Extinction

Jeggred crashed headlong into the first wight, smashing it against one wall with a powerful swipe of his fighting arm, then ripping its belly open with a rake of the claws on one foot as he stomped on it. As the pungent odor of death and rot filled the air, the second wight darted under Jeggred's other arm and casually slapped Jeggred's chest. The draegloth grunted and clutched one of his lesser hands against him?the first time Valas had heard him express pain aloud?and he staggered slightly. An instant later, however, he recovered. Roaring fiercely, the draegloth grasped the wight's face with a fighting hand and, wrenching violently, tore the head from its neck.

The first wight was still moving, crawling furiously after Jeggred with its rotted entrails dragging along behind it. Before it could reach him, Danifae rushed forward, morningstar in hand. There wasn't much room to swing the weapon in the low-ceilinged corridor, but she managed an abbreviated downward smash. The spiked ball of the morningstar connected with the wight's head in a blaze of magical sparks, filling the air with a sharp ozone tang. The wight dropped and laid still.

Pharaun stared at Danifae with a look of open admiration. He held a tiny leather pouch in one hand, which he'd drawn from his pocket as the wights attacked.

"Well done," he said, tucking it back into a pocket of his piwafwi.

Quenthel looked past Danifae.

"Are there more?" she asked Jeggred.

Jeggred stood panting, head turning from side to side as he searched for the scent of additional foes. As his chest rose and fell, Valas noted the wound the wight had inflicted on the draegloth. It was little deeper than a scratch, but it was causing Jeggred to wheeze as if each breath was painful. After a moment, Jeggred shook his head.

"No more," he concluded, "just these two."

Valas cleared his throat.

"Wights are the least of our worries," he reminded the others. "We should get moving. The portal is just ahead, at the center of the vault, about seventy-five paces into the room. Pharaun's marked it with a spell. Quickly now, and one at a time. Take a run and leap out from the end of the tunnel, then levitate down. Touch nothing in the room. You first, Quenthel, then Jeggred, while Pharaun casts a spell on Danifae. Then Pharaun, followed by Danifae. I'll go last."

That said, he flattened against the wall and motioned the others forward. As he did, he scanned the vault one last time, searching for signs of movement, in case any wights had entered it while his back was turned.

They hadn't.

Quenthel moved forward to glance down into the room, then, after communing silently with her whip vipers, she nodded. She backed down the corridor, then sprinted past Valas and leaped into the air. A heartbeat later Jeggred rushed after her, arms flailing.

As the pair drifted down through the empty room toward the portal, Valas glanced up at the ceiling. Were the gods in the mural scowling a bit more fiercely? He stared back at them a moment, then decided it must have been his imagination. Meanwhile, Quenthel had ignored his instructions and was hovering above the portal. Jeggred, floating in the air beside her, kept glancing back and forth between his mistress and the portal, a confused look on his face.

Valas turned to warn Pharaun that something was delaying the pair, but the mage was just completing the spell he was casting on Danifae, tracing an invisible symbol on each of her knees with something he held pinched in his fingers. Finishing, he gave Danifae a quick smile of encouragement, then he turned and sprinted down the corridor past Valas, leaping into the vault.

He levitated to a halt just above Quenthel and Jeggred and motioned furiously for them to go through the portal. Quenthel, however, shook her head.

"You first," she ordered.

Pharaun, hovering in the air, folded his arms across his chest.

"Come on, Danifae!" he shouted up at the tunnel. "We're all waiting."

Valas shook his head. The scuffle with the wights had already caused enough noise to wake the undead, and with all the shouting they'd never hear if more approached. Impatiently, he beckoned Danifae forward.

As she crouched on the lip of the tunnel, he noticed that her legs were articulated the wrong way. She leaped?in a jump that carried her halfway across the room. She looked confident and to all appearances was about to land easily on the bare floor?but then, when she was still about a pace above the floor, she suddenly stumbled and pitched over to one side. As she did, Valas heard a noise that sounded like pebbles shifting.

Danifae wound up on her hands and knees?but not on the floor. Instead she seemed to have landed on something that held her at arm's length from it. Something invisible?or something cloaked by an illusion. Something that kept shifting.