ROD EVERLAR STARED into wide-mawed death.
Down out of the skies it came, hurtling at him six-fold, darknesses so large that they almost blotted out the sky.
Six creatures out of nightmare. Out of his nightmares, literally. The dragon-like, long-tailed, scaly bat-winged monsters called greatfangs.
In the forefront were the two largest wyrms, leviathans both larger than the wizard's tower had been before its fall. Their gaping jaws were large enough to swallow not just Rod, but hundreds of knights standing with him—if he'd had such an army.
Instead, he was fleeing quite alone, plunging frantically down a stone stair he was sure one of the greatfangs would swallow, railings and steps and all, stumbling and falling as he fled blindly on and down, head turned back over his shoulder to watch those huge mouths coming for him.
Neck straining, Rod couldn't look away, couldn't stop watching :oom rush down on him, fangs as tall as trees framing dark red maws, the glaring eyes above fixed hungrily, angrily on him...
He was going to die here, die horribly in those chewing jaws, moments from now. There was no escape. Already the gaping maw of the foremost greatfangs was framing the blindly lurching body of Malraun, staggering after Rod down the stair.
It had probably swallowed Taeauna already; he could see and -ear no sign of her, though he was still shouting her name to the skies.
And if she was gone, what was the point of going on? Why not just lie down and let a hungry greatfangs take him?
Taeauna, emerald eyes flashing as she swung her sword in battle.
Cat-graceful, raven-black hair swirling about her shoulders as she ran.
Laughing at him around a doorway, mouth crooked impishly... or eyes large and dark with fear, captured in a moment when she feared for his fate.
Gods, what beauty! What fire. Trusting in him even when she was contemptuous of his ignorance, or despairing of his failings. Watching over him, defending him, a veteran warrior protecting a foolish younger brother.
The one who'd dragged him here, who'd plunged him into Falconfar and kept him alive. His guide, his bodyguard, his... everything.
"Everything," he sobbed aloud, as he lost his footing and slammed into another landing, bouncing his chin and one hand bruisingly off unyielding stone.
He scrambled to his feet and fled downwards, seeing not the stair but Taeauna again, eyes fixed on his imploringly as he'd seen her last, from afar, a captive.
So beautiful... and gone now, no doubt engulfed and tumbled into the scalding innards of a greatfangs, drowning in the roiling acids of its gullet, silent forever and... and lost.
He loved her, damn it.
And was lost without her.
No Taeauna...
It had all happened so fast.
Rod had awakened from a dream of Malragard collapsing into ruin around him to discover he'd been shaping in his dreams, and the tower was falling.
Then Malraun had appeared, raging madly at the destruction of his tower, and lashed at Rod Everlar with spell-lightnings—then burst into lunatic laughter and turned the lightning bolts stabbing from his fingers to felling all the Dark Helms.
Rod had been rolling desperately away over cracked and heaved stone tiles, fleeing snarling lightnings, but he'd seen and heard Malraun well enough.
With a roar of triumph, Malraun summoned glowing wands and scepters out of the rubble to his waiting hands, spurning most of them to choose and use just two: two horn-headed scepters that forcibly summoned the wizard Narmarkoun from elsewhere—and then tore him apart in a whirling, tightening sphere of clawing magics.
A calmness had fallen on Malraun then, though his eyes were burned away by the fiery magics he'd hurled. He'd smiled sightlessly at Rod and revealed himself as the returned Lorontar, the Archwizard of Falconfar. Who'd hidden in the mind of Taeauna for a long time, and now conquered the body of Malraun, searing that wizard's mind into mad ruin in doing so.
Still smiling, Lorontar had announced his intention of entering and enslaving Rod's body, to gain both Rod's power to alter Falconfar and Rod's knowledge of Earth—and stormed into Rod Everlar's mind.
Only to be beset by Taeauna, rising in sudden mental assault to lash out at Lorontar's sentience from behind. Either she'd been here at Malragard, somehow, or she'd savaged the ancient wizard through their mind-link, from wherever else she was. Freeing Rod to flee, as the six greatfangs plummeted down out of the sky, jaws opening.
Yet the Archwizard had rallied, seeking again to wrest control of Rod's body from him, as Malraun's body staggered on and the greatfangs descended.
Was Taeauna dead?
Rod Everlar cursed bitterly, wanting to pray but not knowing how.
Was he dead already, and just didn't know it yet?
Or did he have a few moments left, before dark, scalding oblivion?
"SO WHAT'S THIS inn ye're taking us to?" Garfist growled, clutching the heavy coffer of gems tightly to his massive belly. It hadn't been his for very long, and he couldn't shake the feeling that it was going to be snatched away from him, somehow. Soon.
"The Stag's Head," Juskra replied, a little grimly, from out of the wing-beaten night just above him.
She was one of the strongest Aumrarr, and a scarred veteran of many battles, but the stout and bear-thewed adventurer dangling from her carry-harness was heavy, and the coffer of Tesmer gems they'd stolen from Imtowers not so very long ago wasn't light either. "We'll not be getting anywhere near that far this night, mind. If the Falcon smiles on us, we might get as far as Telphangh before dawn catches us, and we have to set down."
"Have to set down? How dangerous is Sardray, these days?"
"Dangerous enough," Juskra told him tartly. "They've heard of bows and arrows in Sardray, you know."
"Fat man," Dauntra broke in sharply, from where she flew a little behind Juskra and off to one side, bearing the far lighter burden of Garfist's bony companion Iskarra, "let Jusk save her breath for flying. I'm struggling here, just carrying Isk, and you must be more than thrice her weight!"
"An' it's all muscle, too, look ye!" Garfist grunted triumphantly. "Yet I hear ye, an' I'll leave off talking to my steed, an' talk at ye for a bit. So, what's this Telphangh place, hey?"
"An Aumrarr ruin that other folk shun. That we told you would be our first stop on our way to Galath, remember? It's what's left of an old stone tower, perched on a crag in the heart of the wild Raurklor."
"An' why's it shunned?"
"It's shunned," Juskra put in coldly, "because it's haunted."
"Haunted?"
"Haunted," Dauntra agreed firmly.
"Aye, I heard well enough. I mean, by what?"
"Ghosts. And worse things."
Garfist frowned, and kicked at the air to twist himself around to face Dauntra—a habit that made Juskra's shoulders ache and her temper smolder. "There're worse things than ghosts?"
"Evidently," Dauntra told him sweetly.
"Wingbitch," Garfist growled, "don't toy with me. Ye seem to need us to do yer dirtydark deeds, often enough, an' for that ye need us whole and willing. An' we'll not be so if ye treat us like prisoners, or friends who just happen to be idiots to be chided, an' lied to, an' not told things."
"Gar," Isk said warningly.
"Nay, Snakehips, I'll not be shushed! Who's up here in the night air rushing past to hear us, after all?"
"The lorn who just rose up out of those branches, back yon, to follow us," Dauntra replied quietly.
IN THE SUDDEN silence that fell after the man in black armor vanished in mid-sneer, Rusty stared across the littered security room at Pete.
Pete Sollars stared back at him, lower lip quivering and eyes wide and staring with fear.
After a while, he whimpered.
Which left him a less than ideal candidate for answering any question the Head of Security of Holdoncorp Headquarters might put to him, but Rusty snapped it out anyway.
"Are—are they all gone, Pete?"
"Ooounnh?"
"The monitors, Pete," Rusty snapped, using the flashlight in his hand to point fiercely at the bank of security screens. "Are they all gone?"
Tears were still rolling down Peter's face, but the security observer shook himself, gabbled something apologetic, and scrambled back to his desk, not bothering to pick up his chair or use it. At least Rusty hadn't had to tell him who "they" were.
Only seconds ago, he and Peter had been facing the sixth Dark Helm, large and menacing in his black armor and full-face helm, sharp and glittering sword in hand, stalking forward to murder them both.
Only to vanish, instantly and silently, in the proverbial blink of an eve. Very much there one moment, and gone the next. Like a dream.
But this had certainly been no dream. Across the room, the severed ends of the power cable that the calmly murderous Dark Helm had sliced through were still swinging gently, back and forth, spitting sparks almost lazily out onto the floor.
Rusty stared at them, trying to remember where the nearest guns were, and how many locks he'd have to get through to get at them. Behind him, the huge metal fortress-door of Brain Central stood closed and gleaming. Silent and immobile, with who knew what sort of panic going on behind it.
Well, Hank knew, for one—and it was his problem now.
Faintly, far away, the wail of a siren arose, and the Head of Nrjurity found himself smiling humorlessly.
Or he could just wait for the police. It seemed Derek had taken Rusty Carroll seriously for once, after all.
Which just left him the colossal headache of dealing with all of the injuries and deaths, which—if the six Dark Helms and the... the creature that had flown in with them had been half as efficiently deadly as they'd seemed to be—could be many, plus all the inevitable lawyers, and shattered glass windows that until recently had been the outside walls of the company's corporate headquarters, and all of the electrical damage, too, and...
"No sign of them, Chief!" Pete said excitedly, whirling from the screens with fresh tears leaking from his eyes. "We're clear!"
And Rusty Carroll let out a deep breath he hadn't known he was holding until that moment, and smiled a smile so broad he thought his face might hurt.
The parade of colossal headaches ahead were nothing, nothing at all.
THE MAGIC SEIZED hold of him like a fist, bruisingly hard. He choked, trying to fight it, and—
Narmarkoun. The voice thundered in his head, coldly hostile and gloating. It was Malraun, and yet it was not only Malraun. It was older, deeper... colder.
The world whirled and flashed around him, and he found himself suddenly blinking in the changed light. He was in the open, under the sky, standing amid rubble on ruined stone tiles. It was somewhere he'd seen before, only never so smashed and ruined as this. Malragard?
Malragard, tower of his hated foe Malraun, and it had been Malraun who'd so tauntingly called him here.
Blinking as he called on all the magic he had left to him, gathering it for the coming fight, he stared all around.
Yes, it was Malragard, and here were his own Dark Helms, striding grimly through the tumbled stones with swords drawn, coming closer. Through billowing smoke they came—and greater darkness gathered overhead. His greatfangs were gliding through the sky, converging overhead... all six of them. But how-?
"Narmarkoun!" Malraun crooned. His voice came from behind Narmarkoun, not far off.
Even before he turned to face Malraun, fighting to stammer out a warding spell, Narmarkoun knew what he would see.
And what would happen to him.
Malraun was holding two horn-headed scepters, smiling faintly. The moment their eyes met, he unleashed those scepters.
And Narmarkoun screamed.
Could not help but scream as magic thrust into him, as sharp and as painful as any saw-bladed lorn sword. Then the claws of Malraun's cruel magic tore at his body, tugging it open, and he had no breath left to scream.
He was spun around, helpless, unable even to cry as the clawing magics tore at him and spiraled, whirling around him in a tightening sphere, drawing in close as they raked and tore.
His blood sprayed out of him in a mist, his legs wobbled and failed beneath him, a red fire of agony slashed across his world as one of his arms was torn away, and Narmarkoun sobbed as he fought to focus on one rune in his mind, the relic of a spell memorized long ago. His last hope, his only way out of this...
He was a helpless, bloody wreck already, armless, stumbling on shattered legs, whirled along by magics, reeling back... back...
He was vaguely aware of striking something hard, his shoulder and ribs giving way, collapsing into shards that stabbed through his smashed and broken body.
It was what was left of a wall, and the whirlwind of clawing magic moaned through it as if its cracked stones had been mere butter, or no more than smoke.
His body crushed, Narmarkoun writhed in agony, sobbing in the heart of a cloud of gore, clinging to one thing in his thoughts, a rune that blazed brightly...