Kashur

“Our enemies are coming!” Yelora announced. “Come, we must portal to the crash site!”

“How did the Dwarves and Imperials find us?” Kashur asked, latching his pants and grabbing his cloak and boots.

Ronith appeared over Yelora’s shoulder, out of breath. “Does it matter? They’re right behind us!” She whirled and cast an attack at a roaring Imperial soldier.

Kashur cursed and conjured a fireball as two Dwarves filled up in the doorway. Yelora and Ronith turned to deal with them.

“Get out of the way!” Kashur cried as more soldiers poured into the space, seeming to come from everywhere—down the ladder, through the hull, even appearing from out of nowhere, sand pouring off of them. He loosed his fireball just as the Elves ducked clear.

“We can’t portal out of here fast enough!” he warned Mol Morin, but Mol Morin was smiling. “What are you smiling about?” Kashur used a spell to pull rusty nails from the ceiling and fling them at their attackers, anything to slow down the onslaught.

Kashur heard a cry and saw that an Imperial had seized Yelora. The woman’s meaty arm was around her middle, Yelora’s arms pinned at her side. Kashur raised a hand and let a lightning spell grind between his teeth, but the soldier turned Yelora between them as a shield, pinning Kashur with a mocking leer.

“Surrender or I’ll slit her throat!” the soldier roared, and Kashur saw the glint of the knife.

Anger and fear welled inside him. He called an insidious spell up from the depths of his knowledge, a dark thing that he never thought he would have to unleash, one that would boil the blood of Yelora’s attacker from the inside in an agonizing death. Nobody touches the Elf Queen, he thought as his hands curled in the token of gruesome magic. He waited for the soldier’s face to change, her discomfort to turn into pain and then agony and then something he had to look away from.

Why was nothing happening?

“What’ll it be, Wizard? Am I re-painting this ship with Elven blood?” she cackled.

Maybe he’d gotten it wrong. He’d try a different spell—a tried-and-true one, a precision attack. Lightning.

That one failed, too.

“Awww.” The Imperial’s face twisted into a mask of false empathy. “What’s the matter? Your spells not working?”

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“It’s the box!” Two Dwarves had taken Ronith down. She was a pile of red robes pinned on the ground. “It’s a magic dampener! But its range is limited!”

A Dwarf kicked her in the ribs. When her creature rushed in with a squeal to bite him, he grabbed the rope around its neck and jerked it up off the ground, where it spun and choked, amber eyes narrowed, fingers clawing at the Dwarf’s face while he laughed.

The Dwarves had developed a technology that neutralized magic? No good could come of that.

The Imperial shoved Yelora into the hands of two fellow soldiers, then stomped over to Kashur. He didn’t have magic, but he did have his fists. And his curse. Would a dampener work on that? But, no, he couldn’t even test the theory. Mol Morin had said if he used his power before the convergence passed, the transfer wouldn’t happen. He’d never be free of it.

Kashur threw a punch, but the seasoned fighter dodged it easily, then used Kashur’s momentum to shove him forward, knocking him off balance.

“You’re gonna lose this fistfight, pretty boy,” she said.

Pretty boy? This time he went for a kick. She knocked his leg away and smacked him in the face with the end of a rope. It stung like an insult.

“Put your hands together.” She licked her filthy teeth as she waggled the rope.

There was a dagger at her hip. Kashur might not be able to use magic, but he could still use misdirection. He cocked his neck and pretended to see something over her shoulder. When she glanced that way, he lunged for the blade.

“Nice try.” She’d blocked him and had hold of his arm, bending it in a way that sent him folding to the floor lest she break it. “Guess I’ll have to do it myself.” With a knee on his back, she pushed him down, his cheek smashing into the cold metal floor as she manipulated him by his own joints and bound his hands together behind his back.

From his vantage point he saw her slip her dagger free of its leather sheath. “The Emperor only needs the Elf Queen and the Alchemist. The rest are expendable.” Kashur felt her knee shift on his back as she turned to yell at her companion. “You can turn it off now. Don’t waste it.”

Kashur tried to twist and free himself. He had nothing to lose; she was going to kill him. A hot, loud crack, and his shoulder broke. He yelled as the rest of him seemed to liquify from the agony.

“Stop! We will negotiate the surrender! Just keep them alive!” Yelora cried.

“You’ll negotiate the surrender anyway.”

Kashur moaned as the soldier pinning him yanked his head up by a handful of hair, exposing his neck. His blurry gaze swept the room for the last time: Yelora struggling with her hands bound behind her back, horrified gaze locked on him; Ronith pinned to the floor with a sword at the back of her head, her monster unconscious on the floor beside her; Mol Morin, cuffed and on his knees, laughing.

Laughing? That couldn’t be. That didn’t make any sense. Kashur was losing his mind from the pain. Behind his mentor’s maniacal, cackling form, the vat of water Kashur had bathed in was steaming and boiling... although that had to be his imagination, too, along with the creatures that crawled from the bubbling waters at Mol Morin’s command—pale, toothy, monsters with long pointed ears. They looked something like Yelora’s creature, but greyer, with looser skin and cunning purple eyes. Like a tide of nightmares, they poured over the lip of the vat and into the room with a sound like nothing he’d ever heard before.

Th-th-th-th-th.

After that, it was just screaming.