7. Chapter 7 #3
Her feral cry drew my attention before a bright flash of light split the night, blinding me.
I blinked rapidly to clear the spots from my vision, only to find a bonfire where the bone spider that had been attacking her had been.
Even now I felt dizzy with the uncontrolled detonation of her power that had immolated it in a single blow.
It echoed through me like a gong, clanging against the inside of my skull and making it feel too small.
Or maybe the uncontrolled surge had started with my own panic to begin with.
A less intense flash of light illuminated Keera as our gazes caught across the smoldering mounds of flesh.
“The others,” she shouted, and turned toward the source of the light. I blinked for just a second, the sound of her words mixing with the other noises inside my head in a way that made them difficult to pick out.
As soon as their meaning hit me, though, I hurried to follow her.
The source of the light turned out to be Lord Dhara, wielding a lash of flame like a whip.
She whirled it overhead before snapping it forward, helping Elion and Aderyn keep two more bone spiders at bay.
They danced out of reach of the flame but did not seem afraid of it enough to fully retreat.
Before Keera and I could reach them to lend our aid, Elion crept around to the side of one creature while Dhara kept it distracted with her flaming whip—or she might have, if the creatures had any visible face or eyes in their tangle of limbs, which all seemed to move without direction.
Elion leapt, flying unnaturally high. He swung his sword as he landed atop the spider, batting away grasping hands and slashing claws before driving his blade deep into its center. The inhuman sound of the creature’s scream, like a sword against stone, signaled that he had hit his mark.
The last spider seemed to sense that it would not last long now that its comrades had fallen.
It skirted the edge of the darkness, clattering and waving its limbs in consternation.
Aderyn advanced on it with her blades raised, and Keera and I stepped up next to her.
Dhara’s whip crackled with flame as she flicked it back around her ankles, as if waiting for the creature to either flee, or launch an attack she could use as an opening.
The spider darted forward with speed that seemed improbable given its unwieldy size.
I braced for an onslaught of attacks from its many limbs, but they didn’t come.
Instead, a single arm shot out and grabbed Dhara by the ankle.
I slashed down with my saber, but it whistled through empty air.
The bone spider had already retreated, dragging Dhara into the darkness with it.
“No!” Elion’s ragged voice rent the night. He jumped down off the corpse of the spider he had felled and dashed into the darkness.
“Wait!” Aderyn shouted after him.
A rational part of my brain whispered she was right. We shouldn’t all split up in the darkness where we would be vulnerable—where we might not be able to locate each other and the whims of the desert could separate us forever.
The much louder and more insistent pounding of unreleased power in my brain drove me forward instead, like a physical force pushing me from behind, giving me no choice.
It brayed for more battle, more blood, more action.
A tingle in my throat grew to a burning that spread down to my chest, and metal filled my mouth, leaving me a slave to sensation as it took control of my body.
I charged into the night after Elion and Dhara, the blackness so thick it was almost tangible around me.
A sharp tug at the nape of my neck yanked me back, but I shook my head violently, trying to pull free of the conflicting sensations.
Only darkness surrounded me now, leaving me trapped with the burning heat of magic trying to seize my body, filling up all the empty spaces like a physical thing.
My muscles twitched and spasmed as I fought against it and tried to comply with its demands in equal measure.
It wanted me to find something, or maybe I was trying to find something: Dhara and Elion… a bone spider. Maybe something else. Golden flowers and silver hair.
A crash and a shout sounded off to one side, and I turned, boots skidding in the earth as I tried to change direction quickly, the noise giving me a foothold in reality.
I tried to follow the sounds of battle, but with chattering and screams pressing in on me from every direction, including the inside of my own head, it became impossible.
I slid to a halt, my head whipping this way and that as I tried to gain my bearings.
My muscles still twitched and shuddered, as if I were a horse trying to shake off an unwanted rider.
The oppressiveness of the night closed in around me and blinded me.
With no reality to hold on to, the force of my madness drove me to the ground.
The thump of my knees against the earth jarred me enough that I was able to gasp in a breath and throw out a mental hand.
There was a reason I shouldn’t reach for the one thing I knew—I hoped—could still save me, but I couldn’t remember.
The only clear thought in my mind was her.
Keera.
Her name was the last thing I thought before I tipped headfirst into the bottomless well of insanity.