and stabbers. Slategrey and chitin-blue, with its scales rattling where it scurried like a scorpion towards the six accused, the creature's intentions seemed murderous.
'Vormulac!' Wratha bared her fangs, prepared to squeeze her bulb.
'Wait!' the Lord of Vormspire snarled at his warrior, and brought it clattering to a halt. And to Wratha: 'Lady, why do you delay matters? My warrior's not here to harm you, but to ensure that you do no more harm! He is your escort out of this place, into the shame and seclusion which you all deserve so well.'
Amazingly, she laughed. 'What? And do you banish us like wayward children, back to our spires and manses? No, I think not. For Olden Starside waits, and we would be the first to claim its aeries, and all the sprawling treasures of legendary Sunside.'
' "Would be", aye,' Vormulac answered her, grin for grin. 'Oh, I know your ambitions well enough. But your plans lie in ruins, Wratha, and that's the penalty you pay. For while we've kept you busy here, our most trusted lieutenants have commandeered your aerial warriors, or destroyed them in their vats. By now your forbidden creatures, and those of these dogs who run with you, are either dead or redirected. So, you would be first in Olden Starside, eh? Well, we say you'll be last!'
Again she laughed ... then crouched down snarling, and pointed her wand at Maglore. At that range there was no way she could squirt him, but still he cringed inside. And: 'You, mentalist,' she hissed. Thought-thief. Why, I've sensed your snooping for all of a ten-year. But you could only hear such thoughts as we chose to think! Aye, and so you've followed a false trail, Maglore of Runemanse.'
Now she pointed at Zindevar, saying: 'And you, blood-hag. Ah, I remember you! You were ever the jealous one, even from the first. Why, if not for Devetaki, who overruled you, you would have vetoed my ascension, then tried to take me for ... for your companion! How dared you ever imagine that I, Wratha, would make my bed with such as you? What? When there's ripe raw muck in the methane pits? And did you think I couldn't buy your spies, or offer them what you could not possibly give? Ah, but you've sent some pretty boys into Wrathspire, my Lady Cronesap! I thank you, for I had them all before sending them back again, but without the information you required. Or at best, with the wrong information!'
Now, while Zindevar fumed and sputtered, Wratha looked at Devetaki Skullguise, and saw that in her anger she wore no mask but had exposed the damaged half of her face down to the flensed bone. 'And you, Devetaki, who was my good friend,' she said, her voice low now and less spiteful. 'Indeed, I admired you greatly. But you've listened to my enemies, and so become one of them ...'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
She threw back her shoulders. 'Well, and you are all fools ... but none so great as you, Vormulac! What? Warriors waxing even now in secret caverns? But I tell you - they are waxed!'
And as for the third time she laughed, so Canker Canison lifted his muzzle and howled like a wolf. It was an eerie ululation, which passed out through the high windows and into the gulf of Turgosheim. And no less than Vormulac's whistle, it was also a call - which in a moment was answered!
But between times: 'Rush them!' Grigor the Lech shouted. 'What? And are we afraid of a stench? If the bitch uses her weapon, she and her pack are vulnerable no less than the rest of us! Vormulac, use your warrior to crush them!'
The Lords and Ladies took heart and surged forward again. Vormulac's creature, waiting for his command, sensed the tension and the fact that the six had been alienated; it clattered this way and that, watching them, undecided, with its stabbers and pincers at the ready. Wratha aimed her spray: at the skittering warrior -then at the Lords and Ladies - then back to the warrior. She was no longer in control, and her girl-shape was gradually giving way to monstrous metamorphism.
Finally ...
... Canker Canison laughed! He threw back his head and shook like a fox shedding fleas, and a weird new sound - in fact a very old sound, out of times immemorial - sounded in Vormspire. The throb and sputter of an aerial warrior's propulsive orifices!