Mouths wide, they roared with ravenous intent, their howls echoing through the vast, multilevel corridor.
Their large, glossy, almond-shaped eyes seemed nearly as black and wet as their soft, moist flesh. When a thin, semitransparent third eyelid blinked in from the inside corner of each eye, the membrane gave their eyes a slightly milky appearance.
In an instant, Richard’s emotions went from exhausted relief to full fright. He had thought it was over, but now there were suddenly many times the number of Glee as in the attack that had just ended. He took a quick look over his shoulder. None were coming from behind. At least not yet. The soldiers back in that direction were still a long way off. They would never reach Richard and those with him in time.
All of those claws were terrifying enough, but even more frightening were the nasty, oily faces of the creatures. The thin wet skin wrinkled as their wide mouths gaped open, lips pulling back from long, needle-sharp teeth that glistened with stringy slime. The mouths full of white teeth stood out all the more against the dark mass of the creatures.
The few dozen soldiers racing to Richard and Kahlan’s defense from that same direction were suddenly beset by the tall dark shapes slashing away at them with hooked claws. They ran through the midst of the soldiers, overwhelming them with sheer numbers and brute force. The soldiers tried to fight back—even taking down a few of the Glee, which were then trampled underfoot—but they were being hopelessly engulfed and overrun.
Before the Mord-Sith could launch toward them, before Richard had time to think about it, he reacted out of instinct born of white-hot rage.
He thrust both hands toward the threat.
Clarity came to him in a frozen instant in time.
His birthright, that core of his gift deep within that he hadn’t been aware of growing up, but that he had come to know intimately when in the underworld, erupted forth as if it were wild fury brought to life.
In that fraction of a second, everyone seemed to be moving in a dreamlike state so slow that he could see the shock on every face as this sudden new threat materialized out of thin air. The fear and stark terror of what was coming for them was clearly evident on each of those faces. The Mord-Sith, though, lived to defend Richard and Kahlan with their lives, so their fear was layered over with grim resolve, a kind of acknowledgment that they were already dead, so they might as well take down as many of the enemy as they could before there was no power left in their muscles or blood in their veins.
Richard had time to look at each of their beautiful faces, each an image of intelligent beauty, reflecting what could have come of these women had they not been taken at a young age and twisted into killing machines. But now that was what they were, and that visage overlaid whatever else might lie beneath.
In that silent, otherworldly state, everyone seemed to Richard to be moving so slowly so as to almost be statues. He could see the fiercely determined expressions on all of the soldiers as the Glee around them ripped at them with claws and teeth. The whole scene, that instant in time, seemed frozen in midair.
At the same time, Richard could see all the ravenous, wrinkled faces of the Glee—big eyes, small nostril holes, enormous mouths and teeth—all of them struggling in the thick mass, tumbling over one another to be the first to get at Richard and Kahlan. It wasn’t a drive for glory, as a soldier in battle might have, but rather a voracious, communal hunger to kill, like beasts needing to feed.
Richard knew without a doubt by seeing their big, almond-shaped eyes that their gazes, frozen in that moment in time, were mostly fixed on Kahlan. They had also been sent for Richard, but more importantly, for her first. Their claws were all reaching out, trying to be the first to hook her, to be the first to rip her open, to sink those needle-sharp teeth into her flesh.
They had been sent to eliminate not merely Kahlan, but the children she carried, the hope she carried.
He could see in her face that Kahlan knew it as well.
From within the crackling cocoon of power, Richard could see it all, watch it all, as everyone moved only the width of a hair with each lazy tick of time.
A kind of sparkling, spiraling, hissing haze swirled up around him, colors flashing up and down within it. Eddies of light rippled through it. Tiny flashes, sparks of energy, ignited all throughout that haze, uncountable numbers glowing with glittering fluidity. Each of those embers sparked out, only to be reborn and set off yet another cascade of glimmering flashes. It was dazzling. The center of the vortex was warm and protective; it was the energy of his own gift expanding outward.
It reminded him of the first time he stood on Zedd’s wizard’s rock, the way the light threatened to ignite the air around him and the air itself rotated with a dull roar as it swirled like smoke. It engendered that same sense of wonder, that same recognition of unimaginable power being gathered together, of a world he had never known existed coming into being.
He could just see in his peripheral vision that Kahlan, knowing they were coming for her, had straightened her back, the Mother Confessor ready to release her own power. But Richard knew beyond any doubt that in this case, with as many of the dark creatures as there were charging through the soldiers to get at her, she didn’t stand a chance.
None of them did.
Only one thing could stop what was but a heartbeat away from becoming reality. He knew that in two heartbeats, they would all be dead.
Unless he stopped them.
Power, ignited by the spark of his rage and fuelled by the singular gift he carried, filled every fiber of his being, swelling through him, around him, a summoned haze of lethal force. It felt hot, sharp, and violent, as if it were erupting from his very soul and tearing its way through him, eager to get to his hands, eager to do his bidding.
In that quiet, clear instant of inner cognition, of wild rage and hate materialized, he also had time to reflect on everything he had been taught, everything he had read, and everything he had seen about the use of the gift. It was all there in his mind, the memories ready to serve his need. In that instant, it felt as if Zedd were there with him, because this was something Zedd had intimately known and understood.
Now, Richard felt it. It was him. It was wrath itself.
Through it all, even as memories of Zedd warmed him, the thing that stood out in his mind, the thing that mattered, was that he was a war wizard, born of a long line of those rare men.
He had always fought that reality. He had always tried to both master it and avoid it, never comfortable with who he was. But in that crystal-clear instant sparked by raw danger, it all came together.
This was his purpose, his calling, his need.
To his other side, Shale was also lifting a hand to use her power. He knew, in the silence of that soft yet unborn instant inside the swirling haze of rage sparkling all around him, that not only was it not enough, but it wasn’t going to be fast enough. What she was able to do couldn’t begin to match the speed and enormity of the threat. At most, she would only have time to take out one or two of what looked like well over a hundred attackers before the attackers overwhelmed and killed them all.
As much as he admired her courage, this was not for her to do. This was not for the soldiers to do. This was not for the Mord-Sith to do. This was not for the Mother Confessor to do. This was vastly more than any and all of them could begin to do.
This was for Richard to do.
In his mind he realized that the totality of it, while at first seeming overwhelming, simply required a computation of position, distance, degree of angles, numbers of each threat, and their rate of speed as they closed the short distance to their victims.