Kayan. “Link up!” he said, but she was so preoccupied with slapping and tugging at herself that she didn’t hear him. He grabbed her arms. “Link up!” he shouted.
She struggled to break free of his grasp, and the look in her eyes was one of pure terror. Her face had twisted into a mask of agony, and her screams had dwindled for lack of breath to an almost constant moan of pain.
“What’s wrong?” Jedra asked. “Kayan, what’s the matter?”
“Agony beetles!” She writhed free of his grip and slapped at herself again.
“There’s nothing there.” Jedra grabbed her arms again. “Stop it. You’re hurting yourself.”
Another snarl from the lizard split the night. Link up, now, Jedra mindsent. He held Kayan tight against him, trying to establish the link on his own, but he couldn’t. Fight it! he sent. It isn’t real.
Kayan stopped struggling. Her body quivered exactly as if she were still being bitten, but a moment later Jedra felt the mindlink form.
It was like being dropped into liquid fire. Pain shot through every nerve in his body. If this was what Kayan had been feeling, then no wonder she’d screamed. It was hard to maintain the link while such agony coursed through him, but this was their only weapon. Even though their intellects weren’t completely melded this time, they were still more powerful than if they fought alone.
The creature’s doing this, Jedra thought. It’s gotten inside our minds somehow. He willed the pain to stop and felt it respond to his command. It didn’t go away completely, but it no longer filled his entire consciousness.
He and Kayan turned their attention to the lizard creature. It wasn’t a creature now; it was Kayan who stalked Kitarak, easily dodging his wild swings with the gythka. Kitarak flailed at empty air a few feet to her side, stabbing and slicing exactly as if something were there. Obviously he was having trouble distinguishing reality as well. Their psionic vision overlaid the starlit scene. In it, they saw the creature as a glowing knot of light, long colored ropes of it that stretched out to entwine around Kitarak and themselves.
Cut those, Jedra thought, imagining himself slicing through the light with his hands. The ropes flickered when he struck them, and the pain he and Kayan felt fled, then returned. The image of Kayan disappeared momentarily as well, but the tendrils of light reestablished themselves and the image and the agony returned. Forget this, Kayan said. Let’s just squash it flat. Jedra winced at the thought. He knew it wasn’t really Kayan out there, but all the same, he couldn’t bring himself to attack whatever it was that fought in her image. And since it was his telekinetic power that their union amplified, Kayan couldn’t initiate it herself.
Smash it! Kayan insisted, but he couldn’t do it.
The Kayan thing leaped toward Kitarak, and this time it grabbed Kitarak by his left leg. Kitarak screamed and stumbled to the ground, and for just a moment as the creature concentrated on its attack, the image flickered backed to reality. In that instant, Jedra struck with all the force he had, greatly augmented by Kayan’s presence. He imagined a huge hand swatting the lizard, crushing its body and blotting out its tendrils of light.
The ground shook. Thunder boomed, and the light flared bright, then died. The intense pain Jedra and Kayan had felt ceased instantly. Something else flared around Kitarak, though, a different kind of light. A halo of bright blue radiance surrounded him in a glistening cocoon.
Jedra and Kayan unlinked, and looking with their normal eyes they saw Kitarak getting slowly to his feet. There was no halo of light in the real scene; here the tohr-kreen’s body itself glowed blue. His light was strong enough to illuminate the ground a few yards around him, and by its glow they could see the crushed body of the lizard creature lying flat as a shadow at the bottom of a shallow depression of pulverized rock. Cracks radiated out from it in all directions, but where Kitarak stood they veered away, and the ground looked undisturbed in a tight circle around him. Kitarak himself looked healthy as well, except for the blue glow.
“Are you—are you all right?” Jedra asked him.
“It clawed me on the leg,” Kitarak said, limping slightly and using his gythka for support as he stepped toward them.
“No, I mean the light.”
Kitarak clicked his mandibles together. “Ah, yes, that.” He ducked his head. “It’s ah… it’s… I’m fine.”
“You’re glowing blue,”