Goram swung his gods-cursed hammer once more.
Shan closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see it. “Pain is—”
The bones in his left hip shattered inside his skin. Blinding agony engulfed him. His dazed mind howled and groped for the word.Pain is…is…is—
—Rage.
It came from nowhere and filled him in an instant. Violent fury. Bloodlust. Savage, vengeful ferocity so vast it made the earth tremble.
Goram fell to his knees, and his master staggered back against the rough, carved-out walls of the cell. Maur’s hood fell back, revealing the rotting ruins of his face—the skin drooping like melted tallow, patched with oozing sores where his flesh had begun to putrefy.
“You…will…not…touch…him!”
The guttural roar of command came from Shan’s own throat—but the fierce, rumbling voice was not his.
Concentrated power filled him—searing him from the inside out, all but boiling the blood in his veins. It was as if the Bright Lord himself had poured all the vast energy of the Great Sun into Shan’s soul on a bolt of divine lightning.
With the power came a presence—feminine and familiar—and Shan wasn’t the only one who sensed it.
Silver eyes fixed on Shan. “You!” he exclaimed, and silver irises darkened to the lurid black of Azrahn.
Shan roared a warning to the daughter he had never seen—the precious, beloved child he and Elfeya had conceived in a world of endless horror. The same child they had risked their lives to save, and now willingly suffered every torment to protect.
The Rage—hers and his combined—exploded, flooding him with fury.Sel’dormanacles disintegrated. Agony ripped through him as his body flash-boiled into a cloud of flaming mist and his mind into a fearsome, savage haze.
Burn him! Shred him! Feast on his roasted bones!
The cry howled in his mind, but the fierce battle cry turned to a shriek of pain as the mist he had become resolidified. Limbs formed, but they were twisted and misshapen, half tairen, half Fey, as if man and beast had been fused together in some monstrous amalgamation. Enormous muscles rippled and bulged beneath a patchwork hide, silvery Fey skin covered by broad tracts of black fur. A man’s bony hands, larger than serving platters, ripped at the air with a beast’s razored claws.
The creature reared back on bulging hind legs and opened its fanged maw. Searing fire spewed forth in an incinerating jet.
Goram screamed as his body turned to lifeless char, and beside him, the hammer he’d wielded with such malevolent enthusiasm melted into a puddle of harmless slag.
The High Mage shifted his initial weave into a powerful shield that withstood the first blast of fire—then he struck. His skeletal arms shoved forward, purple velvet sleeves falling back to reveal clawed hands holding globes of Azrahn that he hurled with a strength far exceeding his frail, wasted appearance.
The dark, corruptive magic splashed against the enormous, furred chest, and the creature that was part Shan, part tairen reared back, roaring with a mix of rage, pain, and fear. Cramped wings beat at the rough rock of the ceiling. Midspan claws gouged deep furrows into thesel’dorore.
The monster howled assel’dorrubble rained searing acid across its back and the burning ice of the Mage’s Azrahn spread across its chest.
Flame exploded from the beast’s muzzle.
Vadim Maur dove through the cell door and rolled to the left. His bones bounced painfully across the unyielding stone floor, but neither the jolts nor even the snap of a breaking finger unraveled his concentration.
Pain was the price of great magic, and he had long ago accepted that penalty.
Vast and devastating, his power surged in answer to his call. Blazing, multi-ply threads burst from his hands in dense shield patterns as clouds of intense flame boiled out of the cell to fill the corridor.
The guards by the door—unprotected by similar shields—lit up like matchsticks. They didn’t even have time to scream before the ash that had been their living bodies scattered on the searing winds of the maelstrom.
Perspiration broke out on Vadim’s skin, then evaporated as the hairs on his arms crackled and his skin turned bright red. He poured more magic into his weaves, but the destructive force of the fire was too great. A six-fold weave—no matter how powerful—had no chance of standing against tairen flame for long. His shields were failing. He was roasting.
Desperate, he arrowed a command to hisumagiguarding the cell two levels above. «Go to the shei’dalin Elfeya now. Kill her!»
Elvia ~ Navahele
Bel groaned and held his hands to his ringing ears. His head felt like that Eldrultsharthad applied his hammer to Bel’s skull. Someone was screaming.
His eyes snapped open and he rolled into a crouch.
