Bleating, Polaris staggered backward, tripped on her fallen cape, and almost fell. The elemental shifted its massive bulk, sunlight glistening in its diamond depths, and crunched after her.
Laughing at the archwizard's discomfit, Sysquemalyn glanced at Polaris's entourage. At the cliff, the last two ships gathered frantic passengers. One lifted with the gangplank still down and people still clinging to it. The fiend's mind was crowded by a thousand evil spells, but one amused her. With wry humor, she pointed at individuals on the escaping ship with a finger like a stone stalactite.
"Befriend! Befriend! Befriend!"
Immediately, the people pointed out changed, distorted. Eyes blazed hatred, mouths gaped in a rictus, hands clenched. They ground their teeth, bit their own tongues so blood flowed. And, battle-mad, berserk, attacked everyone within reach. Drawing knives or swords, or plying their bare hands, they stabbed, slashed, tore, bit, battered. A screaming clerk grabbed his neighbor's hair and bit the man's ear off. A soldier jammed her sword through her comrade's belly, then twisted and shoved to spill his guts in a gory pile. A third stamped on the fingers of a woman clinging to the gangplank. Broken-fingered, the woman plunged to her death. One berserker was pushed bodily over the side by three men, but the mad one yanked a victim to tumble along with him. Sysquemalyn cursed others with berserk rage, hoping one would chop or loosen ropes and so drop the sail, make the ship veer into the mountainside, but the cursed folk savaged humans, not a wooden ship. They ran punching, kicking, biting, strangling.
Finally the flint monster shrugged, balled her fist, then blew it open. A wind vortex gathered strength, engulfed the ship, knocked the hull at a steep angle so people pitched overboard, and shredded the metal foil sail. Stricken, the ship sank. But Sysquemalyn knew that safety devices might kick in and bring the ship to a safe, though ungainly landing. She needed more destruction.
Pointing fingers that chilled, she flicked them. Icicles six feet long sailed like arrows and thudded into the ship. They punctured wood and people, sheared rigging, crunched gunwales to splinters, and exploded deep inside like giant ballistae. Something broke, for the listing ship dropped from the sky like a shot goose. No safety devices spared it from hitting the desert floor.
Lady Polaris had outrun the crysmal elemental, for the thing was slow. Yet her gown was torn at the hem, slashed on one sleeve, and she was actually bleeding from a razor-slice on her shoulder. Her gorgeous hair was disheveled, spilling around her golden face, a novel sight for Sysquemalyn. The monster laughed like rocks splitting in frost. "A simple elemental, Polaris?" the monster-mage chided. "You can't stop that? How about this? The best for last!"
Polaris panted spells, but nothing worked. Her anger was gone, washed away by terror. Never had she fought anyone so fearsome. She might even be killed! And now, cornered on this mountaintop, rattled so badly she couldn't think straight, her repeated shift spell failed too. Somehow, without anyone suspecting, even those idiot mages employed to spot traps, Sysquemalyn had ringed the mountaintop with an anti-shifting sphere such as protected floating enclaves. Polaris despaired, ready to run for the first time in her life, but couldn't! And now She shrieked as something warm and wet slithered down her back. It tingled and burned as it touched her skin, and for a second she feared the black ooze. Then tentacles slimed her neck. Grasping, screaming, she caught the slippery pod in both hands and yanked. The thing clung to her skin. She glimpsed it, a bright golden color, and instantly knew it. A laraken, a swamp parasite that fed on magical energy. And Polaris was charged with magic like a mythallar engine!
Sight of the parasite blotted out as a squirming tentacle covered her eyes. A tentacle tip bored into her ear like a slimy tongue. Another slid down her shorn gown, and oozed between her breasts to fasten on the skin over her heart. The thing would suck her dry of magic and life like a golden leech. She shrieked, voice cracking, "Get it-t o-off! Get it off!"
"You didn't say please!" crowed Sysquemalyn. The archfiend laughed so hard she almost fell. In three years of suffering hell, she'd imagined this revenge a million times, but reality was far sweeter than any dream. To have Polaris scream and beg for mercy was utterly delicious!
From the corner of a bulging eye she caught movement. The last ship yanked its gangplank to lift off. Its commander was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid, for he'd waited to scoop up everyone still living. Sysquemalyn fixed that.
She clapped stony hands, arched the fingers to a point, and thrust toward the ship. Before her, a dent creased rock. Like an invisible knife, the crease enlarged as it slashed stone like cheese. The phantom plow was nine feet wide when it struck the ship. Wood splintered, copper-riveted boards split and sprung loose. People were either chopped in half or pulped with bone-crushing force. Screams echoed within as the magic cleaver chopped the keel, a curve of oak fourteen inches thick, and broke the back of the ship. As the ship died, so did the magic. The shorn hull fetched on a spur of rock, then, with a grinding roar, slid down the mountainside on a path of blood before tumbling out of sight.
The fiend from hell surveyed her work. In a black pool fragments of soldiers dissolved. The stone mountaintop was furrowed as if by giant carpenter tools, yet pools of ice water remained, and someone had drowned face down. Two burning hulks gave off greasy smoke from charred flesh. Blood, shorn limbs, dropped weapons, and splinters littered the ground. A hole showed where the elemental crysmal had burrowed away.
A frenzied squirming and mewling was the only action left. Lady Polaris lay on her back and wrestled with the laraken. Thriving on her personal dweomer, the parasite had expanded as large as a wolf, and now engulfed Polaris's torso like a giant ball of snot. Tentacles flailed for her arms and legs like some grotesque dance. Voice broken, she whimpered pitifully.
Plucking thorny feet from black ooze, Sysquemalyn loomed over Polaris. The archwizard's beautiful face was scratched, sweaty, scraped. Her hair was dirtied and dull, her eyes wild and bloodshot with fright.
"That's better," cooed the monster in a rasp like a file. "No longer high and mighty? Afraid? Suffering? Worried about dying? Oh, believe me, Great White Cow, Greasy White Sow, Gorgeous White Mistake, there are worse things than dying. Much, much worse. Having your skin peeled from your body, for one. Would you like that?"
A claw like an iron nail lovingly touched Polaris's cheek. She recoiled, but the throbbing laraken pinned her tight. With ease, Sysquemalyn drove the nail through Polaris's cheek. The archwizard screamed, but a thumb and finger like pliers snagged her tongue, pierced it, yanked. Polaris had to spit out blood or choke.
"We could do this all day. We might yet," crooned the fiend. "But I want you whole, to feel the touch of your pet." With a snaky hand, she caressed the laraken. It perked up, sensing more mystic energy, but Sysquemalyn flicked aside a questing tentacle. "Stone skin has advantages, see? I'll tell you what's going to happen. This laraken grows by consuming your dweomer. You'll weaken to a shell, utterly helpless. Then the laraken will move to its next task. You see, they don't mate, but reproduce themselves when they find plentiful magic. You'll serve nicely. The laraken will open a cavity in your body, plant an egg, and wait while it hatches. It will keep you alive while the offspring grows inside you, feeding off you. Slowly. Over months, or years. Oh my, I expect it'll hurt terribly! You'll feel yourself consumed from within! That almost pays us back, dear Lady Polaris, but come with me."
Grabbing the archwizard's white hair, Sysquemalyn dragged her to the black cavity left by the departed crysmal. She tipped Polaris and the laraken at the edge. Even in near-mindless fright, Polaris felt a bitter wind blow from the hole. The crysmal had bored back to its own plane. This drop would take her far from anything she'd ever known. Better to die-but would she die?