Ixidor had not dreamed up this horror. Kamahl had. This was his own nightmare made manifest.
The monster smiled a sanguine smile, reached over his shoulder, and drew forth the massive Mirari sword. He lowered it in front of him, challenging Kamahl to a duel.
He would have to fight his worst nightmare-the bloodthirsty man he once had been.
Phage had lost sight of Kamahl when they both struck ground. She had rolled one way, and he had rolled the other.
Rising, she climbed atop a fallen gigantipithicus and looked back. She barely had time to dive away again as the jellyfish plunged and splattered. Landing on her face atop a pile of dead, Phage waited as jellyfish parts smacked juicily all around.
She stood and surveyed. The crab warriors were dead, the jellyfish were fleeing, and half the army remained. In the distance, Stonebrow lifted his gory figure above the charnel grounds, a sword flashing in his hand. Nearby, Zagorka sat astride Chester. The old woman and her mule seemed both a counterpart to and a mockery of the great centaur. Those two commanders could marshal the living troops and lead them in a march over the dead ones.
Of course, it would be easier to regroup if Kamahl waved his blessed axe.
Where was Kamahl?
Something danced in the sky, blue-white stars spinning. They reached down to the battlefield and spread above the heads of the gathered throng.
Phage remembered these stars. They were Ixidor's probes.
One whirled nearby to strike an elf archer. It sank into his head and disappeared. A moment later, the man dropped his bow and doubled over to retch. From his mouth emerged a buzzing bug. It flopped out onto the ground and then swelled to take hideous form. It was a demon soldier-pallid skin stretched over spiky bone and violent mechanism.
The elf shrieked and backed away. He tried to snatch up his bow, but the demon stormed in. Shoulder spikes impaled the elf's belly. The demon stood, and the agonized elf flailed across its back. He lived only a moment more. The demon dragged his riddled form from the spikes, threw him to the ground, and stalked on to kill again.
It was a living nightmare.
All along the line, the blue-white probes struck. From the mouths of each creature issued those bugs, which swelled into more monsters.
Phage's eyes narrowed. Only she would be immune, for she already was a living nightmare. The last time a spark such as this struck her, it had sunk into the ravenous darkness within and not emerged again.
She made little effort to avoid the blue light that jagged down toward her.
It hit and burrowed into the skin between her eyes. It did not extiguish itself as had the last spark but sank through to her brain. This spark was different. The last had sought light in her mind and perished from lack of it. This spark sought darkness and found it.
Either Phage was the only one who was immune, or she was the most vulnerable one of all.
A chunk of something scuttled out from between her teeth. Clacking wings beat, and the thing jagged free. It was a roach, blacker than any beast Phage had ever seen. In disgust, she spat, and felt another such creature heavy on her tongue. She spewed it out, and there were two, and another, and more. The bugs gagged her. They scrabbled to get free, clawing at her lips. She vomited them, five at a time, then ten. She could barely breathe as the black torrent of them poured out.
They didn't fall to the ground but rose on saliva-shining wings. The roaches gathered in a churning swarm that spread like ink in water. Still more emerged.
That single spark had discovered the mother lode of nightmares. It was bleeding them away from Phage.
Already the sky darkened with the swarm, no less than an insect plague. As yet, the roaches were only gathering, but once they swept down in hunger, they would consume everything.
Phage fell to her knees. She tried to clamp her mouth shut, but barbed legs jutted between her teeth. Pincers gnawed her gums, and leathery shells pressed against the back of her throat. She began to gag. Let them kill her. Better to die than to let this evil plague out on the world.
The thought stunned her. It was not her own. When would Phage had ever died to save the world?
Still, she couldn't hold the bugs within. They burst out in a slick column.
All joined the cloud. It was huge, spreading above the whole battlefield. Many of the warriors paused to stare up into that boiling cloud-a horror worse than any they had ever conceived. It did not look like separate insects, but like one great darkness eating away the blue sky. Planetary gangrene, it turned all it touched to nothingness, and it grew greater by the moment.
Tears rolled down Phage's face. She had not wept since that horrible day in Krosan, when her brother had left her to die.
Phage shook her head, tears flying from her cheeks. Kamahl wasn't her brother. She wasn't Jeska, but with each new roach that tumbled from her mouth, she felt less and less like Phage and more and more like Jeska.
He had been right; Kamahl had been right. Jeska had survived within that cloud of horrors. The sister he sought had been imprisoned in pollution.
Still, the foulness gushed from her as if it would never cease.
"Jeska!" said a husky voice, and a powerful hand grasped her arm.
"Ka-mahl!" she gagged, turning toward him even as the plague poured out.
It wasn't Kamahl. General Stonebrow knelt beside her. He had apparently slain his own greatest nightmare and come to help slay hers. Strangest of all, he touched her without rotting away.
"Jeska! What is happening to you?"
She tried to answer but could not for all the roaches.
Even for Ixidor, high in his glimmering palace above the sapphire sea, the battle had turned deadly. Outwardly, he was at peace, surrounded by his unmen and the finery of his bedchamber. Inwardly, he was dying.
Ixidor trembled. His jaws clenched, teeth grinding upon each other until grit covered his tongue. Rot spread in his mind. It ate away will and thought. Ixidor wanted to rise, but he could barely breathe.
This Phage's skin had held a nightmare that could destroy the world. No wonder her very touch killed. No wonder to her the death of a single woman was nothing. She held within her the death of everyone.
Shuddering, Ixidor managed to scoot forward on the seat. It was a seizure, yes, but it was movement. If only he could break through this rigidity that held him. If only he could… but the part of his mind that contained the answer no longer remained.
Ixidor fell from the chair. An unman swooped as if to catch him, though Ixidor would have simply fallen through to another part of the castle. Instead, the creator's own instinctual mind took hold. His hands broke the fall. Ixidor crumpled to the floor.
Instinct. It would save him. Panting, he cried out the first word that came to his tongue. "Nivea!"
The unmen heard. In voices like bleeding air, they repeated the name.
Ixidor growled, convulsed, crawled. "Nivea!" It was not the right name, but it was the only name he could speak. "Nivea!"
She came, not Nivea but the creature who had once had her face.
On majestic wing, Akroma dropped down to the balcony. Her feline claws scratched the marble floor. When her face cleared the archway, its faint color fled away entirely.
"Creator!"
Akroma hurried toward him. Once she would have drifted above the floor, but now her claws scrabbled like a beast's. She had been soaring the skies above Topos, guarding her creator against any approach, but this attack had come from within.