/Really, Corvis./ The voice reverberated in his mind, so much worse than the phantom echoes of the past years, eclipsing his thoughts entirely. /Another noblewoman? Since you didn't prove up to conquering, are you trying to fuck your way to the throne now? Or do you just find that the inbreeding makes them more docile?/
Corvis could only gurgle. Even if he could have forced the words past his tongue, his mind thrashed too violently to form them.
More movement, more images. A nauseating stench began to permeate his memories, corrupting even the most pleasant into something foul, something better forgotten. /The dog? Seilloah's the dog?/ Corvis's head felt as though it would burst as it filled with a cruel and hysterical laughter. /Well, I always said she was a bitch, didn't I?/
On it went, and on, farther and farther back. Through Corvis's recent travels; the life he'd made and the plans he'd pursued as part of Rahariem's Merchants' Guild. And farther still, through his nightmarish experiences in Tharsuul, land of the Dragon Kings, and his all-consuming eldritch studies-not to empower his new plans, as he'd maintained and even believed, but as a means of escaping the pain of Tyannon's rejection.
He would have threatened, demanded, cajoled-even, gods help him, begged for it to stop. But he could not. Khanda hadn't even left him that.
Until… /Ahhh. There it is! And just in time. If I had to relive any more of your pathetic existence, I might just vomit. And you call my home 'hell'…/
Corvis saw the words flash across his mind, one at a time, and Khanda peeled them off like scabs. Gradually, inevitably, the entire spell began to form, until the demon was but a single passage from the end.
The scream, when it came, sounded in Corvis's mind and ears both, threatening to shatter hearing and sanity alike. A geyser of pain erupted from his gut even as he fell to the street, a motionless rag doll.
Khanda stood, his body rigid, jaw agape in astonished agony. A mask of blood and ruined, splinter-coated flesh peered over his shoulder from behind, and the wavy blade of a demon-forged flamberge jutted obscenely from his ribs.
"I don't know precisely what you are," Jassion rasped, viciously twisting Talon in the wound. "But I heard enough."
The world held its breath. Corvis gawped up at the two men he hated most in the world; at Irrial standing behind them, her hands raw and bleeding where she'd dug Jassion free; and Seilloah slinking at her feet, one paw twisted at an impossible angle and clutched painfully to her chest.
Slowly, Khanda looked down at the length of hellish steel that had skewered him like a haunch of pork. And then, finally, he spoke.
"Ow."
Though it clearly pained him, he twisted at the waist, widening his own wound as he moved, and jabbed two fingers into the ragged flesh that had once been Jassion's nose.
The baron shrieked, stumbling back with both hands to his face, leaving the sword sticking clear through Khanda's torso. And Khanda himself could only laugh at the stunned consternation in his enemies' eyes.
"I have complete control over my body, Corvis, save for those limitations the summoning spell imposed on me. Why would I possibly choose to make myself mortal? Don't you understand, you cretins? You cannot kill me!" He extended a hand as though tossing a ball, and Jassion staggered farther-but only a few steps. He levitated for but an instant, clearing the earth by only a few inches before he fell once more. And for the first time, Khanda looked genuinely concerned.
"No." He spun, and there was Corvis, standing once more. Sunder slammed hard into Khanda's ribs, cracking bone and sending the demon hurtling aside. "But it looks like we can hurt you, doesn't it? Seilloah!"
The dog looked up sharply, peered at the rubble toward which he was pointing. She needed no more than the long years they'd worked and fought side-by-side to figure out what he was asking, and she nodded. Again the stalks burst from the earth, this time lifting the heaviest of the stones and planks.
Beside the road, features now twisted in an agonized rage, Khanda was rising once again.
"Jassion!" Corvis called. "It's the Kholben Shiar! Their magics must interfere with his!" And again he pointed, not at the rubble Seilloah's plants were hefting but at the hard-packed earth below.
Please, gods, make him understand!
And though he twitched visibly, perhaps in frustration at the thought of taking orders from Corvis Rebaine, he obviously did. Jassion leapt the intervening detritus and slammed into Khanda before he could find his balance. The baron grasped Talon's hilt and twisted, forcing demonic blade and demonic body downward. They toppled, the tip of the Kholben Shiar plunging into the earth. Jassion leaned on it, thrusting with all the strength he had left until it slid as far as it would go, the crossbar lying flush with Khanda's skin, staking him to the road.
The plants slackened their grip. Wood and stone rained down to bury Khanda in a makeshift cairn-and would have buried Jassion as well, had he not anticipated what was coming and rolled desperately aside. Obviously, and perhaps understandably, Seilloah held a grudge.
He rose, somehow directing both an infuriated glare at Corvis and a wistful, longing look where his weapon lay interred.
"Is he dead?" Irrial asked shakily.
"You heard him," Corvis said, turning away. "We can't kill him. That probably won't hold him for more than a few minutes." He began to run, but managed only a few paces before his aches and bruises and burning lungs reined him back to an unsteady, stiff-legged walk. The others fell quickly into step behind him.
"Can we possibly get far enough in a few minutes?" Irrial wondered aloud.
"That depends-on him." Corvis halted abruptly, raised Sunder's edge to hover within inches of the startled Jassion's throat.
"Where's Mellorin?" FOR LONG MINUTES THE STREET WAS STILL, the nighttime silence broken only by the creak of settling rubble and the fearful cries of distant villagers too terrified to leave their homes. Low-hanging clouds began to thin, moon and stars peeking out to see if the chaos had ended.
A peculiar snapping, combining the whistle of a sharp wind with the crackling of a bonfire, sounded a few yards down the road. The dust swirled as though kicked by a giant invisible foot, and a shape-human, feminine, lost in slumber-materialized in the dirt. It would have astonished anyone watching, had there been anyone watching, but the street, and the surrounding windows, were empty.
Again, silent moments passed. The debris shifted, stone screeching on stone, wood breaking, and something that had once appeared human rose from the wreckage with a scream to shame the damned. Limbs hung at agonizing angles, splintered bone protruding through rents in the flesh. Blood caked its skin, flowed from a hundred tiny wounds. From its body, unmarred by the impact of the rubble, protruded the Kholben Shiar.
Shattered hands, aquiver not so much with agony as rage, clutched at the blade. He could feel the insatiable hunger within the metal, a power that flowed from the same infernal wellspring as his own. He bit back a hiss of revulsion at its touch, all the while promising Rebaine and Jassion a thousand deaths.
He'd expected that the Kholben Shiar could likely hurt him, even if they could not kill; known that the magics of other demons, no matter what form contained them, would cause him pain. But until he'd felt the weapon sliding through him, piercing mind and body, pinning him to the earth, he'd not truly understood what that meant. Khanda had not worn his human form long enough to comprehend mortal anguish, and nothing-not his various minor wounds, not even the torment of Nenavar's ire-had prepared him for an agony the equal of any found in hell.
Inch by inch, fingers shredding themselves even further against the edge only to form anew, he pressed back upon the blade, driving it out. Finally he felt the pressure and the pain ease, heard Talon clatter to the ground behind him, and he gasped in very human relief.