mouth.
“Only hate endures.”
They slammed into the ground before Kesson completed his spell.
Agony exploded in Rivalen as bones shattered, as ribs spiked organs, but he smiled through the pain—until he realized that Kesson, despite the fall, despite the damage he must have suffered, had not lost the thread of his spell.
Black veins form on the surface of the Source, ooze forth from its orange flesh. Eventually their ends detach from the Source and hang loose below it. I reach up, take them in my hand. They are warm, pulsing. I scream as they burrow into the flesh of my hands and forearms, but the pain vanishes quickly.
The Source’s energy flows into me unadulterated and I scream with pleasure.
Cale and Riven watched the dragon bury men and giants under the mountain of its form. Furlinastis roared with pain. Cale presumed that the force of his impact had caused many of the weapons borne by the men and giants crushed beneath him to penetrate his scales. Shadows swirled around the dragon. Dirt and soil formed a hillock in front of him by the time his body came to stop.
Cale saw Regg shouting orders, ordering his men and women to realign. Shadows churned around the surviving giants as they too tried to regroup. The shadowwalkers appeared amongst the Lathanderians, clots of darkness amidst their light.
Furlinastis lurched to his feet. Corpses and weapons impressed into his body dangled from the scales of his chest and abdomen. Blood leaked from a score of wounds, poured around a giant’s sword that had been buried to its hilt in his chest. He extended his neck and roared his rage into the sky. He turned to face the giants. The Lathanderians rallied to either side of him.
“Where is Kesson Rel?” Riven said.
Before Cale could answer, a surge of unadulterated pleasure ran through him. He gasped, stopped, sought its source, found it in his mental connection with Magadon.
Mags? What happened? Where are you?
It is wonderful, Erevis, Magadon said, and his mental voice sounded as if it were floating. Power leaked into Cale’s brain, images, memories, knowledge.
Cale shook his head to clear it, cursed.
“What is it?” Riven asked.
“Mags is at the Source. He’s in Sakkors.”
“What? How?”
Cale shook his head, blinking as his eyes started to water, as the tone of Magadon’s mental impressions grew harsher. He grabbed his head in his hands, tried to hold it together.
Mags, get away from the Source. Don’t do it. Don’t.
When Magadon spoke again, his mental voice sounded deeper, harsh as a rasp. Don’t? You fear the power I hold. You are a liar and a betrayer.
Cale endured the mental storm in his brain and said to Riven, “We have to get to him. He’ll be lost.”
“He’s been lost a long time already,” Riven said.
Cale glared at the assasin. “He’s half a man. I’m not leaving him. If he were whole. …”
He winced as more and more mental energy poured into his mind. Magadon was awash in power and enough of it was leaking through their mental connection that it made the veins in Cale’s temple throb.
“He cannot be whole unless we kill Kesson,” Riven said. “That first, then we help Mags. Otherwise you, me, and everyone else here dies. Then Sembia. Then the rest. You know it, Cale. You saw Ephyras.”
Cale knew Riven was right, but he feared that Magadon, in his mentally wounded state, would be irretreivable if they didn’t get to him soon. Meanwhile, the emptiness within him beckoned, expanded, opened wider, ate at him. Riven must have been feeling the same thing. They had to kill Kesson Rel or die.
“There,” Riven said, and pointed across the plain, where they saw Rivalen and Kesson rise on shaky legs and face off.
Hang on, Mags.
The Source awakens fully, then awakens me fully. The hole in me is filled, the emptiness bridged. My mind is magnified. My power is amplified. Knowledge fills me. I swim in the warmth of the Source’s mind, my mind one with it, my will one with it.
But I am not content.
Rage burns like wildfire through my consciousness. It is born in the mind of the fiend and dwarfs everything else in my mindscape. Its fire consumes the weak barricades of conscience that try to stem its spread. What little of the man that remains in me flees before it. Bits of regret, guilt, love, leak out of the conflagration of my rage and flee my mind.
I am hate.
And I am power.
My mind reaches out into the world, senses the minds of