Zyung raised his starry blade, his eyes fixed upon the fallen Vireon.
No!
Dahrima raced across the scattered mounds of dead to her dying King.
Zyung’s voice was a new kind of thunder. He pronounced a final judgment of death in his own language as his arm raised high the dark blade.
A tiny figure appeared out of nowhere at Vireon’s feet. A lone Man, his face turned up to meet the God-King’s terrible eyes. Dahrima did not stop to consider his courage, but scrambled on toward Vireon. She would either carry him from Zyung’s wrath, or die at his side.
The stranger wore a black hood and a dark robe set with flashing emeralds. He raised a thin arm at the same moment that the God-King’s blade began its descent. He spoke a single word that rang as loudly as Zyung’s own voice.
The silver colossus slowed and stiffened to a dull shade of black. Even the glimmering sword lost its shine. The God-King and his blade stood completely immobile above the battleground. Zyung was an effigy of dark iron, like the statue of a grim God built too large for any of the world’s temples.
The stranger was gone.
Gleaming sorcerers buzzed like flies about their petrified God-King.
Dahrima grabbed Vireon’s body into her arms. Now he was only the size of a Man, yet the wound in his gut was a mortal one. She ran toward the river, clutching him to her chest like a sick child. The battle resumed behind her, the clashing of metal replacing the stunned silence. Now, while the sorcerers were distracted from pouring out their deathlights, she must escape with Vireon’s body.
The Uduri gathered about her, unwilling to let their spear sister bear this burden alone. They hacked through a formation of Manslayers and gained the riverbank. When the Udvorg had first arrived, they had constructed a crossing out of great, flat blocks of masonry. Dahrima and her sisters ran across these uneven stones toward the slope of the western ridge.
Bodies choked the sluggish red river as it spilled toward the crowded bay.
Dahrima’s great axe lay somewhere among the heaps of dead. She did not need it. Her sisters cut down the foes who charged into her path.
She ran from the valley of death, Vireon’s blood spilling along her arms and legs.
Khama.
Awake, Feathered Serpent.
Khama opened his eyes. A blur of colors and shapes.
A man’s voice.
“Listen to me. We must be quick. I cannot free you from this cage while you wear this form. You must become a Man again.”
Khama tried to focus. There was no strength left in him. The furnace of his heart was a flickering candle. The unsteady shapes refined themselves. An orange glow filled a wide chamber of smooth, yellow substance. It felt and looked like wood, but there were no seams or boards.
A hooded figure stood facing Khama’s disfigured snout. Khama’s coiled body was a mass of agonies. The scent of his own blood filled his flaring nostrils, as well as the scent of the one who spoke to him. He smelled southern perfumes and the fragrant oils of nobility. And the salty tang of brine underlying it all.
How can I smell so superbly when the rest of me lies senseless and broken?
Two piles of silver cloth lay in the chamber, each with a heap of white sand (or salt) at its center. About the walls stood barrels, crates, and chests. He lay aboard a ship; they had carried him into the cargo hold of a dreadnought. A prisoner to torment and pry for secrets when the battle was done.
The orange glow came from the chains of clotted light twisted about his serpentine frame, trapping and sustaining him at once. Their links were instilled with sorcery. He smelled that indescribable odor as well.
“Do you hear me, Khama?” said the hooded man. His cloak and robes were sable, with the green glint of emeralds about neck and sleeves. “Take the form of a Man once more. Do it now. Zyung will soon break the spell of iron.”
Khama did not understand. He closed his eyes again. The magic of the spellchains was drawing him back toward a deep slumber.
“Khama!” A small hand slapped his great, torn jaw.
“Too weak…” he mumbled. His forked tongue rolled out of his mouth.
The stranger placed his hands upon Khama’s great eyelids. He sang an ancient refrain, and Khama’s inner flame rekindled for a moment. His eyes reopened, but he could not see the face hidden in the shadows of the hood.
“Now, Khama,” said the stranger. “You must become a Man, if only for a few seconds.”
Khama seized the borrowed flame and drew upon its power. His ragged, bleeding flesh warped and shrank. His skin once again acquired the rich brown hues of a Mumbazan man. Yet the red wounds across his body remained. The gleaming chains fell to the deck about his smaller form. They were made of a size to encase his Serpent body, not his human aspect.