Frank stared at Vorrh, trying to catch a glimpse of the eyes behind that black veil. Was he human? Could he be reasoned with? Could his will be broken?
The only other option was to fight. And although Frank’s body was humming with adrenaline, the wear and tear of the last few days was catching up to him. The cuts and bruises. The busted ribs. The pain of something broken in his back.
He felt like a race car on a quarter tank of gas. Sure, he still had all that horsepower under the hood, but he couldn’t redline forever.
“We’re under the protection of Princess Sazhra,” he said. “She won’t be happy to hear about this.”
“Your Princess has overplayed her hand.” Vorrh was standing still but his robes flowed as if tossed by the wind. There was no wind in the pavilion though, not even a breeze. “Her protection in worthless. You’re on your own now, and severely outmanned.”
“Outnumbered,” Frank said, slipping the shield off his back. “Not outmanned.”
“You don’t think me a man?”
“Well a man’s someone who does the right thing even when it’s hard. Even when he knows it’s gonna hurt. We’re both about to do something really painful here. Only difference is I know it’s gonna hurt.” Frank raised his sword and shield. “And you’re about to find out.”
Vorrh tilted his head. The whispering from behind his gauze veil rose into a chorus of overlapping voices, like a funeral congregation chanting from different hymnals, everyone out of tune.
Then the rats surged.
They came as a black tide, rising from the gutters and holes and cracks in the stone, a wave of shrieking fur and teeth.
And Frank met them as he would a wave, head-on.
His saber whistled through the air, slicing bodies open in sprays of blood. He kicked and swatted, tiny bones crunching beneath his sandaled feet. But the horde was endless. Within seconds, the wave had broken over him, rats climbing up his legs, leaping off his shield, sinking teeth into his chest and thighs.
Kyra lay sprawled behind him on the ground. She tried to scramble to her feet but was too weak. As the swarm began to engulf her, she screamed, the sound echoing loudly across the pavilion.
Then the human cultists charged.
Their oily robes flapped like bat wings as they ran, bone masks gleaming in the moonlight, curved daggers raised high. Frank ducked the first swipe and then rose up, punching his saber into the attacker’s gut. The man gasped as buckets of blood emptied out of him, splashing over Frank’s chest, over Kyra, over the frenzied rats.
Wake of Terror
Psychoplasm Cost: Passive
8 Will saves attempted.
3 fails. 5 passes.
Psionic Reserve: 80/100
The human cultists froze mid-stride. Two dropped their blades and fled outright, their nerves broken. One fell to his knees, sobbing through his mask.
Frank twisted and flung the skewered body aside just in time to meet a dagger thrust. He parried low, smashing the edge of his shield into the attacker’s throat. The next strike nearly impaled him, Frank barely slipping the blade, before he countered with a vicious elbow, cracking the cultist’s mask in two.
But the horde kept coming, their advance never slowing. The rats climbed higher up his body. One bit into his shoulder. Another tore a chunk from his neck. That’s when he felt it stretching across the pavilion, the invisible leash, the binding will. Vorrh’s mind compelled the creatures forward, dampening any self preservation instinct they might have possessed, refusing them the indulgence of fear.
Frank had hoped the terror effect would’ve scattered the rats. He wasn’t strong enough to face them all. Not yet anyway.
Fear Eater
Psychoplasm Cost: 5
+3 Might
Psionic Reserve: 75/100
He drank deep from the psychic reservoir of panic. Terror flowed into him like molten steel. His body responded instantly, his heart racing, muscles swelling with power, a few minor wounds even knitting closed.
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Crack.
It was as much a sound as a sensation, shattering glass inside his skull.
“Caution,” he heard someone scream. It took a second for him to realize it was Thune, shouting from inside the sack tied to his belt. He must have felt the psychic pull of Frank using his powers.
His word was a warning, but Frank paid it no mind. He was fighting for his life here. Thune’s oft repeated warning — there are fates worse than death, Frank Farrell — returned to him now. But being eaten by a horde of rats seemed like just such a fate. He needed all the help he could get.
Power surged into his limbs. He felt strong and rejuvenated, his saber weightless. With renewed vigor, he tore through the horde like a thresher through wheat, hoisting Kyra to her feet between sword strokes. She beat rats away with her bare hands, her simple wrap torn to strips.
Frank just kept killing.
Scores of rats died in seconds. Backs crunched. Heads split. The ground slick with their entrails. But still more came, crawling out of the shadows, climbing from the cracks in the marble floor. For every rat that Frank killed, two more appeared.
And behind them all crept Vorrh, moving on all fours as nimbly as on his feet. He had donned his weapons of choice, three-pronged, bronze claws strapped to the dorsum of each hand, so that he looked less like a man than a beast imitating a man.
When Frank caught sight of him, he loosed a war cry and rushed forward, nearly slipping in gore. Vorrh never flinched, waiting for the charge with his face upturned, claws ready. His veil fluttered and Frank caught sight of his eyes, red-rimmed and yellow as an undercooked yolk.
Break him!
Frank reached for the rat lord’s exposed eye.
Eye of Terror
Psychoplasm Cost: 5
Target is immune to Fear effects.
Psionic Reserve: 70/100
Frank’s vision blurred. Cold fire erupted at the base of his skull, and he felt something deep inside his brain … fold.
Allflesh Intrusion
Level 2: Blessings of Minor Corruption.
New traits acquired.
Stabbing pain ripped through his forehead. He staggered, dropping his shield and clutching his brow as the horns erupted from beneath his skin. They stretched and coiled, curving behind his head and coming to rest just below the angle of his mandibles. He reached up with his free hand to touch them, finding each horn black and hard as bone, with pronounced ridges and a cruel point.
His left hand stung. He thought he might have cut it on a horn, but when he looked, he saw a mouth had formed in his palm. Lipless. Ringed in fangs. Twitching. Hungry.
He nearly vomited. But when he opened his mouth — his true mouth — the only thing that came out was a scream. He stumbled across the pavilion, rats dangling off his body, and only stopped when he heard Vorrh’s voice whispering in his head.
“Now you begin to see what you are.”
”Listen to me, Frank Farrell,” Thune called from his sack, “Heed the sound of my voice.”
But Frank was beyond reason now, beyond fear, beyond even rage. Madness alone drove him. He charged at Vorrh with the desperation of a man whose mind was slipping from his grasp like sand through clenched fists.
Vorrh dodged with practiced grace, his veil fluttering over his skeletal face. He smiled as he let Frank’s blade pass by, almost playfully. But before he could strike back, the pavilion filled with the sound of boots on marble. Behind him, the princess guard of House Saar’Jin had arrived, garbed in their impossible glass armor and wielding fearsome bronze halberds.
“Halt,” their captain called. “Drop your weapons.”
Whatever cultists were alive and still standing charged, scores of rats at their heels. With a discordant chant, Vorrh directed the bulk of the horde back toward the assembled guards. The pavilion erupted in chaos. Bronze met bone. Screams pierced the sky. And warriors armored in moonlight fell beneath a rising tide of vermin.
Frank shook the rest of the rats off him like a wet dog and then turned to strike. But Vorrh was already retreating, slinking back down the steps leading to the pavilion, his robes trailing like smoke.
”We can’t hold you now,” he whispered. “But the eyes of the horde are everywhere. And this city never sleeps.”
Then he was gone, darkness rising to embrace him like the hand of an old friend.
A crowd had started to gather, come to watch the fight. Frank staggered back to Kyra, his saber dripping with blood. He bent to retrieve his shield along the way, slinging it over his shoulder as he helped the girl beat off the last of the rats.
“Frank, we have to —”
Her eyes widened at the sight of him.
”What happened?”
”I don’t know,” he said.
“Are you okay?”
”No, I don’t think I am. Let’s just get back to the manor. We’ll have Virelios examine me.”
”No,” Thune called. “We can not trust him.”
”What was that?” Kyra asked.
Frank reached into the sack and pulled out Thune’s head.
“He can speak?” she asked.
”I assure thee madam,” Thune said, “I can do more than that.”
She looked like she was going to pass out. Frank reached to steady her.
”The head is right.” She grabbed Frank’s wrist weakly. “We can’t go back to the manor. The princess will be furious that we caused all this trouble.”
”We’re working for her.”
”Not anymore. Not after tonight.”
The sounds of battle intensified. The grunts of men, the clang of bronze, the squeals of rats as they were put to the torch.
“We must flee,” she said. “Into the city. There are places to hide.”
Frank surveyed the battle. The princess guard had killed the last of the cultists and was now setting about slaughtering the rat horde as well. One man among them, a warrior covered in gore, looked up from his bloody work and pointed to Frank.
“You there,” the guard shouted. “The princess would speak with you.”
“We must go,” Kyra pleaded.
Frank sheathed his saber and then slung the girl over one shoulder. “Hold this,” he said, handing her Thune.
Then he took two running jumps across the pavilion and leapt out onto the rooftops below, vanishing into the maze of the city.
And by morning, he would be the most wanted man in Uqmai.
