Plague of Shadows by Howard Andrew Jones

Author:Howard Andrew Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781601252913
Publisher: Paizo Publishing, LLC
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Interlude

Ring of Shadows

Darkness wrapped them only moments after they were through the doorway. Cold pierced their flesh like thorns. One of the men screamed, and there was the sound of metal clanking on stone, protesting as it was crushed and rent.

Stelan’s voice echoed through the dark chamber. “Arcil, light!”

A brilliant flood of white energy lit the space an instant later, and Elyana finally saw what they faced. A reptile the size of an ox lashed its spiny tail near bookcases which ornamented the curving two-story wall behind it. The dragon seemed fashioned from plates of shadow wrapped around a skeleton. Its head twisted from side to side, its fierce red eyes blinking against Arcil’s flaring ball of light that burned high in the vast, cathedral-like space.

Black vapor drifted from its fanged maw. Under one claw the knight Daramont lay twisted, blood trickling out from multiple rents in his armor to gather in a widening pool.

Eriah cried out at sight of his twin. Elyana advanced. If there was hope for the fallen knight, there was no way to give aid until they stopped the dragon.

“Run!” Young Nadara backed frantically toward the archway, her voice rising in panic. “He’s summoned an umbral dragon!”

They had thought only to find Lathroft, the shadow wizard who’d fled before them. They had not expected this horror. Elyana knew it was small, as dragons went, but that made the creature no less deadly.

She charged forward on the left, Stelan on the right. There was no hesitation. After so many years, they reacted with rapid precision to every challenge. It was no surprise to hear Vallyn’s voice raised in a martial melody, or Arcil shouting something in cryptic words.

The dragon swung toward Stelan, hissing, its backswept horns pointing to Elyana. A draconic wing brushed down at her at the same moment its tail lashed. She ducked under the one, her hair streaming out behind her, and leapt the whipping appendage in a crouch. She landed nimbly, then noticed a strange blur in the air a few paces to her left.

Stelan cried out to Abadar and shouted as he swung at the creature’s darting head. Elyana’s eyes were rooted on that widening whirl of energy. A human hand in a dark sleeve thrust out from its center.

She had found the shadow wizard.

Elyana’s leap carried her into the blur and through into a strange, dark place occupied only by the wizard; her sword came down across Lathroft’s hand and severed it at the wrist. Blood weltered as the hand flew free. The hooded wizard howled and dropped to his knees, stump pressed to his chest. Elyana noticed that her blade’s swirling, intricate runes glowed here as they did when the weapon was wielded against creatures of shadow. Their light bloomed even more fiercely as her second strike swept down through cowl and skull; brain and blood sprayed out and the wizard fell, gurgling and twitching.

So died Lathroft, the second most powerful of the shadow wizards. It was hard to believe him truly finished, and Elyana stared down in wonder.

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