There were drumbeats in the darkness. Not the rattatatat of marching drums, but the slow war drums of the orcs that he remembered from the early days of the regiment before the faelen returned. They never faced the orcs in the end, but the terror of their drums remained.

The pounding shook his spirit, and flashes of dirty gray light carried the memory of pain. He tried to resist. Why not stay here in the comfortable nothingness?

Riots eyes snapped open, his vision filled with the surging trunk containing infinite threads of color heaving across the dark sky.

I’m still alive.

“He should be leybound or dead by now.” Riley's words were followed by the gentle unscrewing of a flask and the wash of raw spirits. “It might be time to abandon this, and if the sergeant could respond, he might well agree.”

“The elixir should have made things easier, not harder,” Kerne said.

“It’s the hedron burn; I’m sure of it. They draw ley power from their host and their surroundings, and the imprint is powerful enough to pull the leypower directly toward it, so sergeant Riot is being used rather more like a fleshy conduit. But we are quite far from my understanding of these matters.” Riot felt a stab of pain as Riley prodded at the swollen wound on his hand. “We could cut it off?”

Riot tried to protest, but only managed a strangled gurgle.

“I don’t think we are quite there yet, but if he doesn’t leave here leybound, he’ll be taken straight to the gallows,” Kerne said. “I must leave you, Riley, but I’m sure the sergeant would insist on continuing.”

Kernes sentiments were the exact opposite of what Riot was thinking; even with his sluggish, pain-wracked thoughts, he knew that given the choice, he would likely choose the rope.

“Very well, brace yourself, sergeant, for we continue,” Riley declared.

Riot lost track of the attempts, just registering the pain, the suffocating pressure, and the relentless surge of the ley power invading his body.

The fourth bell tolled in the city, telling him that he'd been lying there for three hours. He still couldn’t speak but had a vague control of his muscles again, and managed to lift his head to see Riley had large bags under his bloodshot eyes.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The arcanist caught him looking and gave him a weak smile. “Still with us, sergeant? I sincerely wanted to help you, you know.” Riley mopped his brow with a large handkerchief. “The problem is that you used the hedron. It scraped you out of any residual leypower, and all I can assume is that your core has ruptured. But there’s no way to know, is there?” Riley paused for a moment, as if waiting for Riot to respond, then shook his head.

His voice grew distant as he paced to and fro. “But a rupture would mean death, so one can only conclude that the leylines are too weak to fill your core. It’s like pouring a watering can into an empty volcano.” Riley appeared to be speaking to himself now, pacing up and down faster. “Yes, well, that’s how leybound work isn’t it? They fill up, and you can’t be filled, can you?”

Riley appeared in Riot's vision again, his bloodshot eyes wide with excitement. “I think I have it, Sergeant; it's only a theory, but I fear we are rather out of options. Kill or cure, as my father used to say. He was a horse doctor you know. Obviously you’re not sick, or a member of the equine family, but you understand the sentiment.”

A ley line detached itself from the churning mass, and Riot felt his breath stick in his lungs. The others had whipped through the air like snakes, but this one fell from the sky without grace, a thick spar of arcane light as wide as a dinner plate.

“Oh!” Riley said before dropping out of sight and hitting the ground with a thump, like a marionette with its strings cut.

The leyline surged into Riot's gut and a noise like roots of a tree being ripped from the earth filled his ears. The power crushed his lungs flat and his eyes bulged as he fought to draw breath, but it was like trying to hold back an ocean with his hands, and the power surged over him, washing him away.

The pressure grew, and he felt as if his skin were expanding. Then, when he doubted that he could hold any more of the power, it relented, and he drew a gasping breath that arched his back so far that his spine cracked.

The nature of the pain changed. Becoming an acute personal invasion as the leyline infiltrated his body. Muscles were torn apart by searching tendrils that crept out from the burning mass behind his navel. The private and intimate pain grew worse the further the leyline extended. It reached his shoulders and hips, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. It forged a path through the joints in his elbows and knees, and his muscles convulsed, twisting his bones.

Finally, it cut into his fingertips and toes, slicing through his nail beds, and Riot found his voice again and bellowed, the sound of his pain echoing up the walls of the circular chamber and into the night sky.

Riley stirred and groaned, grasping the table and hauling himself up. The arcanist laid a hand on Riot's shoulder, and the burning ley power left his body like someone had unplugged a drain, leaving only the empty, raw pathways that had been carved into him.

“I’m still alive,” Riot muttered.

“For now. No sudden movements, Riot, or you’ll go up like a bonfire. Gods, I need a drink,” Riley breathed.

His footsteps faded away, and Riot was alone.