Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [9]
Alarm skirled through Warian. He struggled in Yasha's grip. His flesh-and-blood arm, quicker, more precise, and stronger than his prosthesis, flailed ineffectually. He tried to claw at Yasha, but he could barely think. Yasha's deadly threat was more than a bluff. He must have had considerable practice choking people to apply the hold so quickly. If Warian didn't pass out first, he was in for the beating of his life. Darkness beat in on all sides as his vision began to fail. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision-dark and swirling, like that he'd just seen tendriling through the interior of his arm.
He concentrated all of his faltering will on pushing the darkness away.
Warian's crystal arm flared with amethyst brilliance. Warmth shot from his shoulder to his crystalline fingertips, a blaze of sensation where before he had felt only vague dullness. The arm fused more fully to him, spiking with sensation as never before, transmitting the sense of touch in a way he had not felt in all the seven years he'd worn it, since the mining accident. But he was still blacking out.
Warian reached up with his artificial limb, grabbed Yasha's forearm that held his neck in a vice, and pulled.
A shape flew through the air and smashed into the far wall. It took Warian a moment to realize that the shape, now crumpled and unmoving on the floor, was Yasha. Lavender luminance lit the faces of stunned tavern patrons as they stared at him with wide eyes. The light in their eyes reflected the glow that pulsed and rippled out of Warian's crystal arm.
"What the…?" said Warian, looking at his prosthesis with eyes as wide as any of those in the bar.
Bui the Hog, still in the grasp of her drunken belligerence, and still holding her improvised club, struck at Warian again. Her swing was strong but lacked its former deadly speed. In fact, Warian realized, everyone in the bar seemed to be slowed, as if the light from his arm had encased them all in a syrupy dimension of sluggishness. Or was the light propelling him forward into a faster plane of perception?
Warian swayed his body to be just outside the arc of Bui's swing.
Bui moved in, assayed another brutal swing. Instead of stepping out of the way this time, Warian backhanded the oncoming wooden club with his prosthesis. The impact splintered the chair leg as it blasted out of Bui's hand. The woman remained fully in the clutch of her rage. She lunged forward, trying to catch Warian in her reddened, vein-popped hands.
Warian ducked beneath her lunge. Again. And again. Wishing to end it, Warian stood his ground for Bui's next lunge. As she rushed him, he reached out to tap her on the forehead-he was coming to understand that the strength and speed in his arm could be a deadly combination. Still, the impact was enough to tumble Bui to the ground, her head reeling.
Surveying the remainder of the tavern customers, Warian saw the dislike directed at him from the bar had transformed into fear.
"Don't worry…" he began as the light in his prosthesis guttered out. The dull nothingness of the last seven years flooded back into the crystal, and his supernatural perception evaporated.
He sagged against a table but caught himself before falling to the floor. He didn't want to advertise that the freak display of energy had dissipated, draining away as inexplicably as it had energized him.
More than that-weariness enveloped him as if he'd just run full out for a great distance. He couldn't get enough air, his legs and arms wanted to cramp, and exhaustion made him tremble. Warian had to get out of the tavern while the onlookers remained cowed.
He stumbled back to the table where his card game had been interrupted. Shem backed away. With careful nonchalance, Warian slid the contents of the pot to his pouch. He looked at Shem. "I would have won anyway, if not for the distraction. I had a Bahamut in my hand." So saying, Warian revealed the stern visage of the dragon and its thirteen points. With a shrug, he threw the card in with the rest of the coins.