Брюс Корделл - Lady of Poison

Time again to bring his gaze to bear. The Daughter had no eyes. Could he even affect that corruption of divine energy given life? He opened wide his eyes and reached again for the feeling in the back of his mind, the core of ferocity, the ember of his heritage. He called upon the gaze of the medusa.

Invisible lines of influence plunged from Marrec’s eyes, instantly wracking his head with pain. Where his gaze touched upon the Daughter’s side, flesh bubbled—bubbled, then ceased all motion, as flesh became stone. He couldn’t encompass the creature in a single look—he had to paint the Daughter with his gaze, moving left to right, right to left, and in the wake of his passing glance, flesh gave over to stone.

The Daughter reared up. A massive slab of hardened stone sloughed away to reveal terrible pink flesh within. The slab of stone, once part of the Daughter’s side, smashed into rubble, forcing Gunggari to skip away, though a few chunks caught the Oslander on the side, drawing blood. Marrec didn’t care. His power was overcoming that of the Daughter. His vision began to fill with red, blood pooling in his sockets from the strain, but still he pumped his force of will through the connection he’d made with the Daughter, through the thrumming invisible line of his sight.

Gunggari’s wail of agony was as water on the fire of his effort. The force of his gaze winked out immediately. The Daughter, rearing, had caught Gunggari. The Oslander was down. Down, too, came those hideously heavy feet, stamping. Gunggari rolled, but his pain hindered him, and he couldn’t roll far enough. The Daughter’s foot smashed down upon the tattooed soldier, breaking bones and bursting flesh. The tattooed soldier joined the elf hunter in stillness.

If Gunggari by some miracle retained grasp on life, his bleeding body would soon betray that effort without immediate tending. Marrec didn’t waste time thinking about it—he simply ran full out for his friend’s side. Where he presumed that Elowen yet survived her contact with the Daughter, he knew his friend would not. He might already be dead.

A geyser of fiery energy poured down upon the flank of the Daughter, distracting it long enough for Marrec to reach Gunggari’s side. Ususi was still in the fight and unleashing her most potent spells against the rampaging horror.

The cleric felt for the tattooed warrior’s pulse—faint, growing fainter, but still beating. Marrec called joyfully on his renewed link to Lurue and poured healing into his friend, but Gunggari’s flesh was grievously wounded. The Oslander opened his eyes but remained prone. He had managed to stabilize Gunggari, stop the bleeding. That would have to be enough.

The Daughter completely ignored Marrec, even though the cleric fairly kneeled at the creature’s feet. Furious at the fusillade of spells with which Ususi continued to burn it, the corrupted aspect charged the mage. Ususi cried out, seeing her death approach. She shot a look of apology Marrec’s way, touched the Keystone hanging at her breast, and was pulled backward, out of the Rotting Man’s court by the power of the amulet. She was gone.

The Daughter, deprived of its intended target, stumbled to a stop, its immense but dreadfully quick legs causing the ground to quake with each and every footfall. Its bulk hid from view both the Rotting Man and … Ash.

Marrec stood and began running in a single action. The creature was between him and his charge. If it killed her, then all their effort was for nothing.

Justlance was in his hand with merely a thought, but what hope did he really believe he had? The creature had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was nigh on unstoppable. What force could hope to breach its bulk and reach its heart?

What physical force … but wait—the beast was born of a gift of the Green Powers. It was a corrupted aspect, but an aspect all the same, and somehow, Lurue was tied up in all of it. Was slaying the creature the answer? Though foul, at heart it must be good . Something that seeks to do good, though it commits evil, can be redeemed, or so Marrec hoped.

The knowledge that was flushed from hiding by the Nentyarch’s elixir finally completed its work. Revelation illuminated Marrec, then, like the sun that lifts up from behind a mountain, revealing the plain that was previously dark. Marrec saw a parallel between Ash and himself, and the Daughter and his monstrous gaze. Moreover, he saw an equivalence between any creature that hopes to do good, but through inaction, inattention, poor judgment, or even self-interest, does evil. Does that action, then, condemn such a one to a life of evil thereafter? Does it mean that that one does not deserve a second chance?

Well, no, of course not.

Life is but a brief flicker, and as the saying goes, “What will it matter in one hundred years?” is all too true for most creatures. Life is a short-lived gift. If that gift is not explored in all its dimensions, it is like spurning the gift, setting it aside on a knickknack shelf where other things of little interest accumulate. How else can life be experienced but through decisions? How else can good be judged from evil, if mistakes are not made? That was the secret that revealed itself to Marrec: To err is to live, and to live is to err, but one can only pick oneself up after each mistake, wiser for the experience, and go on. What else is there?

One had to forgive oneself.

The Daughter’s horn nearly removed his head from his torso as he skirted its bulk, bringing him more fully to the present. Taking the knife-sharp blow along the haft of his spear, Marrec ran on, rounding the flank of the Daughter. There was the Rotting Man, still sitting upon his throne, concentrating upon the corrupted aspect, possibly controlling its actions, or at least preventing it from lapsing into unrestrained destruction.

There was Ash, defenseless and alone in the Court, looking up into the blank expanse of the Daughter’s flesh, as if searching for something. Despite having no eyes or any other organs for sensing its environment, the corrupted aspect paused, seeming to study the slip of a girl on the ground before it.

The Rotting Man commanded, “Take what is yours, Cystborn. Take the capstone of your power and your sentience. Become what you should have been these last six years. My scourge, Talona’s Step-Daughter.”

The Daughter moved forward, as if to engulf the defenseless child, but slowly, tentatively, as if the Rotting Man wished to relish his final victory.

Marrec, his head still spinning with his own personal revelation, knew that his own revelation applied, too, to Ash.

“I forgive you, Ash,” yelled Marrec. “That’s right. We all forgive you for allowing the Rotting Man to steal away your purpose, your form, and your power, but you have to forgive yourself.”

Ash’s gaze slowly swiveled upon Marrec and focused. She was listening.

“Let yourself off the hook—put your mistake behind you and learn from it. Take back what is yours. You didn’t mean for things to come to this.”

Ash’s eyes narrowed, and her tiny head began a slow nod, as if in grudging understanding.

“Enough of this. Consume her!” thundered the Rotting Man.

The Daughter fell upon Ash, absorbing her entirely into its shambling husk.

The Rotting Man laughed. The cleric despaired, crying out his frustration.

The Daughter lay splayed across the ground where it had leaped upon the child.

Then a change came over it. The Daughter’s body began to throw off mass in great rotting layers, one after another, like an onion. Every layer broadcast images into all the living minds nearby—the layers were like records of the sordid malice the Talontyr had committed against the world. The first few were only insults and aggravations. Then came violence and death, and rot followed after. It was Talona’s influence, psychically manifest as each section of the Daughter fell away. The next layers revealed the Rotting Man gathering to his side minions versed in spells and foul sorceries. Marrec saw piles of skulls left behind where the Talontyr’s forces triumphed; he saw living trees burned with torches, the tree-dryads locked within, screaming; he saw crimes without number, and creatures rotting from the inside; he saw sacrifices made to Talona in all their gruesome detail. Marrec saw the war of the Green Powers against Talona, and the secret plan the Rotting Man and his goddess drew up to subvert those plans and redirect those efforts to decay. Every layer that fell away from the Daughter revealed fragments of the past to Marrec, as if he were remembering something he’d always known.