Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

Chane barely kept his feet as Magiere shoved him into the wall, but when she clawed beyond his grip, her fingers passed by and her hardened nails only tore rents in the wood. He could not comprehend how he had held something and she had missed striking it.

Worse, she appeared to have lost all her reason.

Then something struck his whole body at once.

It felt like a wind coming from nowhere, which had been hardened like stone, and everything darkened before his eyes. Stunned, he found himself—when his sight cleared—slumped down against the wall, and Magiere was trying to pick herself up at the passage’s far side.

Whatever had hit him had struck her aside as well.

A shadow darkened Magiere’s form. She twisted up to her knees, her mouth gaping and exposing elongated fangs ... but no scream came out.

Chane grabbed for his fallen shorter sword.

Saving Magiere was not what drove him. If this thing could do all of this to him and a dhampir, what had happened to Wynn? He charged, striking at where he had seen that shadow. In the last instant, he remembered ...

He could not kill the specter’s body, its host, with so many present for it to take instead.

Chane twisted the sword’s blade and drove one strut of the crossguard behind his swing. The crossguard went all the way to the wall. As the impact jarred his arm, something else struck his face.

Searing cold pain spread through Chane’s skull.

Chap grew desperate to get back to Magiere, and yet he could not abandon Leesil.

She could not be left to face the specter alone, and Chane’s help did not count. Neither did the blood in his mouth or what was left of the dead guard beneath him. In a wider space for trained armed men to move freely, these moments of Leesil and Chap holding their ground might not have happened.

And the plan was now worthless. The specter would never be trapped in the domin’s hidden room.

Chap looked up once at Leesil facing the remaining two guards above.

—Drive them up ... out ... before more come—

Leesil would not glance back, but his answer came as he lunged up another step.

“Get Magiere!” he shouted.

Chap started to wheel when his whole body was lifted off the steps. He did not have time to even feel a jolt of shock before he flew sideways into the side rail.

Chane let the hunger rise to eat the pain and cold in his head. When his sight cleared, he saw Magiere on her knees. She looked up at him with eyes—not just irises—flooded pure black.

The sight filled him with fear, not of her, but that she had completely lost herself.

Her head snapped around toward the stairs as something there shattered.

Chane looked in time to see Chap tumble down amid broken pieces of the railing. Leesil’s body slammed sideways in the stairway’s other side. The two guards above were likewise knocked away.

It was not until Magiere lunged up, grabbed her fallen sword, and pushed past toward the stairs, that one thought broke through Chane’s fear.

She had looked before he had heard anything. She had known—sensed—something that she could not see. And in her current state, she might not stop until she killed what had tormented her ... and Khalidah would flee the host before dawn.

When Magiere reached the stairs, she ran right past Leesil and Chap, who both appeared half stunned while struggling to rise. Partway up the stairs, the final two guards—both still teetering—tried to stop her. She knocked the first aside, and Chane thrashed to right himself as he heard the crack of the man’s jaw. She split the other man’s chest with her falchion and ran past before he dropped.

Magiere had lost to her dhampir half, and Chane bolted toward the stairs.

He tried to shout at Leesil, though he only rasped, “Get up—now!”

Wynn halted on the house’s landing when Ghassan froze in the opened doorway ahead of her. Panting in fright and exhaustion, she tried to shove him out of her way to no avail.

“What are you waiting for?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, so she tried to push him aside enough to see into the house. And when she did ...

A gray-robed figure stood down the long, dark hallway ahead. The pit of its hood shifted slightly from the domin to her.

“No!” Ghassan snapped.

Wynn thought that was meant for the specter, and then the domin’s hand clamped over her eyes, and he shoved her back. Stumbling, she swatted away his hand, but he stood fully in the doorway, blocking her as he stared into the house.

Something mournful, then pained, and finally hateful twisted the domin’s features.

Ghassan fixed on a gray robe he had not seen before this night. He could not see what—who—hid within the hood, but he felt something worming into his mind. His will alone could not stop it, and whispers swarmed over his thoughts to smother them.

One voice cut through all of them.

“Oh, so much anguish and hate—both so tiny and pathetic. A morsel compared to the meal I deserve, after what you and yours did to me ... for so long.”

Ghassan tried to block out that voice. In its place, a swarm of whispers crawled over his mind like carrion beetles.

...worthless ... coward ... where were you ... when they all died, even her ...

He lost focus and cringed, fearing that name they might whisper at him.

...lovely ... so truly kind ... and so satisfying to us ... your Tuthâna ...

Yes, she had been the best in nature if not skill of all within his sect. She had warned him from afar to hurry back, when he had lost against Wynn and her comrades in seeking an orb in a forgotten dwarven city. Her warning had come too late ... to reach her.

Ghassan did not know he had screamed until someone struck him in the side. That sharp pain made him gasp.

“Wake up!” Wynn cried. “Don’t let it get to you!”

All Ghassan’s pain-fed rage fueled the burning lines, sigils, and signs that filled his view. That fiery pattern overlaid his sight of the gray robe standing serenely in the dark. Then he heard a scream, and shouts, shattering wood and feet pounding upon stairs. The gray hood turned slightly, perhaps looking toward those sounds, as did Ghassan.

The others were below, but at least one was coming up. When his gaze shifted back in less than a blink, he looked into that hood’s blackness.

All lines of light shattered to splinters within his sight. Like glass shards, they cut and stung his mind instead of his flesh. He heard a spiteful titter in his head.

“And now there is another that I will take again, though not for myself. She belongs to her maker.”

Ghassan lurched back as an unseen force struck his whole body. He saw the gray robe drift up the hallway farther into the dark. He barely grabbed the doorframe’s sides as someone rushed up from out of the cellar.

Magiere spun, looking everywhere. No matter where she turned, she did not appear to see the gray-robed figure lingering just beyond her. Something was wrong with her face, though it was not clear in the dark.

Ghassan lurched again as the force upon him grew.

“Get out ... you petty little pretender.”

Wynn began shouting, pulling on him, and all he could do was fix on Magiere. He barely raised and held one sign in his mind’s eye for an instant. He uttered one command into her thoughts before his focus broke.

—Clarity—

Ghassan stumbled back, dragging Wynn with him, and heard the front door slam shut.

As Magiere charged out of the cellar, her insides burned, her guts ached, and hunger overran all of that. Fed on hate born of fear while she’d been in that cell for a moon, something more had happened to her near the end that she’d told no one.