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You're not hunting a living man! And you'll never stop it through your usual means.
Garrogh swung as Rodian tried to get in front of the black mage.
The figure reached back and caught Garrogh's blade. The sword halted instantly, as if no more than a child's stick. Garrogh's eyes widened as Rodian swung at the figure's front.
His longsword passed straight through the cloak and robe. Meeting no resistance at all, Rodian almost lost his balance.
In that brief instant the black one twisted. His other hand struck Garrogh's face… and passed straight through.
Horror closed Rodian's throat.
Garrogh's grip released his sword's hilt, and he crumpled.
The lieutenant's face turned ashen in the pattern of a hand overlying his slack features. When his knees hit the cobblestones his legs folded, and he fell backward with his eyes locked open.
The black figure finished its full turn back to Rodian with Garrogh's blade still in its grip.
Rodian backed up a step.
"Don't let it touch you!" Wy
He retreated another step as the figure opened its hand. The blade didn't slide along the cloth-wrapped palm. Garrogh's sword dropped straight down, right through the hand, and clanged upon the street.
Rodian heard a loud snort and hammering hooves. Snowbird was coming. She would kill—or die—for him, but he couldn't afford to look back for her.
"No!" he shouted. "Snowbird, stay!"
Still he heard her hooves.
"Shade, go!" Wy
Rodian quickly glanced sideways.
Wy
Wy
Rodian jerked Snowbird's head aside and shoved on her neck.
"Back!" he commanded. Then he turned and closed behind the wolf.
He had no idea how to fight this man if his sword couldn't co
The figure lashed out at him.
Rodian saw the hand of wrapped black cloth coming for his face and jerked his head aside.
Searing cold spread instantly through his shoulder.
He cried out as if frostbite had erupted inside his muscles. Searing cold strangled a cry in his throat as pain ran down his arm and up his neck. Fear struck him as hard as the cobblestones when he toppled.
Rodian vaguely heard the wolf's snarl, its claws scrabbling on the street, but he couldn't lift his head. He was going to die, and all he could do was lie there, waiting to see the empty cowl appear above him.
Someone leaped over him from behind. He caught only the sight of a whipping brown cloak.
"Shade, hold!" someone rasped, as if too hoarse to speak clearly.
Rodian struggled, curling up to pull his knees under himself. A tall man with jagged red-brown hair, wielding a longsword, held out his free hand toward the snarling wolf. He and the wolf shifted about, keeping the black figure between them. Of all strange things, the figure remained stuck there, hesitant to turn its back on either of them.
Something about the pale-faced man was familiar, and he appeared to have no fear of getting near the robed one.
What was happening here?
Rodian's pale protector lifted his booted foot and kicked Rodian in the chest. As he tumbled across the street, he heard someone whispering, and then…
"Chane, run!" Wy
The man in the brown cloak glanced once to wherever Wy
Wy
The Suman sage was chanting in a breathy whisper.
Rodian heard an angry snort. Despair took him as Snowbird began to charge again.
From Spirit to Fire… for the Light of Life!
The wraith jerked to a halt, as a spark filled the crystal's heart.
The long six-sided prism flashed like an instant sunrise.
Wy
She heard Shade's sharp yelp as everything turned black in her sight.
A screech filled the street, nearly deafening her, and she took a few steps backward.
Even in the dark she held on to the pattern needed to keep the crystal ignited. Then she noticed that the darkness was only ahead of her, like a circle of black. At its center she saw the long crystal, aglow but muted. Everything at the sides of her vision was as brilliant as daylight, or even brighter.
Wy
They'd darkened so suddenly, shielding her sight, and slowly they lightened only a bit—until she made out a wavering black form.
Il'Sänke was somehow holding it in place! Keeping it from vanishing again.
Wy
The shadow shape in her spectacles' dark circle began to fragment. Pieces of it spread like smoke in a whirlwind. Its illusory body began to break up as its scream continued to tear at her ears.
A black flash erupted before Wy
All sound ceased, and the sudden silence made her flinch.
It was gone. All she saw through her shielded sight was the crystal, almost too bright to look upon, even wearing the spectacles.
Wy
Pure blackness came. She couldn't wait for the spectacles to readjust, and she clawed them off her face, keeping her gaze fixed ahead.
There was nothing where the wraith had stood.
Farther out, Shade groveled on the cobblestones, rubbing her eyes with her forepaws. Rodian's horse backed away, thrashing her head, and her rump hit a shop's porch post. She was snorting in panic, her eyes blinking and wild.
Wy
Rodian gasped for air and couldn't see clearly. His sight was washed with colored blotches left by the sudden light from the crystal atop Wy
But the black-robed mage was gone.
Rodian began to remember what Wy
What—some malignant ghost? How could he accept that?
He gasped for air again and could only watch as Wy
Rodian's shoulder burned and yet felt icy within. The figure had barely touched him, but he felt so weak he couldn't even try to stand. A scraping sound caught his attention.
Il'Sänke dragged himself up. The Suman looked terrible, pale even for his dark skin, and he glistened with sweat in the street's dim light.
"It is all right, Captain," il'Sänke said weakly. "It is over."
The sage had been working with Wy
Nothing was all right.
Garrogh was dead, and Rodian didn't know if Lúcan had survived. And he still had to explain everything to the city minister and the royals of Malourné.