Quintessential Tales: A Magic of Solendrea Anthology (15 page)

In fact, for the duration of Adamon’s visit with Selma, Tiadaria saw nothi
ng strange or out of place. Maybe the danger had passed. Maybe whatever had threatened the town had moved on. In the morning, she and Adamon could do another, more thorough search of the town and then head back to Dragonfell. Selma, that poor girl. She appeared to be the only survivor.

She slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead. How could she be so stupid? Of course
! It seemed that Selma was the only survivor. It fit. It all fit. Tionne was behind this. She had to be. With the exception of a few minor details, this was the attack on Doshmill all over again. This was the same thing that happened to Tionne, only now she was doing it to someone else. Tiadaria wasn’t sure which was worse. The Xarundi had done it out of their instinct for conquest. Tionne was doing it because she liked it. The girl was twisted in the worst way.

Footfalls on the steps behind her heralded Adamon’s return. She whirled from the window, catching a flicker of surprise on his face before he schooled his features into the impassive mask that was his typical expression. She threw her hands up.

“I don’t know why we didn’t see it!” she exclaimed as he stepped off the staircase. “This isn’t just some random occurrence. We were meant to be here. This is Tionne letting us know that she’s still out there.” Tiadaria ticked off the points on her fingers as she spoke. “First, we’ve only found one survivor, a girl about the same age as Tionne was when the Xarundi attacked her village. Second, monsters. Third, the attack on the town. It all adds up.”

Adamon brushed past her, going to stand by the window and peering out into the darkness beyond. He stood, immobile and silent, stroking his chin with his elbow nestled into his other palm. Tiadaria wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake a reply out of him, but she knew it wouldn’t do her any good.

“Perhaps,” he said at long last. “There isn’t enough evidence either way. All of this could just as easily be something else. You might be seeing what you want to see.”

Tiadaria fumed. Once, just once, she’d like for Adamon to admit that her theories had merit. Even if it was just to say that her point of view w
as a plausible one. Instead, he’d pick apart her ideas, brick by brick, until he’d done his best to debunk everything she believed. It was infuriating.

A bloodcurdling scream from the floor above stopped any wallowing that Tiadaria thought she had coming. The reedy, high-pitched wail was a sound of pure terror, wrenched from the throat of a child. Tiadaria’s hands went to her scimitars, yanking them free of their scabbards with a menacing ring.

Adamon might have had his faults, but a slow reaction time wasn’t among them. He had the cannon in his hand and was halfway up the stairs before Tiadaria had even fully turned from the window. The Quintessentialist took the steps to the upper floor two at a time, his feet only just touching the step before his next leap forward. He was fast!

“Get off of her!” Tiadaria heard him scream, then the muted roar of his weapon.

Calling on the power of the Quintessential Sphere, Tiadaria leapt from the bottom railing, sailed over the stairs, and landed on the upper balcony overlooking the common room. Adamon was a short distance down the hall, his weapon still smoking from his first shot.

At the end of the hallway, just beyond where Adamon stood with his legs planted apart and his cannon raised, was one of the creatures that Selma had described to them when they’d found her. Six or seven feet tall, the thing had a huge, bulbous head perched atop a mass of writhing tentacles. It seemed like there were too many to count, as they were in constant motion, propelling it forward with impressive speed toward Adamon. It had no eyes that Tiadaria could see, but its mouth was filled with jagged teeth that glistened in the dim lantern light.

Slipping into sphere sight, Tiadaria was shocked to find that she saw nothing. It was as if the creature didn’t exist. There was no shadow, no residual echo, and no flickering memory of the thing that was harrowing Adamon. She dared not close to attack, putting herself between Adamon’s cannon and the beast could mean maiming or death. Another scream came from the room that they’d laid Selma in.

Another creature, with Selma wrapped in tight coils of thick black tendrils, scurried out of the room into the hall. It held the girl out toward them, as if it knew they wouldn’t attack if they might injure the child. Adamon’s hand snapped toward the creature and Tiadaria was certain he was going to fire, even if it meant he might hit Selma.

“Adamon, no!”

Flames belched from the end of the cannon as he pulled the trigger, filling the hallway with thunder. The monster at the end of the hall, the one not gripping Selma in its grotesque appendages, exploded. It looked like a pumpkin dropped from a tall tower. Bits pulpy flesh splattered against the walls. The tendrils gave a few spasmodic twitches, then were still.

Seeming to recognize the threat from the Quintessentialist, the creature holding Selma dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the room it had just left. It moved with surprising speed for such an unwieldy looking thing. Tiadaria darted past Adamon as he dropped two new shells into his pistol. The pumpkin-monster was heading straight for the window that overlooked the sleepy down.

Calling on the Sphere once again, Tiadaria jumped forward, her scimitars slicing down across the appendages that were propelling the creature forward. Without the aid of
sphere sight, it was more difficult to be certain that she wasn’t going to injure the girl with her wild attack, but she couldn’t afford to wait for a better plan of attack. If they made it to the window, Tiadaria didn’t think that Selma would survive the night.

Her blades struck true, severing several of the tentacles with each swing, spilling black ichor over the floor. The beast reared back, its maw wide in
a horrible screech that made Tiadaria want to drop her swords and clap her hands over her ears. The sound penetrated her mind, burrowing deep inside her head.

Trusting in her training and experience, Tiadaria struck again and again, the flurry of blows only just missing Selma as the creature writhed and turned, trying to reach the window before she managed to dismember it altogether. A quick sideways swipe parted the monster’s head from the body mass and Selma fell.

Tiadaria dove and grabbed her before the girl could hit the floor, wrapping her body around the child and rolling them to safety. When they stopped, she uncurled her body and looked at Selma’s puffy red eyes.

“Are you
all right?”

The girl nodded, tears still welling in the wide eyes.

“Tiadaria, come on, we need to go,” Adamon called from the doorway. He glanced in at them, then down the hall. He leveled the cannon down the hallway and pulled the trigger. Both barrels roared to life. “More of them on the stairs and down below. Check the window.”

The
Swordmage rolled to her feet, kicking the body of the monster out of the way and going to the window it had been trying to escape to. She shoved the window open, peering out into the night. The window wasn’t going to provide them with a way out.

Below the little house, a sea of pumpkin-monsters filled the alley and street beyond. They screeched in their tuneless voiced, their open mouths turned upward as if to receive anything that might fall from above.

“No good, Adamon. There must be hundreds of them.”

“
All right.” Adamon had ducked back into the room and was dropping two new cartridges into the cannon from a pouch on his belt. “I guess we fight our way out.”

Tiadaria gave the girl a gentle nudge toward Adamon with her hip. She flexed her arms, feeling the familiar pain of the scimitars in her hands. She spun them in a neat circle, testing their balance.

“Stay close to Adamon, Selma. I have work to do.”

The first creature to reach the door to the room, she cleaved in half from top to bottom. The next she cut in half across the middle. Her blades flashed and sung. Soon, Tiadaria had fallen into the trance-like state of a skilled warrior in frenzied combat. Her strikes were fluid, finding their targets and then moving to the next without
as much as a pause. They inched their way forward, out of the room, through the hall, and down the stairs, leaving the bodies of the creatures in their wake.

For every foe that fell, there seemed to be two more to take its place. Tiadaria carved a wide swath of destruction around them and from behind, she heard the periodic blast of Adamon’s cannon. After what seemed like hours, they made it into the street. The forms of the creatures around them ebbed and flowed, a sea of evil intent on devouring them. Tiadaria found a moment’s respite in her attacks to glance across the street to the town square. What she saw there was unsurprising, but still sent a chill up her spine.

Standing at the base of the fountain was a diminutive girl with pale alabaster skin and raven dark hair. It wasn’t hard to recognize her at all. Tionne was turning out to be every inch as much her nemesis as Zarfensis had been. Something thick and heavy slammed into the side of her head, knocking her off balance and blurring her vision. Tiadaria started to turn, but something wrapped around her ankle, yanking her legs out from under her.

The world seemed to flip upside down as she was hoisted into the air. A moment later, she slammed into the ground and everything went black.

“We should have just killed her in the square.”

“Where’s your sense of the dramatic?” Tionne asked as she tightened the bindings around Tiadaria’s wrists and ankles. “After all the problems she’s caused for us, I’m just supposed to cut her throat and leave her to bleed? That hardly seems like justice.”

“Justice or not, you wanted to draw her out and you’ve done that. Toying with your enemy is a good way to get killed. Remember the Xarundi.”

Tionne sighed. She didn’t understand the morose turn Nerillia had taken since they’d driven the last of the Xarundi from the Warrens and seen Stryne established in his new quarters. They’d been dismissed a short time after. In a rather brusque fashion, if Tionne was being honest. In fact, she suspected that only Nerillia’s newfound power had spared them from death at the dragon’s whim. Not even a dragon would dare oppose the force of nature that had once been known as the Deep Oracle.

That was, without question, part of the change in Nerillia’s attitude. She had become whole again, both parts of her soul now inhabiting a single mind. A period of adjustment was to be expected. Even so, Tionne wasn’t sure she approved of the change. Nerillia had been fun and exciting in Dragonfell, sharing Tionne’s lust for blood and need for something to fill the void within her. Now all the exotic, gray-skinned beauty seemed to want to do was reflect on the events that had brought her here, to this little town nestled in the middle of the Imperium. It was bad for business.

Tionne checked the knots she’d tied one more time, ensuring they were tight. Pain lanced up her arms as she ran a hand over the rope. She’d had it made special, with a thin thread of extruded steel that ran its length. It’d be of particular use against the
Swordmage, but she hated carrying it. Even just having it nearby made her feel an echo of that disassociation she’d felt when her former mentor had almost severed her connection to the Quintessential Sphere. She never wanted to feel that way again.

Satisfied that her prisoner wasn’t going to escape, she turned to the long table they’d laid out for dinner. Tionne picked up a glass of mead and took a swig. She grimaced at the sharp taste and glared at the amber liquid. The
amenities that Havenhedge offered left much to be desired. They’d been in Overwatch before coming here. Tionne had become accustomed to the finest mead and wine that money could buy. Anything could be had in Overwatch for the right price.

In fact, that’s how they’d come to be here. They’d been hired to recover a family heirloom, a powerful relic that seemed to have been forgotten among the sands of time. Luring the
Swordmage into their clutches had just been an added bonus. Not only would they get paid for the job, they’d get rid of Tiadaria as well. Tionne couldn’t imagine a much better outcome. Placing her glass on the table, she circled it and pulled out a chair. Tionne offered it to Nerillia with a flourish.

“Come and dine, my dear?”

Something flickered behind Nerillia’s eyes and for a moment, Tionne thought Nerillia might decline. Instead, a slow smile crept across her face and she seated herself with an equally expansive gesture. That was more like the Nerillia she knew and loved.

“It isn’t every day that we have such a distinguished guest for dinner,” Nerillia said, gesturing at the still unconscious form of the
Swordmage, trussed to her chair. “I still think I prefer our private, quiet dinners.”

“Not to worry,” Tionne said with a smile. “I think our pets are still plenty hungry and will be more than happy to get their dinner once we’ve finished with ours.”

Tionne glanced out the window. The creatures they had created were milling around the farmhouse, shadows illuminated by the pale light of the full moon. So many of them in so confined a space made the rustling sound they made as they moved over the earth an almost constant din. At the very least, their army would protect them from anyone who might seek to rescue Tiadaria before they could dispose of her.

The inquisitor, Adamon, and the girl were probably dead by now. Even if they weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to stage an assault on the farmhouse and protect the girl at the same time. He’d have to find a safe place to keep the little one and by then, she and Nerillia would have dispatched their guest. Then they’d return to Overwatch.