There was something disturbing in the warforged’s tone, and Lirra decided she’d talked to the constructs enough. She turned away from them, walked back to the wooden bunk, lay down, and closed her eyes. She’d changed her mind about getting some sleep. It wouldn’t be long before her father was ready to question her, and she’d prefer to be more rested when the time came for them to talk.
“Tell me if you’ve heard this one before,” Shatterfist said. “Two halflings walk into a temple, and the first halfing says to the other …”
Lirra groaned and jammed her fists against her ears. Maybe her father had posted the warforged outside her cell not merely to guard her but to torture her as well. If so, it was working.
Close to two hours passed before her father summoned her. He sent a soldier to inform the warforged that they were to bring Lirra to him, and Longstrider unlocked the cell door and stepped aside so that she could exit. Her tentacle whip urged her to flee, and she half seriously considered an escape attempt, but she knew she’d never be able to get away from the two warforged in these close quarters. Besides, she wanted to talk with her father. The warforged marched her down the narrow corridor of the garrison barracks to Rol Amark’s commandeered office.
“General Vaddon is waiting for you inside,” Longstrider said. He then took up a position on the left side of the door, while Shatterfist stood on the right.
So the warforged were going to stay outside during their talk. She wondered if her father was trying to reassure her with a show of trust. It was something she might’ve tried if their positions had been reversed. She opened the wooden door and stepped into the office.
Once inside, she understood the reason why the warforged hadn’t accompanied her. She’d forgotten that Rol Amark’s office was simply too small to accommodate them. Geirrid wasn’t exactly a thriving metropolis, and the garrison barracks, while serviceable, weren’t lavish by any means. The office was plain as field rations: four stones walls, no windows, an oak desk with a single stool in front of it. Vaddon sat behind the desk, while Ksana stood behind him. The stool, obviously, was meant for Lirra. She elected to stand.
Lirra noted that Ksana held her halberd, while Vaddon’s sword was drawn and laid out on the desk before him. His right hand rested on the table, in easy reach of his weapon. It hurt Lirra to see two of the people she loved most in the world prepared to defend themselves against her in case she decided to attack.
Vaddon must’ve noted the way her gaze took in their weapons, for he said, “Both Ksana and I apologize for bearing arms like this, but given the circumstances …” He trailed off, his eyes fixed on her left arm.
“No need to apologize,” Lirra said. “I understand.”
He nodded, clearly uncomfortable. He cleared his throat before speaking next. “Tell me about your association with the shifter.” His tone was unemotional, the general questioning a soldier under his command. But Lirra was Vaddon’s daughter, and she could hear the undercurrent of sadness in his voice, and she knew this was just as hard on him as it was her. She decided to follow his lead and respond to his question as unemotionally as she could.
“There’s not much to tell. I tried to track down Elidyr on my own last night and failed.” She chose to leave out the fact that she hadn’t been in her right mind while scouring the countryside searching for her uncle. She didn’t want her father worrying more about her sanity than he already was. “I hired Ranja to help me find him. We were on our way to buy supplies when Elidyr and his … creations attacked us.” She shrugged. “Guess I didn’t need to hire her after all.”
Vaddon frowned, clearly unhappy with the brevity of Lirra’s answers. “A number of farmers and their families went missing last night. What do you know about it?”
“Elidyr used them as raw material to fashion his monsters. At least, that’s what he told us before he ordered them to attack.”
Ksana interrupted. “What else did he you tell you?”
“He plans to reopen the portal to Xoriat and release the daelkyr lord that nearly came through last time. He believes by doing so he’ll be able to transform our world into a paradise-or at least his twisted version of it. He also asked me to join him. I refused. That’s when he set his white-eyes on me.”
“White-eyes?” Ksana asked.
“Those monsters he made.”
Ksana said nothing more, and for several moments both she and Vaddon just looked at Lirra. She looked back and waited for them to make the next move.
After a time, Vaddon said, “Elidyr’s transformation drove him completely insane. How are we to know the same thing didn’t happen to you?” Despite himself, his concern for her came through in his voice.
Lirra wanted to reassure him, but she felt she owed him the truth. “Oh, I’m not as mad as Elidyr. I don’t think he could pretend to be sane if he wanted to. I don’t think he even knows what sane is anymore. But I believe I’m sane. The problem is convincing you that I am.”
Sadness crept into Vaddon’s gaze. “Whatever the state of your mind, you’re not the woman you were.” He nodded toward Lirra’s left arm.
“It’s true that I’ve changed,” she admitted. “It’s a constant struggle for me to maintain control of my symbiont. But I am in control.”
For the moment, the thought-voice said. Lirra ignored it and continued talking.
“Perhaps that’s so,” Vaddon said, a tinge of hope in his voice. “If it is, you’ll let us help you.”
Lirra didn’t like the sound of that. “Help me how?”
“By removing your symbiont,” Ksana said.
Lirra felt a surge of panic from the tentacle whip, and it began uncoiling from around her wrist, determined to defend itself. Vaddon reached for his sword, and Ksana moved her halberd into battle position.
Stop it! Lirra mentally shouted at the symbiont. You go wild now, they’ll be convinced I can’t control you, and they’ll remove you for certain! Calm down and let me play this my way, and there’s a chance you and I will walk out of this room still bonded together!
For an instant, she thought the tentacle whip was going to go ahead and attack anyway. But then it hesitated and slowly, reluctantly, coiled itself about her forearm once more and grew still. It remained on guard, however. If Vaddon and Ksana came to believe she couldn’t control the symbiont, they’d attempt to remove it from her by force-and that would be bad for everyone concerned.
“It’s all right,” Lirra said. “I’ve got it calmed down.”
Vaddon and Ksana looked at her, as if they were deciding whether or not to trust her. Finally, Ksana held her halberd at ease once more, and Vaddon removed his hand from his sword handle. Neither fully relaxed, though, and Lirra didn’t blame them.
“As you can see,” Lirra began, “the symbiont is a little touchy about any talk of our being separated.”
“But the longer we wait-” Ksana said.
“The harder it will be to separate us,” Lirra said. “I know.” While the initial bonding between symbiont and host occurred rapidly, true fusion took time. The more time passed, the more intertwined Lirra and the tentacle whip became, not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. Eventually, it would be almost impossible to separate them without both suffering severe, perhaps even fatal, trauma. “But I don’t want to be separated.”
“How can you say that?” Vaddon asked in disbelief. “Don’t you want to be free of the creature?”
“I’m being practical,” Lirra said. “The whole point of the symbiont project was to create a new kind of warrior, one who could control an aberration and make use of it as a weapon. I am that warrior, Father.”
“We thought Rhedyn was such a warrior,” Vaddon said, “but in the end he couldn’t resist the corrupting influence of his symbiont and betrayed us all.”
Lirra felt a hand of ice clench around her heart at the mention of Rhedyn’s name, but she pressed on. “Just because he lost his battle against corruption doesn’t mean I will lose mine. Besides, you need me, Father. Who among us is better equipped to face Elidyr than I am? He has to be stopped, and you both know it. The longer we talk, the more time he’ll have to repair the Overmantle and reopen the portal to Xoriat. We need to mount up and ride after him!”