His weapons were out and moving in a rhythm of defending curves and slashing threats, though he didn’t recall drawing them. The runes on each blade flared brighter and lifted slightly from the metal. The interweaving of his kata created a light painting in the air, a palimpsest of rune on rune, red on white, a fractal lure capable of fascinating the weak-minded.
None of the dark elves, however, apparently suffered from that particular mental handicap. The last warrior narrowed his eyes, hefted his ebony shield, and flicked his short sword from its sheath, launching a fluid series of cuts. Demascus parried each with his weaving blades. But the warrior caught each of Demascus’s countering cuts just as deftly on his shield.
This one was skilled! And wasting the deva’s time. Each moment he spent fencing gave Chenraya and the robed drow time to marshal their own attacks. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the priestess gesticulating, purple light building on her fingertips.
“Lolth blast you!” screamed Chenraya, her arms suddenly motionless in a pose of exultation. The hair on Demascus’s neck lifted as if something immensely powerful moved beneath him like a sea monster under the waves threatening to breach.
The deva threw himself to one side. A gray bolt of power sundered the air where he’d been standing, brushing him, and where it touched, he lost feeling. The deadened spots were only a spattering, but each one was more than mere numbness; they were like holes in his existence. He laughed. He felt most alive when the stakes were highest! Even though a distant part of his mind was yelling at him to be careful, the Sword ignored it.
The drow warrior cut a trail of blood in the deva’s forearm with his flicking short sword. Demascus’s counterblows banged harmlessly on the shield. He should probably stop playing and neutralize them, before they coordinated their offensive. He lurched toward the muttering male wizard, whom the deva had left alone for too long. The warrior got in his way and, still startled, left off whatever spell he’d been concocting with a surprised exclamation that summoned the night. A natural ability these dark elves drew on instinctively when threatened, some past life whispered in his ear.
Blackness pinched out Demascus’s mark of radiance and settled over the central circle, blotting out all that occurred within its velvet cover. The drow could see perfectly in the dimness.
And with a flick of the Veil, it wrapped around his head like a blindfold, so the Sword could sense his surroundings, too. The scarf was still recovering from its previous exploit, though, so everything seemed scratchy and uncertain.
Chenraya was chanting again, maybe preparing for another shivering blast of divine power. The robed one who’d summoned darkness dug in the satchel hanging at his belt, searching for something.
The warrior charged. Demascus pretended to stumble, using the motion to duck under a sword swing as he went down on one knee. He shuffled and made a quarter turn so he was again directly between the two remaining male drow. Chenraya was still out of reach.
The wizard yelled something in a tongue Demascus didn’t recognize. Probably something like, “He can see us!”
Demascus grinned. “I am the Sword of the Gods,” he intoned. “Do you think darkness could deny an assassin of heaven?”
Queen Arathane called the storm. Despite how far they were beneath the surface, lightning answered and thunder roared. With her spear, she blasted waves of ettercaps, spiders, and lurching animated miners, rendering them indistinguishable smoking heaps. Even so, new waves of foes clambered over the wreckage to reach her.
Riltana and Chant fought at her side. The three of them constituted a competent and impressive force. Chant never missed with his enchanted crossbow. Riltana’s swordplay was dazzling. But there were too many. The spiders seemed endless, and it wasn’t the large ones that worried the queen most. It was the tiniest ones; they were hardest to notice.
Then the inevitable finally happened. A tiny scarlet recluse scuttled up Arathane’s armor and bit her neck. It felt like a splinter of lava under her skin. She slapped the spider away. The pain and a wave of dizziness made her stagger.
“Your Majesty?” said Chant, turning to her. Then an ettercap lying prone at the pawnbroker’s feet ended its ruse; it latched onto Chant’s leg and bit. Blood splattered.
Riltana rushed from behind and knifed the creature, even as a new wave of ettercaps closed.
Chant waved Riltana back with one hand as he shot a bolt that divided three times to lay low as many ettercaps. He took a step and winced. Blood trickled down his leg from the bite. He said, “Are you all right, Your Highness?”
Arathane lied, “I’m fine. How about you?” A thread of weakness wound down her spine and sent feelers into her arms and legs. But she made a show of discharging another blast, scattering a new mass of attackers.
However … if the venom spread any farther, her facade would crumble.
As a monarch, that just wouldn’t do. “We need to consider pulling out.” Even if that meant leaving Demascus? It pained her to contemplate it, but a leader couldn’t be swayed by sentiment.
Riltana narrowed her eyes. “What’s taking that leech-son deva so long?”
“Demascus!” someone called near the entrance. He couldn’t see that far with the scarf around his eyes, so he snatched it away. The drow dimness had lapsed, and normal vision was possible. He saw the floor between him and the exit was blocked by a mass of screaming ettercaps, groaning undead, and at least one drider. A glitter of storm-sharp light, followed by thunder, threw a handful of shadows across him before it guttered out. A fierce fight raged there.
“Demascus? Get your ass back here with that staff! We need to leave!” the voice came again. It was familiar … a woman he knew. He just wasn’t sure it concerned him. Especially not when he had three such premier targets to deal with. Not when the killing-glee sparked on his spine like a fuse, promising a wondrous detonation.
The drow wizard produced a scroll from his bag. But the warrior prevented Demascus from doing anything about it with his dancing sword. His facility with the weapon surprised Demascus. Few foes had ever fended him off for so long. Especially when hindered by having only one blade to the deva’s two. In Demascus’s defense, the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge was oddly unresponsive. Its ends were flapping all about without guidance. The scarf should have kept its ends tucked out of the way.
Finally Demascus broke around the warrior and charged the wizard. The same sensation as before, of something indefinably large moving just beyond sight, feathered across Demascus.
“Chenraya,” screamed the dark elf wizard, followed by something Demascus couldn’t understand. He assumed it was something along the lines of “You betraying bitch!”
Another fountain of awful energy burst from the floor. The blast swept away the remaining bits of darkness clotting the air, its virulence too extreme to allow any lesser blight in its presence.
Demascus leaped into a flailing shadow created by a lightning glare from the periphery of the chamber. He slipped into it not a heartbeat before the drow priestess’s calling engulfed the space where he’d been and where the drow wizard still screamed in fury and terror. He stepped across the all-too-brief shadow lane caused by a dying lightning bolt. He stepped back into reality at Chenraya’s elbow. What remained of the drow wizard was a greasy pool of flesh in which floated oddments of clothing. The single remaining drow glared at the priestess with undisguised hate.
The priestess was cackling.
Chenraya had just swatted down an able-bodied ally, even though it lessened her chances of beating Demascus, just because of the charge she got from killing. The realization partially woke Demascus from his daze. His assassin’s guise and power threatened to slip from him entirely. I’m not anything like her, he thought. I only kill those who deserve it. Those whose fate and the gods command! Except that you enjoy it, he accused himself. All too much.