Paul Kemp - Shadowstorm

"You look at me like a broken thing," Magadon said, and his voice cracked.

Cale shook his head, the movement too fast for the denial to be true. "No. I am just… pleased to see you whole."

"I am far from that, Cale."

Magadon's words took Cale aback. "You have never called me 'Cale.' "

Magadon shrugged and looked away. "No? It seems right."

Cale and Riven shared a look and Cale noticed Riven's beard-it had grown substantially since they had left Cania.

"Your beard," Cale said.

"And yours," Riven said.

Cale ran his hand over his face and felt several days' growth on his cheeks.

"What happened?"

"Time distortion as we moved through planes," Magadon said.

"So what happened to the time?" Riven asked.

"Lost to us," Magadon said. "The same as… other things." He kneeled into the fog and used the black water of the swamp to wash the filth and blood from his flesh. Demon scales, as red as pox, showed in irregular patches on his exposed skin. The tattoo on his biceps, the mark of his father, was stark on his otherwise pale skin. The scars that once had marred it were gone. Magadon touched his horns thoughtfully, frowning.

Riven looked across the fog at Cale. "Why here?"

Cale heard an accusation behind the question. "Because what I promised him is here. Or at least the trail is. It must be."

Riven touched the holy symbol at his throat and walked to Cale's side.

"He said you had promised it to another, that Mask would be displeased. What have you done, Cale?"

Cale looked past Riven to Magadon. "What I had to. You'd have done the same."

Riven studied his face and his gaze flitted for a moment to Magadon. "Maybe."

Magadon stood. "I am here. Do not speak of me as if I am not." The mindmage, clean of blood, approached them and offered Riven the dagger the assassin had given him on Cania.

"Keep it," Riven said.

"I have a weapon," Magadon said.

"So you said," answered Riven. "Keep it anyway."

Magadon shrugged, tucked the blade into his belt. He looked up into Cale's face. "What did my father mean when he said you had promised it to another? To whom? I, at least, should know."

Cale stared into his friend's pain-haunted white eyes, more certain than ever that he had done the right thing. "You both should know. And you will. But it is a long tale and this hardly seems the place for telling it. Let's put some solid ground under our feet and get our bearings. Then I'll tell you both everything. Well enough?"

Riven looked skeptical.

"Everything," Cale emphasized.

"Well enough, then," Riven said.

Magadon turned a circle, examined the lay of the land. Stinking water, tangles of trees, and patches of jagged reeds surrounded them. The fog-shrouded air muffled sound.

"Place feels familiar," Riven observed.

Cale had been thinking the same thing. It hit him, then, but Magadon said it first. "It appears my father is not without a sense of humor. This is the same swamp where we first encountered Furlinastis."

Cale and Riven cursed. They had faced Furlinastis the shadow dragon once before. Cale had wounded him, but they had lived only because the dragon, citing a promise made long ago, had spared them. But he had promised, too, that he would kill them should they return to the swamp.

Something thudded against Cale's boot under the water, giving him a start. He stabbed down into the murk with Weaveshear but hit nothing. Tension gripped him.

He started to speak, but an ominous hush fell. The swamp stilled. The chorus of insects ceased. The howling creatures retreated to their murky dens and fell silent. The air above them emptied of the flying creatures.

"Dark," Riven said. "Dark and empty." The assassin held his blades and turned a circle.

Cale did the same. Shadows leaked from Weaveshear.

"He is coming," Magadon said, his voice strangely flat. "Now."

Shadows poured from Cale's flesh. He molded them with his mind into shadowy duplicates of himself that mirrored his movements. The illusions would distract the dragon and, with luck, draw some of its attacks. Riven prayed to Mask under his breath and shadows from the air coiled around his blades.

"Where, Mags?" Riven asked. The assassin stood in a crouch, his breathing steady.

Magadon shook his head and looked into the darkness. "Nowhere. Everywhere. We will never see him."

Cale knew Magadon was right. Even with his shadow sight, Cale saw nothing but dark water and coils of fog. The shadow dragon was as much one with the darkness as Cale.

But they could hear him, and Cale's darkness-sharpened hearing caught a sound: a rhythmic rush of air, the beat of huge wings from somewhere above them.

"In the air," he said.

He scanned the sky but saw nothing. He felt the dragon's approach the same way he felt an approaching storm. He felt exposed. They had no cover.

"Link us, Mags," Cale said.

The mindmage could connect their minds so they could communicate silently at the speed of thought.

Magadon shook his head. "No."

Cale looked at him sharply.

Magadon said, in a softer tone, "I cannot, Cale. I am not… I cannot."

Cale stared at the mindmage, unarmored, damaged in his soul, worn as thin as old leather. He had not even drawn his dagger.

"He's got nothing but a dagger, Cale," Riven said, his eyes on the sky, his thoughts apparently mirroring Cale's.

Cale made his decision. "We are leaving. This is not our fight."

A roar from above drenched them in sound. The dragon broke from the darkness of the sky, backlit by a vermilion flash, a mountainous form of black scales, muscle, and shadow. He dove directly at them. Another roar sent waves through the waters of the swamp.

The creature bore down on the trio. His teeth were the length of daggers. His wings stretched two bowshots across from wing-tip to wingtip. His massive form trailed a cloud of shadows the way a shooting star trails flames. Cale saw faces in the shadows, old faces, familiar faces. The dragon opened his mouth wide to breathe. The faces in the clouds opened their mouths, too, and Cale read their lips, or perhaps heard their whispers.

Free us!

"Cover!" Riven shouted, though there was nowhere to run.

The moment before Furlinastis spat a cloud of viscous black vapor from his mouth, Cale caught a glimpse of Magadon, staring up at the dragon, arms limp at his sides, face impassive. Cale had no time to process the implications before the dragon's life-draining breath saturated the area in ink. The swirling cloud of shadowstuff wormed into Cale's body through his nose, ears, and eyes, pulled at his soul, drank his life force. He staggered in the muck, fell. He heard Riven groan and curse.

Furlinastis hit the swamp with the force of a thunderbolt. His body displaced so much water that a waist-high wave of foul liquid washed over Cale. The dragon's respiration sounded like a forge bellows.

Despite the life-draining effect of the dragon's breath, Cale recovered himself enough to draw the shadows to him. He reached out his consciousness for Magadon and Riven as the shadow magic took hold.

"You were warned never to return," the dragon's sibilant voice said from out of the darkness. "For that-"

Cale heard no more. He thought of one of the only places on the Plane of Shadow fixed firmly in his memory, a place from which they could begin their pursuit of Kesson Rel-the city of Elgrin Fau the lost, once the City of Silver, but now the City of Wraiths.

The shadows engulfed them and swept them there.

Furlinastis knew the First and Second of Mask were either dead or had escaped, for he could no longer hear their hearts. The cloud of darkness dissipated and he saw only the lifeless husks of dozens of frogs, fish, snakes, and other small creatures native to the swamp floating on the surface of the water, their lives extinguished by his breath. But there was no sign of the humans. They had escaped him.