Chapter 8

The room was large and rectangular in shape, with walls formed from obsidian and polished to mirror smoothness. Centering the wall opposite the door was a large hearth, now burning brightly, the light reflecting off the walls in a flickering glow, and the floor was covered by a huge red carpet, and a trail of discarded clothing lay strewn across from the door, and all the way to the large double bed, which was shaking vehemently. Moans, slowly increasing in tempo, reverberated in a rhythm from the polished walls, and would surely have been audible to the gihox guards posted outside, had not a trick of kairu been used to keep the sounds contained to this one chamber.

Zane grasped the headboard of the bed with both arms, Malice desperately urging him on with her heels. She had teleported into the town he and his gihox army had overrun, and teleported him back to the fortress, claiming a most urgent business. But when he had arrived, he had discovered that the important business was of an entirely different sort than what he had expected. Not that he was complaining, for he and Malice had not made love since before the beginning of the march. They had both been getting desperately randy as a result, and were now being quite energetic.

Zane glanced down at Malice and could see from her expression that she was nearly there. Her moans became choked off, becoming a quivering groan, and he felt her muscles contract. A funny expression found its way onto her face, and then she seemed to relax, settling back into the mattress. Her face was contented as she patiently waited for him to finish up.

Zane rolled off Malice and onto his back a short while later, thoroughly spent. He draped an arm across her shoulders and pulled her tight, lamenting that he would have to return to the gihox camp soon.

Malice suddenly tensed beside him, and he noticed that she was clutching her chest, a look of the purest agony splayed across her face. Zane sat bolt upright as the truth of what was happening registered fully. He threw back the comforter and rolled to his knees, flexing his arms as he went over in his mind what he needed to do. But as he was about to give her first aid, the tension seemed to flow out of her, though it seemed to take hours. She looked up at him, her face glistening with sweat, her breathing ragged.

''Are you alright?'' Zane asked.

''I'll be fine,'' Malice replied hoarsely.

''That looked like a heart attack.''

''I've been meaning to tell you,'' Malice said. ''I had an incident like this some time ago, just after our armies began their march. I've been searching for some imperfection that could cause it, but so far I've found nothing that could explain this.'' Her face became really tight, and anger flashed behind her eyes. ''As you know, I have the Cataclysm Stone in my possession, as it was shown to me in a vision right after that first incident. I think I can somehow use it in order to cure whatever ailment has me in its grip.''

''This ailment,'' Zane began, ''could it be caused by psychic fracture, the attack that split you and Maya into two separate entities?''

Malice stared at Zane, eyes wide as though she had not expected this kind of deep thinking from him. She smiled and patted him on the cheek, then rolled to her feet and walked over to the shelf where she kept her kairu tomes. She pulled a book from the shelf, then sat on the edge of the bed.

Malice found the page where the attack she had used was described in great detail, then started to read. Zane glanced over her shoulder at the text, but it was written in the ancient language of kairu, and he could not make any sense of it. The minutes slipped past slowly, but eventually there came a change over her face. With a snarl, she hurled the book across the room, missing the fireplace by inches. ''But I killed her already,'' Malice roared, springing to her feet and pacing furiously about the room.

''What is it?'' Zane asked.

''It is said that as long as me and Maya remain apart, our bodies will be unstable, and will eventually stop functioning. There are two ways to prevent this, the first being for me and Maya to merge into a single corporeal body again, via psychic fracture.'' Malice spat into the fireplace as she passed by. ''The other way is for one of us to die, at which point the corpse would dissolve into energy, and be absorbed by the survivor. Then we would be complete and stable again. But I already killed Maya, and I certainly did not absorb any form of energy afterwards.''

''Then the book must be wrong.''

''Perhaps,'' Malice said, knuckling her brow and taking deep breaths to try and calm herself, though with somewhat limited success. ''I'll have to find a way to use the stone to counter the effects of this ailment. I would rather not be remembered as the conqueror whose ambitions were foiled because she died of a heart attack.''

''I can help you,'' Zane offered.

''My beloved,'' Malice said with a forced smile. ''Your place is with the army, for without you as a constant reminder of our power, the gihox might stop fearing us. And if they don't fear us, they might very well turn against us. Karbraxis will not betray me, for he knows that if he does, then I'll roast the flesh from his bones. But I do not trust our other soldiers further than Fanarloki could throw them.''

Zane nodded, the logic irrefutable.

xxxxx

Malice reappeared in her room a short while later, after having teleported Zane back to the gihox encampment. She walked over to a safe and dialed in the correct pass code, then retrieved from it the light bluish orb that was the Cataclysm Stone. She handled it for a few long moments, marveling that this smooth rock was a piece of debris from the planet of Nevrod, which Lokar had destroyed all those years ago. She laid the stone on the floor and sat down cross-legged before it.

Her eyes started to glow a furious purple, and she channeled her inner kairu into the stone, and the ice coating it melted away, forming a puddle around it. No sooner had the ice melted when the dark spirit felt the stone activate. She could feel the tug at her inner kairu as the stone tried to suck it out of her. Malice stroked her chin as she pondered how she might use the stone in order to defeat her ailment. Could it be that if she absorbed a great enough amount kairu from the stone, she could defeat her ailment?

Malice closed her eyes, falling deep within herself and achieving that state of perfect calm and the deepest meditation. Then she did something she had never attempted before, detaching a small piece of her spirit and sending it into the stone, much as Lokar had done when he had created the shadow kairu. Using that piece of her spirit, she wrought changes in the stone, making it so it would only drain the energy from the land around her, and not from herself or her gihox minions.

Malice came out of her trance, even as the landscape around the fortress started to wilt and die, becoming gray and dark.

To be continued...