Send me home. I ignored the horror.
"What do you mean?"
"We're all here because of you, Eska. Not blaming you, just stating a fact. We're stranded here on Do'shan. We can't go back. The Rand will be after us now, she'll know what happened here, and Coby… Well, she never really liked any of us." Least of all me. Coby had been looking for a reason to kill me from the first day we met, and her resentment only grew as did my relationship with Silva.
Hardt continued. "That old Sourcerer might have claimed the Terrelan Emperor is done with us, but Prena Neralis doesn't seem the sort to let it go. And I don't think the Emperor will be willing to let an Orran Sourcerer go about his kingdom. So, where do we go? What do we do now?"
Home!
"I'm not looking for answer right now, Eska." Hardt clamped a big hand on my shoulder. "But it's something worth considering. In the meantime, let's get some rest. I think we could all use it."
I let him turn me away from Silva's ashes. A good thing about Pyromancy, you can set a fire so hot even bone will be reduced to ash. Hardt steered me towards our makeshift shelter where Tamura and Ishtar huddled around the fire, both injured and morose, sharing their own bottle. Imiko was nowhere to be seen, and her little ringlet sat on Tamura's lap, huddled in a woollen cloak, nervously twitching its head around as it looked for its mistress. Someone had draped a couple of cloaks over Horralain's shivering form, but the big man still hadn't emerged from his nightmare. I alone had not robbed the dead for warmer clothing, but I knew it wouldn't be long before my Pyromancy Source killed me, boiling my insides. I would need to retch it up once more before that happened.
"Not yet," I said, shrugging free from Hardt's gentle hand.
"Eska, you need to rest as well as the rest of us."
"Not yet," I spat. "Not while one of us is still in danger."
Chapter 5
Each step closer to Horralain was like wading through a miasma. Each limping lurch made the world recede around me a little further. Every inch closer I crept brought on a new, heady rush of pleasure. His fear was like nothing I had ever felt before. A city, any city, is full of fear. It flows through the streets and alleys like the wind. It cares not for the boundaries of house or home. Fear rises from the inhabitants, one and all. Little fears, blinding terror, niggling anxieties. It is a constant meal for a horror such as Ssserakis, and just as that monster drank it in, growing fat and strong on the power of it, I benefited too. The Pit was like a city in that regard. Fear was everywhere, all the time, making me strong and lending me power. Ro'shan was no different, nor the Polasian capital. Even Do'shan was veined with streaks of fear waiting to be mined, although much of that was fear of me thanks to my murder of so many of the feral pahht. Horralain was different. This was no inexhaustible supply of dread slowing suffusing the world, he had become a furnace of fear, burning hotter than any person has cause to. It couldn't last. I knew it. Ssserakis knew it. Sooner or later, the terror would become too much, the stress and strain on his body too great. Sooner, rather than later, Horralain would fall, killed by a prison of fear he did not know how to escape from.
The world around me blurred as I struggled closer, feeling as though I was pushing my way towards an inferno, pushed back by a cyclone. Somewhere close by, I heard Hardt say my name, but I waved a lazy hand in his direction, hoping he took the hint. By the time I was standing just a few paces from Horralain, I could barely breathe. The pleasure of it was so intense I felt myself growing hot and tingling all over. The giant thug rocked back and forth on his knees, oblivious of both the cold, and me.
"What can we do?" I asked. I probably looked strange to the others around me, braced as though struggling against a powerful wind, and talking to myself.
Do? Bask in it. Revel in the feeling and the strength. Drink in as much as we are able. I used to inspire this sort of fear in my minions every day. The strength it gave me… Even Norvet Meruun didn't dare challenge me.
"What?"
Norvet Meruun is one of the lords of Sevoari. You would call it an Abomination, a pulsing mass of flesh, tentacle, and bile, throbbing beneath the surface of my home.
"How does that help me free Horralain?"
Ssserakis laughed in my head. It doesn't.
"Help me, Ssserakis, or I will make you hurt."
For a few moments there was nothing inside. Then I felt the horror grow curious. How?
"I'll open up another portal. And another. And another. I'll keep opening them up until that thing on the other side takes notice again, and I will step through. And this time I won't let you hide inside of me." Something strange happened then. I felt a new fear. Not Horralain's. Not my own. I felt Ssserakis' fear. Whatever lay on the other side of the portals had taken an interest in the horror, and only our link, and my desperate searching, had allowed Ssserakis to return to me.
Your minion is trapped inside a construct. Form a link, and I will carry us both across the bond.
"What?"
Reach out and touch the fool.
The world lurched around me. The frozen amphitheatre was gone. My friends were gone. The ashen remains of Silva were gone. I found myself in a luscious great hall, decorated in golds and reds so deep they looked bloody. Pillars surrounded me, extending into a thick darkness like tar high above. The hall extended into forever in every direction, so many pillars it seemed impossible. Hundreds of people clustered in front of me, each one wearing fanciful clothing that I had only heard the likes of in stories. They wore all the colours I could imagine, from dainty yellows, to rich browns, to white so bright it hurt to look at. And each one of the people was talking, voices raised in a cacophony of sound that echoed about the hall to repeat upon itself, layering noise over more noise.
"What is this place?" I could barely hear my own voice over the shouting of the men and women in front of me.
A construct. You would call it a dream. I was born in one, pulled together from a thousand different experiences. You've been in one before, when we first met.
"Down in the Pit. You trapped me in a darkness and cut me."
My shadow laughed at me. There was light in the great hall, but no source, yet my shadow extended out to my left and up onto one of the pillars. As I watched, my shadow detached from the pillar and stepped closer to me, free of any surface. It was blacker than deep night and held my shape too consistently. Ssserakis watched me from the shining pits of green light that were my shadow's eyes.
"You have form here?"
The rules here are different. I can take any form I wish.
I glanced down. "As long as we're still connected? You can't separate from me."
My shadow laughed, green light spilling out around the jagged edges of its mouth. Of course not. You know so little of possession. I cannot leave you, Eskara. We are stuck together until you die.
"What? That seems like something you should have told me before I agreed to carry you." The horror was right, I knew little about possession. Almost nothing, actually. It never once occurred to me that I had no idea how to remove Ssserakis. Worse still, I realised that to fulfil my promise and send the ancient horror home to the Other World, I would have to die. Of course, I still had no idea how to go about such a thing anyway.