Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [92]
Worriedly, Liet watched Gargan haul Twilight from the pile of yellow-white. She looked up, bright-eyed, but blinked in confusion at the goliath, as though she expected someone else. Then she nodded, and he returned it. Liet felt a little stab of jealousy. Ridiculous, he told himself.
He shook the snowy stuff out of his hair. "Sand?" he asked, perplexed.
The sand that had been trapped above ceased pouring out, leaving an open bubble of air. On the other side of this bubble lay another layer of sand. White grains hissed along its circumference as though along the inside of a great balloon.
Twilight furrowed her brow. " 'Twas what I was about to say."
"I don't understand," Liet said.
She plucked up a loose stone from the tower and hurled it upward with all of her might. It slowed as it rose, slowed, slowed even more, and almost seemed to hover as it reached a particular spot in the air-halfway between the tower and the sand. Then it accelerated up and up, and thumped into the sand as though it had fallen.
"What does this mean?" Liet asked.
Then there came a buzzing. From somewhere behind, Davoren shouted, and crackling lightning filled the air. The bee-men were upon them.
A stinger hissed straight for Liet. Crying out, he warded it off with his hands. Twilight leaped to his aid, her hand going to her rapier, but one of the creatures hit her from the side. Her head struck the stone with a crack, and her body went limp. Unconscious, she toppled, rolled, spun to the edge, and fell from the leaning tower.
" 'Light!" he shouted, agonized.
Then a dozen bodies slammed him down, spears gouging, and Liet screamed.
Gestal watched as she fell, reflecting how like a discarded doll she was. He especially enjoyed the helpless cry filled with mortal pain. But as Twilight fell toward her death, he felt nothing but bemusement and a slight twinge of disappointment.
Then a pair of black hands snaked out of shimmeting distortions in the air to catch the-falling body, and the eyes narrowed. The foe. The hands dropped her, redirecting her fall, and Gestal saw abeil-the bee-creatures-catch her. How frustrating.
Abeil swarmed the four from every direction, spears thrusting and multiple khopesh blades whistling. In spite of a veritable storm of lightning bolts from the warlock's scepter, the creatures quickly overwhelmed them with blade and sting. A pile grew around the four, but the fools were outnumbered twenty to one.
The stingers penetrated their bodies, and Gestal shivered at the lovely agony even as they fell. How sweet he found those stings. In the meantime, he enjoyed the screams of pain and distress as slowly each went down, inevitably. The gray-faced warlock lasted the longest, with his demon's blood. He killed at least a score, but it would not be enough.
As Gestal watched slaying power pour from that scepter, he grinned. 'Twas only a matter of…
Predictably, the scepter reached its limit, coughed when the warlock attempted to summon more killing bolts, and exploded in his hand, blowing the limb to nothingness. The warlock screamed, clutching his stump, and the abeil swarmed him.
The fiendish skin helped repel some of the stingers' force, but not the poison.
Well.
With the will of the Demon Prince, Gestal ripped into the other's mind and became himself. The other vanished into the darkness once more. The abeil hesitated but continued the assault, wondering why this one had risen, and why it looked so different.
Gestal smiled with lips that were his again. Their mistake.
He spoke a single word-a piece of pure chaos, born of the roiling madness that had reigned before the upstart gods had come. It was not an exclamation, nor was it even louder than a whisper. Gestal merely breathed, releasing the magical power of the master, and the spell soared out in every direction.
In a sphere centered on Gestal, scores of abeil simply stopped, their hearts or brains obliterated, and fell from the sky. The less fortunate ones screamed blood and splattered against the stone tower like raindrops, to