The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [98]
“Let’s find out.”
Lei raised the wand and there was a brilliant flash of electricity. The bolt smashed into Harmattan. Chips of blackened metal went flying, and when the smoke cleared Pierce saw that the blast had punched a hole straight through the stranger’s chest almost a foot across.
He was still standing. He hadn’t even shifted position, and as Pierce and Lei watched in surprise, the gaping hole slowly filled itself in. It was then that Pierce realized: Harmattan wasn’t covered in a coat of metal shards. His entire body was composed of tiny pieces of metal. He was like a statue made of sand. Some force was holding these particles together—and within seconds, he had simply readjusted his mass to erase the gaping wound.
Satisfied?
“No.”
Lei released a second bolt. This one struck the stranger in the head. No creature of flesh and blood could survive such a blow, but when the flash had faded, Harmattan was still standing. The mystical energy had evaporated the cloud of mist hiding his features, and now Pierce could see the stranger’s head—the head of a warforged soldier. It was blackened, but intact, and Pierce guessed that it was forged from nearly indestructible adamantine, but it was far too small for Harmattan’s massive body; it was about the same size as Pierce’s own head. It was floating above his torso, hovering at least three inches in the air.
Lei’s wand only held enough energy for two blasts, and now that charge was drained. She slipped it back into her belt and gripped her staff in both hands. Pierce had an arrow drawn, and he kept his eyes on Harmattan, wondering if a simple arrow would have any effect on the strange creature.
Neither of them saw the slender figure slip out of the shadows behind Lei until it was too late. A metal elbow slammed into the base of Lei’s skull, followed by a powerful fist. Lei staggered forward, nearly dropping her staff, and turned to face the new foe.
“So you are his lady.”
The warforged had abandoned the robe and cloak she’d used as a disguise in Sharn and Stormreach, and Pierce had to admire her design. The blue enamel on her plating seemed to shift with the shadows, blending into the darkness. Her frame was light and willowy, built for deadly speed instead of brute force. As she spoke, adamantine blades slid into place.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” Lei said.
The air rippled around her fingers, and Pierce remembered the scout she had destroyed earlier that day, aand he remembered another battle—a struggle beneath Sharn, when she had turned that same power against him.
“STOP!” He cried, his voice rising to its maximum volume. He unleashed his arrow, striking the ground between the warforged and the artificer. “Lei. Do not fight, and you—if you harm her, I swear that I will destroy you.”
There was a moment of silence. Then the dry voice washed across the clearing. Indigo.
The assassin took a step back, her blades disappearing into her arms. “As you wish.”
Pierce felt a strange fascination as he watched her. The bladed scouts, this Harmattan—they seemed so alien that it was hard to think of them as being members of his own race, but the blue woman—there was something about her, a feeling he couldn’t explain.
“Lei,” he said. “Daine has abandoned us. It seems we will be traveling with these people.”
Harmattan rustled again, and Pierce realized that it was what he did instead of laughing.
Daine was surrounded by darkness.
He couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t see or hear. He was stranded in endless gloom.
Just a month ago, his first thought would have been am I dead? Dolurrh was said to be an empty void, a net that pulled in the souls of the fallen and held them until all memory and thought had faded away. A few weeks ago, Daine might have felt traces of panic, fear that this was the end.
Instead, his first thought was darkness again?
His second thought was to evaluate the qualities of the void, with the attention a connoisseur might