Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [112]
An unholy chill flared from beneath her pale skin, shaking Gargan like a jolt of lightning. He fell, stunned, listening as maniacal laughter filled the tent for a long, painful breath. Then Twilight arched, her muscles snapping, and collapsed limply.
Finally shaking the shock out of his head, Gargan looked at the star sapphire in Mehvenne's ochre hands. "The Shroud," he said, realizing. "Gestal."
Then he thought he heard a soft little laugh, but it was not that of Foxdaughter, nor was it that of Gestal. Gargan looked around, but no one was there.
" 'Light!" Liet screamed. "Help me! 'Light!"
Demons pulled him down into an abyss from which flames arose. Putrid corruption spread over his body, slowly at first, but faster as the fiends bore him away.
She cried out, but could not hear herself over the cacophony.
Snarling lizardlike demons surged around Liet's receding body, clawing and pawing at their new foe, barbed tongues licking and rending the putrid air.
Betrayal drawn, the elf-without-a-name slashed and stabbed, cut and lunged, all to no avail. The eldritch steel, its gray burned to white, bit into demon after demon, felling them as a scythe cuts wheat, but they kept coming-hordes of the fiends. She sensed them all around her and danced and dodged, trying to fight them all off.
She could not. "No!" she tried to scream, but she had no voice.
Then a single serpentine form rose from the darkness, towering over the other fiends. Its two baboon heads loomed over her, snickering and yowling at one another. The nameless elf cowered, her body locked in place by the awesome power that dripped from the demon lord. "Demogorgon!" shouted the fiends. "Demogorgon!"
Then the two heads had faces, and they were the same scarred, twisted, beautiful visage: Gestal.
"I see you," he rasped. "You cannot hide."
The nameless elf tore her gaze away, but everywhere she looked, there he was. Every demon wore Gestal's laughing face, Gestal's burning eyes, Gestal's broken grin.
"Shadows cannot hide you," the faces said. "We know your lies."
Gestal surrounded her, his madness beating at every corner of her will.
"No," she growled. "No!" The demons surged around her, and she slashed, tore, and cut, but there were so many-too many. She slashed at them and ran them through again and again, but they kept coming. Claws tore and rent her clothes.
"You fear," they all said, out of bleeding mouths and broken jaws. "You fear being stripped of your shadows-fear being nothing-fear knowing your lies for lies."
"They're not lies!" she lied. The claws and fire tore at her clothes-her flesh froze, even though the flames rose and rose around her.
Claws wrenched the gray rapier from her hand and they caught fire. Their blackness burned away before her eyes, stripped and peeled like thick paint on a flawed canvas. White gleamed underneath-white like bone-and she screamed and shut her eyes. The darkness was not an escape-the demons followed her.
"You're alone," they said. "A lonely child-a fool child. A child."
"I'm not a child!" she lied. She staggered and finally knelt, exhausted, naked, and surrounded. "I'm telling the truth!"
"No, you're not," a familiar voice said. "You are nothing alone-without your steel, without your lies. Nothing."
Then a loving, gentle hand-Liet's hand, she thought- reached out of the chaos.
Against all her instincts, against the demand of her will, gods help her, she wanted to take it-needed desperately to take it. She needed to let her mind go, let her heart take her fully, let the dream become her world.
"Come with me," Liet's voice whispered. He was there, welcoming, inviting. "Run-leave your pain and your lies. Accept what you are."
They were all gone. Every man or woman she had loved. Her father, Nymlin, Neveren-all of the hundred or so creatures she had loved were dead. Lilten had abandoned her. Liet was gone. She had no one to call upon.
"Where are you wandering?" Liet smiled so sweetly. "Come. Walk with me."
She reached out to take Liet's hand.
Then there was a sound,