He does not see Imas kneeling before him anymore. In his mind, I have replaced Imas with a viper the size of a mountain. I make him feel the scales sliding over his skin, cold and wet. Make him feel the fangs sinking into his soul. I make him experience the digestion.
"Get out!" Malek shrieks, dropping the axe. It clatters to the stone floor, missing Imas by a hairsbreadth.
Malek claws at his face. He digs his nails into his cheeks, tearing ribbons of gray skin, trying to rip the vision out of his eyes.
"It’s inside me!" he screams, his voice shredding. "It’s eating me!"
Blood begins to drip from his nose. Then his ears. Then his eyes. His brain is hemorrhaging, unable to process the sheer, crushing weight of the illusion I have forced upon him. The Warrior’s magic within him flares, trying to fight back, but you cannot fight a nightmare with a sword.
The soldiers holding me let go. They don't just release me; they fling themselves away, backing into the walls, whimpering like beaten dogs.
I stand alone in the midst of the chaos. My hair floats around my face, lifted by the static charge of the magic pouring off me. I feel light. I feel terrible. I feel like a star going supernova.
I look at the archers on the balcony. They are trained killers. They are fearless.
I turn my gaze up to them.
You want to see death?I ask them, my thoughts booming in their skulls like thunder.Then see it.
I push the sensation of drowning into them. I fill their lungs with phantom water. I make them feel the pressure of the deep ocean crushing their ribs.
The first archer drops his bow and clutches his throat, gagging, his face turning purple.
The second one screams—a high, thin sound of madness. He looks at his own hands and sees snakes. He sees his fingers turning into vipers that are biting his own wrists.
"Get them off!" he wails, dropping to his knees. He begins to claw at his arms, tearing at his own armor, scratching until he hits flesh.
"My eyes!" another screams, digging his knuckles into his sockets. "The shadows are biting my eyes!"
Chaos erupts. It is not the controlled Chaos of the Khuzuth; it is the messy, wet panic of prey animals trapped in a burning cage.
I look down at Imas.
He is the only one untouched. He crouches on the floor, staring up at me. His face is splattered with mud and blood, his expression one of utter, paralyzed awe. He sees the blackness of my eyes. He feels the storm radiating from me. He knows that I am dismantling an army with nothing but a thought.
He does not look afraid. He looks... vindicated.
But I cannot stop. The dam is gone, and the ocean is rushing out. I am burning through my reserves, burning through my life force. My knees shake. The edges of my vision fray into white light.
I focus on Malek. He is on his knees now, retching blood onto the stone floor, his mind shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.
Die,I tell him.
It is a simple command. A push of empathy twisted into a weapon. I make his heart realize how tired it is. I make his brain realize how much it hurts to be alive. I make his body sympathize with the dust.
Malek gasps. His red eyes roll back in his head. He slumps forward, face-planting into the stone, his massive body twitching once, then going still.
Silence falls.
It is the silence of the grave as if the god of death has comme.
The soldiers are catatonic, curled into fetal balls, lost in their own personal hells. The archers on the balcony have stopped screaming, reduced to sobbing heaps of broken armor.
I sway. The power cuts out as abruptly as it began, leaving a vacuum that sucks the air from the room. The blackness recedes from my vision, and the world rushes back in a blur of gray and red.
My legs give way.
I fall, expecting the hard impact of the stone.
