Iorrjaer

Chapter 37

Yophiel sat in shock and horror. The image of Alan's face connected to that hideous form stayed in her mind and despite her efforts to break her mind away from those images. His face stayed before her eyes, and she could not bring any other thought to her mind. She tried to think of anything else; her Paladin-hood, the face blocked it. Victor and Granna, the face detoured it. The ziggurat, the face disintegrated it. Alan's eyes were locked on, horrendously fixated on her and she started to feel that the longer she stayed removed from them, the more she was drawn to meet them. She resisted, every fiber of her being shouted that meeting those extraordinarily eerie eyes would be her doom, yet she could no longer fight the urge. They were calling to her.

Sorâth and Malka returned to the scene, just in time to see Yophiel's face fall into despair and to see Häsmæl reach down to the dead body at his feet and rummage around. He stood and held a hideous looking worm in his hand. The worm was surprisingly large and fit within Häsmæl's hand. It looked a lot like a maggot of a beetle - a larva that instead of transforming itself into its final stage, transformed whomever hosted it. Malka was fascinated by the size and also the complexity of the magic that surrounded it. And just as he was starting to get a feel for its magic, Häsmæl crushed it. Malka felt its magic dissipate and felt a strange echo throughout the air.

His rainbow hair briefly dulled before it returned to its normal vibrancy but there was no mistaking it: killing the larva had an effect on the magic that surrounded them. The air shook again as Häsmæl returned to Krasson's head and crushed it under his foot. Sorâth continued to watch as the orc rummaged around again until he stood with a second larva and held it close to his eyes to inspect it. Satisfied that they were both sufficiently dead, Häsmæl ate them.

Malka made a confused sigh.

"Power," Sorâth deduced. "Bërrdiwüt, it would seem, takes up an incredible amount of energy for him to maintain."

"Hmm," Malka pondered. He noticed something else, Yophiel. She was catatonic. "Yophiel?"

Sorâth tossed chairs that blocked him from her aside like they were paper. He knelt down and found her staring blankly at the ground, like she was still taking in the scene. Internally, she was struggling to make sense of what she had just witnessed. It defied all of her preconceived notions. Notions of the world and of Häsmæl. She had been so sure of his uselessness that she had blinded herself from acknowledging the truth: Häsmæl was Jörcnir. Not Sorâth.

Had they lied to her? No. She had come to the conclusions on her own and they just did not refute them. Her mind reeled and roiled with thoughts and accusations but all melted away when she admitted that she had been the center of everything that she had created. All of the problems and all of the blame, were nothing more than her own fantasies.

Just as she was having these realizations, and being on the cusp of acceptance, Häsmæl destroyed the larvae of Alan and Krasson.

Her mind seared in pain. A pain that shot through her mind and body as her larva reacted to its kin being murdered. Her mouth was open as if to scream, but no sound escaped and she was sitting straight, looking towards the sky. Malka tried a few spells but they broke before he could complete them. Sorâth tried to put a hand on her shoulder but there was a strange energy building around her that repelled his hand.

Häsmæl basked in his victory. His mark pulsed gently and steadily, and he felt its power coursing through him. He knew that he had more control now, he felt the power from his mark stabilize, he was in control of it now. Thell Tyradur, really had been an initial taste of the power that resided in him and he had let it control him. Now he had control of his power.

He turned to see Sorâth and Malka with Yophiel. He recognized that her stature was a reaction to his extermination of two larvae and he recognized that her larva was now reacting. Probably calling for help. He made his way over to her and placed his hand on top of her head without pretense. It was so much larger than her that he had to be careful for the weight of it alone could injure her. He put a little pressure on her head and felt her larva react violently.