Lisa Smedman - Realms of Shadow

Men, women, and even a few children walked and played contentedly amidst the waving grass. Among them, he saw Jennah.

He had forgotten too how radiant her hair looked in the sunlight. Dressed in a white gown and smiling, she looked as beautiful as a sunset over a calm sea. Tears flowed freely down his face. He leaned forward, reached his hand through the portal, and called to her. "Jennah! Jennah!"

She gave a start, looked around in surprise. "Zoss? Is that you?"

"Yes, dearest! Yes. It's me. I'm here. Here." He waved his hand.

She looked in his direction, must have spotted him through the portal on that side, and ran toward him. She reached out to hold his hand. Her spiritual flesh passed through his hand.

"I've come to bring you home, dearest. Come through."

Her smile faded and she backed off a step.

"Zoss, I am home." She smiled and twirled about, arms above her head. "Look at the sun, Zoss. The flowers." She met his gaze through the portal, her eyes troubled but determined. "It's dark where you are. I'm not coming back."

The finality in her voice bit Zoss like a punch in the stomach. He could not breathe. He knew then that the resistance to his prior attempts to bring her back from the dead had not been the result of planar mechanics; it had been her. She had not wanted to come back.

"But…"

"I'm sorry, Zoss," she said softly, and brushed his fingers. "I miss you, but I can't live in the dark. You'll come here in your time. I love you still."

She smiled softly, but turned to leave.

Despite it all, Zossimus could not blame her. Seeing the sun, seeing the smiling faces of the spirits, the flowers, all of it reminded him of how empty his life had become. How dark, how muted, how colorless. He could not ask her to live in shadows. She belonged in the light.

As she walked away, he made up his mind. Instead of him bringing her back to life, she would bring him back.

"Wait. Jennah!"

She turned. "Zoss, I can't-"

"I know. I'm coming with you."

With a mental command, he released Ascalagon from the spell.

The dragon roared with pent up rage. Pleeancis shrieked. Ascalagon's head snapped down, jaws wide.

The instant Ascalagon's fangs began to rend his flesh, Zossimus's spirit departed his body and darted through the closing portal. When he reached the other side, the sun stung his eyes, but he smiled nevertheless. Now a spirit himself, he took Jennah in his arms and threw her into the air. She laughed like a schoolgirl.

They kissed, then ran off amidst the flowers, under the golden light of the sun.

The dragon must have heard Pleeancis's scream as it devoured the Boss. Ascalagon snapped his head in Pleeancis's direction. Bloody tatters of the Boss's body leaked from between his fangs.

Pleeancis gave the dragon one final obscene gesture and teleported away.

Back at the manor, the quasit stood in the Boss's bedroom and kicked at the ground.

"Damnable lizard. I should've stabbed you in both eyes."

But he hadn't, and now the Boss was gone. The manor felt emptier than ever. Pleeancis thought of all the good times he had once had with the Boss. The memories made his stomach feel funny. Tight. His head hurt too, and… what was this wetness on his face?

"Stupid love," he said, and curled up on the carpet to weep.

Darksword

Troy Denning

20 Flamerule, the Year of the Moat (1269DR)

Lost on the Road Across the Bottomless Bogs

Out of the fog ahead came mist-muffled voices, many of them and not far off, mothers singing, children crying, fathers shouting… oxen bellowing, hoarse and weary. Melegaunt Tanthul continued walking as before-which was to say very carefully-along the road of split logs, which bobbed on the spongy peat with every step he took. Visibility was twenty paces at best, the road a brownish ribbon zigzagging off into a cloud of pearly white. Not for the first time, he wished he had taken the other fork at the base of Deadman Pass. Surely he was still in Vaasa, but whether he was traveling toward the treasure he sought or away from it was anyone's guess.

The voices grew steadily louder and more distinct, until the hazy outline of the road ahead abruptly dissolved into nothingness. Strewn along a narrow band at the end of the road were a handful of head-shaped spheres, some perched atop a set of human shoulders with arms splayed wide to spread their weight. Farther back, two sets of nebulous oxen horns rose out of the peat, the blocky silhouette of a fog-shrouded cargo wagon sitting on the surface behind them.

Melegaunt pulled his heavy rucksack off his back and continued up the road, already fishing for the line with which he strung his rain tarp at night. As he drew nearer, the head-shaped blobs seemed to sprout beards and wild manes of unkempt hair. He began to make out hooked noses and deep-set eyes, then one of the heads shouted out, and with a terrible slurping sound, sank beneath the peat. This cry was echoed by a chorus of frightened wails deeper in the fog, prompting the nearest of the remaining heads to crane around and bark something in the guttural Vaasan dialect. The voices fell immediately silent, and the head turned back toward Melegaunt.

"T-traveler, you would do well to s-stop there," the Vaasan said, the frigid bog mud causing him to stutter and slur his words. "The 1-logs here are rotted through."

"My thanks for the warning." Still fifteen paces from the end of the road, Melegaunt stopped and held up the small coil of line he had pulled from his rucksack. "My rope won't reach so far. I fear you have spoiled your own rescue."

The Vaasan tipped his head a little to the side. "I think our chances b-better with you out there, instead of in here with us."

"Perhaps so," Melegaunt allowed.

He peered into the fog beyond the Vaasan's tribe, trying in vain to see where the road started again. As annoying as it was in the first place not to know where he was going, the possibility of being forced to turn back before he found out absolutely vexed him.

"Where does this road lead? To Delhalls or Moorstown?"

"Where d-does the road lead?" the Vaasan stammered, his voice sharp with disbelief and anger. "What about my people? After I saved you, y-you are not going to help us?" "Of course I'm going to help you. I'll do everything I can," Melegaunt said. Somewhere deeper in the fog, another Vaasan screamed and sank beneath the bog with a cold slurp. "You might, uh, disappear before I pull you free. If that happens, I'd still like to know where this road leads."

"If that happens, the knowledge w-will do you no good," the Vaasan growled. "Your only hope of reaching your d-destination is to rescue my clan, so that we can guide you wherever you are going."

"Something is dragging your tribe under one-by-one and you are trifling over details?" Melegaunt demanded. He pulled his black dagger, then dropped to his hands and knees and began to probe the logs ahead for rot. "This is no time to negotiate. I won't abandon you."

Then your patience will be rewarded," the Vaasan said firmly.

Melegaunt looked up, his brow furrowed into a deliberate scowl. "Am I to understand you don't trust me?" "I trust you to try harder if you have n-need of us." "An answer as slippery as the bog in which you are mired," Melegaunt snapped. "If I am successful, you will have no need of me. How can I trust you to guide me then?"

"You have the word of Bodvar, leader of the Moor Eagle Clan," the Vaasan said. "That is all the trust you need."

"Trust has different meaning for outsiders than for Vaasans, I see," Melegaunt grumbled, "but I warn you, if you go back on your promise…"

"You have nothing to fear on that account," Bodvar said. "You have but to keep yours, and I will keep mine."

"I have heard that before," Melegaunt muttered, "far too many times."