The shard flared dark red, and Vantra took that as a bad sign. Whenever her altar and badge turned that dark shade, enemies wished her and her companions harm—not that she needed the reminder her protections were not enough.
The shields broke. Thnk thnk thnk. Air whistled through holes, and the front rotated to the right, exposing the broad left side to attack.
“Vantra!” Dough yelled, his voice distant as she concentrated on shield after shield after shield. She felt something strike her arm; she looked over at the pirate. “Get Kenosera and Yut-ta off this thing!”
How was she going to get them off the spintop and not hurt them? She smashed her lips together. She told them of the danger. They did not listen. Why did they not listen?
She popped the buckle and pushed from the chair, eyeing the two wide-eyed beings before thrusting the door open; wind careened inside, blowing the ends of belts and light objects around. While she did not have the energy gleaned from that magic source, she should be able to hold shields long enough to get them to the ground. The two unbuckled and rose, fighting for balance; she slapped shields over them, altering the interior so they could not fall through. She formed handles, the best she could do to combat the jostling. A thread snaked from the shard and crisscrossed the surface like yarn, then foamed; a cushion? Good enough. She floated out the opening, and Kenosera fell after her, Yut-ta next.
“Stay safe!” she screamed at Dough as the last shields broke and the front of the spintop exploded.
No time. She wrapped the thread around her arms and flew away from the craft, angling towards the top of the nearest building that looked like the roof remained intact, fighting to stay in front of the heavier living. The shard crackled, and lightning coursed down the strand, covering the shield as the connection frayed.
She reached the roof as the attachment broke. The shield hit and slid on the foamy magic, the lightning providing a cushion between the parapet and the protection. She slapped her hands on the surface and created pointy bumps on her palms to slow the rotation through friction. Once it halted, she scrunched her fingers, and it evaporated, leaving the two beings on the rough stone, eyes squeezed shut, the spear lying between them.
“Sorry,” she whispered as her gaze flicked over them. “Are you hurt?” Both shook heads. Relieved no ill had come to them, she employed her typical Sun shields.
The night lit with an explosion; she gasped as fire rose high above neighboring buildings, orange and yellow racing skyward. Within moments, debris rained down in flaming bits. Dough!
She heard calls from below. Kenosera and Yut-ta struggled to sit up as she zipped to the edge and peeked over; rainforest beings raced into the ground-floor door. The three-story roof had a stair leading to it, though much of the wall supporting it had collapsed. She doubted they cared about the danger when their prize was so close.
She whisked back to the two, grabbed the spear, and drew them to a corner. While she had never attempted the invisibility spell with the living, she did not have a choice. She shoved the shard into Yut-ta’s chest and thrust the weapon at Kenosera. “Smack me with that if I don’t wake up,” she whispered, bending her head to concentrate.
Thumps and sharp, angry voices, whines, more thumps. Fear rose, and she fought for calm. A hand gripped her shoulder, and the thumb rubbed a light, comforting circle. She focused on that; she had two beings to protect. She needed composure.
Hot, searing pain tore through her chest. She choked, looked down; a staff, swirling with the same corrupted touch that infected the roots, rammed through her and chipped the rough sandstone between Kenosera and Yut-ta. Thick revulsion, disgust, terror, shot through her as the staff jerked back, leaving a hole that her essence poured through.
Heat flared around her—the shard?
She screamed as agony scorched through her being. She collapsed, slapping her hands over the gap, grasping the fleeing essence as everything became blistering white. Nausea overwhelmed her as the lingering darkness sizzled and dug into her core.
A presence rushed to her, dark, bitter, and engulfed her. Probing hooks reached into her, scraping against her inner self.
No. NO!
Clear Rays burst from her, leaving her weightless. She could not see, could not hear, could sense nothing. Did she float above the roof? Below it? She could not tell up from down, left from right. Dark shattered, falling from her, tumbling into nothing.
The brightness dwindled, leaving lightning streaking across her sight. She blinked, staring at Kenosera’s leg. What happened? Her mind, so fuzzy; had the corrupted staff hurt her? She looked down; no tear in her essence, and her core pulsed strong despite the rest of her energy fluctuating.
Kenosera slipped his arm around her and drew her into a sitting position. How did he do that? She remained in Ether form! He wasn’t a spiritesti, he wasn’t—
He held the shard. Maybe that was why? But she had given it to Yu-ta, because of his Sun connection. She raised her head, searching for the hooskine. He peered over the edge of the parapet, then glanced back, stern, intent.
“Vantra, we can escape down the wall.”
“Go, we’ll meet you down there,” Kenosera told her. He drew her from her kneeling position and pushed her over the lip. Numb, she wafted to the ground, wanting to order her thoughts and failing. She alit on the soil, and her numbness crumbled under hyper-sensitivity. The contaminated forest, the roots, the beings, all weighed against her, their bleakness strong, their fear distant, repellent.
She could sense the citadel and a vast lake of darkness that called to the forest. It answered, creeping ever-steadily towards it. Spots above and below ground milled about, and a blot of corruption sat atop it all, wavering, unsteady. Kjiven. She sensed Kjiven, his despondency and rage.
Enemies neared—afraid, fierce, still too distant for a visual. She pushed from the ground and wrapped her hands around her upper arms; the taint faded into the general numbness infecting her perception. What was wrong with her? She felt so strange. Had the corruption harmed her? Nothing remained of it as far as she could detect; her essence shimmered with Sun’s Touch, warm, comforting. But how could she sense the foulness in the beings now, when before she could not? It was as if thousands paraded through her mind, each with their own thoughts and needs, demanding she recognize them.
“The spear’s gone.”
She jerked and whirled; Kenosera grabbed her hand and hauled her down the wall and behind the next building. Torches sat at the corners, providing enough light to keep the darkness at bay, but she could feel it creeping closer, searching for a chance to break through and answer its summons.
“The spear?” she whispered.
“Clear Rays obliterated it,” he said as he led them down a rocky path. Rock crumbled behind them, accompanied by a shower of smaller debris.
“Well, better losing the key than our lives,” Yut-ta muttered, hastening his step. Kenosera took that as a silent command to increase speed.
Vantra stroked her throat. “I-I . . . they . . .” Her voice hitched.
“They were corrupted beyond saving,” the hooskine told her, angry loathing lacing his words. “They felt worse than the forest, and that’s saying something.”
“I could see nothing of the yondaii’s skin or fur, so many symbols overlapped. Evil swam around him like gnats. He struck you with his staff, and, well . . .” Kenosera glanced back at her. “I don’t think you killed him. I think the shard did.”
“It rode with Clear Rays,” Yut-ta said. “I could feel it. It eradicated those symbols but didn’t leave anything else behind, either.”
“Like you rid me of Rezenarza’s touch,” the nomad said. “A blessing, even if he did not live to accept it.”
“What corrupts like that?” she whispered, her hand drifting to her chest. She tried to gather her thoughts, explain how the magic placed by the staff felt dead, and how she could now detect that deadness surrounding them. She knew its touch because she witnessed so much of that in the Fields, wafting from head after head who had given up hope of Redemption.
“I don’t know,” Yut-ta said. “But I think he could sense you. He looked like he noticed you, even if he was oblivious to me and Sera.”
“There’s so much wrong here.” She tried to clear her thoughts, but fuzz dulled her, as if she had wrapped a warm blanket around her head that prevented her brain and emotions from working properly. Not that she had a physical brain, but . . .
“We need to find another spear.” The hooskine pushed ahead, brought his wings tight to his body and planted himself against the corner of a building. He peered around it, then popped back. “That’s the only way we’re getting below ground without drawing more attention.”
Her emotions frayed; she and the shard probably attracted quite a bit of it.
He peeked again. “I don’t see anyone,” he whispered.
“Should we try to find Dough first?” Kenosera asked.
Vantra shook her head. “He’ll find us.” Better to let a ghost phase through walls in search of them than to expose her companions to angry rufang. She settled her hand against her head, worried that the fuzziness was a sign she needed to absorb mist. If her essence sucked in the corrupted place’s ryiam-laden fog, infection would ride with it. Should they try to make it back to the temple? The air there remained clean . . .
The sharp, prickly touch of the taint hit her. She winced and tugged on Kenosera’s hand. “There are rufang about.”
Her companions planted themselves against a wall and bent down. She drifted to Kenosera’s side, tingling with the sense that corruption came near. Voices rose, argumentative, the one in deep pain sounding familiar. Yut-ta crawled to the left-hand edge of the building and peered around, then hastened back to them.
“That’s Zepirz,” he whispered. “They’re carrying him on a stretcher, but it doesn’t look like he’s been harmed physically.”
“His marks are hurting him.” Vantra could feel them pulsing, and she shuddered. If he were willing, she would do as Sun acolytes had done for millennia, used Clear Rays to wipe away the touch of an unwanted syimlin. She had not noticed in Deousem, but their caustic corruption burned him. How had he managed to function with that pain?
“His marks?” Kenosera asked.
“I can sense them. They burn.”
He frowned, then looked at the hooskine. “I know what that’s like. Do you think Kjiven can control him through them, like Rezenarza did me?”
Yut-ta cocked his head with bird-like curiosity, then dipped his head in a nod. “Likely. The more marks, the greater the hold of the manipulator.”
“Let’s see where they’re taking him.” She wanted to leave him, but could not. She had to convince him that the pain he felt was not holy; she had seen similar damage in patients looking to the Spiral Sun’s healers for help. One particular lesser syimlin, Elbada, was especially covetous of her following, and her mark made it nigh impossible to leave her influence without a Sun acolyte breaking the link. She warped her blessing and her touch, and Vantra hated that one with such power harmed those who followed her. She was a semi-popular syimlin of the arts; she did not have to bow to such terrible means to transition into a greater syimlin’s power.
Her mother said her jealousy held her back, as it did most lesser syimlin. How many others would achieve greater status if they did not lust after it so dearly?
She jerked back as a hand settled against her forehead. She blinked at Kenosera, who regarded her, frowning. “Are you alright?”
She realized they no longer hid behind a building and wondered when they had deserted their place. “I . . . don’t know. Everything’s hazy.”
“We’re not going anywhere near him,” Yut-ta said, swiping his hand through the air. They stood beneath a new awning that covered boxes and barrels, one bright enough with torchlight, the corruption stayed away from the space. What did they store there, that warranted the protection?
“We have to.”
“No we don’t. Vantra, you seem . . .” Kenosera tried to find a word, and she shook her head.
“I can’t leave him like that without trying to convince him to destroy the marks. They aren’t Strans’ blessing, we know that.”
“He’s the enemy, and we know others like him can harm us with their staffs.”
Fear pummeled her, and she delved into her essence, but nothing dark—other than her typical twist—remained. “I don’t sense the taint in me,” she whispered. “He needs help. If he says no, we can go. It’s his choice. But he has to know.”
“Know?”
“That Strans isn’t Strans, and that Kjiven’s marks are a corruption of the Labyrinth blessing.” Something about that scratched at her, but she could not say why.
“You’ve too soft a heart,” the hooskine muttered. “He will bring death to us, yet you insist on helping the unhelpable.”
“As a Sun acolyte must, even when it seems impossible.”
Kenosera chuckled, and Yut-ta did not enjoy the reminder of the faithful’s creed. “Fine,” he grumbled. “They went in that building across the square. It looks like they left two guards, so around the back.”
