Tim Waggoner - Lady Ruin

Elidyr laughed and clapped his hands like a delighted child.

“I wasn’t certain that was going to work. I’m so glad it did!”

Those Outguard members who’d remained on their horses-Vaddon and Ksana included-had been pulled off by the tentacles, and a number of riderless mounts stood in the street. Several of the steeds fled, terrified by the inhuman monstrosity in their midst, but these were warhorses, trained to stand steady in the face of battle, and many of them remained where they were. Elidyr walked up to the mount Vaddon had been using and swung into the saddle with an easy grace that Lirra had never known him to possess before. It seemed the touch of the daelkyr lord had done more to transform his body than she’d thought. The horse-a black gelding-was less than thrilled to have this human and his three symbionts sitting upon his back, but his training held and he did not rear or buck.

“Farewell, everyone,” Elidyr said. “I’d love to stay and see what happens to you when you’re pulled into the main mass, but I’ve dawdled here long enough, and it really is time for me to take my leave.” He pulled on his mount’s reins and the horse turned toward Sinnoch. “Are you ready, my friend? And do you have what we need?”

“I am, and I do.” The dolgaunt reached behind him to pat a pack tied to the back of his saddle, and with a sinking feeling, Lirra realized what it contained-the Overmantle.

“Excellent! Then we can be off.” Elidyr turned away from Sinnoch. “Choose a horse and hop on, Rhedyn. It’s time to leave.”

At first Lirra didn’t understand what her uncle was talking about, but then she saw that the white tentacles had left Rhedyn alone just as they had Sinnoch. Rhedyn stood in the street, looking like a living shadow, and as Lirra watched, the dark aspect faded until Rhedyn resembled a man standing in light shade, despite the fact the sun was shining down upon him. The implications struck her as hard as any blow from the hammer-fisted warforged ever could have. Rhedyn was in league with Elidyr and Sinnoch. Despite the evidence of her own eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. She told herself it was just more of Elidyr’s insane ramblings and couldn’t possibly be real.

“Rhedyn!” Lirra called out. “You can’t go with them! You’re a member of the Outguard and a soldier of Karrnath! Stay with us, fight with us!” She wanted to say: Stay with me! but she couldn’t make herself speak the words.

Rhedyn gave her a look that was impossible to read before turning away and walking to the nearest horse. He swung himself up into the saddle, took hold of the reins, and then, with a last look at Lirra, he turned the horse about, touched his heels to the horse’s sides, flicked the reins, and the animal began galloping down the street. Elidyr and Sinnoch followed close behind.

Lirra watched them ride off, despair welling up inside her. But the feeling was quickly choked off by a rising tide of anger. She remembered his visit to her bedchamber on the night before the test of the Overmantle, remembered the things he’d said, the feelings he’d attempted to express … Nothing but lies.

Fury roared through her like a firestorm, and she vowed that whatever else happened, she would not die this day, absorbed into a disgusting mass of flesh. If nothing else, she’d survive to make certain that Rhedyn paid for his betrayal of the Outguard-and for betraying her.

The thing the white-eyes had merged into had continued pulling Lirra and the others toward it while Elidyr, Sinnoch, and Rhedyn rode off, and they were within three yards of the main mass. At this rate, Lirra judged they had a minute at most before they were pulled into the pile of flesh, and what would happen then? Would their own flesh and bones liquefy as they became part of the creature? Or would they merely suffocate as their air was cut off? The warforged would likely survive in either event, but the rest of them would not. Lirra thought furiously, determined not to die before she could have her vengeance. She found herself remembering a lesson her father had taught her long ago, when she was a child learning to spar with a wooden practice sword.

“Every opponent has a weakness,” he’d told her. “The trick is figuring out what it is in time to do you any good.”

Assuming this creature had a weakness, what could it possibly be? And how could they exploit it in the few seconds remaining to them? Lirra rapidly went over what she knew about the monstrous conglomerate. It was comprised of the bodies of people whom Elidyr had reshaped into mindless, supernaturally strong servants. He’d transformed them using powers granted to him by a daelkyr lord, powers that originated in Xoriat, the Realm of Madness. She didn’t know if those powers were, strickly speaking, evil, at least in a metaphysical sense, but they seemed close enough to her. And if they were based in evil, that meant …

“Ksana!” she called out.

Though Lirra couldn’t see every member of the Outguard, for the fleshy mass of the creature stood before her and some of the others, she could still see the cleric. The woman was off to her left, and Lirra was glad to see she’d managed to retain hold of her halberd.

The half-elf’s face was scrunched in concentration as she hacked at the tentacle encircling her waist with her halberd, but whatever damage she inflicted healed before she could strike again.

“What?” Ksana called back, not pausing in her attack on the tentacle that gripped her.

“Do you remember what you did at the Battle of Corran Ridge?”

At first Ksana looked at Lirra without comprehension, but then awareness slowly filtered into her gaze. “But that was an entirely different situation! The creature they sent at us was a battalion of Karrnathi zombies that had been abducted and merged into a single massive creature! This thing isn’t undead! I don’t know if I can-”

“It’s evil, isn’t it? Besides, whatever the damned thing is, it’s going to be the death of us in less than a minute if someone doesn’t do something!”

Lirra thought the cleric was going to protest further, but instead she nodded and then turned to face the conglomerate creature. Her expression grew placid, almost serene, and Lirra knew she was preparing her spirit for what was to come. And then Ksana gripped her halberd tight and stopped resisting the pull of the fleshy mass that had been the white-eyes. Instead she ran toward it, her halberd blazing with bright light as the cleric channeled the power of her goddess-the power of the sun-into her weapon. When the half-elf reached the main mass of the creature, she raised her halberd high and cried out, “In the name of Dol Arrah, I command you to begone, foul thing!”

And Ksana brought the halberd down upon the creature with all of her might, burying the axe head into its pulpy flesh.

Dazzling light burst forth from the wound Ksana made, and though the creature possessed no mouth, Lirra heard its death cry in her mind, accompanied by a pain like someone had jammed a white-hot dagger blade into one ear and out the other. But there was another voice within her mind. Voices, actually. Men, women, and children, all of them saying the same thing: Thank you .

And then the conglomerate creature exploded like an overripe melon, and a putrid, viscous slime gushed onto the street. The tentacles gripping Lirra and the others fell limp and collapsed to the ground, releasing them. The Outguard soldiers didn’t stand around once they were free though. They rushed forward and began hacking away at the creature’s remains with their swords, just to make sure the damned thing was dead. Lirra wasn’t concerned about the creature anymore. She was worried about Ksana. The cleric, now that her work was done, staggered back from the remains of the creature, dragging her halberd because she was too weak to lift it. Her face was pale, her eyes unfocused, and Lirra knew Ksana was on the verge of collapse. The same thing had happened at Corran’s Ridge, and Lirra remembered how Ksana had explained it to her afterward.