Tithian watched in astonishment as the rest of his body changed into that of a mul. After his arms came his shoulders and neck, then his chest, back, and stomach. Each transformation brought a fresh surge of pain, but it barely registered on his stunned mind. The king was too busy contemplating the significance of what was happening to dwell on his discomfort.
During her travels, Tithian knew, Sadira had learned that the horrid monsters called New Beasts were created by the untamed magic flowing from the Pristine Tower. If so, it seemed likely that the Dark Lens was the tool Rajaat had used to control that magic. The king reasoned that the ancient sorcerer had relied on the Way to shape the Tower’s mystic energies, then used the power of the lens to give them a physical reality. The process was not so different than that by which Tithian had bestowed Rikus’s body on himself.
As the last pains of his change faded away, the king looked down and saw a pair of bulging thighs where his scrawny legs had been a moment before. Noting that they were even covered by the thick coppery skin of a mul, Tithian straightened his knees, thrusting the Dark Lens completely into the bag.
No sooner had the Oracle disappeared than the satchel mouth returned to its normal size, tightening around Tithian’s new legs. Silently congratulating himself for a job well done, he tried to push the sack down over his knees so he could withdraw his feet.
The king suddenly found his buttocks scraping across the floor. Before he realized what was happening, the satchel slipped over his hips and started up his chest. A numbing cold spread over him from breastbone down, save his feet still burned where they touched the lens. He cried out in astonishment and scratched at the floor, cutting his fingertips on the sharp edges of mica sheets.
Despite the strength of his new body, Tithian could barely stop himself. The Dark Lens seemed to be falling, dragging him into the satchel after it. The king tried to kick away from the hot glass, but to little avail. His feet remained fused to its surface.
Great clumps of floor tore away in Tithian’s hands, and he slipped farther into the satchel. The mouth of the bag came up past his armpits and over his head, engulfing him in a cold, formless world. The king lashed out and caught the edges of the satchel. It began to turn in on itself.
Fighting against the tide of panic rising inside him, Tithian tried to break contact with the lens by visualizing himself standing on a granite floor. For an instant, his soles were filled with pain, and he smelled the acrid stench of charred flesh. The Oracle separated from his feet.
Tithian instantly began to change back into the scrawny, sickly-looking ruin of a man he had been before bestowing himself with the traits of a mul’s body. Waves of pain rolled through his limbs and torso as each group of muscles shriveled back to normal size. This time, he felt every instant of the agony acutely.
Despite the pain, Tithian retained his grip on the satchel and endured the transformation while floating just inside the sack’s mouth. He did not feel the burden of his own weight, and no longer did he experience any sensation of up or down, sideways or forward, or even of past and present. He simply existed, connected to the outside world only by the tenuous grip of his aching fingers.
With each passing moment, the Dark Lens appeared to grow smaller and smaller. Tithian assumed that the change in size meant it was falling away from him, but he could not be sure. In the formless gray world inside the satchel, there was nothing by which he could gauge movement or direction. The lens simply seemed to be shrinking, until it now appeared no larger than his own head.
Even through the pain of his ongoing transformation, Tithian realized that it was not normal for an item to fall away so rapidly. Usually, he just opened his hand, and the object drifted away as if buoyed on a cloud. The king stretched out one of his hands and pictured it resting on the lens, attempting to summon the artifact in the same way he would summon any other.
Nothing happened, save that the lens continued to fall away. A cold lump of fear formed in the pit of Tithian’s stomach. “Come to me!” he screamed.
The lens did not stop falling. Tithian closed his eyes and visualized it resting in the palm of his hand. As he summoned the spiritual energy to use the Way, he felt himself being drawn toward it. Again, the sack began to turn in on itself, and he knew he could not continue to hold it while trying to recover the lens. He had to make a choice: release his grasp on the mouth of the satchel, or lose the Dark Lens.
Tithian opened his hand and released the satchel.
There was no sensation of movement, nothing drifting past in the horrible grayness to mark the passage of distance. The king knew that he moved only because the satchel opening was growing smaller and the lens was growing larger. He could not feel the air brushing his face as he slipped through it, or even whether the temperature was hot or cold. Tithian simply felt numb.
Some time later, the king caught the Oracle. It might have been a few moments or a day that had passed; Tithian could not tell. He had no more sensation of time than he did of distance. All he knew for sure was that he struck the lens with a terrible jolt. Again, he felt a surge of fiery energy rise through his body without causing him pain, then he sat down on the lens, held fast by the mystical energy he was drawing from its depths.
After he had re-established contact with the Oracle, the sensation of falling returned to Tithian’s stomach, and he felt a cold breeze brushing past his face. The king slowly turned, looking in all directions, trying to find some means of further orienting himself. He saw nothing but the opening from which he had come, glowing red with the sun’s light and rapidly vanishing.
Hoping to stop the lens’s fall before the opening disappeared entirely, Tithian visualized himself as a wyvern. In his mind’s eye, he saw the long, barbed tail wrapped around the lens below, his huge leathery wings beating the air furiously in an attempt to raise himself and his cargo up to the opening.
Energy sizzled from the lens into his body, and his back and shoulder blades burned with fierce, blistering pain. In the next moment, the stumps of a tail and two wings sprouted from his body. As the appendages steadily grew longer and larger, their roots sent long tendrils of anguish burrowing through his body. He began to shudder uncontrollably, though as much from fear that he would lose the Dark Lens-or be lost with it-as from his pain.
Gulping down his misery and shock, Tithian waited until the agonizing transition was complete and the unbearable pain subsided. Then, making sure his tail was securely wrapped around the lens, he flapped his new wings as hard as he could. The air throbbed with each stroke, and the gray mists swirled around him like smoke on a windy day.
The king and his lens continued to fall. He looked up and saw nothing but a crimson dot where he had hoped to see the satchel opening.
Forgetting about his wings, Tithian leaned over the side of the Oracle and peered into the grayness below. He opened himself to the power of the lens once more and used the Way to visualize the satchel opening directly beneath himself. Again, he felt his body erupt with fiery energy. An instant later, the crimson dot appeared below the Oracle.
“By Rajaat, yes!” Tithian cried. “If we can’t fly up to the exit, we’ll fall out of it!”
No sooner had he spoken than the king suddenly felt as though he were beneath the Oracle instead of on top of it, and he knew he was once again falling away from his goal. As Tithian watched, the satchel opening faded from a dot to a point, then blinked out of sight altogether. He could not tell why he had failed. The lens might have changed the direction of its movement, or simply turned over so that he was looking at the exit from its bottom instead of the top. In either case, all he knew for sure was that he had been traveling toward the dot one moment, and away from it the next.