Onslaught

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: READING MINDS

To Ixidor, this was not so much war but nightmare, for the battlefield lay within his own mind.

The creator's body sat cross-legged on the highest balcony of Topos, but his spirit rushed in fury among clashing armies. He imposed the geometry of his subconscious onto reality and thereby folded space and strangled time. For weapons, he wielded his most twisted dreams. For warriors, he sent pieces of himself. Ixidor's army of gray men rose from his gray matter, and as they touched his foes and took on their forms, Ixidor learned.

Only a hundred putty people remained alive, many hiding amid the sightseeing safari. Through their ears, he heard applause and laughter, gurgling wine and steaming food. War should not sound like this.

Ixidor needed time to think about what he had learned, so he prepared his scaly warriors-aggression incarnate. They could fight with only minimal attention.

Ixidor closed his eyes and let a sense of irritation well up within him. Anger prickled on every nerve ending. The emotion reached to the fringe of Greenglades and awakened an army of knob-shouldered and gaunt-legged beasts.

Carapace shuddered, and legs untangled themselves. Shelled bodies rose among the tree boles, pincers plucking at the bark. An army of gigantic crabs suddenly strode among the fronds, heading toward the nightmare lands. Little red lights shown in their searching eyes, and the beams jagged across the wastes toward the invaders.

Tracers swarmed up the legs of the creatures-equine, elfin, reptilian, goblin-found the eyes that waited above, and locked on. Crab warriors surged from the jungle's edge. Claws clacked, mouth parts scissored, legs rasped-a clattering roar as the things descended.

Ixidor smiled. It always felt good to go from fear to fury.

They ran on four legs, lifting the rest in a set of deadly lances. Barbed claws snapped excitedly above.

The first of the crab folk-a long-legged beast that had pulled into the lead-struck the invaders. Vicious feet speared through heads, chests, and bellies of elves, then flung the flailing folk away. Claws snapped around necks and severed them. The crab ate its way rapidly into the line.

The elf contingent split, and a rhino charged through their midst. The ram affixed to its head crashed through the forest of chitinous legs. It struck the crab's belly, cracked the carapace, and shattered it.

The crab fell back, clawing at its broken body. It would die, yes, but it had killed six foes first. More scaly comrades struck the lines a moment later and ripped in with equal brutality.

Ixidor opened his eyes and stared, abstracted, at a blue sky cluttered with giant jellyfish.

Why would his foes do this? Why would Krosan and Cabal, ancient enemies, come together to slay him? Could it be true that this was all for Phage?

Those questions pressed on a fragile part of Ixidor's psyche. To kill Nivea had been madness. To march two armies to kill him too…

The jellyfish hung there, languid in the steamy sky.

Ixidor closed his eyes. He shooed away the questions and let anger rise.

Those beautiful, glowing beasts should not simply hang there. Let them fight. In his mind's eye, Ixidor gathered them into a brooding storm cloud. They formed an enormous squall line of plasmic bodies and drifted toward the battlefield. Beneath them, tentacles descended in a stinging rain. Whatever beasts would not fall to carapace would fall to it.

Through the ears of his putty people, Ixidor heard thrilled cheers from the safari folk. They had just glimpsed the jellyfish. Some even clapped excitedly as the beasts bore down on the battle.

Tentacles dragged across soldiers' upraised faces. Goblins curled up and died while elves shrieked and clutched at blinded eyes. Centaurs grappled the tentacles, struggling to rip them loose but only losing control of their own limbs.

Spectators giggled, placing and taking bets.

Ixidor could bear those incongruous sounds no longer. Kill them, he commanded his putty people.

They did. Disguised in the finery of nobles, the gray folk rose from their caravans and killed and killed. Cruel laughter turned into shrieks of terror, and instead of wine gurgling, it was blood. Such noises befit a battle. The putty people slew a few dozen of the royal patrons before they themselves were destroyed. Laughter and screams both died to nothing.

Finally, Ixidor could think.

He opened his eyes. The blue skies were clear again. Where once there had been giant jellyfish, now only Ixidor's own disciples remained, daytime stars around him.

Could this all be for Phage? What if she were as much a victim as Nivea?

Ixidor shivered. If that were the case, no one fought for what was right. All were wrong. All was madness. If the battlefield was Ixidor's own mind, then he himself was mad. The more violent the battle, the madder he became.

Already Ixidor had used his worst nightmares, but the invaders did not relent. It was time for them to face their own worst nightmares.

Lifting his hands to the heavens, Ixidor said, 'To me."

The sparking disciples swirled down his upraised arms. They poured into his brow, and energy cascaded through him. Minds touched upon his mind, knew what he knew, wished what he wished. Opening his mouth, Ixidor sent them pouring forth.

Between cerulean sky and azure lake, the darting blue sparks went. Though silent and small, these were the most vicious of all Ixidor's warriors. They would plow the minds of the foe and uproot their deepest fears.

As Ixidor watched his disciples spread through the world, he wondered if any creature would survive this battle and if those survivors could be anything but insane.

What sort of monster would make such monsters?

Kamahl slashed a groping tentacle. It fell, smearing its stinging poison down his side. Were it not for the axe he gripped, power of growth and power of death, he would be dead already. Still, this was hell-to suffer agony and not die.

Scrambling away from the jellyfish, Kamahl sought cover. The giant beast followed him, and his only escape was blocked by a crab warrior.

Ah, a solid foe for a change.

Growling, Kamahl hurled himself to the attack. His axe cracked through one leg of the crab. He swung the axe in another arc beneath it, and a second leg severed, and a third. Kamahl ducked under the crab's body as if it were an umbrella.

The jellyfish caught up to them, and a rain venom poured down atop the crab. Under the convulsing creature, Kamahl was safe-sort of.

What sort of monster is Ixidor?

He was the partner of a woman I killed, a woman who looked like Akroma, Phage had said. She had killed Ixidor's beloved. No doubt that murder had something to do with all these horrors.

I bit through her neck, crunched her skull, chewed her flesh, and worried her bones. My teeth murdered her, my gullet swallowed her, my gut digested her. She's gone.

Phage had killed Kamahl's sister and Ixidor's beloved too.

"She has destroyed us both."

Dying in the rain of poison, the crab constricted its remaining legs around Kamahl. He was suddenly caught in a cage of carapace, his axe trapped outside. Worse, the jellyfish's feeding tube descended. Sinewy lips slid down around the crab and sucked it up. Kamahl went with it.

The clangor of battle was muffled inside that translucent tube. Membranes slapped and organs pumped. A huge stomach gurgled above, one already filled with half-digested warriors. It would be more than full when Kamahl reached it.

There was no room. Kamahl struggled to shift his axe so that the blade would rub against the peristaltic muscles. The rubbery stuff only stretched instead of cutting. Down around the tube flowed digestive juices that lubricated and suffocated. Already, they had eaten away enough of the crab's shell to kill the thing. Once Kamahl reached that bulbous stomach, even his regenerative axe would not save him.

A spasm gripped the tube, and the crab bolus ground to a halt.

Kamahl merely hung there as another constriction tightened around him. The dead crab pinched his sides, spikes digging in. It didn't matter whether he reached the stomach or not. He would die here.

Something darkened the tube that held him. It was as though black mold grew rapidly across it, mold in the shape of a hand. The fingers of decay widened, lengthened. The translucent flesh of the mouth-tube trembled. Tissues tore, and through a hole that smelled of rot, air came to Kamahl.

He gulped a breath. Struggling against the might of the esophagus, Kamahl reached out to drag more of the foul flesh away. Air gushed in. He inhaled gratefully.

Phage's severe face appeared in the opening. Another black spot spread where her other hand clung. She must have shimmied all the way up the outside of the mouth tube, killing it as she climbed.

Kamahl could only pant and gape.

"I thought I saw your axe," she said, nodding toward the blade, which glinted despite the oozy flesh around it.

Kamahl's voice was raspy. "You came for me."

She shook her head. "I came for the axe-the blade enchanted to kill Akroma."

Grimacing tightly, Kamahl nodded. "Just get me out of here."

A regretful light shone in Phage's eyes as she glanced down. "All too easy. From here to the ground, it's all rot. Get ready to drop."

Kamahl glimpsed lines of putrefaction striping the feeding tube. Chunks tumbled away, and his legs hung in clear air. Soon, the muscles would lose their hold altogether, and Kamahl and Phage would plummet.

They lurched downward. "Good-bye, Sister."

"Only keep hold of the axe," she replied flatly.

Then both were falling. They tumbled beside each other in midair, accompanied by an unwholesome cascade.

Kamahl tumbled backward and saw that the skies were nearly cleared of jellyfish. He flipping toward the ground and saw that half his army had been decimated by crab warriors, but none of the gangly monsters remained.

Kamahl tucked himself into a ball, ready to hit ground. He struck a mound of bodies, the fleshy hill taking much of the impact, and rolled to one side. Remembering his sister's words, Kamahl clutched his axe, allowing its power to scintillate through him.

The rotting jellyfish fell. It whirred down and splattered. Its guts rolled out in waves, one of which caught Kamahl and hurled him farther.

At last, the slimy and bruised barbarian tumbled to a halt. He lay there for a time, coughing. The axe remained in his hand, tight against his chest. Its healing strength was a salve to his body.

All around, the battle lulled to silence. The jellyfish and crabs were gone, and the allied army paused to climb from the slime and breathe.

What horrors would come next?

A constellation drifted in the heavens-a swarm of blue stars. Kamahl recognized those darting points of light-the aura of Ixidor. He had used them once to read Kamahl's mind. How would he use them now?

Struggling out of the mire, Kamahl tried finitely to leap aside.

A blue star arced down and struck him in the forehead. His mind flashed, alight with alien intelligence. It held him paralyzed as it searched among memories. Into the deepest comers it probed, and at last, it found what it sought.

Something was in his mouth, something that scuttled. Kamahl spat. A black beetle fell from his lips and struck the ground. It landed on its back, legs flapping. The bug was big, the size of his thumb-no, his palm, his fist.

Squinting, Kamahl leaned down to stare at it. It was getting bigger.

Kamahl staggered back.

Plates shifted across the creature's back. Flesh bulged between. The blackness faded to brown and then to tan. Rear legs broadened and thickened until they were as large as Kamahl's own. Front legs fused into arms, and thorax plates became hardened muscle. Armor formed at shoulder and waist, and a buckler at wrist. Worse of all, though, the head of the bug became his own head-not as it was now, but as it had been in those mad days when he wielded the Mirari sword.

Ixidor had not dreamed up this horror. Kamahl had. This was his own nightmare made manifest.

The monster smiled a sanguine smile, reached over his shoulder, and drew forth the massive Mirari sword. He lowered it in front of him, challenging Kamahl to a duel.

He would have to fight his worst nightmare-the bloodthirsty man he once had been.

Phage had lost sight of Kamahl when they both struck ground. She had rolled one way, and he had rolled the other.

Rising, she climbed atop a fallen gigantipithicus and looked back. She barely had time to dive away again as the jellyfish plunged and splattered. Landing on her face atop a pile of dead, Phage waited as jellyfish parts smacked juicily all around.

She stood and surveyed. The crab warriors were dead, the jellyfish were fleeing, and half the army remained. In the distance, Stonebrow lifted his gory figure above the charnel grounds, a sword flashing in his hand. Nearby, Zagorka sat astride Chester. The old woman and her mule seemed both a counterpart to and a mockery of the great centaur. Those two commanders could marshal the living troops and lead them in a march over the dead ones.

Of course, it would be easier to regroup if Kamahl waved his blessed axe.

Where was Kamahl?

Something danced in the sky, blue-white stars spinning. They reached down to the battlefield and spread above the heads of the gathered throng.

Phage remembered these stars. They were Ixidor's probes.

One whirled nearby to strike an elf archer. It sank into his head and disappeared. A moment later, the man dropped his bow and doubled over to retch. From his mouth emerged a buzzing bug. It flopped out onto the ground and then swelled to take hideous form. It was a demon soldier-pallid skin stretched over spiky bone and violent mechanism.

The elf shrieked and backed away. He tried to snatch up his bow, but the demon stormed in. Shoulder spikes impaled the elf's belly. The demon stood, and the agonized elf flailed across its back. He lived only a moment more. The demon dragged his riddled form from the spikes, threw him to the ground, and stalked on to kill again.

It was a living nightmare.

All along the line, the blue-white probes struck. From the mouths of each creature issued those bugs, which swelled into more monsters.

Phage's eyes narrowed. Only she would be immune, for she already was a living nightmare. The last time a spark such as this struck her, it had sunk into the ravenous darkness within and not emerged again.

She made little effort to avoid the blue light that jagged down toward her.

It hit and burrowed into the skin between her eyes. It did not extiguish itself as had the last spark but sank through to her brain. This spark was different. The last had sought light in her mind and perished from lack of it. This spark sought darkness and found it.

Either Phage was the only one who was immune, or she was the most vulnerable one of all.

A chunk of something scuttled out from between her teeth. Clacking wings beat, and the thing jagged free. It was a roach, blacker than any beast Phage had ever seen. In disgust, she spat, and felt another such creature heavy on her tongue. She spewed it out, and there were two, and another, and more. The bugs gagged her. They scrabbled to get free, clawing at her lips. She vomited them, five at a time, then ten. She could barely breathe as the black torrent of them poured out.

They didn't fall to the ground but rose on saliva-shining wings. The roaches gathered in a churning swarm that spread like ink in water. Still more emerged.

That single spark had discovered the mother lode of nightmares. It was bleeding them away from Phage.

Already the sky darkened with the swarm, no less than an insect plague. As yet, the roaches were only gathering, but once they swept down in hunger, they would consume everything.

Phage fell to her knees. She tried to clamp her mouth shut, but barbed legs jutted between her teeth. Pincers gnawed her gums, and leathery shells pressed against the back of her throat. She began to gag. Let them kill her. Better to die than to let this evil plague out on the world.

The thought stunned her. It was not her own. When would Phage had ever died to save the world?

Still, she couldn't hold the bugs within. They burst out in a slick column.

All joined the cloud. It was huge, spreading above the whole battlefield. Many of the warriors paused to stare up into that boiling cloud-a horror worse than any they had ever conceived. It did not look like separate insects, but like one great darkness eating away the blue sky. Planetary gangrene, it turned all it touched to nothingness, and it grew greater by the moment.

Tears rolled down Phage's face. She had not wept since that horrible day in Krosan, when her brother had left her to die.

Phage shook her head, tears flying from her cheeks. Kamahl wasn't her brother. She wasn't Jeska, but with each new roach that tumbled from her mouth, she felt less and less like Phage and more and more like Jeska.

He had been right; Kamahl had been right. Jeska had survived within that cloud of horrors. The sister he sought had been imprisoned in pollution.

Still, the foulness gushed from her as if it would never cease.

"Jeska!" said a husky voice, and a powerful hand grasped her arm.

"Ka-mahl!" she gagged, turning toward him even as the plague poured out.

It wasn't Kamahl. General Stonebrow knelt beside her. He had apparently slain his own greatest nightmare and come to help slay hers. Strangest of all, he touched her without rotting away.

"Jeska! What is happening to you?"

She tried to answer but could not for all the roaches.

Even for Ixidor, high in his glimmering palace above the sapphire sea, the battle had turned deadly. Outwardly, he was at peace, surrounded by his unmen and the finery of his bedchamber. Inwardly, he was dying.

Ixidor trembled. His jaws clenched, teeth grinding upon each other until grit covered his tongue. Rot spread in his mind. It ate away will and thought. Ixidor wanted to rise, but he could barely breathe.

This Phage's skin had held a nightmare that could destroy the world. No wonder her very touch killed. No wonder to her the death of a single woman was nothing. She held within her the death of everyone.

Shuddering, Ixidor managed to scoot forward on the seat. It was a seizure, yes, but it was movement. If only he could break through this rigidity that held him. If only he could… but the part of his mind that contained the answer no longer remained.

Ixidor fell from the chair. An unman swooped as if to catch him, though Ixidor would have simply fallen through to another part of the castle. Instead, the creator's own instinctual mind took hold. His hands broke the fall. Ixidor crumpled to the floor.

Instinct. It would save him. Panting, he cried out the first word that came to his tongue. "Nivea!"

The unmen heard. In voices like bleeding air, they repeated the name.

Ixidor growled, convulsed, crawled. "Nivea!" It was not the right name, but it was the only name he could speak. "Nivea!"

She came, not Nivea but the creature who had once had her face.

On majestic wing, Akroma dropped down to the balcony. Her feline claws scratched the marble floor. When her face cleared the archway, its faint color fled away entirely.

"Creator!"

Akroma hurried toward him. Once she would have drifted above the floor, but now her claws scrabbled like a beast's. She had been soaring the skies above Topos, guarding her creator against any approach, but this attack had come from within.

Ixidor wished he could comfort her, but he could hardly join thought to thought.

Akroma knelt above him. "What has happened? Who has done this?"

If only he had the words. It was not Phage who had done this. Phage had kept this monstrosity imprisoned in her skin. To kill the woman now would be to destroy the one vessel that could contain all this evil. It was not Phage whom Akroma must fight. It was the blackness.

"Blackness…" he muttered. "Blackness…"

Akroma's face was quizzical. "Blackness?" She lifted her eyes, glaring at the unmen. "What blackness? Speak a name, Master, and that creature will no longer be."

He could speak the name of Phage, but it would mean the end of all. No, Akroma must not kill Phage, but the blackness.

The contagion changed in his mind. No longer was it a great amorphous shape, no longer a swarm. Now, it was a tangle-a mass of glistening tubes. They were eating and eating.

"Eating," gasped Ixidor. He struggled, managing to shove himself upright and sit. He was regaining his mind, his strength, but not quickly enough. "Eating."

"What is eating?" Akroma asked.

"Wurms," blurted Ixidor. He grasped her hand, stared into her piercing eyes, and squeezed the words out. "Kill the wurms."