The invisible force tighten around Kamahl's legs. He clambered up the serpent's back and leaped away, tumbling over a rift in space. Kamahl sprawled in the dust.
The serpent lashed his head, eyes rolling in their sockets. His skin split open, and muscle spurted out. Another hernia appeared, gushing meat, and a third and fourth. All the while, the wurm's skin shrank in upon his body, ever tightening as if crushed in a giant fist. Soon ribs cascaded in a gory fountain.
Kamahl staggered up and stared, disbelieving. He took an unsteady step but felt a wall of magic hold him back. "He's twisting space itself!" he shouted. His words were lost in the explosion of the serpent's body. Only the spine remained, with ribs cracked away and meat in a red well around it. The vacant spine settled down upon the gore.
Just beyond the carnage, Phage yet rode her undead mount. Without skin and flesh, the creature seemed immune to the compression of space.
The folds in air relented. Ixidor was shifting his assault, warping a different vector. Energies coalesced in front of the undead serpent and formed into a looming wall.
Kamahl scrambled to his feet and shouted, "No!"
He was too late. The undead serpent lurched into that scintillating wall. Its head broke through, and it slithered on. Just beyond the disturbance, flesh and bone dissolved. Still, the body of the snake wound forward, as if its head remained.
"A temporal wall," Kamahl muttered in realization. Ixidor could fold not just space but also time. The temporal loop had rotted the snake's head in moments. Its body crawled on because the temporal wall still conveyed the signals from its missing head.
Kamahl rushed up beside the serpent. There was no time for delicacy. With the flat of his axe, Kamahl struck Phage and knocked her from the creature's scabrous back.
Phage rolled in the sand, came to a halt, and looked back.
The snake slithered on through the wall and dissolved to nothing at all.
The commanders stared, amazed.
They weren't the only ones who had witnessed the power of Ixidor's nightmare lands. The army shuffled to a stop.
The safari patrons let out a surreal cheer.
"Idiots," Phage growled, spitting into the dust "They'll be reamed as well."
Kamahl shook his head. "This is his worst. He wants us to stay out and so throws his worst at us first. I doubt he can sustain such powerful effects for long." He gestured toward the scintillating wall, which was already fading. Kamahl rose and dusted off his clothes. "You are right about one thing."
Phage climbed to her feet and snapped. "What?"
"The safari patrons are idiots."
Kamahl and his sister shared a rare smile. Together, they bowed low, both mocking the spectators and heartening their own armies. The roar of the caravan doubled, and the army shouted in cocky fury.
Between gritted teeth, Kamahl said, "There isn't only darkness in you."
"Or lightness in you."
Together, they raised their hands in the gesture for march. Turning, they strode deeper into the nightmare lands. The armies shoved up toward their commanders. They were ready to fight. Dwarves, goblins, dryads, centaurs, rhinos, and spinefolk all spread out in a wide line of advance that reached from the caravan on one side to the horizon on the other.
Still Kamahl and Phage were ten strides ahead of them.
Phage eyed the gray ridge. It seemed a great worm, rolling across the hills. "You think he has thrown his worst at us?"
Kamahl nodded, his axe gripped tightly in both hands.
"We're about to find out."
No longer a worm, the roiling line ahead resolved into an army. The soldiers were gray skinned and naked, human in shape but hairless and half-formed, like hunks of clay. They strode with staring eyes toward Kamahl, Phage, and their army.
"What do you think they are?" Kamahl wondered aloud. "Zombies?"
Phage shook her head. "He wouldn't dare throw undead at the Cabal."
Kamahl scowled. "Whatever they are, they have no weapons."
"Maybe they themselves are the weapons."
The commanders grew silent as the land between them and the gray men vanished. An anticipatory cheer arose from the spectators. It goaded the army to raise its own battle cry. Only the gray men marched in silence.
Kamahl raised his axe overhead, ready to split one of these beasts from brow to belly. It seemed almost slaughter, and something in him quailed at the thought. He glanced to Phage, whose hands were at the ready. She had no such reservations.
With a roar, the lines converged. The hairless creatures reached toward Kamahl, almost like beseeching children. His axe descended but then caught short. They laid hands on him-as gentle and soft as putty.
How could he slay such helpless things?
Those fingers hardened and strengthened. Kamahl stared down to where a dozen gray men grappled him. Their hands became callused replicas of his own. In a rapid wave, transformation swept up the arms of the beasts, making them brawny and tan. Shoulders bulked and neck muscles snapped, chests grew broad, and armor and clothes took shape. Strangest of all, though, the crowd of heads around him transformed to bear his own face.
In a moment, every last bit of gray was gone, and Kamahl was surrounded by duplicates of himself. From their hands jutted axes like his own.
He took a staggering step back, but his doubles advanced. He glanced sideways, seeing a score of Phages battling each other. Another step back, and Kamahl ran into the tide of his own warriors. As each creature crashed against the gray men, more transformations took place. Dozens of Stonebrows took shape. Multiples of Zagorka and her mule came into being. In moments, none of them would be able to tell friend from foe.
With a furious roar, Kamahl brought his axe shrieking down upon one of his doubles. It was caught unawares, its own axe half raised. Kamahl chopped the thing's arm off.
It fell, turning gray before it hit ground. Black blood oozed from the severed limb. From the thing's shoulder, though, the blood was as red as wine.
Kamahl swung the axe again, this time cleaving the monster's brain. Its false image bled away from the blade, and the beast was gray again as it struck the ground.
Even as one of the gray men fell, two more hands reached in to trigger the transformation.
Kamahl lopped them off and whirled his axe in a path around him to keep them at bay. At all cost, he must avoid being touched, then he must kill until every last one was dead. His axe chucked into the forehead of another simulacrum. When metal met brain, the visage peeled away.
At least fighting his own semblance, he knew which one to kill. The only way he could know a true Phage from a false one was to sever a limb and watch for red blood.
With a growl of frustration, Kamahl bashed back another axe and sliced open the guts of its wielder. It felt strangely satisfying to kill himself again and again and again.
Phage was laughing. She never laughed, especially not when she fought, but to fight herself and find herself so weak was laughable.
She slapped one of her assailants, leaving an indentation on the creature's cheek. The impression quickly turned black and ate away the face. These gray men could withstand a fleeting contact, flesh to clothes, but anything more made them fall apart like old cheese.
Phage's laughter turned to a shout as she grabbed the necks of two nearby simulacra. Squeezing, she removed her likeness from their shoulders forever.
These monsters couldn't stand before her. They bore no weapons and did not wield the power of rot. They weren't even convincing actors, for all crowded together to attack her.