■
Johannes’ breaths were ragged. He coughed, and he felt how one tooth didn’t quite sit right. Probably loose, knocked ajar.
Damn goblins.
He struggled to stand, but one leg was in ruins.
Lost.
His eye had been given away to one powerful goblin, a goblin queen turned partially into a goblin.
His arm was a ragged mess, and might have to be amputated.
He sat there, the entirety of his being focused on maintaining consciousness.
“Will you stop me?” Johannes managed to ask.
“I’ll leave you be, provided you don’t disclose how you did this.”
“Yeah,” Johannes said.
“Make your claim, and then take me for your familiar. We’ll see this happen,” Faysal said.
Johannes didn’t act surprised. He simply sat there, a heap, bleeding. His voice was a croak. “Deal.”
“Finish,” Faysal pushed him.
Johannes couldn’t even nod in response.
“My last challenge met,” the sorcerer spoke, and his voice was just as raw as before, even as he found a surge of strength. “I claim territory as far as my voice reached to the west, to the large stone tree…
“I claim territory as far as my voice reached to the southwest, to the base of the condo sign…
“I claim territory as far as my voice reached to the south, the bridge, goblin’s bridge…
■
The bell tolled. Faysal watched from above.
The beings that dwelled in the abyss were emerging. Areas were shifting. Quite interesting to watch, given his vocation. One who created paths.
He studied the practitioners. Studied Johannes.
He felt no fondness for the man. No fear, anxiety or worry.
But Johannes was crafty, and had been irritating enough with scraps of knowledge and meager amounts of power. Now he had a great deal of power, and he hadn’t let his guard down, nor abandoned his canniness.
Faysal wasn’t a warrior. He was a planner. So long ago, he’d anticipated Johannes’ failure, and steered events so he might take advantage of it. To deal with the demon, among other things.
As familiar, one part of a whole, he could exert his power, stretch his wings and lay claim simply by being more.
For the time being, he seized all that Johannes was, in body, mind, and spirit.
None of Johannes’ temporary companions noticed his brief falter, the stagger, the hand that went to his head, as he fought and failed to resist.
There.
The fallen house on the hill continued to sink, nearly as fast as they climbed. If they slowed or faltered in the slightest, they might lose their chance to escape. He was a gatekeeper, and he sat so he blocked the place that bridged the sinking house and the rest of the city.
“Stay,” he said, and the idea communicated along the loose, waving threads that bound Johannes to him.
Johannes accepted the order, and at Faysal’s bidding, passed it on to the others.
15.01
The individual floorboards underfoot felt like the boards of a rope bridge, each one suspended but unsteady. Not all of the boards were capable of supporting the weight of a human being.
One of the Behaims stumbled, one leg going straight through the floor. I caught the man by the upper arm.
Callan’s age. Related to the man that had killed Callan.
Though I was capable of holding him up, I wasn’t capable of lifting him back to a more secure position with one arm alone. Another Behaim reached forward and grabbed him, and we lifted him together.
The sound of wood creaking under a great strain joined the tolling of the bell, as we followed the main group.
Someone was saying something, but the noise around us drowned out the words.
The abyss was building again, pulling down sections of the house that had lingered, clinging to the sides, one section of wall providing enough material to build six or seven walls, down here.
We climbed, and the environment all around us settled into place, crashing, cracking, splintering. Bookcases tipped over and spilled out their contents, and small avalanches of loose wood, bricks, tomes, and stone found solid ground, dancing off unseen surfaces, careening this way and that, and settling into shapes that resembled bookshelves, sometimes only a stick caught between rocks or larger texts, with a book or two resting on it. Each impact seemed to knock us down. Sometimes an inch, sometimes a foot.
Above us, the opening to the town and the woods was only just visible. The hole that the house had dropped into was roughly circular, and if I didn’t look directly at it, it cast the illusion of a great moon looming over us, albeit one so dark gray that it was far closer to being black than to white.