Nowhere scowled. Brendis and Miri wore heavy armor, and each of them had picked out one foe to deal with. Demascus wore chainmail beneath his ornate robes, but he was heading for the thickest concentration of foes and seemed most likely to need Nowhere’s help. Keeping to the shadows, he circled slowly around the outside of the chamber, his eyes fixed on the nearest cultists.
A cultist whose left hand was covered with the scarlet liquid moved to intercept Demascus. He held a sword and swung it wildly at the cleric, who blocked it with an easy parry.
“You,” Demascus said. “I saved your life in Bael Turath.”
The cultist didn’t answer, but his left hand moved to his throat as if of its own volition.
“And this is how you respond to the grace of the gods, freely given to you?” Demascus said.
The liquid crystal that swathed the man’s hand extended a snaky tendril and found his mouth. He started to scream, but the liquid choked the sound off. His lips twisted in disgust, Demascus cut the man’s head from his neck with one clean stroke of his sword. A spray of blood and droplets of red crystalline liquid trailed from the edge of his sword.
Across the room, Miri killed the pantherlike creature before it fully completed its transformation. An orb of greenish goo hurtled from Sherinna’s hand and splashed into the six-armed hulk as Brendis’s glowing sword whirled around it in a deadly dance, wearing down its defenses.
Demascus advanced on the next cultist, but he hesitated as he realized that the man was too wracked with agony to even acknowledge his presence. Nowhere stalked out of the shadows to approach the cultist from the other side, and saw that the man was clawing at an eye socket that was filled with the liquid substance. The Sword of the Gods was reluctant to kill a man who posed no immediate threat, but Nowhere felt no such compunctions.
As the tiefling thrust his dagger forward, the man’s body jerked out of the way as if yanked away by some unseen hand. His good eye, wide with fright, focused on Nowhere as he stumbled through the arch. With a flash of crimson light, the man disappeared into a desert landscape under a dark red sun.
Nowhere paused, not sure whether he should try to follow. He glanced at Demascus, who seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. As he looked back to the archway, though, he realized that his decision had been made for him. In place of the desert landscape, he now saw a dark forest, with a wooded island of earth and stone floating in the air above it.
Another creature swept in, this one no longer recognizable as the cultist it had been. Its body was formed of shadow, though crystalline structures extended from its back like wings and swirled around its legs in long, twisting tendrils that lifted it off the ground. As it moved closer, Nowhere felt a pressure on his mind, as if the monster were sifting through his thoughts. He threw a dagger at the creature, but the blade flew wide and clattered on the stone. Then he heard the croaking cackle of Tavet the Heartless, and turned to see the night hag standing right behind him, tearing her claws into Sherinna’s lifeless corpse.
“No!” he screamed, recoiling from the hag’s bloody grin.
Then he heard a grunt of pain from the direction of the shadow creature, and Tavet seemed to flicker. For a moment, in place of Tavet he saw a smear of darkness in the air, and he glanced around to see Sherinna standing several paces behind Demascus, launching another arcane barrage at the creature. Demascus, too, looked like he was pulling himself out of his own nightmarish vision, and he was visibly shaken.
Nowhere growled his rage. The creature had dredged his mind and woven his worst nightmares into a weapon to use against him. Even as he rushed toward the monster, he felt the pressure on his mind again, but he honed his fury to drive the nightmare weaver’s tendrils out of his thoughts, and the pressure faded completely as his dagger slashed into the creature’s shadowy substance. A blast of fire from Sherinna’s fingers engulfed the creature, stopping inches from Nowhere’s face and bathing him in waves of heat as it roared over the nightmare creature’s body. With a shout and a flash of light, Demascus drove his sword deep into its shoulder.
With the last of his anger, Nowhere pushed the smoldering body as it fell, sending it tumbling through the arch and into the dark forest of another world.
He looked around to get a sense of the tide of battle. It seemed to be going in their favor: Brendis had toppled the four-armed hulk, and he and Miri were locked in battle with a creature formed of fire, with a pulsing core of liquid crystal at its heart. The dragonborn cultist whose fiery breath had given birth to the creature was dead on the floor nearby. Near the archway, only one cultist remained—the human with crystalline legs, who looked like he was still trying to manipulate the portal. As Nowhere looked at the gate, though, he saw the cultist-monster he’d forgotten: the chittering swarm of spiders was in the process of forming itself into a single creature, forming a sheath of black chitin around itself and shaping it into spindly legs and a bulbous body.
While the swarm-creature was still gathering its strength, Nowhere stepped forward to deal with the cultist at the arch. He moved up behind the man, who had somehow remained completely focused on the arch as battle erupted around him. He saw the liquid crystal pulsing on the man’s spine and undulating where his legs had once been. He struck out with his dagger in hatred and revulsion, driving the blade up beneath the man’s ribs. The man’s head and shoulders slumped, but the quivering column of liquid crystal kept the corpse upright. Nowhere stepped back, but the liquid lashed out at him.
The pain had all but stopped as the Voidharrow fused with Albric’s spine. He was so intent on tuning the portal to free the Chained God that even the destruction of half his body failed to deter him, and though there was a brief battle of wills, he had bent the Voidharrow to his own purpose.
Then the dagger slipped into his side, piercing a lung and his heart, and Albric’s mortal body died in the span of three heartbeats.
He was not Albric any longer, but neither was he only the Voidharrow. He saw, though not with Albric’s eyes any longer. He saw the corpses of the others—the other exarchs of the Voidharrow, the former acolytes of Albric—strewn here and there on the floor of the chamber, clots and puddles of liquid crystal flowing back from the bodies to pool in the center of the room. Albric’s plans, the Chained God’s plans, and even the Void harrow’s plans all lay in ruin, thanks to the interference of these five mortals. He saw the one who had stabbed him, recoiling in fear and disgust, and reached his substance to seize that body.
The scream pleased him, the terror and pain given voice as he found his way into the body and made it his. It was different than Albric’s form, stronger and faster. The mind was quicker, too, and he could make use of it as he crushed its will with his own.
“Nowhere?” The female, the wizard, was bending over him, concern on her face. The dagger had fallen from his grip, so he used his bare hand, focusing all his strength into one blow that drove her off him and slammed her against the wall.
He got to his feet and surveyed the wreckage of the chamber.
The man’s name had been Nowhere, and now he was nothing. He shaped the muscles of the face into something like a smile.
“I am Nu Alin,” he declared.
Miri shot Brendis a smile. She liked fighting alongside the paladin—they were coordinating well together, even without speaking. More importantly, she realized, Brendis was relying on her. He trusted her to keep up her end of the partnership, which she could never really say about Demas. The Sword of the Gods was nothing if not confident, and while he certainly deserved to feel sure of himself, it often left her feeling like an unnecessary appendage. A child, tagging along at the whim of the champion.