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Sheol nodded. “We must risk it. Let loose your terror, Rox. Shatter these trees, and find the hiding place for us.”
Rox smiled. He shifted so that he stood with his feet wide apart, and tipped back his head. His grin widened, became more feral, then he spread his arms out wide, his fingers trembling slightly … and screamed.
Terror raged through the trees. Every nightmare possible, every fear imaginable, every horror that was ever conceived, flooded rampant through the crystal forest.
Far away, hidden at the edge of the crystal trees at the point where it joined the waterways, WolfStar cried out and sagged to the floor. His breath cramped in his chest, his eyes bulged, and his limbs trembled.
His hands convulsed, and tightened about the tiny, cold corpse he carried.
“No!” he whispered, and then gagged.
In yet a different part of the crystal forest, the Survivor leaned against a tree, and grinned. His brown eyes danced with merriment.
“Predictable,” he whispered. “But foolish. Very, very foolish.”
Terror raged through the crystal forest. It bounced and jangled through the trees — and then it reflected, reflected back toward its source a thousand times stronger than it had been born.
Straight back to the Demons and StarLaughter.
It hit them with unimaginable force.
Every one of them, StarLaughter included, fell to the crystal floor, bruising flesh and jarring joints, their mouths opening for screams that never came because of the sheer weight of the terror that consumed them.
The baby slid out of StarLaughter’s arms, rolling downhill until he slammed against a tree and lay still.
Completely still, his eyes wide open and blank, unaffected by the terror that assailed those who cared for him.
As quickly as the terror had hit the group, it dissipated. Rox had withdrawn his power in the extremity of his own fright, and once the source was shut off, so the terror dimmed until there were only faint shadows left to chase each other through the forest.
Mot was the first of the Demons to recover. He struggled to his feet, his pallid flesh quivering.
“I had always wondered how the Enemy had trapped Qeteb,” he said hoarsely. “Now I know. They must have used his own power against him. They must have reflected it back at him!”
Sheol bared her teeth, arched her neck, and then howled, letting the sound echo through the forest a full minute before she shut her mouth with a snap.
“Then, knowing, we are the stronger,” she said. “No-one can ever use that trap against us again. Come, rise, and we shall set off on foot to find our stolen treasure.”
StarLaughter came out her fugue with a start, and suddenly realised that her child was missing. She cried out, then spotted him some paces away. She scrambled over on her hands and knees, ripping the hem of her robe where it caught under one knee, and gathered him into her arms, crooning softly.
“Was he hurt?” Raspu asked.
StarLaughter shook her head. “He is well, see how well!”
The five Demons were now gathered about her in a circle. They stared down at the unmoving infant, then lifted their eyes and stared at each other.
And smiled.
The Survivor ran one hand back through his silvered hair.
Then he straightened his black leather jacket with a tug at its hem.
“Good,” he said. “Good girl.” He patted the tree affectionately. “That scared them! Now, we may as well let them have what they want, and let them leave. No use holding them up any more than we have already.”
The Survivor smiled slowly to himself. “But that was fun to watch.”
Then he tensed, his eyes on a far distant form moving stealthily from tree to tree. He caught a brief glimpse of golden wings, and coppery hair.
WolfStar!
Noah swore. He hoped the Enchanter wasn’t going to make a nuisance of himself.
He stilled, watching the distant form carefully. Noah suddenly realised that WolfStar had outlived his usefulness by many, many years.
“Something should have been done about you a long time ago,” he murmured.
Then suddenly Noah’s face blanched, and his right hand clutched at his chest, and he forgot all about WolfStar as the craft wreaked their deadly havoc within him.
In the end, it wasn’t the Demons that Noah had to fear at all.
Sheol stood talking quietly to Rox, making sure he hadn’t been harmed too greatly by the sudden reflection of his power, then turned and gestured to StarLaughter and the other Demons.
“Come. Let us waste no more time here than we must.”
She turned and walked deeper into the forest, her feet slipping and sliding on the treacherous floor.
After an instant’s hesitation, the others followed her.
They found the going difficult and nerve-wracking. Feet constantly slid out from underneath them, and their hips and knees were continually jarred and bruised by sudden heart-lurching tumbles.
StarLaughter, her arms so tightly wrapped about her unliving son that they sunk into his flesh, had to spread her wings in order to maintain even the semblance of balance.
But even that worked against her, because the feathers invariably got caught in low-slung branches. Sharp crystal twigs dug into her feathers until blood speckled the path behind her, and she was constantly being spun about as a wing was securely lodged between branches.
StarLaughter gritted her teeth against the pain, and struggled forward. Damn all the Stars into eternal darkness that she no longer had her power!
And why didn’t she? Hadn’t the Demons promised that her power would be returned to her when she came back through the Star Gate?
Raspu caught her thought and paused, leaning a hand against a tree trunk to maintain his balance.
The ground was now sloping alarmingly, and yet the slopes below showed more tangled crystal branches and golden leaves for as far as the eye could see.
As StarLaughter drew level, Raspu slipped an arm about her waist and drew her tight and hard against him.
StarLaughter, her breath momentarily jerked from her body, looked into his eyes in fright — and then relaxed, feeling the power and warmth of his body against hers.
“Be still, Queen of Heaven,” Raspu whispered, his breath warm against her cheek, his arm still warmer about her waist. “Power shall be yours, but you must wait a little longer for it. Once our own power has been strengthened by this Lake, then we will have some to share with you. A different power than what you once commanded, but still power.”
“Of course,” StarLaughter said, accepting. “The Star Dance is no more, is it?”
“No,” Raspu whispered, and leaned down to softly brush her lips with his. “No more.”
The Demons struggled lower and lower. No more tricks leapt out at them, but their tempers grew progressively shorter as they went deeper, until they lashed out as they stumbled, their arms and hands striking twigs and leaves from branches, leaving a scattering of crushed crystal and trampled leaves in their path.
“Where?” snapped Sheol.
“Where?” snarled Rox.
“What is wrong?” StarLaughter whispered, now walking close to Raspu.
“It must be here somewhere!” he said, then jerked to a halt. “Wait!”
“What?” Sheol asked, turning to look at him.
Raspu stilled, sending his awareness slinking out between the trees. There was something … something …
“Something is out there!” Mot said.
“What we are looking for?” StarLaughter asked, her eyes bright.
Raspu shook his head slowly.
“Something … else. Something … watches.”
Noah stilled in his efforts to get back to his craft. Pain still arced through his chest and arm, but it wasn’t as fierce as it had been previously.
Or maybe he was simply getting used to it.
He raised his head slightly and peered about. Could the Demons see him? Sense him somehow? He tried very hard not to even breathe. No doubt the pain they would visit on him should they catch him would be even worse than this he currently endured.
Noah remembered the horror that had been wreaked on his own world, the frightfulness of the campaign to trap Qeteb, and he shivered.
“Drago,” he mouthed soundlessly, and looked up through the crystal-clogged slopes rising above him. Drago!
And agony such as he could not have even imagined knifed through his body.
“It feels almost like the Enemy,” Sheol said, a deep frown twisting her face. “I remember how they felt, how they tasted. And this tastes so familiar.”
Rox shook his head. “It could not be. They were mortal, they could not still live.”
“But still,” Raspu said, and looked about. “Still … there is something out there.”
“But it is not a danger,” Mot said briskly. “Come.”
And he set off again.
The other Demons looked at each other, shrugged, and followed him, Raspu holding StarLaughter’s hand.
But still they kept their awareness sensing out about them.
They found what they where looking for eventually, when they were so tired and impatient that they were at the point of sinking their teeth into each other.
It sat before them, bubbling quietly.
“Warmth!” Sheol whispered, and sank to her bruised knees.
StarLaughter stood, staring, unable to believe that after so long, the first of the jewels of the Grail stood before them.
A large, spreading pool of blood in the very pit of the crystal forest, gently steaming and bubbling.
“Yes!” Raspu screamed … and then lunged at StarLaughter.
She pulled back instinctively, her arms tight about her son, but Raspu was far too quick and far too strong for her, and he yanked the baby from her arms.
“Yes!” he cried again, and tossed the baby towards the pool of blood.
The child arced through the air — and then fell, hitting the pool with a sickening heavy-wet splash.
Blood splattered out in a great circle where he had hit the pool, covering both the Demons and the nearest crystal trees.
StarLaughter cried out in horror, her hands to her face. Her child had gone! Disappeared!
“Wait,” Raspu said, his voice now calm. “Wait.”
Every one of the Demons was now still, tense.
Waiting.
Suddenly there was an agitation within the pool of blood, as if it were being stirred by an unseen hand, and then something floated to the surface.
A child.
But an infant no longer. A toddler of perhaps three or four. A boy, his hair thickened and clotted by the blood in which he floated, his eyes closed under gelatinous clumps of the stuff, his pale skin made rosy by the blood running off him.
“DragonStar!” StarLaughter cried, and waded into the pool.
She sank to her thighs almost immediately, but she struggled on, the blood rising up through her pale blue gown and soaking her breasts and wings. She lunged for the boy, missed, lunged again, and grabbed him by the hair, pulling him to her.
“DragonStar,” she whispered this time, and drew the boy to her, offering him her slimy, crimson breast.
The nipple plopped out of his unresponsive mouth, but there was a difference in him — and the difference was not only his size.
StarLaughter looked up to the Demons anxiously standing at the edge of the pool.
“He is warm,” she said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “He is warm!“
WolfStar watched from his hiding place twenty paces distant. He lay flat along the forest floor, his head raised only enough so that he could see through the transparent roots before him.
This was his first sight of the Demons — and of his wife, StarLaughter.
