Elidyr had chosen to use four different types of symbionts today: a tongueworm, a crawling gauntlet, a stormstalk, and the tentacle whip that had taken over Osten the day before during his test. Osten lay on the table positioned in front of the tentacle whip’s cage, for he intended to try once more to bond with that particular aberration. Lirra had asked him about his choice not long before the experiment began. “I know the thing, and it knows me,” Osten had told her, as if that was reason enough. And perhaps it was, but Lirra couldn’t help feeling that Osten had chosen to bond with the whip again because he had something to prove to himself-and perhaps to the aberration as well. For their parts, the symbionts seemed to sense that something important was about to take place, for they writhed restlessly in their cages, occasionally testing the doors, as if eager to taste the flesh of a new host.
She glanced at Rhedyn then. His shadowy aspect was more prominent, making his features barely discernible. Perhaps he was merely gathering his shadow sibling’s strength in case anything should go wrong.
Elidyr wore a leather satchel slung over his shoulder, containing tools of the artificer’s trade, and for the last several minutes he’d been using one device or another to poke and prod at the Overmantle as he performed a last check to make certain everything was in working order.
“How much longer?” Vaddon said, an edge of irritation in his voice.
Elidyr stood hunched over the Overmantle, holding a device made of two thin glass rods with silvery webbing stretched between them. He waved the device in front of the Overmantle’s opening, nodding to himself as he did so.
“That should just … about … do it.”
Elidyr abruptly straightened, tucked the glass rods back into his satchel, and then turned and grinned at Vaddon.
“We’re ready to begin whenever you are, General.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Vaddon said evenly.
Elidyr nodded once then turned back to the Overmantle. He slid a tray of crystals halfway out of the containment framework and began touching them in a precise order. He didn’t bother explaining what he was doing, but there was no need since Elidyr had covered the basics the day before in Vaddon’s office.
“The Overmantle will do two things,” he’d said. “First, the psi-crystals will strengthen a host’s mental defenses, allowing him or her to resist all attempts at mental dominance by a symbiont. Second, the dragonshards will open a tiny portal to Xoriat, one no larger than a pinprick. The crystals will draw forth a small controlled stream of chaos energy through that portal and transfer it to a host. Once that energy is inside a host, it will insulate him or her from a symbiont’s corrupting influence, much the same way our bodies are more resistant to a particular disease after we’ve contracted it and recovered. Once a host is cloaked by these powerful twin protections-hence the name Overmantle for my device-he or she should be able to control a symbiont with ease.”
Elidyr turned to Sinnoch. “Open the cage doors.”
A clawed hand emerged from a sleeve of the dolgaunt’s robe. Clutched in his spider-leg fingers was a glass sphere the size of an apple. Sinnoch circled his thumb over the top of the sphere’s surface, and in response the locks on the four symbiont cages disengaged with audible clicks and the doors began to rise. The symbionts were intelligent enough to sense that something strange was going on, and they were reluctant to expose themselves to danger willingly. And yet, there was a host for each one of them, laid out on a table like food at a feast, just waiting for them to come forth from their cage and take it. Eventually, instinct won out over caution, and one by one the symbionts began to move out of the cages and toward the steel tables.
The tentacle whip was the first to emerge. It slithered quickly toward Osten, as if somehow sensing he was the same man it had dominated before and it was eager to claim him once again.
Elidyr turned his head back and forth, watching closely as the quartet of symbionts climbed onto the tables and drew near their soon-to-be hosts. Elidyr had explained to them that it was important the bonding process between human and aberration already be underway before he activated the Overmantle-if for no other reason than to keep from scaring the symbionts off-but it couldn’t be too far along, else it might be too late for the device to prove effective. He had to activate the Overmantle at just the right moment, and not before.
The tentacle whip fastened its beaklike mouth on Osten’s inner forearm, and the thin crimson tendrils that surrounded the mouth wrapped around the man’s elbow before burrowing into the flesh. Osten’s teeth were gritted tight and his jaw muscles clenched. Sweat poured off him, and his every muscle was wire-taut as the symbiont began altering the internal structure of his body. His brow furrowed in concentration, and Lirra knew he was fighting to resist the pain of the foul creature merging with his physical body as the psychic corruption as the whip joined with his mind.
Lirra turned toward Ksana and saw that the cleric’s eyes were closed, her lips moving silently. No doubt the cleric was seeking her patron goddess’s blessing for the volunteers as well. Lirra hoped the gods were in a beneficent mood today. She knew Osten and the others could use all the help they could get.
The tongueworm slithered over the length of a woman’s body, reversing its position as it neared her mouth. It inserted the tip of its tail between her lips, and the woman closed her eyes and opened her mouth wide to receive it. The worm hesitated for a moment, as if not quite able to believe it was being welcomed, and then it plunged its tail down the woman’s throat. Tears streamed from her eyes, and her body convulsed as the tail wriggled its way down into her stomach, intending to anchor there. When the bonding process was complete, the tongueworm-whose hood resembled a human tongue-would lie flat over the woman’s true tongue. She would still be able to speak, but the tongueworm could lash out whenever she willed it to deliver a paralyzing poison strike using its concealed barb. Lirra turned to see how the host on the third table was faring.
The crawling gauntlet had scuttled across the man’s body like a large crustacean and settled over his right hand and forearm. The bonding process for this aberration was far less disturbing than for a tongueworm. The host wore it like a natural gauntlet, and the symbiont extended tiny tendrils into the flesh to bind itself to the host body. The man winced as the gauntlet joined with him, but the procedure looked much less painful than it was for Osten and the woman, and Lirra was glad for the soldier, though she had no doubt he’d have an equally difficult time resisting the psychic influence of the evil creature.
The last symbiont was a stormstalk. It resembled something like a fat, fleshy serpent with a single large white eye in the center of its otherwise featureless head. A static discharge of energy like a miniature lightning storm danced over the surface of the eye as the aberration slithered across the chest of the woman who would serve as its host. Once coiled over her breastbone, its tail wriggled toward her neck and slid around the base of her skull. The creature plunged tendrils into the host’s skull, burrowed through the bone, and dug into the brain to take root. As the process began, the woman screamed-the only one of the four volunteers to make a sound as their symbionts joined with them-and Lirra didn’t blame the woman one bit.
Lirra looked to Elidyr. The artificer was in motion, rapidly touching the Overmantle’s crystals in a complex pattern, his hands moving with the speed and grace of a master musician playing a familiar, beloved instrument. Several seconds passed without result, and Lirra began to fear that the device wasn’t going to work, that Elidyr simply hadn’t had enough time to complete it. But then the crystals began to pulsate with an eerie blue-white light, and four streams of energy emerged from the Overmantle’s framework and lanced through the air to strike the four crystalline rods affixed to the tables where the hosts lay. The rods shimmered with the same light as the Overmantle’s crystals, and the tables began to gleam blue white as the rods transferred energy to the steel. In turn, the magical energy was fed directly into the host’s bodies, and by extension, into the symbionts as well-just as Elidyr had said it would.