Lady Ruin

CHAPTER ONE

Whenever you’re ready, Osten,” Captain Lirra Brochann said.

The man nodded, his brow furrowed in concentration. Coiled in his right hand, the tentacle whip pulsed softly as blood-a mixture of its own and that of its host-circulated through the symbiont’s rubbery red flesh. The barb at its tip quivered slightly, as if it enjoyed the taste of Osten’s blood and looked forward to sampling someone else’s-namely, Lirra’s.

Two men stood on opposite sides of the room, swords belted at their sides, hands resting on the pommels of their blades. One was a handsome man in his late twenties, close to Lirra’s age, while the other was a white-haired lion of a man in his mid-fifties. General Vaddon Brochann, the older man and Lirra’s father, wore full armor with a series of runes engraved upon the breast plate, while Rhedyn, the younger, wore only a mail shirt over a tunic and leggings. Despite the illumination of the everbright sconces set along the cold, gray walls, the younger man’s features were indistinct. Still, Lirra didn’t need to be able to see his face clearly to know that he-like Vaddon-watched the fight intently, ready to step in at the first sign that something was about to go wrong.

Osten’s eyes narrowed in concentration and sweat beaded on his forehead. He was a boyish-looking man with a shock of midnight-black hair cut by a white streak on the left side. While Osten was barely into adulthood, his broad shoulders and strong limbs hinted at the man he would one day become. Osten was serving two years in the Karrnathi military, as was mandatory for every citizen in the country-man and woman-and he had the makings of a fine soldier. At least physically, Lirra thought. Mentally … well, that’s what they were here to find out.

Osten stepped forward, and as he did so his left eye twitched and his lips moved, almost as if he was talking to himself, but no sound came out. Though he was young and strong, his movements were stiff and awkward, as if he were having trouble controlling his limbs. Or as if he were fighting to maintain control, Lirra thought. A distant look came into his gaze, and she knew that his focus had turned inward.

“Hold,” she ordered. If he didn’t have full control … But it was too late. With a sudden motion, Osten extended his right hand and released the tentacle whip.

Lirra kept her gaze fixed on the barbed tip as the fleshy coils of the whip straightened and extended toward her. The barb streaked toward her right eye, and she could see a bead of poison glistening on the tip. A tentacle whip’s range was roughly fifteen feet, and Lirra stood about that distance from Osten, but she wasn’t about to take any chances. She drew her head back, leaned to the left, and brought her wooden sparring sword up to deflect the attack.

But at the last instant before it struck the sword, the barb angled sharply downward and shot toward the hilt-or more precisely, toward her hand. If the whip managed to pierce her flesh and inject even a low dose of its poison into her, she’d be incapacitated and completely at its mercy. And if it managed to get a full dose into her, only the blessings of the Sovereign Host would be able to save her life. She knew Osten wasn’t trying to harm her-at least, she hoped he wasn’t-but the tentacle whip had a mind of its own. She released her grip on the sword and yanked her hand away an instant before the whip-barb struck the weapon’s leather-wrapped handle. The sword’s wooden blade pitched toward Osten as the force of the whip’s strike flipped the handle toward Lirra. Lirra was already in motion, though, and she caught hold of the sword in an overhand grip with her left hand and she managed to keep her weapon from falling. Then with a flip of her wrist she swung the sword in a downward arc and struck the tentacle whip. The symbiont recoiled from the blow and retracted toward its host, giving Lirra time to shift her wooden sword back to her right hand.

She retreated several steps and regarded Osten. Sweat ran freely down the man’s face, despite the fact that he’d put forward little physical effort so far. The tentacle whip undulated in the air, like a sea plant moving to the rhythm of an underwater current. Lirra had the impression from the easy, almost lazy confidence of its movements that, whatever effort Osten was putting into their internal struggle, the tentacle whip was winning.

“Osten,” she said, “stand down.”

The man’s head jerked slightly when she spoke his name, but otherwise he didn’t reply, didn’t even acknowledge her existence. His gaze remained clouded, unfocused, and his lips continued to move as he whispered silently to himself. Lirra could just make out the shape of a single word, repeated over and over: No. No, no, no, no, no …

Without taking her eyes off Osten, she gestured with her left hand, a signal to Vaddon and Rhedyn to make ready. She then lowered her wooden sword to her side and started walking slowly to Osten, speaking in calm, even tones.

“I think you’ve made a good start, Osten. That initial strike was clever. Even if for some reason you didn’t manage to inject poison into the hand, the blow itself could cause someone to lose hold of their weapon. The precision with which your symbiont can strike is one of its greatest assets, as you’ve amply demonstrated today. What I think we need to do now is continue to devise ways to best use that precision in battle. I have a few ideas …”

Lirra came within striking distance of Osten while talking, raised her sword, and swung it toward Osten’s left temple, aiming for the white streak in his hair and-

The tentacle whip lunged toward the practice sword, wrapped around the wooden blade, and with a single, savage yank tore the weapon free from her hand. She caught a momentary glance of Osten’s face-eyes wild with dark joy, mouth stretched into a feral grin-before the symbiont brought the sword swinging back around toward her. Lirra managed to twist to the side and take the blow on her right shoulder, but the tentacle whip was far stronger than it looked, and the impact sent her flying.

Training took over and she rolled as she hit the floor, using her momentum to bring her back onto her feet. She remained upright only a split second before instinctively diving forward into a somersault. She felt more than heard the sound of the wooden sword slicing through the air where her head had been an instant ago. As she rolled into a standing position, she drew a dagger from inside her right boot and spun around to face Osten-or rather the symbiont, because that was her true opponent. Osten’s personality was still there, somewhere inside his mind, but he was no longer in control of his actions, and that changed everything.

Osten’s features were twisted into a mask of fury, his eyes bright with madness, and he moved toward her with a sinuous grace that contrasted sharply with the awkwardness he’d displayed only moments before. The tentacle whip hurled the practice sword aside-directly at Vaddon, as it turned out, who was approaching Osten from behind, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. A single slice from the general’s own sword was enough to cut the wooden blade in two and send its separate halves clattering to the stone floor.

Not for the first time since joining the Outguard, Lirra marveled at a symbiont’s ability to perceive its surroundings despite an apparent lack of sensory organs. Osten’s back might be to Vaddon, but the tentacle whip still knew the general was approaching.

Lirra risked a quick glance to Rhedyn. He moved more swiftly than her father, and it appeared he was within a half-dozen yards of reaching Osten. But a shadowy skein rippled across his body, making it difficult for Lirra’s eyes to focus on him clearly. He might’ve been closer than that, or perhaps farther away. Rhedyn had drawn his sword and held it gripped tight in his right hand, and he stretched his left hand out as if it were a weapon in and of itself. Vaddon continued approaching Osten as well, features set in an expression of grim determination, but he was farther away than Rhedyn. Not that it made much difference how close either of them were, Lirra thought. Neither could reach Osten before his-or the symbiont’s-next strike. The wisest thing for her to do would be to put as much distance between herself and Osten as she could, to give herself the few extra moments necessary for Vaddon and Rhedyn to move in close enough to help her.

But she remembered something one of her teachers at the Rekkenmark Academy had once told her: You can run from danger, but you can’t run from yourself.

She grinned. She’d never been one for making the safe choice.

Rhedyn shouted for her to stop as she ran toward Osten, but she ignored it. Lirra had fought enough battles to narrow the focus of her attention to a single objective. In this case, getting close enough to Osten to slam the handle of her dagger into the side of his head and render him unconscious. The man wasn’t in control of his own actions right then, and she’d spare his life if possible. But Osten had known the risks when he’d accepted the symbiont, and if she had to slay him, she would.

Osten’s left arm flexed upward, and the tentacle whip coiled back into his waiting hand. He then swung his arm around and released the whip again, its length unfurling toward Lirra as she ran to him. She dodged to the left and the barbed tip of the tentacle shot past her, but a half second later she realized her mistake; the whip hadn’t intended to strike her directly. The end of the whip curled down, approached her from behind, and wrapped around her right ankle. Osten yanked his left arm back, and Lirra’s leg was pulled out from beneath her. She fell onto her left side and hit the stone floor hard enough to force the air from her lungs. Sharp pain stabbed into her side, and she thought she might’ve broken a rib or two. She still had hold of her dagger-a Karrnathi soldier didn’t release her weapon until she was dead, and maybe not even then-but stunned as she was, the blade did her little good at the moment.

The tentacle whip coiled loosely around her right wrist and its barbed tip continued slithering through the air toward her face. She feared that the whip intended to inject her with poison, but instead it wrapped around her neck. Then the coils around both her wrist and her neck tightened, preventing her from wielding her dagger while at the same time cutting off her breath.

She reached up with her left hand and clawed at the coils around her throat, but her fingers could find no purchase on the symbiont’s rubbery flesh. The coils constricting her neck were tight as iron bands, and they were growing tighter by the second. Gray began nibbling at the edges of her vision, and flashes of light sparked behind her eyes. A deep lethargy swept through her, and she knew she had only seconds of consciousness remaining. She focused the last remnants of her rapidly fading strength and continued tearing at the coils around her throat. She knew it was hopeless, but she would keep fighting until she could fight no longer.

Everything went black for an instant, but then she felt a shudder pass through the coils around her throat, and the pressure eased enough for her to draw in a gasping breath. Before her vision could clear, she grabbed hold of the coils and began yanking them off of her. As Lirra struggled to sit up, she saw a blurry outline of a shadowy figure standing between her and Osten, with the midsection of the tentacle whip gripped in one hand.

She understood what had happened. Rhedyn had used the corrupting touch imbued by his own symbiont to stun Osten’s tentacle whip, thereby saving her life. She unwrapped the last of the limp coils, careful to keep the barbed tip away from her skin. Osten stood staring at Rheydn’s shadow-shrouded form, as if he were having trouble seeing it-or perhaps he saw it, but in his weakened state of mind he didn’t understand what he was looking at. All signs of the fury that had gripped him were gone, leaving only confusion in their wake.

“What … happened?” he whispered.

Osten didn’t see Vaddon coming up behind him, and Lirra’s father couldn’t see the expression on the other man’s face. Lirra tried to call out a warning, to tell her father that Osten was no longer under the influence of the symbiont, but her voice refused to work, and all that came out of her mouth was a soft croak. The general’s own features were horribly calm as he stepped up to Osten, raised his sword and brought it slicing down onto the man’s arm where the symbiont was attached.

Osten screamed, and Lirra’s fragile hold on consciousness evaporated.