Page 173 of Stormvein
Creatures pour from hidden crevices. Their bodies—dear god, their bodies—catch the moonlight like fractured glass. Segmented and partially translucent, I can see organs pulsing beneath exoskeletons that shift between transparency and mirror-like reflection. Dark fluid pumps through visible veins. Six spindly limbs propel each one with uncanny, skittering speed that defies their size, while feathery antennae whip the air.
Most horrifying are the multiple mouths arranged in spiraling patterns along their undersides—wet, glisteningopenings that open and close with obscene hunger. Each one is lined with rings of needle-sharp teeth.
One descends on a thread directly above us, its body rotating as it lowers itself. I can see my own terrified reflection across its surface. A dozen versions of my wide eyes and pale skin distorted across facets of living crystal. It’s studying me. Assessing. This isn’t mindless hunger, it’s focused predation.
A fighter near the back loses control of his mount. The horse rears, whinnying in panic. The sound shatters the terrible tension.
Every glassback freezes for one heartbeat ... Then they attack.
The creature above me drops, landing on the haunches of my horse. The animal bucks in terror, throwing me from the saddle. I hit the ground hard, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs. Rolling onto my back, gasping, I’m just in time to see my horse bolt down the path with the glassback clinging to it.
The pass dissolves into a nightmare. Fighters draw weapons, but they’re outnumbered. A glassback rears up before me, its underside pulsing with sickly red light. Those tiny mouths open, giving me a direct view inside.
I try to scream but only manage a strangled gasp. The creature’s antennae reach toward me, quivering with what seems like anticipation. Something wet begins to seep from glands near its head—a clear fluid that hisses where it drips onto stone.
Silver light erupts from my fingers. The glassback pauses, its antennae waving frantically, sensing the change in me. In that moment of hesitation, shadows lance through its body.
Sacha, striking from somewhere behind me.
The creature’s exoskeleton cracks with a sound like breaking ice. Instead of blood, a luminescent red fluid leaks from the wounds, steaming in the cold air. The stench hits me —chemical and rotten, like decaying plants mixed with copper—and I gag.
“Stay down.” Sacha’s voice is tight with control. His shadows flow around me, forming a barrier as more glassbacks skitter down the walls.
I try to push myself up, but my arms are shaking too badly to support my weight. My breath comes in short, painful gasps. Energy pulses wildly beneath my skin, responding to my panic rather than any conscious direction.
A glassback lunges for Sacha. I throw out my hand automatically, and power surges through me, hot and electric in a chaotic burst that misses the creature entirely and strikes the pass wall instead. Rocks crack and tumble down, nearly crushing one of our fighters.
“Control it!” Sacha spins to dispatch the attacking glassback.
But control is beyond me. Every nerve ending feels raw, exposed. The silver light burns hotter with each thundering heartbeat. Something is building inside me, something I can’t contain.
A glassback leaps toward me, sailing through the air on gossamer threads that trail from its body. Its mouths are already opening in anticipation. Sacha is too far away. The other fighters are engaged in their own desperate battles. No one can reach me in time.
And then my terror transforms, becomes something else. Something with teeth and claws and purpose. The mist stalker erupts from nowhere, materializing between me and the glassback in a swirl of silver-tinged vapor that solidifies into muscle and bone and fury. Its form vibrates with barely concealed rage.Myrage,myfear, given physical form. Its jaws snap closed on the glassback’s midsection with bone-crushing force.
The connection slams into me, and then I’m not just seeing the mist stalker, Iamthe mist stalker. I’m experiencingeverything through its senses while still trapped in my own trembling body.
The glassback’s exoskeleton splinters between powerful jaws, jagged pieces piercing the soft tissue of our mouth, sending lances of pain shooting through us both. The creature’s ichor floods our throat, tasting of battery acid and rotting fruit and something so utterly alien I have no reference for it. It burns wherever it touches.
I gag, bile rising in my throat as the doubled sensations overwhelm me. My human body rejects what my familiar experiences, while the mist stalker embraces the pain as the necessary cost of survival.
The glassback thrashes, its limbs scrabbling against the mist stalker’s flanks, leaving shallow cuts that I feel as if they’re being carved into my own flesh. My familiar doesn’t seem to notice. It tightens its grip, shaking the creature violently until bones snap. The glassback’s body ruptures, spraying ichor in an arc that spatters across fighters and stone alike.
Where the fluid touches skin, it raises angry welts. A fighter cries out in pain, the sound immediately stifled as he remembers the need for silence.
Too late. The damage is done.
The clicking intensifies, echoing from all directions. The sound reverberates through the pass like a death knell. Above us, the silver threads begin to vibrate, transmitting our location to every glassback in the vicinity.
“The threads!” Sacha shouts, abandoning stealth now that we’ve been discovered. “They’re signaling the colony. Run!”
I follow his gaze to the web network stretched above us, now humming with activity. The sight sends another surge of terror through me. My body convulses as light pours out in uncontrolled waves. The mist stalker howls, the sound echoingmy internal scream. It tears through another glassback, its savagery matching my fear.
The sky rumbles as clouds gather overhead. Lightning crackles between my fingers. I can’t stop it, can’t evenslowit. My power feeds on my fear, growing stronger as my control fractures.
Sacha drops to his knees beside me, gripping my shoulders hard enough to bruise. His face, spattered with glowing ichor, fills my vision.
“Ellie!Focus!”
