As if Kian had shouted his feelings, Varis cocked his head contemplatively, his stark eyes never shifting. Kian knew he was being seen, no matter that sight should have been impossible for Varis. Moreover, he could feel his own abhorrence mirrored in that dead gaze.
Of its own accord, his hand dropped to the sword at his hip. At the same instant, Varis raised his arms wide, and lashing chords of blue-white fire sprang from his hands. Kian’s mouth fell open in shock, as the whipping flames ripped through the forest. Where those unnatural fires touched, be it upon Asra a’Shah, horses, mud or bole, flashes of smoke and puffs of ash quickly replaced what had been. For a long moment, as crackling thunder pealed around the shaking forest, no one moved.
The prince laughed then, a maniacal, sickly wheezing that seemed to extinguish the flames erupting from his palms. He held a hand before his face, split by a gruesome smile, then waved that unblemished hand like a man shooing a fly. The ground erupted at his feet in a spray of mud, and a twining root as thick as a man’s wrist rose up. This, more than the impossible blasts of fire Varis had produced, staggered Kian’s mind.
Varis motioned again and the root swiveled toward Kian and the others, like a serpent preparing to strike. With a sodden ripping sound, the root began tugging free of the ground. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the root climbed upward, fattening as it soared a dozen paces into the air. Knobby growths sprouted all along its length. One by one, those growths burst open to release quick-growing creepers. In moments, each new shoot had grown as large as the initial root had been. Worse still, what had been a bit of vegetation now had slitted, glowing emerald eyes spread over its length. Those inhuman orbs locked not on Hazad or Azuri, but Kian.
Overawed, Kian stood unmoving, his mind struggling to comprehend what he was seeing. A sudden emotion flitted through his soul, something familiar, though made distant with the passage of time. Yet he knew it, could taste it. Fear, stark and paralyzing terror, wormed through his bowels. Such had not assailed him since his youth on the streets of Marso. He had fought many battles since then, survived countless hardships, grown comfortable with the fright of bodily harm and even death, yet nothing could have prepared him for … for whatever this was.
The root continued to change and grow, ceasing to look like a root at all, but rather a great, thousand-eyed adder. The muddy brown skin roughened to a scaly gray-black hide, and the dozens of lesser roots waved about like ropey arms.
This cannot be real, Kian thought through a glaze of terror, his eyes flickering toward Varis. The youth was now stooped over, still watching Kian and his companions, but rigid with agony. His skin had split in scores of places, showing knuckles of protruding bone. Dark fluid dribbled from the fresh wounds.
Suddenly, with a dull roar barely heard over the steady grinding noises coming from the swamp’s shivering floor, the temple fell in on itself and sank into a bubbling substance as black as tar. Ethereal shapes rose and fell amid the bubbling morass, inhuman figures spawned of nightmares. Even as Kian watched, many of those inhuman figures broke free of that thick substance and arced skyward, while others hugged the ground and swirled away.
With a voiceless snarl, Varis lurched a few paces away from the collapsed temple and the widening pool of boiling sludge. Glaring at Kian, he made a pushing motion, and the towering root-serpent arched backward. A mouth had split open at its highest end, lined with sharp wedges of what looked more like stone than wood. When that maw gaped wide, a roar came forth to water the eyes and tremble the heart. Then, like a monstrous centipede, the root-serpent fell forward and slammed against the ground, spraying mud and sending leaves flying. With another of those debilitating cries, it surged toward Kian, its great girth plowing earth, its scores of arms propelling it along at a terrifying pace.
To either side of the advancing monstrosity, previously immobile Asra a’Shah scattered, their faces ugly with fear and disbelief, saffron robes flapping in their haste. One of the dark-skinned men did not move quickly enough. A handful of lashing roots caught him, twisted and tugged his limbs in different directions. The man howled and thrashed. With a grisly ripping sound, without slowing its advance toward Kian, the hell-spawned root-serpent tore the mercenary apart.
At Hazad’s warning cry the spell of terror was broken, and the trio scattered.
The root-serpent came on, tearing loose from the ground until a thrashing tail pulled from the earth. A volley of Asra a’Shah arrows struck the beast’s flank, but did not slow or deviate the creature from its path. From behind it, commanded by Varis, a fan of silver-streaked crimson fire, washed over the hiding Geldainian archers. With the flames, thunder raged. In its wake, smoke and whirls of ash rose from a wide, tear-drop shaped parcel of swamp where the mercenaries had been. Not even bones remained.
Kian registered all this with half a mind. He understood that the root-serpent was coming for him, and that Varis, whatever he had become inside the temple, had sent it after him. The why of it, the sheer impossibility of it, did not matter. All that did was escape.
Like a man trying to flee a charging boar, he jumped a rotten log, then began veering side to side at a dead run down a gentle slope. Unnatural fire splashed around him, searing trees, the heat singeing his clothing. Miraculously, the flames were so hot and so brief as to leave his flesh unscathed. Varis howled in frustration.
As the swamp thickened away from the temple, Kian slashed his sword at clutching, thorny creeper and hanging brambles. The hunting beast on his heels closed the distance, tearing through the undergrowth without slowing.
In that moment, Kian knew he could not escape. In the next, he tripped and sprawled flat, knocking the wind from his lungs with a grunt. Even as he tried to snatch a breath, he scrambled to his feet and turned, sword raised. Stunned, engulfed by a level of fear he had never known, a blessed cold fury stole over him.
I have never lost a battle.
Against men, a frantic voice warned.
The root-serpent was something else entirely. A part of him thought that maybe this was all some terrible vision, and that he was in truth still back at the temple, laying on the ground, dying for want of breath-
Cracking like a scourge, a whip of hot-fleshed vegetation struck his cheek, welting the skin, disabusing him of the hope that he was suffering dark fancies.
With nowhere to flee and no choice, Kian moved into an offensive stance. As the root reared up before him, he instantly pressed the attack. His broadsword flashed out and cleaved one thrashing arm after another. Despite the ease with which his blade sliced the creature’s abominable flesh, in the space of three breaths he knew he could never win this fight. This was no battle against one man, or even several. This was a war against a bloodthirsty abomination surely spawned from the Thousand Hells. Every wound he inflicted only gave rise to more enemies. Where one lashing root fell in a quivering coil, two more took its place, bursting from the main stalk.
Gradually, Kian was forced back on his heels. He stepped, blocked, and slashed. Over and over again. It was all he could do to keep the roots from grasping him. Splintered tips snapped and popped, leaving welts and cuts over his exposed skin. All was a blur of motion, attack and counterattack. Panic-sweat stung his eyes, and his thick arms began to grow weak with the effort of swinging his sword. Disbelieving horror began to fill his veins. I am about to die.