Troy Denning - The Crimson Legion

The survivors backed slowly away, their fear showing in their faces. The gladiators stood with predatory grins on their faces, allowing the Urikites’ fear to work against them. Rikus used the momentary lull to search for Maetan’s diminutive form and, following the resentful gazes of several enemy soldiers, found the mindbender running down the gentle side of the dune.

The mul glanced over his shoulder and saw that K’kriq’s mekillots were turning back toward the argosy. Looking back to the line of frightened Urikites standing ahead, the mul yelled, “Kill them!”

As the gladiators moved forward, the Urikites began dropping their shields and running after their fleeing commander. In their panic, they opened a surprisingly large gap between themselves and the shocked gladiators, who were not accustomed to seeing their opponents flee in terror. The officer frantically chased after the line, cursing their cowardice and cutting his own men down from behind. After the initial surprise of the rout wore off, the Tyrians joined the chase with a chorus of thrilled howls.

Maetan paused near the base of the dune and looked up at the mass of soldiers trailing behind him. The mindbender’s shadow began to lengthen, spreading across the sands like a dark stain of ink across a parchment. It retained the basic shape of a man, but not the proportions. Its limbs were long and ropy, with a serpentine body that seemed more appropriate to a lizard than a man. When it reached a length of four or five times Maetan’s height, a pair of sapphire eyes began to shine from the head. A long azure gash appeared where the mouth should be, and wisps of ebony gas drifted skyward from this slit.

A gap opened between the shadow’s feet and those of Maetan. The shadow beast rolled onto its stomach, then its body began to thicken and it moved into a kneeling position. When it had assumed a full, three-dimensional form, it rose to its feet. The thing stood as tall as a full giant, towering over the men below it like the great trees of the Baffling Forest.

The Urikites stopped their retreat, frightened murmurs of “Umbra!” rising from their disorganized ranks.

Neeva grabbed Rikus by the shoulder and stopped him. “Wait!” she cried. “You can’t do this alone.”

The mul slowed enough to look around and see that Umbra’s appearance had stopped his gladiators as well. The warriors were standing motionless on the slope, their jaws slack with astonishment and their eyes locked on the huge shadow beast. Rikus would have hesitated to say that they were frightened, but they were certainly spellbound.

Umbra pointed a finger at the routed Urikites, then, in a throbbing voice so deep it seemed bottomless, he said, “Fight! Stand and fight, or I swear I’ll take you with me when I return to the Black!”

As if to emphasize the threat, the thing strode halfway up the dune in two steps, then reached down and closed his sinuous fingers around the torsos of two Urikites. Their chests and midsections disappeared in darkness. In vain, they cried for mercy as Umbra’s shadow crept down to their feet and up over their heads. Within an instant, their forms had simply melted into the creature’s black shape.

“Now, form your lines!” Umbra cried. He pointed toward the Tyrians. “For the defense of Lubar and the glory of Urik, die like heroes!”

The Urikites turned around and dressed their lines, pointing their black swords toward the Tyrians.

“For the freedom of Tyr!” Rikus yelled, charging.

Neeva followed close behind, screaming, “For Tyr!” An instant later, a hundred voices were crying the same thing.

Rikus reached the enemy before they had completely reformed their wall, tearing into it in a maelstrom of whirling cahulaks and kicking feet. Almost before he realized it, he had ripped the swords from a pair of Urikites’ hands and felled two more with crippling kicks to the knees. To Rikus’s right, Neeva hacked a defender nearly in two, then killed another with the backswing as she pulled her axe from the body of the first.

No sooner had Rikus and Neeva cleared their opponents away than a tremendous crash reverberated across the sandy dune as the rest of the gladiators hit the enemy line. The clatter of bone and obsidian weapons filled the air, followed by a growing chorus of pained cries. A handful of enemy soldiers threw down their weapons and turned to flee. Umbra prevented the rout from spreading by snatching the cowards and absorbing them into his shadow.

Rikus caught sight of a black blade streaking toward his ribs. He blocked with the shaft of a cahulak, then raked his other weapon across the soldier’s throat. The man dropped his sword and turned away, grasping at the bleeding wound below his chin.

The mul spun around to attack the person who had slammed into his back, then stopped when he realized that she was one of his own gladiators, a red-haired half-elf named Drewet who had earned her fame in the arena by killing a full giant single-handedly. At the other end of her two-pronged lance hung a gasping Urikite, but beyond her were nothing but more Tyrians.

The mul faced the other direction and saw that, on the other side of Neeva, Tyr’s gladiators were beating the last of the Urikites into the sand. At the bottom of the dune, Maetan had not moved. He stood alone, watching the battle with no indication of concern.

Rikus was about to start down the slope when a rustle of astonished cries rose from the Tyrian ranks; Umbra had opened his blue mouth and was facing the battlefield. A wispy stream of blackness shot from between the thing’s lips and poured over the gladiators like a thick, sticky mist. As the billowing mass spread over the slope, Umbra shrunk as if he were spewing his own body over the dune. Horrified screeches and anguished screams rose from whomever the black haze touched.

“Run!” Rikus yelled. He grabbed Neeva’s wrist and sprinted forward, angling toward the bottom of the dune and away from the spreading vapor.

As fast as they ran, it was no use. The black fog caught them only a few steps later, lapping at their legs like the waters of an oasis pond. Instantly, an icy wave of pain shot through Rikus’s feet and up into his thighs. The closest thing he had ever felt to it were frigid rains in the high mountains, but this pain was a hundred times worse. The rain had been uncomfortable and made him shiver, but the darkness stung his skin and numbed his flesh to the bone. His joints stiffened and would not move, reducing his legs to dead, aching weights.

Rikus felt himself falling, and Neeva cried out at his side. He shoved her forward with all his strength, sending her sprawling half a dozen steps ahead of himself. An instant later, the mul landed face-first in the sand.

The blackness did not overtake the rest of his body. He lay sprawled on the dune, groaning loudly as his mind struggled to make sense of the contradicting sensations of scalding sand beneath his torso and the icy numbness in his legs. Rikus looked over his shoulder and saw that Umbra was gone, or rather had spread his entire body over the gentle slope. The mul lay at the edge of the shadowy form, his legs lost in the blackness behind him. In addition to himself and Neeva, Drewet and perhaps six more gladiators had escaped the frigid cloud, some of them by narrower margins than the mul. Most of the company had been engulfed.

Neeva limped back to Rikus, then kneeled at his head and asked, “Are you hurt?”

“I can’t feel my legs,” Rikus answered. As he spoke, a terrible thought occurred to him. “Pull me out, please!” Rikus peered over his shoulder at the darkness beneath his thighs. “My legs must be gone!”

“Calm yourself,” Neeva said, gripping the mul under the arms. “Everything’s going to be fine.”