“Now we can talk...” a voice spoke. It was indistinct, ageless, and genderless. And though it was soft, it seemed to resonate from all directions. “I…have been waiting to meet you.”

Vincent looked around for the owner. He was alone. But then he noticed the freaks that broke his neck. Their flaccid forms, now enshrouded with a black mist, appeared to be looking at him.

"Jesus!" He stumbled away from them. They did not give chase.

They continued to stare at him, slithering over each other like snakes, undulations rippling through their flesh.

"Somebody help!" Vincent cried out. He pushed against the wall.

"They can't hear you." The deflated snouts followed him. Were these things speaking to him?

"What…what are you?" he asked, staring at the cadavers.

“Many….things. To answer this question would require a thousand lifetimes. Because...you are so limited...we can say I am a legacy left behind by fools.” The entity's cadence and inflection was uneven and unnatural. It spoke as if the idea of words were foreign to it. There were strange pauses in its speech. Vincent was terrified. A legacy left behind by fools? What did it mean by that?

"You're," he stuttered, "you're the one who sent the storms?"

"I am."

"I thought…I thought you were that thing outside."

“I am present in these skins…I am also the puppet dancing with those warriors, as well as the ones attacking your forces."

"What…"

"Before I answer any more questions...I must...look at your vessel.”

The black mist gathered around his broken body.

“What did you do to me?” Vincent asked, "am I dead?"

“I broke you. But you will not stay broken. Still...” One of the arms slithered into his pockets and grabbed the vial of Triasat. “It would be inconvenient for them to find you and use this.”

Vincent watched in helplessness as the entity retreated into the well with the vial.

“You have questions...ask.”

Vincent floundered. He had so many questions, but the words choked in his throat. He was face to face with an entity that could sculpt flesh, perhaps the very same one who kidnapped him from Earth. Though he was intangible, he felt his heart thrumming. He had to calm down. He heard swords clashing outside and somebody screaming.

“What do you want with me?” That was not the question he wanted to ask. He wanted to ask why the entity was sending the storms out across Admoran. But the fear was getting to him. It was making him flustered.

“I want nothing with you...I just wanted to meet you.”

“Why?” Vincent looked around for a means to escape. But the polarized light confused his senses, it made him dizzy. The flaccid corpses, whose colors were reversed, stared at him with the empty white voids where there should have been dark pits.

“You asked why I bowed to you during our first encounter. I did not realize what you were until we touched. Then…I recognized the work of the one who brought you into our world. It is a being I respect. The lore it has imbued you with…it excites me. It has been a long time since I felt awe. ”

“That wasn't you?” Vincent asked, "you didn't kidnap me?"

“No…I am many things. I am a weaver of flesh and bone...a master of puppetry and knowledge...but I can never come close to creating something like you. Your form is Herald-work.”

“Herald-work?” Vincent repeated.

“Yes…the one that brought you here and created that form is a Black Herald. It calls itself Girashnal the Hunter.”

“Girashnal?”

“When it chooses prey...it does not matter where they run. Nothing can stop it. That is its nature. Your existence is proof. You hail from another world. It still found you. My lore is a child's scribblings compared to a Herald's ken.”

Girashnal...so the Stalker had a name. Vincent thought that knowing such a thing would lessen his fear of it. Instead, the opposite was true. It had a name and a title, and that made it feel all the more real to him. It made it personal.

"You are afraid." Vincent couldn't tell if there was glee or curiosity in the entity's observation.

“Why did it bring me here? Why did it...did it do that to me?” Vincent asked, looking down at his broken form.

“Your vessel holds many secrets...I cannot penetrate them all." One of the corpses' slithered an arm out of the grate to stroke his broken form and caress his cheek. "I can only deduce the Hunter's intentions from what I can see. Those deductions will remain hidden. If I am right, Girashnal's plan would be…'thwarted' by the telling. We share...mutual interests. And it would not be wise for me to anger a Herald."

Girashnal's plan. What could such a thing want with him?

"There is humor in the role it hopes for you to fulfill...and its depravity is rivaled only by its brethren. He and its brothers orchestrate comedies that surpass mortal comprehension.”

Before Vincent could ask another question, his broken body on the ground twitched. At the same time, he, in his ethereal form fell to the ground as an indescribable spike of agony surged through his nerves. It was brief, gone in less than a second, but it left him reeling.

"Stop!" he shouted.

“I did nothing. It is as I have said: you will not stay broken.”

“W-what?”

“You will be hard to kill. Your vessel will always try to repair itself, even beyond mortal injury. The experience will be...unpleasant.”

As if to punctuate this statement, another spike of pain surged through his entire body. For a few seconds, he was in two places at once. He was kneeling over his seizing form, and he was inside the seizing form, trying to scream.

“I still wish to talk. I will show mercy.” The hand stroking his head grabbed it, and wrenched his neck.

The pain stopped and left Vincent floundering with silent gasping. He remembered the agony he felt after falling off the cliff near Xalix's. Something had cracked in his back and his form went limp. Strix rescued him and dropped him on the ground. He flopped to the side like a ragdoll. But then he had been seized with a lightning pain not unlike that which ravaged his body moments ago. He experienced sheer torment on that cliff as tissue and nerves slowly tried to knit themselves together, even before his tongue had ever tasted the Triasat.

“You despair…but you will not remember it,” the entity said, “Girashnal knows mortal minds are fragile. You will forget pain. It wants your mind to remain intact.”

That’s why Vincent couldn’t remember the details of his transformation. He knew it had been horrible, but his recollection was vague. So, his new body forgot agonizing experiences by design. The entity was telling the truth. Even now, he could feel a numbness falling over his pain.

“Interesting...” the entity crooned, “I also see the work of a meddler. Somebody stuck their hand in Girashnal's designs. I see alterations made to the Hunter's plans. If it knows...then I weep for this meddler. Nevertheless...the Hunter’s plans will not be hindered by the changes. The point is...you will not remember the pain of your revival. One could gut you…and you will not remember it.”

Vincent reeled from this information. He was trying to digest it. Did this mean he was effectively immortal? Or at least close to it? He heard more screams as the shandan clashed.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, "why are you sending those storms out? What's the point? What do you want?"

“My goal is to spite.”

"To spite? What the hell do you mean?" It did not answer. "What do you mean 'to spite'? You're just mutating creatures because you're sadistic? That's your goal?"

“Horrors of the flesh...they are superficial. What I do now, I do for fun. It is not my goal. My goal is to mock the creator, like the Heralds do. Trauma invites fear. It invites denial. Acceptance follows. I will create a culture that looks at my works and desires them. That is my role in the comedy to come...”

“What are you talking about?” Vincent demanded. The entities words were like poison. They were alien, confusing, and devoid of all logic. Trauma invites fear, denial, and acceptance? It didn't make any sense.

“You do not know the creatures of this world. They are broken...warped. I, and those I admire, my idols, are like water hitting stone. You will never see stone give way. But if you live a thousand years, you will see how it is eroded, how it can be sculpted.”

Vincent didn't know what to say. He remembered the soldier that had been ripped apart, his innards splashing his armor, staining his helmet. He heard the little girl's voice coming from a creature it didn't belong to. He remembered the helpless kelta, panting in terror and agony as one of its eyes hung from its socket.

“Whatever you are, you're fucked up," he spat, "I don't know these people. But three nations...no, four. They sent aid because that damn–what was it called– Ayrlon's Tear, was lit up. And because of that, they sent an army to take you down. I'm pretty sure that means they don't 'desire it'. They want you dead.”

“Ayrlon weeps? Of course...she would...what color is her tear?”

Before he could answer he heard the sound of windows crashing in the other room. He needed to put his foot down. He came here for a purpose. He needed to remember why he came here, why he wanted answers. He did his best to push the dread he felt to the back of his mind.

“What about my memories?” he asked, trying to summon as much confidence as he could.

“Memories?”

“You have them. I want them back.”

***

Slade tumbled into the alley, dropping from a considerable height. She ducked into a roll just before she hit the ground, yet still her horns smacked the wall. Her eyes saw stars, yet she drew her knees against her chest and kicked out, feeling her feet connect with the chest of her pursuer. Snarling, she got up and wiped the blood from her eyes. Normally, the attack would have stunned a normal person, but these things were no longer people. They did not feel pain. A strike to the head would not daze them. A kick to the chest would not leave them winded. Their movements were uncanny and hard to read. But she was a quick learner, and she was fast. Patterns revealed themselves the more she fought.

One charged from her side, she leaned back, brought Calimere's Light up through its neck. Something grotesque and slime-covered fell from its throat. But before she saw what it was, another leapt off the roof above her. She impaled it on the tip of her blade and went down with it. It clasped onto her wrist, so she grabbed an icicle which had fallen to the ground and thrust it into the creature's eye. It thrashed for a bit before going limp. She dismissed her blade so she could free it and rematerialized it a second later to cut down another creature. The blade got caught between the ribs as it fell, causing her elbow to strike the pavement. Her wrist went numb with needles and she dropped the weapon.

Cursing that she wouldn’t be able to use her hand for a bit, she got up and shook it. Another one of the things came charging toward her, a woman with her jaw hanging slack. At the last second, she struck the center of her torso, below the keelbone, kicked her, threw a few uppercuts to set her off-balance, then she crouched into a one-legged spin and used the centripetal force to whip her tail around until it struck the creature's side. The impact sent her flying into the concrete wall. She strode over to it with her dagger in hand and shanked the woman's throat.

Something wriggled inside the villager's mouth. A large black worm squirmed its way out of the throat of the cadaver, a circle of teeth unfolding at its mouth. It tried to lunge at Slade, but she caught it and squeezed. Black guts spewed from its aperture and it went limp.

Lyagens, she realized. They were nocturnal parasites that latched onto large beasts while they slept and took over their minds. They didn’t normally go after people. They must have been turned into stormspawn. The corrupted parasites then latched onto unsuspecting villagers. It explained why their minds were gone. It didn’t, however, explain why their movements were so erratic, why the expressions on their faces varied from joy, to indifference, to ecstasy.

Slade walked over to Calimere's Light and picked it back up. She was granted a short reprieve, enough to realize how tired she was, how hard she was panting. But she could hear more of those things coming. Grimacing, she felt something jagged tumbling around inside her mouth. She spat it into her hand along with a string of blood-tinted saliva. It was a tooth. That explains why my gums itch, she thought as she tossed it aside, wondering how long it would take for that one to regrow.

She saw seven more villagers pour into the alley and run toward her. This is what she lived for, confrontations like this. Danger...it brought her to life. But logic overrode her desire to charge forward and engage them. She needed to escape. She pulled out the sister ring she had taken from Holan's saddle and began to twirl the sling she'd stowed it in. Timing the release, she let go and watched as it flew high into the air. She reached out to it, seeing a spinning world superimposed on her vision. Then she pulled.

It was a maneuver few would dare attempt, to teleport to a sister ring while it was in midair and trying to catch it. But she was not normal. For a blink of an eye, she allowed herself to fall with it, just long enough to reach out and snatch the ring. Then she opened her wings, oriented herself and caught the frigid wind. Her eyes widened in shock and her teeth clenched at the biting cold. She had never felt anything like it in her life.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The turbulent wind threatened to carry her away and send her tumbling. She could see fighting near the perimeter of the plaza. Brick and clay shattered as stars exploded. Corrupted lyagens sprung forth from the corpses of the fallen and latched onto the soldiers, turning them into new hosts, forcing friends to kill friends. Despite this harrowing development, The La’ark’s army appeared to be winning. The villagers grew lesser in number as bombs and arrows rained down on them.

Slade tried to wrest control of her trajectory, but it was useless. The eddies in the wind were too unpredictable. So, she flung the sister ring toward the plaza. For a second time she reached out, watched as the ring struck the pavement and began to bounce.

When it stopped, she pulled herself to it...and ducked just as Akhil, mistaking her for an enemy, swung at her head. She summoned her own blade just in time enough to deflect it. The strength of his attack killed all sensation in her arm as Calimere's Light flew from her hands. Snarling with rage, he grabbed her by the scuff of her armor, picked her up and shoved her out of the way just as the mist spewing creature charged past. She could not believe they were still fighting that thing. It was the only one of the abominations that refused to die. Massaging sensation back into her arm, Slade walked over to pick up her weapon again.

“What are you–” The La'ark began, but she barked an order to her soldiers. She paced back and forth on her mount, occasionally firing a shot from her crossbow, then she turned back to Slade. “What are you doing, Reashos?”

Panting, Slade looked up at her and tilted her head. She tried to answer but sputtered mid-sentence. Another tooth fell out of her mouth and bounced across the ground. She spent the next few seconds spitting and hacking, trying to free her snout of the thick strings of blood-tinted drool. Then she wiped her mouth on a wing.

“Can you still fight?” The La'ark asked.

“W-water...” Slade muttered. She raised a hand and caught the bladder thrown to her. She lifted it to her snout and drank until the whole thing was empty. The good news was that with all the ice and snow around, they would have plenty of it. She tossed it back to The La'ark, walked over to a deceased villager and ripped strips of fabric from its garment and began to wrap them around her wrist and arm, using her wing and snout to tie it off.

“Your roster says you perform best when you work solo. But you and the twins are the best fighters here. They could use your aid to keep that thing busy while we defend ourselves.” The La'ark nodded toward the twins, who were trying everything they could to kill it.

Every limb they hacked off simply flew back in place. Any flesh they excoriated was replaced by bits of skin that flew in from nearby cadavers. Their conduits, the chains with weights and spikes, attacked it from every direction. The imaging on display was phenomenal. The twins’ weapons almost appeared sentient, flying and weaving through the air. When the creature dodged one weapon, the other was ready. Still, it wasn’t enough. None of their attacks mattered. The creature kept reassembling itself. Basically...it was unkillable. Perhaps the twins hoped to wear it out. Instead, they were the ones who were tiring. Even a flurry of stars failed to stop it. It didn’t have a lyagen inside it that she could see. This being was different from the stormspawn.

Slade summoned her blade and began to approach while keeping her distance. In her offhand, she palmed a shryken, looked for an opening, waited...and threw it. If they could not kill the creature, perhaps they could trap it. The dagger tumbled through the air, arching toward the creature's back. The blade struck...

***

“Memories...elaborate," the storm entity demanded.

"You...or that thing, the Black Herald, one of you took my memories," Vincent said, "then you sent them through those storms to bait me into coming here. Well...I'm here. We met, we talked. Now I want the rest of them back.”

“I know nothing of 'memories',” the entity said, "if something has rent your mind, it was not my hand that did it. The storms contain seeds...nothing more.”

“You're lying to me,” Vincent said, “you used my mother's voice to speak out of the damn tantalon!”

“I saw glimpses of your past when the meddler's lore dispelled my storms. The speech was…an experiment. I took nothing from you.”

Vincent would not believe it, he refused to.

"You're full of shit," he said, "tell me the truth!"

"I did not lie. No need. I have nothing to do with your memories. Now…tell me about Ayrlon's tear."

Vincent did not seem to hear its words. There were too many conflicts warring in his head. There was a meddler. Somebody else was responsible for his amnesia. In the distance, he heard a soldier scream before his voice filled with a wet gurgling.

"Stop it!" Vincent yelled, "they didn't do anything to you!" But before the entity could respond, he heard Tuls' voice.

“Vincent?” The relos echoed. Vincent turned to look at him. Tuls’ figure looked strange in the light. He looked at Vincent's broken form on the ground. “Menik! Madrian! Vincent...he's injured! Get…” He stumbled backwards, perhaps sensing the entity that fled down the well.

Sperloc entered the room, saw Vincent, ran over and got to his knees to check his pulse. “He...he is still alive...” he rasped. He glanced at the well and withdrew his sword. He shut the grating and latched it. “Something did this to him." He began to search Vincent's pocket. “Where is the damn nectar?!”

Vincent tried to tell them it was in the well.

“I told you, they cannot hear you...”

In the other room, he could hear shouting accompanied by something banging on the door. He left behind Sperloc and Tuls and ran to see what was going on. The door had been braced with chairs, but he could make out Madrian, Jeris, and Menik trying to fight something that was trying to claw its way through the window. An arm reached through, grabbed Menik's new lance and yanked him toward it. Jaws snapped onto his wrist and wrangled it like a rabid dog. Mkari planted a foot on its head and kicked it away, but the window filled with thrashing appendages. A flurry of crossbow bolts flew through the window. But when one creature dropped, another took its place.

This was not happening...it was a dream. But that excuse was growing stale. It felt delusional. The screams were too visceral. Vincent walked over to the window, passing through the soldiers.

“Stop!” He tried to push back the corrupted creatures, the stormspawn. But his arm passed through their bodies. However, one of them did stop and turn to look at him, its jaw hanging loose. “I said stop! I came here! Talk to me! Leave them alone! ”

The entity didn’t respond. Menik pierced its head and a slug-like creature dropped from its mouth. Vincent floundered, he did not know what to do, what to believe. Outside, the air filled with the sound of clashing metal and screams. He heard The La'ark shouting at her soldiers to hold their ground. But they were dying...he could not see them, but he knew they were dying.

"The tear, what color is it?"

"The tear?" Vincent repeated.

"Ayrlon…you said she weeps. What color is the tear?"

"Stop this!" Vincent yelled.

"Tell me what color the tear is."

"It's black and white! It looks white, but everything the light touches is cast in shadows! Why do you want to know? You're the threat! Stop this!"

"I am not the threat." The entity did not laugh. In fact, Vincent was not sure it was capable of laughing. It seemed too alien for such a thing. However, he thought he heard amusement in its words. "It does not represent me."

“Then what?” Vincent demanded, "what does it represent?"

“They are good...these fighters,” the entity crooned, seemingly ignoring his question. “I am almost out of bodies...incredible. Their leader must be commended...but I have been away...so long...I do not know their language, only familiar roots. I would give them a compliment.”

Vincent felt hope for The La'ark and her men. But was this thing telling the truth? Were they really winning? He shook that thought aside. The entity didn’t answer his question.

“What does the light represent?” he repeated, “if it's not you or me, then what is it?”

“Patience…I will answer you,” it said.

"Then answer!"

"You will survive this massacre," the entity continued, "I will leave alive a mount for you to take. When you exit my storms, you will be spotted by one of the flyers of the shard, who will undoubtedly guide you back to the shell. When you find your way back to the authorities who sent you, take your answer to the conduit-wielder and you will tell him the true meaning of Ayrlon's weeping: tell him the Black Heralds are returning. His reaction, and the reactions of any historian present should be very amusing.”

The Black Heralds...Girashnal...his stalker...there were more of them? Vincent tried to ignore the dread he felt in the darkest recesses of his gut.

“It is time to bring this to a close. I wish I could talk more…but I am low on flesh. You came to me for memory...” the entity crooned, “memories from the storms. I do not have them. That is the meddler’s work. But I will grant you one more gale.”

What? No! Vincent needed to find a way to warn the others! He passed through the door and stepped into the plaza. He tried shouting at the twins, whose movements were getting sluggish. Slade was there too, circling the creature's backside. A chain with a spike and weight passed through Vincent's presence, hurling right toward the creature who leapt over it. For a very brief instant, he felt something pulse against his form. Had it been a command?

***

Slade blinked her eyes in disbelief. Instead of striking the creature's backside, the shryken had been caught by one of the bony digits in its wing. As the ilium poured forth to envelope the bone, the creature reached back to the digit, snapped it off and cast it aside before the substance could reach its body. It did this almost by reflex rather than by conscious thought. This thing...it was beyond their comprehension. Slade assumed it could see everything around it and that it didn’t actually use the eyes of the body it inhabited. It knew where she was standing even if it showed no sign of it.

She could not read its attacks because it projected none of its moves. It simply acted without flexing a muscle. This creature was not like the husks she fought. It was intelligent and savvy. Akhil kept attacking the abomination, hoping he could keep it distracted while his saluk arched around and came back for it. The thing was fast, perhaps faster than Slade herself. It performed a somersault and leapt over the chain. As it landed, Oris came in and sliced off one of its legs. The smoldering limb tumbled across the ground, where it twitched. The creature fell down, Oris pinned it to the ground and ignited in flame. The creature's flesh boiled and its bones split.

Oris raised his blade and was about to plunge it into the creature's maw when its severed leg shot back toward it and struck the back of the shandan's helmet. The blow wasn't enough to daze him, but it was enough to stagger. The creature's head spun on its neck in an instant so that its horns faced Oris, then it lunged upward, “pecking” in swift succession with the back of its head. It narrowly missed the sockets on Oris' helmet, but managed to knock out a few of his teeth. Despite having the creature pinned on to the stone, the shandan was forced to defend himself from its continuous jabbing.

He tried to grab hold of the thing's horns, but it was too fast for him and, despite missing most of its tissue by now, it managed to throw him off. He leapt back onto his feet and took a few steps back, spitting blood from his mouth. The creature stood up, its head facing backwards toward Slade, its feral expression seemed rabid. It lifted a leg as if meaning to step toward Oris. Instead, it ran backward right at her. She flashed her blade to life and flared it. Pain seared at her wrists and arms, as she did not have time to let the ethnir coat her form. She spread her wings, looked away, leapt backwards and flashed Calimere's Light at the same time.

A blinding light and a wall of heat slapped at her wings as she briefly summoned her blade's maximum potential. It was just a glimpse, but the force of it was still enough to lift her back and evade the creature's attack. Without waiting to see if it had worked, she grabbed the sister ring with one hand and threw it toward the rushing attacker. It bounced off the ground a few times. An image of a tumbling world superimposed itself on her vision. She pulled herself toward the ring, vanishing from in front of the charging creature and reappeared behind it, hoping to catch it by surprise.

Her blade swung through the air, struck, and staggered the creature. She didn’t wait for it to recover, so she became a flurry of slashes and cuts. She lacked the twins' brute strength, but she was fast. However, she knew this creature was faster, so she didn’t give it a chance to make another move. She stayed on the offensive, hoping the twins had time to take advantage of the opening.

Suddenly, the creature lifted from the ground and drifted away from her, as if suspended by invisible strings. Its head snapped back into place right before it landed back on the ground. Then it dropped to all fours and skittered forward.

It's a marionette, Slade thought. A corpse turned into an animated puppet by some dark lore. Yes...that had to be it. It explained why its locomotion was wrong and uncanny. Something was manipulating it the same way strings manipulated the wooden dolls so often sold by street vendors.

By imagining it was a marionette, she was almost able to pick out subtle “tells” in the creature's movement in order to predict its next attack. Perhaps Akhil and Oris also picked up on this revelation, for when the creature lunged sideways toward them, they were ready. The beast was not powerful, its attacks were especially weak against armor. Being little more than bones and charred flesh at this point, it was like being assaulted by a bundle of twigs. But it was fast and no matter what they did to it, the thing could not be killed. Rip a limb off, it would fly back into place. Scorch it with fire, the flesh would boil but the bones would remain. Pin it down, it would dismember itself and escape from their grasp. It was toying with them.

Finally, Akhil lunged toward the creature, forcing it backwards just as his saluk came flying through the air. For the second time, the creature leapt upward to dodge it. However, Oris’ saluk also flew in. The spike burst through the creature’s chest, out its back, and snaked around its body. In a heartbeat or two, it had wrapped around the creature's chest, arms, legs, and wings, binding them together. The iron ball at the chain's end struck the chest with a satisfying crunch and sent it flying. Akhil’s saluk gave chase. It crashed against the creature and wrapped itself around its body several times, joining its brother. The creature struggled a bit and tried to dismember itself so it could escape, but the chains tightened around it, constricting its movements. It was finally helpless.

Akhil cautiously approached it to give it a few good kicks, then he dropped his fire, looked at his brother and nodded.

“Kiolai,” Oris said, “your shryken.”

“You have my compliments,” Slade said as she withdrew her shryken from the digit the creature had severed. She approached it and plunged the dagger onto its chest. “That was deft imaging on display.”

“My prowess can only be understated, Kiolai,” Oris breathed as the shryken encapsulated the chain along with its victim. “Of the two of us...it has always been known that I am both the more talented and the better looking of our mother's litter. It is why my brother always glowers. But you...you are not a bad fighter yourself.”

Akhil didn’t respond. He was watching the ilium spread along its prisoner, the metallic argent gliding over every curve, covering every corner. Slade watched too. She was not letting her guard down. It wasn’t struggling anymore, but she doubted that it was because of resignation. The metal poured down its feet, spread across its arms. Its skeletal form was being transformed into a statue gilded with silver. But when the ilium reached the shoulders, the creature opened its mouth and vomited geysers of the silver mist, causing the three of them to leap backwards.

Its snout shook as the jet of fog gushed from its bottomless maw. Its eyes rolled back in their sockets until they bulged. It wept mist and vomited clouds of the argent vapor, which began to drift upward and gather. Lightning in the storm above flickered, casting illusions in the growing cloud, making tormented faces of the curling wisps. Even when the shryken clasped the entity’s mouth shut, jets of its mist still rushed through the nostrils with such force, bits of flesh were flung into the air.

The column began to compress, its edges rounding until it became a sphere of whirling fog. The wisps at its edge retracted into the shell until the sphere appeared to be as smooth as glass. The last of the vapor left the body and disappeared into the floating orb, which was now two-landriders wide. The fighting stopped, the last of the stormspawn simply stopped moving and collapsed where they stood. The corrupted lyagens squirmed inside their throats and boiled away, just how the tantalons did. A few soldiers prodded the corpses to make sure they were truly dead. Then everybody turned to look at the foreboding planet hovering above the plaza, its contents churning. Though it didn’t move, Slade could feel a sentience emanating from the dark orb, as if it were a massive pupil glaring at them all.

“What is this...” Oris asked.

The entity stood silent for a matter of heartbeats, just long enough for people to start murmuring. But then a noise rang forth, a loud chime that rattled Slade's eardrums. She felt her armor slap against her skin, felt the noise pass through her chest and out her wings. The landriders that were kept inside the canopies panicked. Handlers shouted and tried to calm them down, but the orb chimed again, sending soldiers stumbling and the landrider's galloping. The La'ark shouted something, but she was just a whisper compared to the orb's knelling.

Holan!

Slade looked around for her landrider and whistled the three note tune she had trained Holan with. She heard a response and turned to see the Kelton charging toward her, dragging bits of the canopy on her feet. Slade jumped to the side at the last second, grabbed onto the saddle and used the momentum to fling herself up the flank. She pulled herself up top and grabbed the reins. Panicked, the beast tried to rear without being sure what she was rearing for. In that brief moment when Slade was facing the sky, she saw a change taking place.

High above, the gyrating column began to grumble. Blotches of darkness were swelling from its surface like infectious boils. A black mass that seemed to fester like skin, pushed forth through the clouds, shoving aside the twisting tendrils as if something were trying to force itself through. Loud, crackling energy sizzled around the edges as these dark cankers bulged. The orb knelled a second time and the storm resonated, responding with louder susurrations. The cankers' surfaces boiled. Slade didn’t know what she was looking at, but she knew what was about to happen. She managed to calm Holan down long enough to dig out a storm ward and fix it on her saddle.

The La'ark glowered at the formations above and shouted orders, commanding everybody to seek cover immediately. Many of the landriders were captured and were now being corralled back into their shelters. But of those that were too panicked to be calmed, Akhil ordered their handlers to let them go. Slade darted her eyes back and forth until she found a nearby barn and sent Holan galloping toward it. She had to squeeze in with five other landriders. She dismounted, grabbed the door, paused for a moment to look up at the cloud. One final chime resounded throughout Crefield...then the cankers ruptured. Dark clouds flowed from them as if spilling from a wispy abscess. They began to fill the sky.