JET 8.4: BY FIGMENTS WAYLAID
“All suffering is relative. There are worlds… worlds in which the torment of souls so overflows that it can be caught up in goblets and supped by myriad entities, beings which only gorge thereupon, for ever unto eternity, or till I call. No, my prince. You cannot even imagine what it is to suffer.”
– from Of Lord Ymer and Prince Rivorn in ‘Elturiel’s Collected Fairytales’
I had Shield Four erected, the pentagon gleaming and spinning, and it was enough to hold back the first wave of statue-people. I constructed the hexagon and sent them all flying back, but then it broke into tatters as the second wave, the third wave crashed into it.
I gritted my teeth as my elbow piped up again, complaining as I drew blades on the air, attaching them to the pentagon.
Our stony enemies might’ve been shaped from a substance that was durable indeed, but it only took a few swings to lop through their limbs, their necks, leaving them scrambling for the body-chunks I took from them. They tried to reattach their severed heads, arms, legs, but they had more than just me to contend with.
Rath seemed to have snapped out of his reverie, at least for so long as he was being distracted by sport like this. He rolled outside my shield’s boundaries, snatching up the heavy-looking statue-parts, hefting them and lobbing them back into the impassable zone within my barriers. They didn’t have a shot at catching him, and before too long he’d left them rolling around like so many dismembered dolls in a child’s trolley.
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But they weren’t dead. I could’ve left a shield-set here and formed another to protect us as we headed through our broken assailants – could’ve let them stay fumbling at my shield’s perimeter until I was long gone – but I felt her eyes boring into the back of my head.
I turned to meet her gaze, the whites around the pupils so bright they’d become incandescent.
“Very well.”
“Thank you, Master.” She inclined her head gratefully, raised her fore-hoof and lowered her horn as she charged.
I hadn’t seen her in action – independent action, at least – since her transformation.
Black lightning gushed from the dark horn, the unlight-fire flowing on the wind, and it didn’t just melt the stone – it set it alight, consuming it as though it were moistureless wood, shadow-flames bursting from the silently gaping mouths, the desperately contorting fingertips. At last, the cores of their torsos cracked, sending chunks of rocky flesh flying, the now-lifeless husks pouring filthy, chalky smoke into the night sky.
She trotted back to my side, panting, baring her teeth in the equine smile that was now creepy, insidious.
“Which way?” I asked her, casting about.
“Here.” Temcar pointed through the white clouds, in a direction which to me seemed completely random. “The way is this way.”
He sounded entranced, but he was within my triangle-shield…
I tried to grin, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I looked about at the others.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
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