Searing pain choked a strangely high-pitched gasp from her lips. The overheated air pulled the very breath from her lungs. The creature's burning limbs wrapped about her, pulling her close in a burning, elemental bear hug. Her hair smoldered and caught flame. She strained toward Angul, but her arms were caught within the encircling grasp. She couldn't reach Angul's hilt!
The monk drew his slender blade, and with masterful proficiency, laid into the burning creature's fiery core while deftly avoiding Kiril.
The fire elemental shuddered, and the elf renewed her effort to burst free. Success! She tumbled into the cool air, rolling to put some distance between herself and her foe and to put out the flames that burned her clothing. Beating out the flames in her hair, she stood, trailing a corona of dark smoke. The smell of burnt leather and hair pinched her nose.
Raidon danced back and forth with the living inferno, using his strangely shaped weapon in two hands, even though the blade was no longer than an ordinary long sword. The straight blade with its curved point danced like a needle, slashing, parrying, and plunging at the creature's fiery core. In turn, the dancing mote of heat and flame drew ever closer to the monk, pawing at Raidon with claws of flickering red and yellow. The fire consuming the citadel blazed steadily, and Kiril realized that fighting the elemental so close to the fire that spawned it was likely a waste of time. Every strike Raidon landed was burned away, revealing unblemished, sun-bright "flesh" moments later.
"Fall back, Raidon!" she ordered. "It shrugs off injury while it is so close to the great fire!" She hoped her surmise was true.
The monk danced away from Moonveil Citadel, as did she, now consciously avoiding Angul's lure. She had been true to her resolve regarding the whisky, and unless she needed to draw the blade to save her life, she didn't want to risk succumbing utterly to his control; without alcohol insulating her mind, she was far more vulnerable.
Adrik's voice broke over the roar of flames from the collapsing citadel. She glanced back soon enough to witness the sorcerer unleashing a blast of blizzard white, narrow where it issued from his hands, but wide enough to encompass the entire stalking flame. Raidon vaulted up and backward, gracefully avoiding the wintry spell. Within that chilly cone, the creature writhed, screaming a torrent of flame.
Raidon extended his blade as the miniature blizzard faded, using it almost like a spear, thrusting into the weakened creature. It shuddered one final time, then dissolved into so many fading flames.
The half-elf essayed a flourish with his blade, then sheathed it in the same elegant motion. He pointed upward and behind Kiril.
She turned. Four ugly silhouettes straddled the same ridge they'd topped a while earlier. Not the star elves she'd hoped to see. Instead, monsters. Each possessed three clawed legs supporting a body as sinuous as a snake. Their ropy arms were like tentacles, and at least three eyes sprouted from each squat, coiled head.
The creatures charged down the ridge as one. Three moved along the ground in an awkward but surprisingly swift gait. The fourth unfurled insectoid wings and took to the air, flying toward the dragonet that circled above the ridge.
Adrik shrieked as he dashed away from the newcomers. The three creatures on the ground bore down on the fleeing sorcerer. The flying creature pointed at Xet. A black spark easily jumped up to the crystal dragon. The tiny constructs color turned to red then black, and the dragonet dropped from the sky.
"Xet!" screamed Kiril. The little creature was more annoyance than companion, but. . .
Raidon tore forward, moving dozens of paces in the blink of an eye. As a creature wrapped a tearing, clawed tentacle around one of Adrik's flailing arms, the monk launched himself into the air. He delivered a snapping side kick directly into the attacking creature's knoblike head.
The other two monsters surged into the mix.
Kiril advanced, but she kept her eyes on the single creature that remained aloft. A nilshai. It must have been responsible for summoning the sentient flame from the burning citadel.
It chattered an obscene blend of music and syllables. With an audible crack, blue-green lightning suddenly connected the tips of its tentacles with Kiril's metallic armor. She screamed as the electric surge drew tight all her muscles into a single, full-body cramp.
She could put off the inevitable no longer.
Angul woke to blue fire in her hand.
The luminosity of the stars above tripled, and all shadows fled the field, or so it seemed to Kiril.
The swordswoman yelled again, her voice stripped of uncertainty and pain. It was the cry of a warrior certain of her eventual victory.
Kiril fell upon the creatures' flanks as they attempted to smother the monk, who in turn protected Adrik's prostrate form.
When her blade contacted the flesh of the first nilshai, she not only hewed through its tissue, but the cerulean flame from her blade immediately set it alight so robustly that its destruction was a small explosion. Flaming, white-hot bits were propelled in every direction. The nearest nilshai also caught fire, and a moment later, it too was consumed by Angul's cleansing influence.
Rarely was her blade so effective—only when Angul's true enemies were flushed from dark corners. These were aberrations! And Angul was forged for one purpose before all else: the eradication of all atrocities such as these whose mere existence so tainted the world.
The final, cowering nilshai uttered an ululation that Kiril understood as terror for its evil soul. She swept her blade through its abominable carcass, consuming flesh and spirit simultaneously with her unforgiving length of steel.
The last abomination continued to hover above the ridge. It spoke, and its voice was a synthesis of high-pitched squeals, grinding teeth, and tentacle flesh rasping across itself. Kiril heard it say, "I foresee my end. As I foresaw the deaths of my lesser sisters you've just slain. But I rejoice! For each death, even mine, is another stone in the path that leads ineluctably to Xxiphu's emergence! Even as I breathe my last—"
Kiril reversed her grip on Angul's hilt, then launched the burning blade as if he were a javelin. Angul punched through the air tip-forward, a series of ever-widening, flaming halos in his wake. The prophesying aberration's body was consumed in the cleansing inferno that followed contact.
* * * * *
Raidon Kane bent to one knee to support Adrik's head. The sorcerer shivered and gasped, "My arm! It... it hurt like fire, but now it's numb."
The monk examined the man's injured limb, easily visible through the shredded sleeve of his robe. Sucker marks made ugly circles across his flesh. At the center of each circle beaded a tiny drop of blood. The arm's color was fading toward a sickly green hue.
"Poison runs in your veins," declared Raidon. "Hold still." So saying, he tore away Adrik's shredded sleeve and used it to tie a tourniquet around the sorcerer's arm above the elbow. He cinched it tight, making the man wince. He hoped it was tight enough to slow the venom. Better the loss of a single arm than death.
The swordswoman walked up, her sword already tucked in her belt. Her blade had surprised Raidon with its incredible display. He wondered why the sword had been so ineffective when he'd first met Kiril at the Mere.
In her arms, Kiril carried the tiny creature she called Xet. Its iridescent color was slowly returning, and its wings flexed. The swordswoman cradled it with a tenderness Raidon hadn't guessed belonged to the elf.
He observed, "You said before that 'threats' wandered Sild?yuir. Are these what you spoke of?"
Kiril said, "Yes. The nilshai. Damned monsters that wield formidable sorcery. They are recent invaders, only becoming a nuisance in the last few years. Word of monsters in the lonelier stretches of the forest circulated, though most thought these 'nilshai' stories were jokes."
The swordswoman scowled at the burnt cinder that was once Moonveil Citadel. "Soon enough, we realized the nilshai were all too real. We discovered they were poisoning Sild?yuir for years."
"Poisoning?" asked the monk.
"They kill our children and steal away tracts of land that are never seen again."
Concern clutched Raidon's stomach. He had discovered his mother's home realm only to find it under attack by vicious invaders. Was she safe?
Adrik looked up from his ravaged, darkening arm. He asked, his teeth gritted against pain, "Where do they come from?"
Kiril gazed at the burning citadel. She said, "No one ever knew. Our sages said they hailed from a spectral reality that underpins our own. But Sild?yuir was disjoined from cosmology when it first took shape. It has always puzzled my folk why the nilshai exert so much effort to enter here, when Faer?n is far easier to reach."
Kiril paused, then continued. "But I know the truth, now. If any of my people were around to hear it, I would explain that the blood-flecking nilshai are agents of the Traitor, adherents who worship, as he does, the gods-damned aberrations of the primeval world. They are servants of the cursed Lords of Madness who seek to regain the realm denied them by the first gods."
Adrik grunted and said no more. Raidon took it as a warning, considering that the voluble sorcerer typically would have launched into a dozen questions. The monk tapped Kiril on the shoulder and said in a quiet voice, "This man requires a healer's craft."
Kiril frowned and hesitated, but she said, "Aid can be petitioned from a place near here."
Adrik smiled despite his pain.
* * * * *