Tarram bent his will, and the Whispering Blade flew. It almost tore itself out of the wizard's grasp, but Mahalagris sneered and hung on tighter.
Tarram sent the sword streaking into the largest boulder in the heap. There was a ringing clang, sparks flew, and the body Mahalagris had borrowed thudded into the rocks. Tarram swept the sword away into the air, the dazed wizard's body still clinging to it, then dashed it against another rock. He refused to give Mahalagris time to think. Again against unyielding stone, and again, bones shattering, Mahalagris crying out now, trying to form words with a smashed mouth.
Tarram brought the Whispering Blade to a hovering halt, and started the draining.
As the gauntlet's power rushed into it, the sword went from angry whispering to exulting gasps, a gleeful song arising from it. The slumped, broken man clinging to it lifted his head, visibly healing as a golden-white radiance erupted from the Whispering Blade and washed over him.
He was healing and growing, getting larger, a surprised and delighted smile spreading across his face. His eyes lost all pain and danced in excitement. He looked down at the masked man gloatingly as a golden-white aura grew to surround him, flickering brighter …and brighter …
A strap parted, and then a belt, Mahalagris's clothes falling away as he grew. The wizard didn't seem to notice, or to care.
Tarram sidestepped and backed away until he stood between the growing spellcaster and Tantaerra, and could put one hand behind his back and wave at her to get away.
He backed away himself as he made that gesture. Mahalagris was eight or nine feet tall now, his eyes flaring into golden-white flame. The wizard threw back his head and laughed, opening his arms wide. Tiny lightnings crackled around his fingertips. He was alive with power.
Tarram moved the hovering sword carefully, lifting Mahalagris off the ground slowly as a feather lifted by the gentlest of breezes.
"Ride the wind," he whispered, as if in blessing, and watched the wizard in the body of the unfortunate, mind-dead Molthuni rise into the sky, a tiny sun ascending to challenge the moon.
"Tarram Armistrade," Tantaerra said quietly from behind him, "you had better know what you're doing."
"You," he murmured, his eyes fixed on the now tiny figure, aloft amid its glowing nimbus of magic, "had better hope I do, halfling princess."
The explosion seared their eyes. Its thunder rocked the landscape, echoes rolling away across the hills to rebound off the Mindspin Mountains.
The magical backlash of the blast raced right after that echo, lifting Tarram Armistrade off his feet. He had just time to turn in midair and see dweomercats sprinting away into the distance and his halfling partner dashed to the ground in front of him. Then the magical shock of the destruction of the Whispering Blade reached the mask, and snatched all Golarion away.
∗ ∗ ∗
Luraumadar, Luraumadar, Luraumadar the mask shouted in Tarram's mind, driving him up out of darkness. The strong smell of roast boar was in his nostrils, and there were armored Molthuni warriors bending over him, half a dozen lance tips hovering near his throat.
"I'm a Lord Investigator of Molthune," he croaked.
The nearest Molthuni sneered. "And I'm a dancing pleasure-girl of the Savored Sting. Now, you're going to tell me what that mask is you're wearing, and why it's glowing-and we won't hesitate to nail your throat to the turf with lances if you try anyth-"
Tarram didn't hesitate, either. Through the mask, he could feel that the Fearsome Gauntlet still had most of its abilities; the Whispering Blade had been overloaded and destroyed long before it could drain the gauntlet entirely. He awakened the gauntlet now, using its simplest ramming blow to dash aside the lance tips.
He rolled hard to the left, to wrap himself around the ankles of a Molthuni and topple that soldier over. The smell of cooked boar seemed to be clinging to him.
Tarram kept rolling, up to his feet and into a sprint that took him out of the ring of Molthuni. He could hear them pounding right after him, and kept dodging to keep any thrown lances from biting home.
He ran through the grass in a wide circle, knowing he had to get back to Tantaerra-and because doing so should give him a good look at all of his pursuers, strung out in his wake. His targets.
A soldier at the rear of the chase wasn't running at all, but rather mounting his horse, probably having realized that a man on a galloping horse can easily run down a fugitive on foot. Tarram called on the gauntlet through its link with the mask and punched that soldier ruthlessly in the throat. The man's head lolled loosely on a broken neck as he bounced off his startled horse, making it rear and bolt.
The gauntlet was still on Tantaerra's arm, as she lay sprawled and senseless. As he aimed the gauntlet to slam into the throat of his closest pursuer, Tarram saw his commands were making the gauntlet lift his partner's limp arm and move it about, the glove towing and turning it.
His chosen target was close behind him, panting and jabbing the air with his spear, trying to stick it into Tarram's back or behind, but not quite close enough yet.
Tarram didn't hesitate. After all, it was his and Tantaerra's lives or those of these-gods! — twenty-some Molthuni.
That closest soldier was abruptly smashed aside, landing like a heavy sack, felled by the empty air.
The next closest Molthuni soon joined him, throat crushed and neck broken, another heavily thudding heap in the grass.
Followed by another, as Tarram grimly went on using the gauntlet, stumbling on in his circling run, heading back to Tantaerra now, his wind almost gone.
Molthune may have more soldiers than I can count, but I have a Fearsome Gauntlet.
The patrol's horses stood watching as the running men came back toward them. A few pawed the ground, but most were stolidly accepting of the loud idiocies of human riders, and merely gazed placidly as Molthuni after Molthuni jerked back into sudden falls and lay still.
"Madness!" a soldiers shouted, realizing his superiors were all down and dead. "We need reinforcements!"
"Archers!" another agreed, and the pursuit of the masked man became a general rush back to the horses, the wide circle collapsing into a flood of men heading straight for their mounts.
"Magic to fight magic!" another Molthuni panted, as men sprang into their saddles and spurred hurriedly away.
Tarram crouched low to confound any last-second spear casts, but none came. Freed of their officers, the Molthuni were in haste not to fight, but to gallop back to Braganza.
Tarram watched them go, feeling much better. Now that all echoes of the stunning lash of the wizard's destruction were done, he felt alert and stronger. Using the gauntlet seemed to have driven away his dazedness and a lot of his aches and pains, too.
He looked at Tantaerra, sprawled and senseless. Could it do the same for her?
He bent over her and concentrated on the gauntlet, trying to get it to leak just a little power into her. Enough to invigorate, not sear or harm.
The gauntlet on her hand pulsed with light, then rippled.
Yes. Envisage that bright white light, lapping rather than flowing or rushing, creeping …
The halfling stiffened, and her eyes flew open.
And fixed on him with blazing anger.
"What are you trying?" she snapped. "I felt it! This-this violation you're-"
Furiously she pointed the gage at him. Tarram could feel that she was trying to slap him away, to sunder his link with it, but if that dread bolt struck him …
He overrode her, and saw the horror dawn on her face as she realized she couldn't break his control.