Worldbinder

A NEW WORLD

Fallion woke with a groan, only becoming conscious in slow increments. His eyes fluttered open, but the dust in the air was so thick that he soon had to close them.

Everywhere, the townspeople were screaming for help, and Jaz was shouting, “Fallion, there’s something wrong with Talon!”

Lying still for a second, Fallion tried to collect his strength. He felt half-dead. He was so feeble that he could hardly lift a hand. It was as if he had suffered an endless illness, and only now might be on the way to recovery though he felt as he might just as easily die.

“Fallion? Can you hear me?”

“Coming,” Fallion managed to say.

Fallion looked toward Jaz, could see his dim outline through a haze of dust as thick as any fog, crouching above Talon. Rocks had risen all around, a jumble of them.

Fallion felt so weak, he didn’t know if he could stand, so he summoned all of his strength and tried to crawl toward Talon on his hands and knees, but as he lifted his left hand, he found that a thick vine was latched to the meaty part of his palm.

He tried to pull away, but it hurt too much. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the vine wasn’t latched to his palm-it was growing through it. The trunk of the vine, about a quarter inch in diameter, ran cleanly through the meat of his palm and continued out the other side.

He peered at his palm for half an instant, trying to understand.

Two worlds combined, he realized. And upon those worlds, two living things had occupied the same space.

So a vine grew through him. But what was wrong with Talon?

Dread surged through him as he drew his dagger, hacked through the vine, pulled it out as if it were an arrow, and then clasped his hand and tried to staunch a raging flow of blood.

Talon was hurt, Jaz had said. What if she has a bush growing through her, or a tree?

Why did I even bring her? he wondered. He hadn’t needed her. She could have stayed home, found some boy to love. But she’d wanted an adventure.

He peered up, but the dust was too thick to make out Talon. His energy was coming a little better now. He climbed to his feet. The gritty dust got in his eyes, and he had to stagger, half-blind, toward Jaz.

By the time that he got there, Rhianna and Farion were circled around, both of them having crawled too, both swearing and uttering curses.

She’s dead, Fallion thought. Our little Talon is dead. He’d always thought of her as a sister, a fierce little sister, and he tried to imagine how he would break the news to Myrrima, their foster mother. Their foster father, Borenson, was a warrior, and he would take it stoutly, though it would break his heart. But Myrrima…she was too tender to bear such news.

As he got close, he rejoiced to see that she was breathing, her chest rising and falling.

“She’s out cold,” Jaz was telling the others.

Jaz looked up, moved back for Fallion to get a better view, and Fallion gasped.

Their Talon had changed. At first, he thought that it was only a matter of growth. Talon had always been a diminutive girl, combining her mother’s lithe body and her father’s strength. But she was diminutive no more.

“What do you think?” Jaz asked. “Seven feet tall? Maybe more?”

That looks about right, Fallion thought. And three across the shoulder. She looked as if she weighed a good three hundred pounds, all of it muscle.

Her face remained much the same, or, at least Fallion could still see Talon’s resemblance in it. But it stretched in an odd way. There were two strange humps above her brow, like those on a calf that is about to sprout horns, and her forehead seemed thickened, as if a bony plate had grown there. Her cheekbones were similarly armored. She groaned, opening her mouth as if to curse at some bad dream, revealing incisors that had become over-large.

“What happened?” Jaz asked.

Fallion suspected that he knew. Some other creature must have been standing where Talon was, on that shadow world, and the two of them had become one.