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

  Darting down after Vyeran, Coralie staggered into the cellar. The house suddenly careened like a keel turning to face wind and waves. The room was nearly pitch dark. Bits of light issued down the stairs and through the windows, though dirt splashed and darkened them with each wave. Her eyes strained even to see her own feet. Ears struggled to listen past the lapping of earth and groaning floor beams. What were those? Circles of blood surrounded rats, which were somehow spiked into the ground.

  The old man struggled to his feet and backed against the wall, a shadow against the gray concrete. His eyes were the unfazed eyes of a soul who had marched with armies and enslaved worlds.

  As Coralie approached Vyeran, the old man backed away and huddled into a corner. Coralie was used to the pain—well, she could handle it—and she gave no sign that she, too, suffered from their proximity.

  The pain kept Vyeran at bay. With it, she could make him listen at least, if he could hear past the possession. “I protected you. She protected you,” she pointed up the stairs, “and you …” The image of Mythilli crumpling to the floor welled up in her mind.

  “They call themselves holy.” Vyeran scoffed, his voice strange, distorted somehow. “What lies they make for the man in the mirror.”

  Coralie struggled to make sense of the man’s accent. “The Severed got another one today. One of us.” She gestured between Vyeran and herself. “Killed her. Don't you get it? The Severed priests, they're hunting us, every last one. And we'll only be safe together.”

  Vyeran merely glared like a feral beast.

  “We make you a guest in our house, and you repay us with blood? End this entanglement at once.”

  “You take me from the great city of the last great people to this backwater heathen living through another Dark Age, and you think me uncivilized? How ironic”

  “You've worn my patience to threads. No more.” She closed the distance between herself and the old man, splashing ankle-deep through dirt, which flowed like water.

  “You do not know true power. The seer will find you all and kill you.” He spat at her. “Shom na me fey kuhra kan.” It was a curse in another tongue – “Blister your eyes and burn your toes.” But the words had grown too weak to bear any effect.

  Coralie pressed in closer. “I didn't skip downstairs to play babyminder. It ends now, or I will scour this evil from your bloody soul.”

  She pulled out the fragment of Evaegis and held it up, grinning. With this, she could win.

  The possessor shrank back as she neared. It seemed whoever had possessed him was even more affected by the pain than Vyeran himself. She leaned forward and touched the stone to the trembling figure. And Evaegis cast out the possessor.

  Vyeran blinked coming back to himself and then leapt for her throat.

  Coralie was ready, her fist pummeled into his face, but it was as if the man's skin was entangled with stone. The blow resounded through her bones, and her knuckles came away dripping with blood. But she’d noticed that Vyeran had completely frozen for an instant when his skin had hardened. That gave her an idea.

  They had left a chair for the old man against the wall to her left. It had fallen, but she turned and snatched it out of the flowing dirt. See what his stone skin would make of this. Under the rain of blows, Vyeran was frozen, unable to move, which also meant he couldn't breathe. He would fall unconscious before he even realized his mistake.

  Only he did something Coralie did not expect. Concrete effigies of rats swelled from the walls and swam across the room, surrounding her.

  Coralie cursed as concrete rats bit into her skin, tearing the fabric of her breeches and gouging at her legs. She kicked and scampered away, but she couldn't shake them.

  Suddenly, from the shadows, Quentorn arose behind the man, holding a spark rod. He slammed its prongs into a patch of blood just below Vyeran's ribs. The old man shriveled in pain, shrieking, and the concrete rats crumbled into the churning earth.

  Now the flowing dirt was knee-deep and rising fast. Quentorn propped Vyeran up with a hand hooked under his arm to keep him from breathing in the dirt. The torment on Quentorn’s face spoke volumes. Drackmoor pain was harder for him.

  Vyeran would still join their fold. Coralie just had to make him see reason.

  She grabbed the unconscious man's other arm. Fire and lightning seemed to pour through her veins, nearly causing her to stagger. They dragged him out of the flooding cellar to the main floor. Vyeran's eyes fluttered open, but his head still lulled back and forth. Quentorn dropped the man, and fell to his knees, trembling, near shock. It seemed he had reached his limit. Coralie felt drained herself.

  Somehow the front door was missing, only splinters clung to the hinges. Dirt flooded through the doorway with increasing force. The house was sinking. They would have to climb higher. Perhaps there she could get the man to release his entanglement. Now that she thought about it, the entanglement should have released when Vyeran lost consciousness. The thought troubled her. What was going on?

  Coralie heaved her burden up the stairs, then released him in a heap. Quentorn followed far behind and paced to the far side of the room where he collapsed, catching his breath.

  She stepped away from Vyeran, away from the pain. Her hands had nearly gone numb from the shock of it, though every nerve and fiber of her body still hummed with torment.

  Coralie felt pity for this man who thought her an enemy, most were softened by the pain, would accept her help to be rid of it, but Vyeran had been driven mad by it.

  She knelt beside Vyeran. “Looks like he has chaos sickness. Too much entropy, we have to draw it out.”

  A bit of glass slid by and she snatched it. Then, drove it into the back of her hand. Then she snatched a lock of Vyeran’s matted hair. With a single long stroke of the glass shard, she cut a piece free. She twirled the end of the hair in her blood.

  Looking up at Quentorn, Coralie pled. “You must entangle his entropy into me, let me drain some of it.”

  “What are you thinking!?” Quentorn roared.

  “He’s our brother drackmoor.”

  “Never entangle the living to the living.”

  “If I don’t he’ll die,” she said.

  “Try that and you’ll die with him.”

  Ignoring him, Coralie bent over Vyeran to paint a blood anchor onto his forehead.

  Then she handed the bloodied hair to Quentorn. “Please.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He sighed and then closed his eyes.

  The connection was instant. Chaos blared through her mind, mingling with the intense pain of her proximity, causing her to tremble. She held her breath as the entropy filled her mind.

  The madness of it tore her in so many directions, one instant it burned through her like fire, the next it tore at her thoughts, then her memories. She clutched to them with all her strength, but the pull only increased. Stop! End it now, some reasoning piece of her mind told her. No. I have to save him. That became her only thought. Save Vyeran. Instinctively she made a cage around the entropy, keeping it inside a mental bubble, held well away from her body and memories.

  Rage filled her so deeply. The more she sought to calm it the more it opposed her. The rolling of the house hardly seemed anything to the torrent inside her. She fought back tears, but that only forced them out.

  She stumbled back, she had never held entropy like this before. She found some cut off scraps from Mythilli’s half-made dress discarded nearby and wrapped one around her hand to staunch the blood as she struggled to hold the entropy in her mind, slowly working away at it with the order of her thoughts. It felt like trying to subdue a storm by waving a small fan against the wind.

  So this was what men felt when they used entanglement.

  She turned back to Vyeran as he stirred. His head rolled to the side to glare at her.

  “You’ve been brilliant.” Through gritted teeth, Coralie tried to sweeten her voice. “But I won’t fight you. Please, let’s talk.”

  He groaned as he reached up into his unkempt hair. It seemed his strength was returning quickly. The man pried a writhing creature from his tangled hair and tossed it at Coralie. She danced away as it landed at her feet, a krim spider the size of her fist.

  How had the man subdued such a creature enough to hide it in his hair? Or was it, too, possessed? She stamped her foot down on the thing. The old man groaned in pain, but the spider was unfazed. Frenzied, it leaped at her, burying its fangs into her calf. Venom lanced into her leg. She kicked, swatting frantically at the thing, but it wouldn't die. Every time she hit it the old man cried out.

  There was no way … but it had to be … The old man had entangled his life with the spider. Suicide. Then Vyeran never planned to make it out alive. He was after blood, her blood. Coralie had to get out of this house immediately.

  Vyeran leaped atop her, clawing at her throat. The culmination of the wounds from rats, the spider, and so many pain-blaring touches dragged her into blackness, but she fought to maintain control.

  Through her narrowing vision, a knife flashed amid the clutter on the floor beside her. She snatched it and stabbed the man in the side. The old man screamed and rolled away. Then Coralie slashed at the spider. Vyeran's shriek pierced the sky as his arm tumbled away and blood gushed out.

  Shocked, the knife slipped from Coralie's fingers as another violent wave rocked the house, sending everything sliding across the floor. She twisted, grabbing the spider where it couldn't bite her or use its legs. As the rush of the moment faded, she couldn't believe she held something so vile. Now Vyeran's life was in her hands.

  “Please, stop this Severed blighted madness,” Coralie pled.

  “No. I stop you from destroying all things.” Vyeran's voice broke as he stood, clutching a hand to his stump to staunch the bleeding.

  “You mad idiot! What can you do when you're dead? Please, see reason. You have one choice left, you can join us, or you can just as well burn in darkness with the Severed.”

  The old man stood amid the rolling of the floor, his expression resolved. “Nothing can make you stop me. I will bring you to a new world. Send you to burn in darkness!”

  The curse hung heavy in the air. Then Vyeran began to melt. Fire erupted from his liquescent flesh to consume the room. His body turned to burning pitch, boiling and spitting flames that clung to every surface they hit. Certainly, a single drop would burn to the bone if it struck her.

  Coralie dove behind the table that had tipped over in the endless rolling of the house. But now the tossing of the room sent the burning pitch rolling across the floor, leaving a thick trail of burning slime in its wake. Back and forth, it formed a wall of flames between her and the door.

  That was a new one. She had no idea how the man had pulled off such a stunt, entangling himself with burning pitch, but it had cost Vyeran his life. It may cost theirs if they didn't get out quickly. Burning pitch flailed and sought about like a living thing. Flames licked every surface, and smoke billowed. They had to get out of there.

  The pitching and rolling had shallowed, probably a sign they were sinking, but the waves hadn't stopped. Their charge was dead, but this entanglement still hadn't broken. How was such a thing possible?

  Quentorn lay dazed upon the floor. She shook him until he came around, and pulled him to his feet. The blistering heat was almost too much, and they were forced to crouch behind the table to shield themselves from the inferno.

  “Where's Mythilli?” Coralie panicked.

  “Already out there on a raft with Alstein,” he said rubbing his temples.

  “What raft?”

  “I kicked the door off its hinges. She's fine, drifting for shore.”

  So that was where the front door went; probably the reason the house was sinking too. They had to find another way out. Smoke siphoned out the window, but not fast enough. It was their only escape. Struggling to hold her breath, she rushed to the window. Her eyes stung from smoke. The air outside was fresh and she sucked in a deep breath.

  The house pitched, hard as a bucking horse. Coralie nearly fell outside, and glass sliced into her abdomen. She recoiled instinctively, but heat blasted her with such fury she spared no attention for her wounds.

  A tall wisle tree had fallen just outside the window.

  “Quentorn. There. See if you can reach that tree.”

  Coughing through the smoke, he nudged her aside, planted a foot on the sill, and leaped for it. Leaves rustled as he grasped at branches. Heat flared behind her, singeing the back of her tight, white blouse.

  She dove from the window, but her jump was short and branches whipped at her skin before she landed in the sea of dirt.

  Struggling to hold her head above the earth, she clawed her way to the branches. The roiling dirt ground against her skin. If she didn't get out of the rolling surge her skin would be sanded away. She grasped a branch and pulled herself up. It dipped dangerously low, but she managed to scramble up across the branch to the trunk. Using the limbs to steady herself, she stepped across the trunk and over the splintered roots onto solid land.

  She saw the raft now. The door floated and tossed upon the waves. Their fellow drackmoor, Alstein, had managed to awaken amid the chaos, and now braced Mythilli, to keep her limp body from sliding into the tumult of waves.

  “We can't leave it like this,” Coralie said. “How do we stop it?”

  “Maybe a secondary entanglement,” Quentorn mused. “Some kind of severing.”

  It seemed there was a current in the churning dirt, a mound formed where the dirt was tossed out by the waves. Before long the current had pushed Alstein and Mythilli to the edge. He crawled out onto the solid earth, and lifted Mythilli's body. Most of the little road to the house had been claimed by the earth waves.

  He carried her down the hill and toward the street, where a cart waited, unhitched. With care he set her in its bed. With nothing but his own power Alstein pushed the cart, seeking help for their wounded friend.

  Coralie collapsed against a wisle tree in exhaustion. Her skin felt burnt and sanded, shins throbbed from the bites of rat and spider, stomach and hand bled from the glass, ankles stung where the churning dirt had rubbed them raw, and the ends of her hair were curled from the heat. Not to mention the days of meditation it would take to work through even her mild form of chaos sickness, which now started to make her stomach churn with all the pent-up nausea of delayed seasickness. Carefully, she picked shards of glass from her shoes.

  Until fire destroyed the place she’d never realized how much of a home it had been.

  The hissing flames of Vyeran's life clung to the rooftop, amid the raging waves of his own entanglement. His final creations clashed in a doomed battle. Dirt crashed over the island of flames, spitting fire and sand into the sky, until the flames, in their death throws, finally dipped below the waves of earth and vanished, cold and silent.

  She had killed another one—a precious drackmoor, scarcer than a red moon. Yet, this glorious man had blinked out like a supernova, leaving a light that would never be forgotten and a darkness that could never be filled. Tears came unbidden. It never got any easier, watching someone die, someone she needed so desperately.

  She couldn't do this with so few. Without Vyeran how much longer could they hold out against the Severed priests, or against Barthum and all the black forces arrayed against them, seeking to cull the drackmoor from all worlds? For without drackmoor, the worlds would shrivel like grapes severed from the vine, and all things would fade into into Barthum’s black void.

  Her heart felt raw, broken. The drackmoor pain was gone, but drackmoor pain was nothing against this, the torment of the soul that would not end.

  She steeled herself against the agony that would not be soothed. She wouldn't be so easy on the next drackmoor; she couldn't afford to be. They would suffer infinite torment until they came to her side or until the closing of all Ages. One thing was certain, she would never fail again.

  No, you must respect people’s choices, even the bad ones. Evaegis whispered into her mind. If we can’t choose for ourselves, we are merely slaves. Persuade, teach, lead, aid, and earn their respect, certainly. But if you force souls, you are no better than the Severed.

  Can’t you see your folly even after this disaster? I warned you of how the Severed would possess you and turn your desires against you. Don’t you see now? There was more than one possessed soul in that house.

  And Coralie wept at the truth of those words and her utter failure.