She no longer bore stormform. She’d changed to … was this nimbleform? Her clothing felt large on her, and her body no longer bore its impressive musculature. She attuned the rhythms, and found they were still the new ones—the violent, angry rhythms that came with forms of power.
This wasn’t nimbleform, but it also wasn’t anything she recognized. She had breasts—though they were small, as with most forms outside of mateform—and long hairstrands. She turned about to see if the others were the same.
Demid stood nearby, and though his clothing was in tatters, his well-muscled body wasn’t scored. He stood tall—far taller than her—with a broad chest and powerful stance. He seemed more like a statue than a listener. He flexed, eyes glowing red, and his body pulsed with a dark violet power—a glow that somehow evoked both light and darkness at once. It retreated, but Demid seemed pleased by his ability to invoke it.
What form was that? So majestic, with ridges of carapace poking through his skin along the arms and at the corners of the face. “Demid?” she asked.
He turned toward Melu, who strode up in a similar form and said something in a language Venli didn’t recognize. The rhythms were there though, and this was to Derision.
“Demid?” Venli asked again. “How do you feel? What happened?”
He spoke again in that strange language, and his next words seemed to blur in her mind, somehow shifting until she understood them. “… Odium rides the very winds, like the enemy once did. Incredible. Aharat, is that you?”
“Yes,” Melu said. “This … this feels … good.”
“Feel,” Demid said. “It feels.” He took a long, deep breath. “It feels.”
Had they gone mad?
Nearby, Mrun pulled himself past a large boulder, which had not been there before. With horror, Venli realized that she could see a broken arm underneath it, blood leaking out. In direct defiance of Ulim’s promise of safety, one of them had been crushed.
Though Mrun had been blessed with a tall, imperious form like the others, he stumbled as he stepped away from the boulder. He grabbed the stone, then fell to his knees. His body coursing with that dark violet light, he groaned, muttering gibberish. Altoki approached from the other direction, standing low, teeth bared, her steps like those of a predator. When she drew closer, Venli could hear her whispering between bared teeth. “High sky. Dead winds. Blood rain.”
“Demid,” Venli said to Destruction. “Something has gone wrong. Sit down, wait. I will find the spren.”
Demid looked at her. “You knew this corpse?”
“This corpse? Demid, why—”
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no!” Ulim coursed across the ground to her. “You— You aren’t— Oh, bad, bad.”
“Ulim!” Venli demanded, attuning Derision and gesturing at Demid. “Something is wrong with my companions. What have you brought upon us?”
“Don’t talk to them, Venli!” Ulim said, forming into the shape of a little man. “Don’t point at them!”
Nearby, Demid was pooling dark violet power in his hand somehow, studying her and Ulim. “It is you,” he said to Ulim. “The Envoy. You have my respect for your work, spren.”
Ulim bowed to Demid. “Please, grand of the Fused, see passion and forgive this child.”
“You should explain to her,” Demid said, “so she does not … aggravate me.”
Venli frowned. “What is—”
“Come with me,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground. Concerned, overwhelmed by her experience, Venli attuned Agony and followed. Behind, Demid and the others were gathering.
Ulim formed as a person again before her. “You’re lucky. He could have destroyed you.”
“Demid would never do that.”
“Unfortunately for you, your once-mate is gone. That’s Hariel—and he has one of the worst tempers of all the Fused.”
“Hariel? What do you mean by…” She trailed off as the others spoke softly to Demid. They stood so tall, so haughty, and their mannerisms—all wrong.
Each new form changed a listener, down to their ways of thinking, even their temperament. Despite that, you were always you. Even stormform hadn’t changed her into someone else. Perhaps … she had become less empathetic, more aggressive. But she’d still been herself.
This was different. Demid didn’t stand like her once-mate, or speak like him.
“No…” she whispered. “You said we were opening ourselves up to a new spren, a new form!”
“I said,” Ulim hissed, “that you were opening yourselves up. I didn’t say what would enter. Look, your gods need bodies. It’s like this every Return. You should be flattered.”
“Flattered to be killed?”
“Yeah, for the good of the race,” Ulim said. “Those are the Fused: ancient souls reborn. What you have, apparently, is just another form of power. A bond with a lesser Voidspren, which puts you above common listeners—who have normal forms—but a step below the Fused. A big step.”
She nodded, then started to walk back toward the group.
“Wait,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground before her. “What are you doing? What is wrong with you?”
“I’m going to send that soul out,” she said. “Bring Demid back. He needs to know the consequences before he can choose such a drastic—”
“Back?” Ulim said. “Back? He’s dead. As you should be. This is bad. What did you do? Resist, like that sister of yours?”
“Out of my way.”
“He’ll kill you. I warned of his temper—”
“Envoy,” Demid said to Destruction, turning toward them. It wasn’t his voice.
She attuned Agony. It wasn’t his voice.
“Let her pass,” the thing with Demid’s body said. “I will speak with her.”
Ulim sighed. “Bother.”
“You speak like a human, spren,” Demid said. “Your service here was grand, but you use their ways, their language. I find that displeasing.”
Ulim rippled away across the stones. Venli stepped up to the group of Fused. Two still had trouble moving. They lurched, stumbled, fell to their knees. A different two wore smiles, twisted and wrong.
The listener gods were not completely sane.
“I regret the death of your friend, good servant,” Demid said with a deep voice, fully in sync with the Rhythm of Command. “Though you are the children of traitors, your war here is to be commended. You faced our hereditary enemies and gave no quarter, even when doomed.”
“Please,” Venli said. “He was precious to me. Can you return him?”
“He has passed into the blindness beyond,” Demid said. “Unlike the witless Voidspren you bonded—which resides in your gemheart—my soul cannot share its dwelling. Nothing, not Regrowth or act of Odium, can restore him now.”
He reached out and took Venli by the chin, lifting her face, inspecting it. “You were to bear a soul I have fought beside for thousands of years. She was turned away, and you were reserved. Odium has a purpose for you. Revel in that, and mourn not your friend’s passing. Odium will bring vengeance at long last to those we fight.”