Kri-lightning crackled over his skin, thunder buffeted him from every side, and wind whipped around him with a furious howl.

To Albanon’s mad-sight, Kri seemed to diminish, to get smaller without changing in any other regard. His eyes saw flesh scorched and torn, inky tendrils dissolved into smears of residue on the stone.

Kri’s hand fell on the archway of the Vast Gate, and Albanon’s heart pounded a warning. The image within the archway flickered and changed-the texture of the hole changed in his mad-sight, in a way that defied description-and then Kri slid through the portal.

No no no, Albanon thought, a beat of denial in the river of his consciousness. He stretched out a hand and extended his will, trying to pull Kri back through the gate, but his magic couldn’t reach through to whatever world Kri had entered.

But Kri was not all the way through. Tentacles coiled around the crystalline archway as his body hung suspended on the other side of the gate. His face was contorted with hideous effort, as if his physical exertion was keeping him from passing fully through the portal. A loud crack signaled the fracture of the arch, and the Vast Gate went blank.

Kri was gone, carried off to some other place, and the Vast Gate was just a dead archway, a door to nowhere standing in the midst of Moorin’s tower. Albanon stood before the arch, staring through it to the blank stone floor and walls beyond.

“Where did he go?” Immeral said, appearing at Albanon’s side, the Elven words flowing like a clear stream from his tongue.

Albanon shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

“To the Feywild?”

“I don’t think so. He changed the focus of the gate before he passed through it, and it was still changing as he hung there.”

Albanon turned around and surveyed the wreckage of the room. It seemed strangely normal, after the madness of the past hours-quiet and stable and sane, just a room in a tower in a perfectly normal town.

The other eladrin were tending to the dead, and even the hounds stood solemnly in a vigil for their lost pack mates.

“It appears another journey to Moonstair is in my future,” Immeral said. “And with a rather larger entourage this time.”

“Not as large as the one you brought with you, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”

“The riders of the hunt know the danger they face. Eshravar died bravely.”

“I’m grateful for your aid, Immeral.”

The huntmaster bowed. “I am at your service, my prince.”

Albanon smiled. “In that case,” he said, “I have one more request before you ride for Moonstair.”

Roghar’s army reached the bottom of the bluffs without further incident. Once they were off the narrow trail, they could spread out more, sweeping like a wave through the streets of Lowtown. Almost immediately, a group of three fiery demons appeared, and just as quickly scattered before the combined fury of Roghar and his soldiers. One demon was badly wounded, perhaps mortally, but mostly it seemed they lacked the will to make a stand and hold their territory.

“They’re pulling back,” he said to Tempest and Uldane. “Or circling around to attack where we’re weaker.”

“They’ll pick off stragglers,” Tempest said. “You should tell them to stay close together.”

A rumble of thunder drew Roghar’s attention to the sky, but the dawn was driving the clouds back. The noise, he realized, came from Hightown. A flash of fire or lightning caught his eye, and he found himself staring at a familiar tower perched near the edge of the bluff. Moorin’s tower.