[Third Era – Year 759 of the Divinity War; Kapurn, woods south of the command palaces]

  “Ever weather a storm at sea?” Quentorn asked.

  It couldn't be. Their house spied over most of the town from its vantage point, nestled in the side of a hill, though mostly sheltered by a wisle grove. If only she could see outside. Across the room, the window shivered and burst, littering the floor with a myriad of razor slivers. The room rolled side to side, never stopping. Coralie could see herself losing her footing and falling upon the broken shards. The door downstairs would be safer.

  Her rolled-up training mat tumbled across the hallway near where she had propped it earlier that morning. Stairs protested as she stumbled downward, clutching the polished wooden banister. Fallen lamps, shattered crystal vases, and overturned furniture littered the floor amid other unidentifiable debris. She tripped over a few logs which had toppled from the hearth. Glass crunched underfoot as she crossed the room, and stutter-stepped over assorted hazards.

  Reaching the door, she wrenched the knob. It jammed for a moment before flying open. She stumbled backward but kept the knob in hand and caught herself before she landed on her backside.

  The sight that met her was stranger than she could have imagined. It was definitely no earthquake, rather some sort of entanglement—a transmutation to be exact. The ground around the house rolled and crested, as violent as the waves of a storm-tossed sea. Short-cropped grass rode atop the waves, though in places the mesh of roots tore, exposing ever-widening patches of churning dirt. The waves died out not a hundred feet from the house, just before the treeline. However, one of the towering wisles leaned precariously toward the house, though some of its roots still clung to solid earth.

  Swatches of the town were visible through the trees. The houses in the neighborhood below may as well have been anchored in bedrock; they did not move nor groan. Three musicians strummed and sang as they strolled along the street, followed by women and children, clapping and dancing, oblivious to the tempest of earth on the hill above them. Everything was normal outside the island of waves, which had turned their house into a boat.

  The minstrels and dancers almost made her smile. It was the only painkiller that worked for drackmoor pain. Memories, motions, dances flitted through her mind but blew away like ashes in the wind.

  Coralie stepped outside and sank waist-deep into the earth before grabbing onto the door frame to pull herself back. There was no way out, not through that.

  “Old what's-his-name,” Coralie said in sudden realization. “He's done something, entangled the earth with water.”

  Quentorn had followed her downstairs. “Vyeran? But how? I only gave him a glass. Not enough for a millionth of this.”

  “Bit of a problem, that.” No one could have done this with a single glass of water, it would take an ocean, and a stormy one at that.

  For now, the drackmoor pain was like the tolling of a nearby death nell, ringing, ringing, endless and droning. It was rather like a siege, none of them could hold out forever, but who would be the first to break?

  A bit of flowing dirt splashed over her shoes. This was the strangest situation she had been in in quite a few months. “Are all drackmoor too clever for their own good?” Coralie wondered aloud.

  “Some have given us a few surprises.” Quentorn steadied himself against the mantle. “Gave you my share when you found me.”

  “You weren't the worst.” Coralie staggered toward the cellar door. “Where's Mythilli? It's her shift for watch.”

  “You don't honestly intend to go down there do you?” Quentorn almost hid behind her, a grown man. “My head's pounding from here.”

  “What are you on about?” Coralie asked. “Can't handle a bit of pain?” But the rolling waves that traveled nauseously up her throat weren't helping her either.

  She had almost reached the cellar door when the tilting earth sent her tumbling back on her rump. “This Severed blighted fool is almost as bad as that woodland fellow.”

  “Now there was one full of fire and wit,” Quentorn said, offering a hand. “Still, I suppose that stubborn streak is why he is decorating a wooden box for the worms.”

  She snorted. “Decorating what?”

  “Before you go down there let me see if I can wake Alstein.” Quentorn was halfway up the stairs already.

  The drackmoor were the key, she was desperate to gain as many drackmoor allies as she could muster. It was her only chance to save the worlds from the rising storm. Drackmoor were rare and precious. And the man, Vyeran, was one of the strongest she had ever met.

  Drackmoor were hard enough to find that she'd had to scour a dozen galaxies to gather these. She'd found the professor in Taengoo, Alstein in Jenvail, and Mythilli had come with her from the Sirithae. There were others of course, but with these, she had formed a family of sorts.

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  An abrupt shriek split the air, Mythilli's, despair thick in her screams.

  Mythilli burst through the cellar door and slammed it behind her, bracing it shut. Blood covered her side, soaking through her tattered teal and silver garb which wrapped around her and over one of her shoulders. Her petticoat was shredded. Only the matching blouse was left to cover her skin.

  Coralie rushed to her side.

  “I am well,” Mythilli said, holding up a hand.

  Coralie almost felt relieved, but Mythilli still clutched her bleeding side. “What has he done?”

  Before Mythilli could answer, Quentorn raced down the upper stairs.

  “Did you get Alstein?” Coralie asked him.

  Quentorn looked up. “He wouldn't wake. Even threw him off the bed.”

  “Did you try the entangled communicator?”

  He began shaking his head, then stopped, clutching it sharply. The pain intensified. Vyeran was climbing the cellar stairs.

  Coralie swore as she pulled out a leather fold with an array of labeled pockets, each containing an object, picking the one labeled with Alstein’s other name—Tecurn. With two lives, drackmoor had more names than most. She pulled out the clip and pushed the two ends together.

  Tecurn’s voice answered. “What is going on? Did someone toss my other body? I felt—”

  “Listen, we need you here. Now.”

  “Okay, but I found a drackmoor girl, over in Hoforn.”

  She didn't recognize the place, but she could hear foreign chatter in the background. Unlike the rest of them, his lives were both here, in this universe. At least he had found a drackmoor girl.

  “Never mind that,” Coralie said. “Wake up, now.”

  “But listen—”

  “The house is sinking.”

  “She's dead,” he said over her.

  “Wait, what?” she asked.

  “Somehow they got to her first.”

  “Right. Blast it. Well, this one's alive still. And we need you here, now.”

  “I'm on the street. You want me to sleep against a building like a beggar?”

  “If you'd rather die …”

  “That bad?”

  Pain intensified like poison blistering her flesh on the inside. “He's coming. Now!” she yelled, and released the clip, tucking it back into its pocket.

  The door shuddered, bowed, and crunched. Though it held, mostly, splinters flew outward, and Mythilli's back arched unnaturally as she was blasted forward. This time she didn't scream but wheezed as she slumped to the floor, losing consciousness. Something jagged and bloody protruded from the small of her back.

  Though Coralie had covenanted to save her, her heart drove her to it faster. She had gone through too much to lose Mythilli, her little Dancing Spider. She needed every drackmoor she could get.

  Coralie struggled to staunch the rage that welled up inside. She would make Vyeran suffer for this. But she fought back the thought. She had to remain cool-headed. The old man could still be turned from madness.

  Nothing could be done about the wound until they stopped this mad entanglement or found a way out. It took all the strength of her fingers to grip her blood-slicked limbs and lift her friend onto her back. The limp body kept trying to slide off, but Coralie's grip was relentless.

  Quentorn's arms grasped and lifted her burden away.

  “I'll tend to Mythilli,” Quentorn said. “Alstein will help … if he ever wakes.”

  “Can you carry him if he doesn't?”

  He shrugged. Suddenly, he glanced at the breaking door. “The old man is yours. Good luck”

  Through a fist-sized hole in the door, a wild eye gazed at her before vanishing.

  The wood shuttered again, widening the peephole.

  She nodded to Quentorn, though he already had Mythilli on his back, carrying her away to safety.

  Coralie trembled. But she drew a slow breath, stoked her hip, and tried to unclench her muscles, steeling herself. If this man could best Mythilli, the Dancing Spider herself, he was powerful indeed.

  The door blasted outward in a spray of shattered wood. Cold mist clung to the icy shards and splinters that clattered all around her.

  Vyeran emerged, a shadow clothed in bright colors, his dark, wrinkled face a mask of determination. His loose clothing was patterned with yellow and green. Just visible beneath the shifting clothes, his skin was covered with symbols written in blood. It looked like he’d mapped the local space onto his very skin, some entanglement she guessed. The old man was obviously ready for them.

  Vyeran's feet were strangely steady amid the mad tossing of the house, and from him, she could feel a tremendous level of self-assurance, easily in the knight rank. He’d barely matched her at the rank of soldier last she’d checked. How had he gotten so powerful in so short a time? Anger crackled from his fingertips, and she knew. The Severed weren’t the only ones who could use anger, anyone could. But by the look in his eyes, she knew he was possessed.

  Coralie backed away toward the still-open door, preparing for battle. Unfortunately, the pitching and rolling of the house would interrupt her usual method of fighting. She would have no advantage against Vyeran. The old man had planned his escape well, and his possessor had given him the power to do it. Coralie reached for the swinging door to steady herself.

  Vyeran charged, not at the door, at her. It seemed he sought to push her out and drown her in the torrential earth. Dirt washed across the floor like water, spilling over Coralie's ankles. She leveraged all her weight to push the door closed. Drackmoor pain increased, doubling with every step Vyeran took toward her—pain like two opposing magnets between any and all drackmoor. Without looking, the torturous feeling acted as her eyes. It warned her to turn and brace herself just as the man plowed into her.

  Like drinking lightning, pain inundated every strand and cell of her body as Vyeran's skin came in contact with hers. The old man's shoulder felt rigid as it knocked the wind from her lungs. Yet if Coralie knew anything, she knew how to handle the torment, to fight with it, to use it. Right now it was her only weapon. Vyeran, on the other hand, recoiled from the pain of her touch. Self-assurance did nothing for pain.

  Coralie braced against the door and slammed her elbow into his face. With the drackmoor pain to amplify the blow, it would easily knock him unconscious. But the blow, and all the accompanying pain, rebounded like a hammer on stone. Shock reverberated through every nerve of her body. Was that an entanglement or just his borrowed self-assurance? She gripped the fabric of Vyeran's loose clothing and tried to choke it around his throat. However, the pain throbbing through Coralie's muscles weakened them, and he easily tore himself away.

  Coralie reared back against the wall and managed to kick him square in the chest just as the house pitched in her favor. That sent the old man rolling all the way back across the room and down the cellar stairs. He wouldn't recover from that easily.

  A moment later she heard Alstein shouting, “What is going on?”

  “Get Mythilli out,” she screamed up the stairs.