| Chapter 7: Message to Revelstone |
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Yeurquin laughed with a ragged, nauseating sound. In gleeful savagery, he dropped Quirrel to the floor and stepped past her. "We meet at last," he rasped to Triock. "I have labored for this encounter. I think I will make you pay for that labor." "Yeurquin?" Staggering where he stood, Triock could see that the man should have been dead; the storm damage he had suffered was too great for anyone to survive. But some force animated him, some ferocity that relished his death kept him moving. He was an incarnated nightmare. The next moment, the Unfettered One mastered his shock, rushed forward. Wielding the lomillialor before him like a weapon, he cried horsely, "Turiya Raver! Tree foe! I know you--I have seen you. Melenkurion abatha! Leave this place. Your touch desecrates the very Earth." Yeurquin winced under the flick of the potent words. But they did not daunt him. "Better dead feet like mine than idiocy like yours," he smirked. "I think I will not leave this place until I have tasted your blood, Unfettered wastrel. You are so quick to give your life to nothing. Now you will give it to me." The One did not flinch. "I will give you nothing but the lomillialor test of truth. Even you have cause to fear that, turiya Raver. The High Wood will burn you to the core." "Fool!" the Raver laughed. "You have lived here so long that you have forgotten the meaning of power!" Fearlessly, he started toward the two men. Witha sharp cry, Triock threw off his stunned dismay. Sweeping his sword from its scabbard, he sprang at the Raver. Yeurquin knocked him effortlessly aside, sent him careening to smack his head against the wall. Then turiya closed with the Unfettered One. Pain slammed through Triock, flooded his mind with blood. Gelid agony shrieked in his chest where the Raver had struck him. But for one moment, he resisted unconsciousness, lurched to his feet. In torment, he saw turiya and the Unfettered One fighting back and forth, both grasping the High Wood. Then the Raver howled triumphantly. Bolts of sick, red-green power shot up through the Unfettered One's arms and shattered his chest. When Triock plunged into darkness, the Raver had already started to dismember his victim. |