As he spoke, the black surface of the pillar began to bubble and hiss. Renaud laughed and plunged his hands in deeper. Then, with a sickening thrust, he threw open his spirit, and Miranda gasped as the black, sickening weight of his triumph-drunk will rolled over her.
The pillar groaned as Renaud’s spirit crashed against it, stabbing into the black wound where his arms were buried and pressing down, forcing the hole wider. The black taint on the pillar’s surface bubbled and hissed as Renaud forced himself in, using his spirit as a wedge. The harder he pressed, the faster the dark stain spread, eating what was left of the pillar’s knobby gray surface as rot from an infected wound devours a limb. With a final, triumphant stab of his spirit, Renaud’s arms disappeared into the sucking maw. His head followed, then his chest and his legs until, finally, he vanished completely. The pressure of his opened soul still pounded through the room, but the man himself was gone, eaten by the pillar, which was now entirely covered in the slick, black rot.
The second the last inch of his heel disappeared into the pillar, a wailing scream cut through the air. Miranda slapped her hands over her ears, but it was no use. The spirit scream cut straight to the well of her soul. It was worse than the sound the sandstorm had made, for that had been many small voices and the effect had been broken up. This scream was one enormous, anguished cry that set her teeth on edge and brought tears to her eyes, but worst of all, worse than anything, was the ghost of a human voice behind it.
Black sludge began to pour off the pillar’s surface, oozing from the hole Renaud left behind him and pouring onto the marble floor. It eroded the stone where it touched, hissing loudly as it washed down the dais steps, and the smell almost made Miranda vomit. The liquid stank of rotten meat, like open sewage on a hot day. The stench filled the room to bursting, until Miranda could feel it eating her skin.
“What is it?” she choked out, looking frantically at Eli.
“Gregorn,” Eli said, his voice muffled by the handkerchief he’d covered his nose and mouth with. “Or what’s left of him. Renaud’s forcing him out.”
The ooze from the pillar showed no sign of stopping. It flowed down the dais to pool on the floor. The stone floor hissed and cracked as the acid spread across it with frightening speed, and yet the pillar showed no signs of slowing. Above it all, Renaud’s spirit hung like an iron weight, and the fearsome spirit wail went on and on—almost human, yet never stopping for breath. When the black pool reached the center of the throne room, Renaud’s spirit jerked and the pool froze, quivering like a caught leaf.
“Gregorn,” the enslavement boomed through Renaud’s voice, sending enormous ripples through the black liquid. “Kill them.”
The wailing scream spiked, and the black sludge began to boil. No, Miranda took several steps back; not just boil, grow. The pool was rising, bubbling up into an enormous mound of black slime between them and the pillar on the dais. It grew and grew, and as it grew, its screaming deepened, until there was nothing human in it at all.
Eli looked up at the quivering, putrid, acidic sludge that was all that remained of the world’s greatest enslaver, and his face paled. “Well,” he whispered, glancing sideways at Miranda. “You’re the Spiritualist, how do we stop it?”
“I have no idea,” she confessed. “I’ve never even heard of something like this.”
High above them, the peak of the mountain of ooze had reached the highest point of the vaulted ceiling. When it touched the stone, it wailed again, sending a rain of acidic globs down on top of them.
“Wonderful,” Eli said, dodging the spray. “Just bleeding wonderful.” He sighed deeply, though Miranda couldn’t imagine how he managed it, considering the stench, and he looked over his shoulder at the lava spirit, still waiting in the hall. “It’s never easy, is it?”
“Easy is boring,” Karon rumbled, stepping through the ruined doorway.
“I hoped that was what you’d say.” Eli smiled. “Well,” he said and turned back to the blob, “let’s have some fun, then.”
Miranda felt the lava spirit’s answering laugh deep in her stomach. The castle shook to its foundation as Karon charged forward, his glowing stone feet cracking the floor with every step, and his flaming fist aimed straight at the center of the quivering pile of black liquid. The blob that had been Gregorn surged forward to meet Karon midway, and Eli, Miranda, and Nico dove for cover as the two spirits collided in an explosion of black steam.
CHAPTER 24
Miranda hunched over, gasping for breath. For once, Nico and Eli were right down on the floor with her, coughing and choking as the black steam burned their lungs. Eyes watering, Miranda looked up in time to see the thick, acidic clouds swirling off Karon’s molten fist as the lava spirit prepared to swing again.