“Damn me!”
Branches rustled nearby. And from somewhere in the depths of the swamp a bird cried shrilly.
What to do now? Dhamon wondered. Lie here until some swamp creature decides to make a meal of me? Find my way back to the Knights of Takhisis? They’d slay me: a rogue knight carries a death sentence. But do I deserve better than death?
What did he have left but death? Could he possibly have a prayer of redemption?
“Feril...”
The insects quieted, and the air became unnervingly still. Dhamon pushed himself to his knees and peered through the shadows. Something was out there. Closest to the ground, the swamp floor blended with the muted greens of the low-hanging branches. The black trunks fused to create a near impenetrable wall. Scant light filtered down from the stars and the moon that peeked through a gap in the overhead canopy.
Little light, but just enough to see some of the shadows separate and come closer. There were three figures.
“Spawn,” Dhamon whispered.
They were black, roughly shaped like men. Wings scalloped like a bat’s sprouted from their shoulders. They flapped their wings, almost silently, just enough to lift themselves above the soddened ground. Closer. Their snouts were lizardlike and crammed with teeth, and the teeth and their eyes were the only parts of them that were not black. Both gleamed dull yellow.
As they neared, he could smell them. They carried the scents of the swamp, though stronger, the fetid odors of decaying vegetation and stagnant water.
“Maaan,” the largest creature said. He drew out the word and ended it with a hiss. “We have found a man for our noble mistress.”
“The man will be a spawn. Like us,” another hissed. “The man will be blessed by Onysablet, The Living Darkness.”
They spread out, began to encircle him.
Dhamon laughed then, catching the creatures off guard. That he would find himself finally liberated from the red overlord only to stumble into the clutches of death was darkly comic. He could never be truly free, he realized. He could never be redeemed. Death, then, was the only solution— the one he deserved, and a more apt fate than becoming a spawn. He laughed louder.
“Is the man mad?” the largest asked. “No sanity in his fleshy husk?”
“No,” Dhamon answered, drawing a breath and reaching for his glaive. “Not mad. But damned.” The haft of the glaive was warm in his hands, slightly uncomfortable but no longer painful. It did not burn him as it had when the dragon was manipulating him.
“Perhaps there is hope for me.” Dhamon whispered. “If I live through this.” He swung the weapon in a wide arc, forcing the three spawn back. “I’ll not become one of you!” he yelled.
“Then you will die,” the largest hissed as it leapt into the air above the sweep of the weapon.
Dhamon slashed at the closest spawn, the magical blade effortlessly parting the creature’s skin and plunging deep into its chest. The beast howled and fell back, released a stinging spray of black blood. Acid, Dhamon realized. Instinctively, he shut his eyes as the spawn’s burning blood showered the immediate vicinity. His face and hands were scalded, and he nearly dropped the weapon. His eyes stung.
“You will die most painfully!” came a sibilant voice from above him.
Dhamon tried to open his eyes, but the acid felt like hot daggers. Blindly, he drew back the weapon for another attack, aiming for where he thought the spawn was. But as he swung the weapon, the spawn bit into his shoulder, its claws digging deep. It was all he could do to keep on his feet and withstand the searing pain.
Another spawn darted forward and wrenched the glaive free. A scream pierced the swamp, guttural and earsplitting. “Fire!” the would-be thief howled.
Dhamon heard the soft thud as the spawn dropped the glaive. “The weapon burns evil!” Dhamon shouted, as he struggled with the large spawn hovering above him. Still blinded by the acid, he flailed his hands, finding the spawn’s muscular arms and trying to grab hold. The creature’s scaly hide was too thick to be harmed, too smooth for Dhamon to seize, but he hammered it with his fists.
The spawn tightened its hold on Dhamon’s shoulders and flapped its wings, trying to lift him above the swamp floor. It shook him violently as flecks of acid dripped from its jowls onto Dhamon’s upturned face.
“I will smash you!” it cursed. “The fall will crush your frail human bones, and your blood will seep into my mistress’s swamp. You killed my brother and wounded my comrade. The Living Darkness can do without the likes of you.”
“No! Do not kill him!” the one below Dhamon shouted. “Onysablet, The Living Darkness, would covet him. He is strong and determined. The dragon will greatly reward us for catching such a prize!”
“Let him come to her broken, then.”
The spawn flew lower and tossed Dhamon into a stagnant puddle. His fall was cushioned by the soft, wet ground. He fought to catch his breath, batting his eyes to clear them of the acid. His vision was blurred, but he could dimly see. The shapes were indistinct and gray— tree trunks, curtains of vines hanging down. There! A glint of silver. The glaive. And near it a spawn, a manlike black shape moving clumsily.
Dhamon gritted his teeth and dove for the weapon. The glaive did not burn, now. He lay there for several heartbeats, clutching the weapon, listening, waiting.
The soft flap of wings above him signaled that the one in the sky was coming closer. Dhamon rolled onto his back and swung the glaive upward in an arc.
The blade parted spawn flesh, nearly dividing the creature in two from sternum to waist. Dhamon rolled quickly aside, taking the glaive with him and narrowly avoiding the eruption of acid from the fatally wounded spawn.
“I will never be a spawn!” Dhamon spat at the advancing survivor. “I will never serve your black overlord! I will never serve another dragon again!” The glaive, wet from the blood and fetid water, nearly slipped from his hands as he hoisted it toward the remaining creature.
“Then you will die!”
The creature’s charge forced Dhamon back several feet, the spawn’s weight bearing him to the ground. Drops of acidic moisture fell from the creature’s lips and struck his chin.
“You will die for killing my brothers,” the creature snarled. “For refusing to serve Onysablet.”
I will die for killing Goldmoon, and for killing Jasper, Dhamon said to himself.
You will not die, said another voice, this one coming from the back of Dhamon’s mind. You must defeat the spawn. The red dragon had returned, Dhamon realized. “No!” he screamed. “I will resist you!” He tried to push Malys out of his mind.
Fight the spawn! Use the strength I give you!
“No!” Against Dhamon’s will, he felt his arms rise and his hands move against the spawn’s chest. His limbs, powered by the dragon’s magic, forced the spawn away. The muscles in his legs bunched, forcing him to stand.
His legs pushed forward. He bent and picked up the discarded glaive. The searing pain returned as his fingers enfolded the haft. A grin formed on his lips, one fostered by Malys. Dhamon’s body advanced on the remaining spawn.
“I am safe, man. You cannot fly. But you are not safe. You will die, man! Die by the claws of Onysablet. The Living Darkness comes!” The creature flapped its leathery wings and rose, angling its body between the thick branches of a strangler fig tree. From a place in the back of his mind, Dhamon watched the spawn fly higher as the swamp grew darker. Then he heard the crack of trunks breaking and trees being uprooted.
The inky darkness carried with it an overpowering stench of decay. It reminded the former knight of the smells that had assailed him more than a decade ago as he walked among the fallen on a battlefield in Neraka.
Though the red dragon manipulated him, she could not stop his involuntary actions. Shivers raced down Dhamon’s back, and he found himself retching from the nauseating odor.