Blood Bound by Griffin B

Author:Griffin, B. [Griffin, B.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dragon Scale Publishing
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

14

Mal Remade

The sorcerer had disappeared, and Mal’s body lay still on the ground. Aleban found herself on the smooth stone floor, propping herself up with her hands. The sudden stillness of the room was unsettling, and sitting in silence next to Mal’s unmoving body was almost worse than the chaos of the moments before. She breathed in and out, slowly. She moved her body across the floor until she sat over Mal, and she studied his face. It was frozen in a look of pain, and his lips were curled back, revealing his jagged teeth. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. Had he died? Had she done nothing when she forced his hand into the sorcerer’s?

She reached her hand out to his throat to check his pulse, but hesitated as her eyes lingered on those long teeth. She placed one hand on his broad wrist instead, searching for some sign of life under her fingers. A few seconds slipped away as she searched in vain. Just as she was beginning to feel the first sneaking threads of despair for Mal’s life, he sat up as if the floor had burned him, so quickly that the movement of it knocked Aleban backwards. He roared, a terrifying, primal sound that filled the chamber and pounded at Aleban’s head. She screamed in response, and pushed herself backwards across the floor as he clenched and opened his hands and dragged one huge palm over his face as if feeling it for the first time. He pitched forward and got to his knees. His arms were alternately trailing behind him as he lurched forward or swinging through the air like clubs as he tried to pull himself up using the bookshelf nearest to him. Artifacts and books were falling to the floor all around him, and he couldn’t quite make it to his feet; his own body seemed to be too heavy for him.

“What are you doing?” Aleban finally said, finding her voice again. She stayed a safe distance away from the distraught orc, hands held up in her least threatening gesture. Mal jerked his head around to glare at her.

“Idiot girl! You think you can trick me? You’ve forced me into a body that is dying, nearly dead, and worse, it’s—this!” he flung one of his massive arms in her direction to illustrate his point. It wrapped around his own shoulder and fell to his side again like a discarded piece of fabric. “An orc! Never has a mind such as mine been so insulted!”

Aleban knew immediately that she was not speaking to Mal. It had worked, then. The sorcerer was in Mal’s body. Was Mal there too?

“Mal?” she asked urgently, ignoring the sorcerer’s insults. “Mal? Are you still—are you still there?”

The orc shuddered and stopped his erratic movements. Now Mal reeled slowly on his feet, looking simply exhausted instead of like a puppet being jerked around by an unseen hand.

“Yes,” he said, and the low growl of his voice was familiar. “What

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