Page 99 of Elvenbred

He snorted.

She rallied, and waggled a finger at him as if he was a particularly dense student. “Now, now, now. Was I here when Sapphirine fell? When Jadeite? Or Topaz? I was not. The creatures you had imprisoned either freed themselves or were freed by their own kind from outside the walls. Or you tortured them until they died, and before you could replace them, your shields failed and the vengeance began. They know what you are now, what you are doing, and how you are doing it, and they won’t stop until their fellows are free. The fall of this city, of all your cities, is just as inevitable. You could turn that around if you wanted. If you cared to. If you bothered to think. People can change. I’m certainly going to try. I have a lot to atone for.” She paused then. “But … I don’t think you will change, not even when it’s too late.”

“Too late?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Now you’ve killed one of their elders, one of their Old Ones, and they are most assuredly incensed. And highly motivated.”

He thought back to the tripedal creature and the use of the king’s Last Word, the actinic dropped directly on it, and crater left behind. He tried to muster a confidence he didn’t feel. He shrugged.

“Because of you?” he asked. “You did do this?”

She considered a moment, glanced away, and then glanced back. He took the moment to shift his weight, working to position himself for the shove that would careen the table into her.

She shrugged, still cool. “By an accident of kindness, in truth. I knew you were stealing from him, and that the rods were hurting him. I didn’t make the connection until I got outside and saw the blue sky.”

She glanced away again, frowned a bit, then looked back. He wasn’t stupid enough to turn his head to look. He took advantage of the moment to shift his footing a bit more. One more glance away, and he would have her. He tensed, readying for the shove that would take her down. Her eyes steadied on him, and he saw her lips moving, working a spell. She made a twisting motion with her thumb and forefinger.

He braced himself for the shove.

He heard a click behind him.

“I think your creature wants a word with you.”

Triana pivoted on her heel and fled.

Haldeen turned. The Probe rose up from its haunches as its cage door opened. Haldeen looked frantically around for the control rod. The creature came out of the cage. He stepped back against the table, using his hand to hold himself up and favor his injured leg.

“Stop,” he commanded, pulling all his authority into the single command.

The Probe halted. It stood completely still for several moments, then turned its gray, scaled head towards him. It regarded him with its oversize, coal black eyes. It had no pupils and its gaze gave him the feeling of being prey before a serpent. It stood frozen, with only its head turned towards him.

He held its gaze, holding it by virtue of the command in his voice. It had followed his commands, been subject to the will of his voice, but always with the control rod in his hand. The spells that connected the control rod to the ones implanted in its brain … miniatures to those used to control the Sources, but identical in principle, held it in check, and restricted its behavior. Haldeen had never tried … been foolish enough to try … holding it with just his voice.

He felt his heart hammering in his chest. He knew he stood on very thin ice, and it would take little for it to crack. He held its eyes, worried that his tenuous hold would break the moment he looked away. He normally kept the control rod on his work-table, but on his return … he didn’t recall where he had set it.

The creature’s shoulders tensed, and it raised one hand, and looked downward, studying it. Haldeen risked a glance around, and saw the control rod. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. It was further than he could easily reach with his injured leg, but perhaps slow movements ….

In the end, it was the rolling table that betrayed him. A spasm in his leg caused him to lean more heavily on it, and it shifted. He stumbled and nearly fell. The Probe’s head snapped up and it tensed. It took a step towards him.

“Stop!” he commanded. It took another step, tentatively, then a third more firmly as the chastisement didn’t come. Haldeen swore. His tenuous control had failed.

He launched himself towards the control rod, already aware he would never make it. He made only a few halting steps before it was upon him, a predator and its prey.

Haldeen felt an iron grip on his upper arm, followed by a lot of pain. Then, nothing.

Triana sprinted back up the hallway, running as fast as she could to get away from that Thing. It simply terrified her, and letting it go had seemed a good idea at the time, but she remembered its scaly feel and immense strength, and wanted no part of a rematch.

She had talked Haldeen up, buying time to try and figure out how to get past him, and he had chatted her up while he worked out his plans, so that had been less of a conversation than stringing each other along. She worked the lockpick spell for one reason only … she hadn’t come up with any better ideas.

Now the damned thing was out, and she wanted as far away from it as she could get. She made it to the bottom set of stairs and scrambled up, taking them two at a time. She remembered the hallway, and where it joined the passage to the surface. She sprang up those stairs, and stumbled over a dead elf in the doorway … the same one she had snuck through all those nights before, when she had been searching Haldeen’s Tower office. She went to one knee, scaping her palms, before she rose. She stepped through the door and looked into the courtyard.

It looked like an abattoir. Haldeen’s Tower leaned drunkenly to one side, knocked off center, and shedding pieces of debris down onto the courtyard. The sounds of battle echoed down into the court from the walls above, the scream, shouts, and clashing weapons signaling the city’s desperate plight. Across the courtyard servants gathered, a huddle of terrified males and females, some holding each other and weeping. One woman held her daughter, who looked to be one of the younger servants, pressing the girl’s face into her shoulder so she wouldn’t see. The dead had first been placed in orderly rows, then haphazardly, then dumped with no thought as the situation deteriorated. A vast creature the approximate shape of a beetle lay partially disarticulated in the middle of the burned courtyard, while elves retrieved the dead that surrounded it.

Triana slumped down by the door, her knees tucked up as she looked at the carnage. Her words to Haldeen came rebounding back. This might have been set up by his people, their actions, their shortsightedness … but right, wrong, or indifferent … she had set this in motion.

She looked at the two women, the older sheltering the younger. Those two would die today because of her. They might have died anyway, and soon, but for it to happen here and now … it was because of decisions she made. She broke down then, and wept … anger, regret, and a terrible sense of loss for everyone whose only crime had been to live in this city. She wept for her own wrongs, those she had hurt, and her own choices … there wasn’t a copper bit’s worth of difference between her and Haldeen and those like him who enslaved because they could, and rationalized it away as needful or right.

She looked up through teary eyes as a shadow swept over the wall. A thing with far too many legs hove into sight. It looked a bit like a cross between a tree and herd-beast, though no ruminant sported vines that launched out like whips. She saw one whip pierce a servant who tried to run. The creature began to lay about it with barbed lashes. Death had come again to the courtyard, and this time, the guards could not hold.