Cathmore waved his hand and Bruk's eyes were restored. The zombie turned to look at Diran and grinned.
"You're going to die here, Diran," Cathmore said. "The only question is how long you'll manage to postpone the inevitable."
Before Bruk could resume his attack, the air shimmered and a young blond girl wearing a gray tunic and sandals appeared behind Cathmore. Diran's breath caught in his throat as he recognized Makala-not as she was, but as she'd been when they'd first met, so many years ago at Emon Gorsedd's academy.
Cathmore turned and smiled at Makala. "It's about time you arrived, my dear. I was beginning to think you were going to miss all the fun."
Makala returned Cathmore's smile, revealing her elongated canine teeth. "The fun's just beginning, and by the way, you don't have as much control here as you think."
Before the master assassin could react, Makala hissed and launched herself at him.
Flames or no flames, Ghaji's axe was still honed to a fine edge and his arm was as strong as ever. He hacked away at the undead shifters as they came at him, severing limbs and lopping off heads, until the family that he'd once helped slaughter years ago-father, mother, and their two children-lay in a grisly scattering of mutilated body parts.
"Don't take this the wrong way, love," Yvka said in a queasy voice, "but I think I'm going to be sick."
Chagai applauded. "Now that's more like a full-blooded orc. Why couldn't you have fought like that when you were under my command?"
Ghaji's chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath, and with his free hand he wiped a smear of gore from his cheek. "They weren't real, but you are. I wanted to finish them off so I could finally put you out of my misery."
Ghaji lifted his axe and rushed forward, but something grabbed hold of his ankle, and he tripped and fell onto the grass.
"Ghaji, look out!" Yvka shouted.
Ghaji thought she was warning him that Chagai intended to attack while he was down, and he rolled over so that he would be able to defend himself, but then he looked down and saw what had tripped him: one of the shifter's arms-the father's, it appeared-had wrapped its hand around his ankle. Other body parts came crawling, sliding, tumbling, and oozing across the ground toward him, moving with nightmarish speed. Clawed fingers dug into his skin, fanged teeth sank into his flesh, loops of intestine coiled around his throat and limbs like grisly serpents, binding him, choking him…
Yvka rushed to his side and began slicing at the animated remains of the shifters with a jade-bladed knife. The weapon was no doubt magical, provided to Yvka by her masters in the Shadow Network, but whatever its properties, it caused no special damage to the attacking body parts, and they continued their work unfazed.
Ghaji tensed his neck muscles, struggling to keep his airway open, but as strong as he was, the intestine wrapped around his neck was stronger, and he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Chagai's mocking laughter rang in his ears, accompanied by a roaring sound that he knew heralded the approach of his death.
"No… honor…" he gasped out.
Chagai stopped laughing. "What did you say, half-blood?"
"No… honor," Ghaji repeated, more loudly this time, using up the last of his air.
Yvka, tears running down her face, desperately slashed at the shifters' remains with her jade knife. Ghaji wanted to take her hand and tell that it wasn't her fault, that as a warrior he knew this day would come, but he couldn't move, couldn't speak. All he could do was watch his lover cry as his vision began to dim.
Then the pressure on his throat eased, and he was able to draw in a breath. Yvka kept hacking away at the body parts as Ghaji breathed in and out, relishing such a simple, life-affirming act. Now when Yvka's knife struck, the wounds began to rot, the decay spreading until the affected body part collapsed to dust. Within seconds, the shifter remains were no more.
Ghaji sat up and rubbed his throat as he turned to face Chagai. The orc glared at him with fury in his eyes and perhaps a hint of shame as well.
"Stand up," Chagai growled, "and let's finish this like orcs."
Ghaji rose to his feet, axe gripped tight.
Tresslar might not have his dragonwand in this illusion, but that didn't mean he was helpless. He grabbed Asenka by the elbow and yanked her out of the way as Paganus's head lunged at them. Despite the beast's ravaged condition, he moved swiftly, his wounds no impediment to motion, and his jaws snapped closed on the empty air where the Sea Scorpion commander had been standing only a second before.
"Stay behind me!" Tresslar warned Asenka.
Then, hoping his illusory backpack contained the same objects it had when he was a young man, the artificer reached inside and pulled out a small diamond wrapped in spider-silk. Relieved, he tossed the gem into the air over their heads. The diamond hovered above them, its position fixed, and a shroud of webbing descended from it like a curtain of gauze to envelop them. As the bottom edge of the protective web stretched to the ground, Tresslar reached into his backpack and removed a small stone wrapped in a mesh of thin bronze wire. Tresslar thumbed a tiny switch he'd attached to the wire-mesh, then crouched down and tossed the stone onto the ground just as the web sealed itself around Asenka and him.
Paganus had pulled back his head for a second strike, but he hesitated when he saw what the artificer had done. The dragon cocked his head to one side.
"You can't possibly believe that such feeble magic can protect you from me," Paganus rumbled. "I can claw through that webbing as if it were naught but air."
"It's not meant to defend against physical attack," Tresslar said. "It protects against heat. You see, I've had a lot of years to think about what I did the first time we met and to consider what I might have done differently. I'm sure you're aware that the gas you breathe-the gas that fills this cave-while deadly poisonous, does not burn, but the breath of a green dragon will ignite when combined with certain other elements. That small catalyst stone was given to me by an alchemist I did a good turn for once in Cliffscrape. Of course, I modified it to make it a wee bit stronger."
Tresslar snapped his fingers, the wire-mesh encasing the catalyst stone began to glow, and Paganus roared as his lair exploded.
Solus didn't know what to do. Though the conglomerate creature Hinto attacked possessed no physical substance, any damage it appeared to do to the halfling would be inflicted on his mind, with results as devastating as any bodily wound. More so, in fact, but if Solus went to his friend's aid, that would leave the psi-forged open to attack by Galharath. Hadn't Hinto told him to deal with Galharath while he engaged the conglomeration in battle? By helping Hinto, Solus would be going against his friend's wishes, and more, he would be dishonoring the halfling's sacrifice, and he sensed that this was important to Hinto, that the small man was fighting a battle much greater and more personal than simply cutting away at an illusory monster. It was a battle that Hinto needed to fight, and Solus should give his friend that chance.
The others-Diran, Ghaji, Yvka, Tresslar, Asenka, and someone else whom Solus had never met but who was well known to the rest, a woman named Makala-all of them struggled with their own separate battles. They faced the same danger that Hinto did: that their minds would be destroyed by Galharath and the power of the psi-forge.
Solus knew then what he had to do. No matter what else happened, Galharath had to be stopped.
As if sensing Solus's decision, the kalashtar gazed out from within the cradle of the psi-forge and directed a thought his way.