Diran smiled. "It seems as if our mysterious psion isn't the only one who can read minds."
"We should move away from Tresslar and Hinto," Ghaji said. "Neither is capable of fighting at the moment."
Diran hated to leave the two alone-Tresslar still unconscious and Hinto held tight in the grip of his fear-but they couldn't draw danger to them, either.
"Very well, let's-"
Return what you have stolen, thief!
The words lanced through Diran's brain like white-hot spearpoints, and he heard someone cry out in pain. He wasn't surprised when he realized it was him. Through eyes blurred with tears, he saw a large figure striding across the dock toward them. Man-shaped it was, made of stone and wood, the surface of its body encrusted with colorful crystal shards of varying sizes that pulsed with barely constrained energy. A warforged, Diran thought, but like none he had ever seen before.
Standing on shore, watching as the warforged advanced, were three other figures. Diran didn't recognize either the orc or the lean, graceful man clad in black leather, but the third figure was known to him, as familiar to Diran as his own face. Swaddled in a thick fur cloak against the cold, grinning like a shark about to sink its teeth into its next meal, stood Aldarik Cathmore.
Before Diran had time to fully register Cathmore's presence, a three-fingered hand made of stone closed around his throat, and he felt himself being lifted into the air. The warforged's pinpoint eyes smoldered with fury as he slowly tightened his grip on Diran's neck, and when next he spoke, its voice issued from its stone mouth.
"Return what you have taken, thief… or die!"
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Can we have a third choice?"
Ghaji swung his flaming axe at the crook of the warforged's arm. During the Last War, he'd fought many of the living constructs, and he knew that they were most vulnerable at their darkwood joints, and though the darkwood was spelled to be fire-resistant on the surface, once that surface was broken, the wood underneath burned as easily as any other.
The axe blade bit into the joint of the warforged's arm with a loud chuk! and held fast. The warforged's head swiveled as he turned to look at Ghaji, but before the construct could react further, the half-orc hauled back on his weapon with all his strength, attempting to unbalance the warforged and break his grip on Diran. Given that the constructs were formed primarily of stone and metal, warforged were heavy and not easily moved, but Ghaji was determined to save his friend and gave it all he had. The half-orc's arm and shoulder muscles blazed with pain, but he refused to let up.
The warforged, which up to this point had been immovable as a statue, began to lean toward Ghaji, and the half-orc gave one last mighty pull, shouting with the effort. It felt as if his arm muscles were going to rip free of their bones, but the warforged stumbled, and the hand clutching Diran around the neck sprung open.
The black-clad priest fell to the dock and gasped for air. Ghaji feared that his friend's throat had been crushed, but while he wanted to rush to Diran's side and tend to him, Ghaji knew he couldn't. The warforged would remain off-balance for only a second or two. Besides, Diran himself was best equipped to heal whatever injuries he might've sustained.
Ghaji's axe was still partially embedded in the warforged's arm, and he needed to pry the weapon loose to resume his attack, but before he could do so, the construct trained his pinpoint eyes of flickering energy on Ghaji, and the crystal shards affixed to his head-already pulsing with energy-shone more brightly. Ghaji felt himself rising into the air as if he was being lifted by powerful hands. He still had hold of his axe, and the blade slid free from the warforged's arm with unexpected ease. Ghaji looked down at himself, but he could see nothing visible that was holding him aloft.
The construct's eyes glowed like tiny twin suns, and Ghaji flew high up into the air and out over the sea.
Asenka watched as an unseen force lifted Ghaji into the air then hurled him far from the dock. The half-orc soared at least a hundred feet upward before starting to descend. From that height, hitting the water would be like slamming full force into a brick wall. If he hit the sea at the wrong angle…
Before she could see if Ghaji entered the water safely, a much closer splashing sound drew Asenka's attention back to the warforged. Thanks to Ghaji's axe-strike, flames engulfed the construct's arm, but now a stream of water rose forth from the sea to arc through the air and splash onto the flames, dousing them. Asenka knew that warforged wizards existed, though she had never encountered any, and she wondered if this construct was one. The warforged's actions didn't seem like magic though. He used no materials or tools, conducted no rituals, spoke no magic words… As near as she could tell this warforged simply willed something to happen, and it did. Disrupt a magic-user's concentration, interrupt his rite, make him mispronounce his mystical phrases, take away or damage his artifacts of power, and you could fight him, but Asenka had no idea how to even begin to counter such power as the warforged possessed. But she knew who might.
Asenka hurried over to Diran. The priest had risen to a sitting position, eyes closed, hand gently pressed to his bruised throat. As she watched, the blue-black color faded as the skin on his neck regained its normal hue, and his windburned cheeks and chapped lips-the result of his standing at the prow of the Zephyr for so long-healed as well. She offered her hand, Diran took it, and she helped him to his feet.
"Are you hurt?" she asked.
Diran rubbed his throat. "Not now. What of Ghaji?" Asenka gazed seaward, but she saw no sign of the half-orc. "I don't know."
Diran's eyes narrowed in an expression that she was coming to recognize as one of controlled anger. "Stay with Tresslar and Hinto. I'm going to try and draw the warforged away from here."
The crystalline-studded construct had finished extinguishing the flames, but now he stood swaying from side to side, staring off into the distance as if stunned or confused.
Asenka grabbed his arm. "Wait!"
She pointed and Diran turned to see a squad of Sea Scorpions approaching at full speed from the shore end of the dock, a dozen men and women, all with weapons drawn and ready.
"Order them to back off!" Diran said. "There's no way they can hope to stand against a creature this powerful!"
Intellectually, Asenka knew he was right. Emotionally, she was proud of the people in her command. They were the best warriors Perhata had to offer, the best in the entire Gulf of Ingjald, and she was reluctant to admit there was any threat they couldn't handle.
As if Diran's words had brought him back to reality, the warforged turned to face the oncoming warriors. He seemed to study them for a moment before raising his right arm and stretching his three-fingered hand toward them. At first nothing happened, but then the wooden planks of the dock began to shudder beneath the Sea Scorpions' feet, and the wood exploded upward as a vast geyser of water erupted into the air. Men and women shouted as they were flung about like so many rag dolls. Most tumbled through the air to splash into the water on either side of the dock, but a few landed on unbroken wood in front of or behind the newly created gap. They hit hard, and the sound of snapping bones was accompanied by their screams of pain.
"Warforged!" Diran shouted.
The construct hesitated a moment before turning back around to face Diran and Asenka.
"I'm the one you want, not those warriors. Forget them. Whatever your problem is, it lies with me, so let us settle it-just the two of us."
The warforged stared at Diran, his expression-like that of all his kind-unreadable. The crystals covering his stone and metal body flickered on and off in a strangely tentative manner that to Asenka indicated indecision.