Snarling, Akroma raked his chest with her claws. Kamahl shouted and tumbled free. Akroma spun once more and rose from the sands.
Already, the barbarian had scrambled to his feet. Deep gouges crossed his chest, and blood poured across a wound on his belly. He crouched at the ready for attack, but his hands were empty as he lifted them. "You cannot kill her."
"You are not my creator," she said, stalking toward her lightning shaft, which shuddered in the ground.
Kamahl shifted before her. "Only Jes-only Phage can stop the deathwurms."
Growling angrily, Akroma backhanded the barbarian, knocking him aside. She grasped her lightning lance and strode toward Phage.
The woman placidly watched her approach. "Unless the wurms return into me, all of us will die. Tell your creator-"
Akroma's eyes grew flinty. "The creator is gone."
"Gone…" Phage echoed incredulously.
Akroma lifted the lightning lance. "He sent me to fight the wurms, and now he is gone."
The lance glinted in Phage's eyes. "It was his last command, that you fight the wurms," she said. "Then why do you disobey him? Why are you destroying your one chance to kill the wurms?"
The staff trembled in Akroma's hand. Her angelic features were as hard as granite. "I am sworn to kill you."
"Once the wurms are gone, you can kill me," Phage said serenely.
"First, I must seek my master."
"Whatever. Finish the wurms, find your master, and then finish me," Phage replied. "Do it however you want-but first, help me defeat the wurms."
Akroma's eyes blazed, but she lowered the staff. "What must I do to shunt these wurms into you?"
"The blue sparks," Phage said, struggling to sit up. "They brought the wurms out. They can gather them in again."
"I will summon them," Akroma said. A new resolve straightened her back. "Until the creator returns, I will command his disciples. I will protect his creation."
Her wings spread and surged. The blast of air threw Kamahl to the ground and whipped up a stinging cloud of sand. Plumes beat again, and Akroma's feet lifted into the air. A third surge, and she was flying away above their heads.
"For the creator," Akroma said to herself as she vaulted into the sky.
With each stroke of her massive wings, she climbed higher above the sullen world. She was ascending, and not simply in body. Until Akroma could find the creator, she had to assume his mantle. Ixidor had brought this dream into being, and Akroma would keep dreaming it lest it disappear. Such was her destiny.
Piercing the endless blue, Akroma reached the apex of the sky. She held the lightning lance high overhead and sang.
Never before had a star sung above the world. It drew the ear of every creature below. In their pell-mell flight, the routed armies looked back. The creatures of the jungle poked heads from their lairs. Even deathwurms paused to crane oozy necks skyward. It was right that they should witness the ascension of this new god over Topos.
Akroma sang again. Her wordless tone was filled with longing for the creator. All of Ixidor's creatures heard and yearned skyward, though most were land-bound and could not rise. The birds in their chromatic choruses flashed above the treetops, but their wings were insufficient in the vast blue. Only quintessential creatures could join the singer, only beings that were kin to the stars.
The disciples came. They seemed faerie fire emerging from the windows of Locus and scintillating along rails and pilasters. The sparks gathered above onion domes and swarmed together into the sky. Following paths through the air, they soared toward the angel.
Akroma's song resonated in them, and the skies sang with dread and longing.
Motes reached her and coursed about her. They traced her face, lingered along her wings, and pierced her mind. In moments, they knew what distressed her and what they must do.
Stars slowly peeled from their angel-god. At first, they came away as one, a glittering veil of energy that retained her shape, but then the gossamer sheet spread. Disciples tumbled down blue stairways of sky, out across the nightmare lands, and toward the deathwurms.
Flickering like candle flames, Ixidor's disciples dropped into the brows of the beasts. Their radiance was snuffed in black folds of flesh, but their spirits reached on through lightless innards. There, the disciples encountered hunger, hatred, and rage, but they continued on, seeking the essence of the beasts. It would be the darkest comer, the most heartless desire.
One by one, the sparks found it: the death wish. They sank their hooks in that horrible desire and streamed backward.
From the snapping mouths of the beasts, the disciples emerged, drawing black strands behind them. They soared into the sky and converged, weaving together their webs of power. En masse, the disciples turned and plunged toward a single target.
Jeska.
"Here they come," Kamahl said quietly.
Blue points of light traced lines across his eyes. He knelt, holding his sister despite the virulent poison beneath her skin. He could only just bear to hold her, with three wurms within. In moments, when the blue sparks arrived, her touch would be death.
"You're getting your wish," he said.
Jeska's eyes were hard, but her voice pleaded. "Remember me, Kamahl. Remember what I do today, even if I never emerge again."
"Don't say that. You'll-"
A blue light soared in, smacked her forehead, and disappeared, dragging a black filament after it.
Jeska shuddered as the darkness drilled into her mind. A spark fled from between her lips.
Kamahl gaped, watching the line sink deeper. "No, Jeska… no!"
With a shriek of tortured air, the slender thread widened into a huge beast. It poured itself into Jeska. She convulsed and grew pale, and her flesh stung like nettles in Kamahl's hands.
He did not let her go. He would cling to her as long as she was Jeska.
Another blue spark impacted, and a third.
She thrashed her head, as if to break the black threads. They only plunged faster into her. Her limbs trembled, and her eyes glowed with evil flame. Two more sparks fled from her howling mouth.
Swallowing, she gasped out, "One more… and I will be gone, Kamahl… One more…"
The tails of the two wurms slipped into her brow.
Kamahl leaned over Jeska, tears streaming down his face. He embraced her one last time and kissed her pale cheek. "Good-bye, Sister." Laying her gently on the ground, Kamahl backed away.
A fourth spark struck, and a fifth, a sixth. Glowing creatures cascaded from the sky. They made Jeska bounce, writhe, and kick. The wurms were filling her, possessing her, but also healing her wound.
Jeska stood, her hands open wide to the influx of the monsters. She seemed a worshiper invoking a god.
Kamahl could not bear the sight. He turned away.
No wurms remained on the corpse-strewn battlefield. Few fought on in jungle and desert. All those that were left were connected by black threads to Jeska… to Phage. They drained across astral channels into her.
She was doing it. She was saving Otaria and damning herself.
In a flash of blue and white and black, it was done.
The wurms were gone.
Jeska was gone.
Only Phage remained.