“What you think, huh?” Slobad asked.
“Flare!” Glissa swore and clenched her fists in frustration. “That’s it. So, so stupid.” She slapped a hand to her forehead. “They weren’t chasing us. They were herding us. He wants me to find him.”
“Why? You wanna kill him, huh?” Slobad said. “Why he want you to find him?”
“Because I think it’s a trap, and we dropped right into it.”
“So why chase Slobad, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Glissa confessed. “Maybe because you’re important to me.”
Slobad blushed, blood flushing his greenish face a rusty crimson.
“But he played with us either way,” Glissa continued. “He couldn’t lose. The levelers-and the aerophins-were sent to either chase me back here, or kill me. Damn Yulyn! If he hadn’t taken us in, we could have made sure Memnarch was dead. This might all be over now. We gave Memnarch time to regroup, and he took it.”
“But crab-legs blew it, huh?” Slobad said in a transparent attempt to brighten her spirits that failed miserably. “No way to get the spark. The moon was the only way, right? Right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Glissa replied, but she wasn’t. “Now he just wants me dead. I hope.” She slapped a hand on Slobad’s shoulder. “Well, what do you say? Should we go check out this track, or try to get back up through that floating deathtrap?”
Slobad cinched up his belt, puffed his chest, and grimaced. “One second,” he said, then reared back and released a long, lingering belch that echoed through the lacuna. “Sorry. Ate too much elf food,” he said when he saw Glissa’s incredulous look. “Onward, huh? Don’t want to stick around here.”
“Slobad, I can’t imagine why you lived alone when I met you.”
“That nothing, huh? You stop by the Feast of Krark sometime-you see the real talent.”
The lower half of the lacuna took a while longer to traverse than the upper half, but then again, Glissa and Slobad were no longer plummeting. The elf girl was surprised to see small animals dashing and hiding amongst the brill moss and razor grass. She wondered if they’d been spontaneously summoned by the magic that still hung thick in the air, or if the little creatures had overcome fear of the unknown to colonize this strange new home. Some she recognized immediately, but a few were peculiar. Denizens of the interior, perhaps.
Odd to think of the ground she had walked and hunted for so many years was only a silver eggshell surrounding a very large yolk, and she was reminded of the flare-vision that had struck her when they first arrived at Viridia.
“You know,” Glissa said, “I think we might be paranoid after all. We’re almost through. If he doesn’t try something soon, we won’t be cornered anymore.”
“What, you trying to get us killed?” Slobad hissed just ahead of her. “Don’t crazy elves know anything about bad luck, huh? Jinxes?”
“Sorry,” Glissa said. “Just thinking out-”
She froze in mid-sentence when a tall, humanoid figure materialized from thin air at the edge of the lacuna, maybe twenty feet in front of them. The glare from the mana core-what Slobad’s people, especially his friends in the Krark cult, referred to as “Mother’s Heart”-obscured the figure’s features and face, but a corona of silver outlined the shape. Slobad skidded to a halt and had his mandible-dagger drawn before Glissa could say a word.
“It’s him, Glissa!” Slobad hissed.
Glissa brandished her makeshift scimitar. “What do you want, Malil? You’re in my way, and you don’t want to be, trust me.” She hoped the stolen leveler’s scythe blade looked menacing as she added, “I’m here for Memnarch.”
The metal man’s response was unexpected as it was perplexing. He tossed his head back and laughed. The sound was tinny, and betrayed something that bordered on mania.
“Oh, you’re ‘here for Memnarch,’ is it?” Malil sneered, and stepped a few feet into the lacuna toward Glissa and Slobad. “You are right. Just not the way you think.” Memnarch’s lieutenant raised his right arm with a clenched fist, and flicked his silver hand at the wrist. In less than a second, a blade that rivaled Glissa’s stolen weapon slid into place, extending from the metal man’s forearm. The quicksilver blade glowed faintly in the dim light of the lacuna.
It seemed like ages since someone had challenged her to a fair fight, and Glissa was sick of battling armies, judges, and mindless machines. She twirled her weapon and grinned. “Well, why don’t you correct me, then?” With her empty hand she threw a subtle wave to Slobad, hoping he would get the message: Stand clear.
Artificial being though he might have been, Malil was easily goaded. With a metallic roar, he charged, the blade that his right arm had become raised high.
Glissa once again focused on the spark. Malil was as much an artifact as the levelers. He didn’t know what he was getting into. Glissa’s inner eye saw the spark, saw magic dancing around it in her heart, and willed destruction at Memnarch’s charging lackey.
Nothing happened. Again.
Malil’s sword arm whistled through the air at Glissa’s skull, and she was able to raise her own weapon in time to deflect most of the blow, though the metal man drew first blood when his blade clipped Glissa’s shoulder on its way past her head. The powerful strike threw Glissa off-balance, but she recovered quickly and danced back, tossing her blade back and forth in her hands, taunting her foe. She hadn’t wanted to destroy this one quickly, anyway. And it would be good practice for fighting her true enemy.
Glissa waited for Malil to relax slightly then swung in with an uppercut that her enemy blocked easily. She slashed back with the not-quite-balanced ersatz scimitar. She could handle it well enough by instinct, but her specialty was the longsword.
Malil’s unreal speed caught her off guard. The elf girl couldn’t believe how fast Memnarch’s servant was on his feet and with the blade. Malil moved in again, but Glissa caught his sword-arm with her curved blade, spun her arm to envelop the blade, then snapped it back in a disarm move. With an ordinary foe, she might have won then and there, but her attempt only snapped off that end of the quicksliver sword. The rest was still attached to Malil.
“You are here for Memnarch,” Malil said as new quicksilver flowed into place in a heartbeat. “You are here for his reasons, and to suit his purposes. You are here for him. And so are you, goblin.”
“Yeah, wanted to ask someone about that….” Slobad began.
“I thought I was Daddy’s favorite,” Glissa said. “He doesn’t need the goblin.”
Malil and Glissa’s duel continued for several minutes with neither gaining a clear advantage. Glissa tried to press the metal man to the lip of the tunnel, hoping to knock Malil off balance long enough for a fatal strike. But Malil turned her attack at the last second and drove Glissa back. Malil matched her strike for strike, parry for parry, and didn’t even seem to be breaking a sweat. Not that he would, Glissa supposed.
“How long can you keep this up, elf girl?” Malil taunted as their blades locked and the pair grappled for advantage. “You will tire. I will not.”
“You might be surprised,” Glissa said. “I get a lot of exercise.” She let loose a yell and swung the leveler weapon with all her might at the metal man’s abdomen. The blade slid through Malil easily, like a knife through a quicksilverfish, and came out the other side with a slurping sound.
The slash hadn’t even left a mark on Malil. One second, he’d been solid, the next he’d been liquid, and it was as if she’d tried to slice the sea in half with an oar. The metal man’s chest swirled and solidified before her eyes, and her foe chuckled.
“Oh, I enjoy surprises,” Malil said. “Did you like that one?”
“Not so much,” Glissa replied, dodging Malil’s sudden lunge. How was she going to fight this creature?