chapter 22
He stood in the formless landscape of the dream, surrounded by crawling white mists. It was the material of his will, waiting to be wrought, and yet he suppressed his every instinct to do so.
Amric began to walk.
The mists curled about him, cloaking and embracing, somehow both warm and chill at once. He glanced at his hands. They were empty, and he had no weapon on his person; he was unarmed. As quick as the thought came to him, he was clothed in dark armor, and the well-worn grips of his swords rested against his palms with familiar weight. He hesitated, frowning, and then banished it all. They were the trappings of war, and though the warrior felt a strong desire for the comfort of their presence, they ran counter to his purpose here, this time.
He continued to walk. He was headed neither to nor from any particular destination, and no such landmark offered itself from out of the mists. It was the simple movement he sought, and in particular an almost complete lack of focus, for if he was correct it would eventually bring––
Yes, there it was; a feather-light touch at the fringe of his awareness, an extra presence here at the core of a domain that should have, by all rights, been his and his alone. He slowed to a halt, and though the presence shrank, it did not withdraw.
“You may as well show yourself,” he called. “For reasons I do not yet fully understand, this is your dream as much as it is mine.”
There was a wavering there at the periphery of his senses, a flickering indecision as of something wild and frightened poised to flee. Then it stiffened into a fragile resolve, and there was movement. A shadow appeared in the hanging mists ahead and solidified into the shape of a man as it approached. Amric waited.
When it stepped from the mists to stand before him, it wore his face, as before. Amric studied the other, and he watched it study him in return with searching eyes. There was concern and resignation there that he felt he should understand. He wondered what the other read in his own countenance as it looked upon him. The other began to fidget beneath the intensity of his gaze, so he gave a strained smile and turned to walk once more. He found it disconcerting to be staring into a mirror of his own visage, anyway. After a moment’s hesitation, the other joined him, falling into step at his side, but a long pace away.
They strode this way for a time, directionless and unhurried, in a tense but companionable silence. At last Amric cleared his voice and spoke.
“You are––” he began, and then paused with a frown. “You are inside me?”
The other glanced at him, and then quickly away. It gave a shallow nod. Amric closed his eyes, going cold inside, but otherwise kept his reaction from showing. It was the response he dreaded, the very thing he had been adamant in denying to himself, but he did not want to drive this entity back into hiding until he had more answers. Despite his effort at control, however, the other flinched as if struck.
“Is this an infection?” Amric asked. “Am I sick, or mad?”
The other looked at him with a pained expression, and shook its head. Amric chuckled at the folly of his own question. How could he trust the word of what might be a figment of his own imagination to determine if he was mad nor not?
“How long have you been… with me? Since Stronghold, and the exposure to the Essence Fount?”
A slow shake of the head.
“Longer?”
A barely perceptible nod. Amric frowned as he walked.
“Why do you not speak?” he said. “It was you calling to me when I lost consciousness in the grip of the Nar’ath queen, was it not? Urging me to release you, to fight together?”
The other nodded.
“Then why do you not speak now?”
His double gave a helpless shrug. Amric stopped and turned toward it, brow furrowing in confusion. The other immediately shrank before his intent gaze. Even as the warrior stared, the figure’s outline shimmered and grew indistinct, beginning to fade from view.
“Wait!” Amric cried, reaching toward it. The form blurred, darting away from his outstretched hand like a windblown curl of dark smoke. Amric gritted his teeth and pulled up short, fighting his desire to give chase. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“Please wait,” he said in as gentle a tone as he could manage. “I just need to understand.”
He waited there for long seconds, breathing slowly. He struggled to keep his mind clear of the anger and loathing that threatened to seep in again at the thought of another creature inhabiting his body like some incorporeal parasite. In desperation he drew upon his warrior’s training, seeking the calm in which he wrapped himself at the center of battle. Very gradually it came to him through his own layers of resistance, and he sank into that void, shedding hesitation and fear, stripping away denial and prejudice. He needed the truth if he was to survive, in this as much as in the chaos of battle, and he would cut away what obscured it until truth was all that remained.
This strange entity had been with him for some time now, of that much he was certain. Certainly since the cataclysmic events at Stronghold, when proximity to the Essence Fount had affected him so. And he could not deny that some unknown force had acted through him to collapse the massive chamber at the core of that fortress when all had seemed lost. That same power had kept Valkarr from the very edge of death long enough for him to be saved. It had been all too easy for him to attribute the episode to the Essence Fount, since it was a huge, powerful manifestation of purest magic and utterly beyond his ken. Grelthus and Bellimar had both insisted that the Fount was not a live thing capable of intelligent action, however. It was a rupture in a ley line––a veritable river of magical energy––and no more sentient than an erupting volcano.
He had ignored all they said and refrained from further examination of the alternatives, because he had feared the conclusions to which they led. It might have been the Essence Fount, or merely coming to a land where all magic was rising to run rampant, that awakened this entity within him, but for some reason he believed its response that it had been with him since before that time.
A lifetime’s aversion to magic rose like bile in his throat, threatening to dislodge him from the center of the void. He was a warrior, raised among the Sil’ath. Magic was a perverse thing, an addiction for less disciplined races. An image appeared in his mind of Valkarr, his closest friend since childhood, with reptilian features twisted in shock and revulsion. Then came more flashing images: Innikar, Sariel, Prakseth––but no, Prakseth was dead. Amric shook himself, and sought the calm within once more.
It was not that simple. Whatever lurked inside him might be killing him or driving him slowly mad, it was true. But it had also saved Valkarr in Stronghold, had in fact saved all their lives. And while the strange dizzy spells had occurred at inopportune times, during periods of high stress and in the face of deadly threats, it seemed as if the other had been offering help each time.
Release me, it had told him. From what? To fight together, it had suggested. But how? By taking over his body? He felt another chill. Would this creature then assume control, never to relinquish it? Would Amric then become the entity within, little more than a persistent shade lurking at the back of its consciousness?
He shook his head. The thoughts sent fear lancing through him, but they did not match what he had seen and felt. The other had not wrested control from him in Stronghold, when he had been injured and at his most vulnerable. Instead, it had joined with him somehow, brought him unimaginable power at his time of need, and bolstered him to achieve the impossible. Afterward, it had retreated into seeming nonexistence again, fleeing before his scrutiny as it had done every time since, and as it had done here. These were not the actions of some unseen tyrant or assassin, awaiting only opportunity to strike him down. And the haunting, wounded look in its––in his––eyes had been disturbingly genuine.
The familiar presence gathered at his side. Even with his eyes closed, Amric could feel a tentative hand reaching for his shoulder, and an overpowering sense of worry washed over him. He opened his eyes to regard the other, once more his mirror image, and the hand froze in mid-reach.
“The dream, with the hidden cottage in the forest,” Amric mused. “That was your dream, not mine.”
The other hesitated, and then nodded.
“You fear me, fear my discovery of you,” he continued, fumbling for comprehension. “I can feel it in you, just as you react to my own state of mind. You have been remaining ever close, but evading my direct attention, terrified that I will find you and strike you down somehow, just as in the dream.”
The other drew back, almost cringing.
“That is why you come to me only in moments of distraction or weakness,” Amric said, eyes narrowing. “Only then are you bold enough to act. You seek to protect me, and yet you have this terrible fear of my wrath.”
His own grey eyes stared back at him, wide with apprehension. Amric burst out laughing, and the other started and blinked at the sudden sound.
“I still do not know what you are, my mysterious friend,” he said with a shake of his head. “But I can see that you are as scared of me as I am of whatever it is you represent.”
The other flashed a hesitant smile at him, but remained at arm’s length.
A harsh sound echoed faintly in the distance, shrill and grating. It was an alien shriek filled with rage and pain, and sudden memories of the waking world flooded back to Amric. The hive, his friends, the Nar’ath queen and her minions, the arrow fired by Thalya and the concussive explosion that had resulted; how could he have forgotten? His life and the lives of his friends hung in the balance as he wandered this surreal landscape.
“If I can hear that monster out there, at least I know I am still alive,” he said grimly. “I need to wake. I need to go back and fight. Now.”
His dark leather and oiled chain armor appeared, sheathing him in its fierce embrace. His fingers curled around battle-worn hilts, and the steel of his blades gleamed before him. The creeping white mists of the dream began to curl about him. The other drew away from him and vanished like smoke scattered before the wind, though whether it fled his weapons or his sharpening focus, he was not sure.
The mists swirled in a tightening funnel around him, faster and faster, bearing flickering images. Amric caught glimpses of the dark interior of the hive, illuminated by the pulsing green glow of the pools. He saw the huge and menacing figure of the Nar’ath queen, thrashing about while her skulking minions milled about with confused and uncertain movements. He saw the hunched figures of his friends isolated amid a storm of sand. And there were other images as well, hallucinations that made no sense to him: the forest, the hidden cottage, an intangible presence hovering fretfully within the cottage above a sleeping child. The door to the cottage cracked open to reveal a blinding sliver of sunlight…
Amric shook his head, and the chaotic images receded. These were not his visions alone, he knew, but also the memories of the other tangled with his own. He clenched at the recognition, wanting to push it all away from him, to be alone once more in his own mind. But the thought continued to nag at him: whether or not he was at risk of losing himself, if this elusive entity could help him save his friends, would he not do it? The situation was dire, if indeed it was still possible to win out. He had already admitted the possibility of the worst that could happen to him, and yet he knew that he would give his own life in an instant if it meant saving the others.
Why, then, not his sanity as well?
He smiled grimly. There would be time enough to seek a cure, if he survived.
“I am going out there to slay that monstrosity, if it can be done,” he called into the air. “You offered to fight together, before. Will you do so now?”
There was no response to his query aside from the echoes of the Nar’ath queen’s fury, which were growing louder by the moment. The mists curled tighter around him like a cocoon.
“Will you come if I call upon you?” Amric shouted.
He looked around for the shadowy figure, but saw no sign of it. He closed his eyes, seeking the insubstantial presence that he knew was nearby, and yet he could not find it. There was nothing. The harder he looked for it, the less certain he was that he had ever felt it, that the whole experience had ever been anything more than a muddled, lingering dream. Perhaps he really was going mad after all.
He tightened his grips on the swords and braced himself, looking upward into the narrowing funnel of mist above him. The shrieks of the Nar’ath queen hammered at him in waves now. The soft caress of the mists felt more and more like the howling bite of a sandstorm. He closed his eyes, pushing back doubt and fatigue, seeking the center of the void he would need to survive in the maelstrom awaiting him in the waking world above.
He exhaled slowly.
“Are you with me?” he whispered.
Yes, I am with you.
Rough hands shook him.
The ingrained instincts of the warrior took over, and he lashed out before he was fully aware, before his eyes even opened. A grip of iron caught his forearm in motion and clamped there, holding him firm. Amric’s eyes flared wide to find Valkarr crouched over him. He could read the relief in his friend’s tight expression even through the swirling, wind-borne sand. Behind Valkarr stood the hazy figures of Sariel and Innikar, peering down at Amric.
A broad grin creased Valkarr’s scaly face. “If you are done resting, warmaster, your warriors are quite ready to leave this place.”
Amric lurched up to a sitting position, and helping hands boosted him to his feet. His head spun and his body ached in more places than he could count, but he managed to stand on his own. His face and hands stung as if burnt, and there was a stabbing pain in his left side when he took too deep a breath.
To his surprise, he found his swords back in his hands, just as in the strange dream. He frowned. His weapons had been lost in the sandstorm as he fought the Nar’ath queen, tumbling from his numb fingers and scattered in different directions. How, then, had they found their way back to him while he was unconscious? The waking world was not like the dream landscape, where he had summoned his belongings with desire alone. Had his friends found them on the chamber floor and pressed them into his unresponsive hands as he was lying there? Whatever the cause, he was grateful for their return.
A sharp tremor shook the ground, accompanied by an ear-splitting peal of agonized fury. The center of the chamber was enveloped in a great cyclone of sand, and from it came waves rippling along the ground like low-hanging smoke. It seemed the Nar’ath queen was injured and angry, and had once more cloaked herself with her eerie control over the wasteland. As Amric studied the tempest, wondering if they could find their way through it to strike at the monster, another tremor ripped through the hive and almost threw him from his feet. There was a sound like the breaking of dry branches, and a network of cracks spidered through one side of the dome overhead. A piece of sandstone the size of a horse cart fell away from the high wall and shattered into a thousand shards of rock upon the ground. Several more followed, and the cracks in the dome began to spread and widen.
“The hive is collapsing,” Sariel shouted. “We need to leave now!”
Amric threw another glance toward the dark, raging heart of the storm, and then nodded. “Let her pull the place down on her own head,” he said. “We will wait for her above, if she emerges.”
They ran for the nearest of the winding stairways. At the foot of the stairs, Amric paused and spun about.
“Bellimar!” he said. “Did you find him as well?”
Valkarr shook his head, his expression grim. “We found no sign of him, but it is hard to locate anything out there. We were very fortunate to find you, once the queen raised the sandstorm again.”
Sariel grabbed at Amric’s arm, pulling him toward the stairs. “There is no time to look again,” she hissed. “We can only hope that he found his way out on his own.”
Amric hesitated, lifting his gaze to the shaking dome above, then gave a reluctant nod and turned back to the stairs. The old man had shown himself to be canny and tough; hopefully that would be enough to see him free of this place of death and destruction.
The warriors sheathed their blades and raced up the curving stairway. The ground fell away below, and they were soon above the roiling clouds of dust and sand, but their ascent proved no less harrowing than the battle below had been. The whole place trembled and heaved, threatening to throw them from the narrow stairs with every step. Twice the steps began to crumble away beneath their heels, and only quick leaps and the clasping hands of their comrades allowed them all to continue climbing toward the night sky.
They were partway up when a fluttering shadow shot free of the maelstrom below and rose through the air in an impossible leap. It clamped to the wall below the stairs ahead of them, clinging like some ragged spider. After a moment’s pause, the figure began to move, scampering up the sheer stone wall. Amric reached over one shoulder for the hilt of a sword as he neared the thing, but then he froze as he recognized the pale, slender hand that reached over the edge of the stairway.
“Bellimar!” he cried.
The old man pulled himself onto the stairs with a grunt, and then rose shakily to his feet. His clothing was torn and he bore countless gashes and scrapes, though his wounds were all puckered and bloodless. He swayed for a moment, clutching his side, and then gave the warriors a rueful look.
“Remind me never to do that again,” he muttered. “I suppose I should be grateful that I am already dead.”
Below, the angry cries of the Nar’ath queen rose to a crescendo. The swirling sands drew together across the hive and toward the core of the storm, leaving the chamber floor bare as they receded like a sudden tide. It all hung there for a moment, dense and dark, and then exploded outward with a sound like a thunderclap. The concussive force pressed them all to the wall of the hive for a moment as the sands bit at their exposed flesh. Then it subsided, and the sand sheeted down the outer wall. The chamber was clear to view once more, as was the Nar’ath queen.
She stood hunched in the center of the hive, seething with rage. She was surrounded by a dozen of her heavyset black minions, which milled about her in fretful uncertainty. The queen’s face was a charred ruin, and her heavy outer jaws hung twisted and useless from the lower part of her elongated skull. From the midst of that blackened visage, however, her green eyes burned with brilliant and unremitting malevolence. Those glowing slits raked over the room, searching for her prey. Her head lifted toward the tiny figures high above her, and her eyes narrowed. With a harsh, gurgling hiss, she burst into motion, surging for the foot of the stairway. The hive, which had become still momentarily, began to shake again with renewed vigor.
Amric’s brow furrowed. The stairs were narrow and unstable; there was no way they would support her bulk. He was about to say as much aloud when the Nar’ath queen reached the wall, and the words died in his throat. The stone wall warped at her approach, twitching and rippling like the hide of a beast. The ground lifted before her, and the stairs near the bottom melted and flowed slowly together to form the beginnings of a ramp. Amric felt a chill. The monster was reforming the place to meet her will, and it would not be long until she was able to pursue them out of the hive.
Amric glanced down. The stone beneath him had begun to shift, as when a strong ocean current pulled the sand out from beneath one’s feet. The edges of the steps were becoming less definite, rounding and disintegrating before his eyes. He shared a quick glance with the others.
“Run!” he barked. “Now!”
They raced up the stairway as it eroded and crumbled, by turns running and scrambling on all fours. When at last they reached the lip of the dome’s opening, Amric could not recall a time when he had been more grateful to stand beneath the open sky. A roar of frustration followed them as the Nar’ath queen continued her climb. Thalya, Syth and Halthak were waiting for them with the frightened horses.
“Where are the captives?” Amric asked.
“Marching back toward that outcropping of rock we camped on last night,” Thalya responded. “They are weak, and the desert may be no friendly place, but the men seemed to find it preferable to remaining near the hive.”
Amric nodded. “Nice shot, by the way. You have my thanks.”
“You are welcome,” she said. “And you owe me for that arrow.”
But she flashed a smirk as she said it, and he grinned back. Then her gaze strayed to Bellimar, taking in his bedraggled state, and her smile faded. Bellimar met her emerald eyes with an unblinking, unreadable expression. Amric tensed. The huntress had expended two of her powerful ensorcelled arrows, but she had a third remaining. It might look to her as if Bellimar was evincing a moment of vulnerability worth exploiting, but Amric had seen the vampire’s unnatural speed and strength firsthand below. In addition, the Nar’ath queen would reach the top of the dome in short order, and the battle would be resumed. They might need every weapon in their arsenal to stop her, if it was even possible to do so. A confrontation between the two of them here and now would prove disastrous for them all.
Before he could step between them, however, Thalya took a deliberate look up and down Bellimar, her cold expression promising a future reckoning, and then she turned her back on the old man. She stepped into the saddle of her black mare.
Amric let out a slow breath and swung atop his bay gelding. Sariel vaulted up to sit behind him. The others mounted their own horses, with Valkarr and Innikar riding together again, and the group began to pick their way around and down the dome as rapidly as its steep slope allowed. The horses seemed to be having an easier time on the descent than they had when climbing the structure, and Amric realized that the slope was less severe. The hive was slowly sinking, settling as it shook, almost deflating. The riders picked up speed, coaxing the horses to a sliding trot over the crumbling surface.
With a shriek like tearing metal, the Nar’ath queen burst from the hive. Her baleful gaze fell upon the riders, and long black claws tore into the stone as she surged forward after them.
“I hope you have a plan to stop that thing, swordsman,” Syth called as he cast worried looks over his shoulder. “That arrow only seems to have made it mad.”
Amric turned in the saddle to find Valkarr.
“We cannot face her directly again,” the Sil’ath said. “Our blades were little more than annoyances to her. We need to wear her down.”
“Agreed,” Amric replied. “Ride on to the ground and lure her away from the hive. I think she draws power from this location, somehow. Spread out so that she can only chase one at a time, while the others dart in and out quickly. She’s too big for a single killing stroke. Try to bleed her with smaller wounds instead. Weaken her slowly, and then finish her.”
Valkarr’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded in response as he rode. Behind him, Innikar gave Amric a questioning look.
“You talk as if you will not be there,” Sariel hissed into his ear, giving voice to their puzzlement.
“I am hoping it will not come to that,” Amric said with a tight smile. “But those are my orders––my suggestions––in case this does not work.” He handed her the reins.
“In case what does not––” she began.
Amric whipped a leg over the saddle and dropped from the horse.
Sariel shifted forward into the saddle and pulled back on the reins, slowing the big bay, but Amric waved them all on.
“Go!” he shouted. “I think I know how to stop her, but follow Valkarr’s lead if I am wrong.”
The riders exchanged glances, hesitating precious seconds more before spurring their horses onward down the outer surface of the hive. Syth lingered last, clearly torn as mad admiration shone in his eyes. Finally, he threw a long look toward the retreating form of Thalya on her mare, and he turned his horse after the others. Amric smiled; he wondered if Thalya knew.
“You are going to need a bigger weapon!” Syth called back as he rode away, and then Amric was alone.
I know, Amric thought. I am hoping I have brought one.
He turned to face the charging Nar’ath queen.
The riders had made good time, aided in large part by the gradual sinking of the dome. Amric now stood significantly closer to the wasteland below than to the top of the hive. The queen had gained ground on them, certainly, but her own mass and the decaying surface was hampering her progress. The fringe of small appendages skirting her huge form dug into the stone beneath her, keeping her from sliding out of control. She released and grabbed anew in a rippling, insect-like crawl. It brought her toward Amric at an alarming pace, but he was grateful to find it was nowhere near the blinding speed she had exhibited below.
He would need the time, if this was even going to work. If he was not insane after all.
Amric reached inside, searching for the presence he knew was there.
I need you now, he thought. You wanted to fight together. This is our chance.
For long, sickening seconds there was nothing. Amric watched the Nar’ath queen, radiating power and rage, clawing her way toward him. Then the familiar presence filled his mind, drowning his senses. Feelings of fear and urgency hammered at him, wrapping his own emotions and amplifying them until he was all but crushed beneath their weight. He staggered and almost went to one knee as a wave of dizziness struck him.
No! he commanded, gritting his teeth. If we fight for control, we will both die. This time we work together.
The pressure receded and the presence became hesitant, confused. It seemed to Amric like a wild animal, uncertain whether to attack or flee. He needed it to do neither of those, and instead accept a third alternative. His alternative.
I have done my best to deny your existence, he thought. Well, no longer.
The hive shook beneath his feet, and the Nar’ath queen came on.
You have hidden from me within my own mind, and sought to overwhelm me by acting on my behalf, he continued fiercely. No longer.
The Nar’ath queen drew near, glaring her hatred from a ruined face. She crouched low with her torso, squatting with forelimbs outstretched like a massive spider, while the serpentine rear part of her form gathered and tensed for the final pounce.
This time we work together, Amric repeated, lifting his arms.
Power roared within him, filling him like an ocean of white fire.
The Nar’ath queen’s glowing green eyes widened in sudden fear and outrage. “Adept!” she screamed. “Deceiver!”
With thunderous force that shook the dome anew, she catapulted into the air toward him. Amric raised his hands, palms outward, and made a sharp pushing motion. The monstrosity struck an invisible force in midair and careened backward to slam into the stone. Fine cracks snaked in every direction from the point of impact. She twisted back into an upright position in an instant, but he was not done. Operating on pure instinct––his or the other’s, he was not certain which––he reached out with hands flared open to send tendrils of power threading through the disintegrating stone of the hive. The dome began to rumble even more violently than before. The Nar’ath queen scrabbled with her talons over the bucking surface, seeking enough purchase for another charge.
“We will destroy your kind, Adept!” she spat. “My minions will––”
“Let us see if you can command your minions from hell, fiend!” Amric snarled back.
He clenched both hands into fists. A deafening roar shook the hive, and the top half of the massive dome fell away before him in an avalanche of stone. The Nar’ath queen vanished from sight, clawing and shrieking, sucked into a growing vortex of rock and sand. The hive continued to fracture and tumble in after her, and her screeching was lost in the thunder.
A meandering crack split the stone at Amric’s feet. The vast hole that had been the top of the hive was growing rapidly; the ragged edge crumbled toward him like a voracious, widening maw that meant to consume him as well.
Amric turned and ran.
His body was bruised and battered, his every nerve tingling, and it felt as if he had been somehow singed from the inside. He pushed it all from his mind as best he could. Right now, to run was to live, and the fates be damned but he was going to run. He ran down the slope at a reckless pace, hurdling cracks as they yawned before him and skirting the sinkholes that opened like sores in the earth. The surface of the dome was decaying, softening from stone to sand, and seemed to catch at his boots as he pounded over it. His footing was far too treacherous to risk a look back, but his fevered imagination put the collapsing edge at his very heels.
He hurled himself past the last bit, leaping through the air to strike the sand of the wasteland. He rolled several times and came to his knees, gasping for breath. He was just in time to see the last remnants of the hive vanish beneath a crashing wave of sand, sending a plume of dust high into the night sky. Where the imposing structure had been, there was nothing left but a broad, shallow crater in the desert.
Amric sagged back on his haunches, shuddering with reaction. The strange presence flitted and circled within him, almost giddy, while he only felt a chilling numbness inside. He turned his hands over, staring down at them as if they were not his own. Wisps of smoke rose in slow curls from his fingers.
The whicker of horses caused him to lift his head. The others drew rein a short distance away, their eyes wide as they stared at him. Valkarr rode at the head of the group. Amric searched his friend’s expression, seeking any clue as to what he was feeling at the moment: revulsion, fear, anything. But the Sil’ath’s face was frozen in shock, and revealed nothing.
Bellimar urged his horse forward, edging past Valkarr’s blue dun. Incredulity and triumph warred within his ancient eyes.
“Swordsman,” he whispered. “Your aura––”
“I know,” Amric mumbled, looking back at his hands. “I know.”
In truth, he could feel the power still radiating from him like the heat from a bonfire. He closed his eyes, trying to shut it all out. He had asked for this, had invited it to emerge, had all but demanded that it fully join with him. But it was too much, too fast, and it felt like it was consuming him from the inside. The strange presence within him faltered, sensing his rejection. Its elation faded, eclipsed by rising puzzlement and concern.
Amric heard several of the riders slide from their mounts, heard the thumps as their boots hit the ground. Tentative steps approached him where he knelt. He felt them gathering around him, but no one touched him, and nothing else broke the silence except his ragged breathing.
Nothing, that is, until a sharp crackling began in the night air.
Amric’s head snapped up. He felt a jarring sense of panic come from the other within him, and that brimming presence fled, winking out of existence so quickly that Amric was left reeling at its sudden absence. He expected to feel an abiding sense of relief to be free of it, and instead he felt only… empty.
A fiery rift appeared in the air above the crest of a nearby dune. It split wide like an opening wound, and through it stepped a man in black robes. The rent closed behind him with a sizzling hiss. The stranger was tall, with a dark beard, and he held himself like a man prepared for war. His gaze swung toward them, and a humorless smile spread across the hard edges of his features. Amric could feel the man’s power even over the distance, blazing like a beacon in the night. Somehow he knew, without the slightest hint of doubt, what type of creature they were now looking upon.
This, then, was a true Adept.
This was the creature that struck fear in the black heart of the Nar’ath queen, the monstrosity that had nearly killed them all.
And it might well be his own kind.