The Silenced Tale, стр. 96

“Unbelievable,” Lucy groans.

“’S how I would have written it,” Elgar offers. “Best way to write yourself out of corners is to make something explo—”

A second blast rocks the room.

The crowd screams.

“Stop talking!” Lucy shouts, slapping her hand over Elgar’s mouth. “Oh my god, stop talking!”

“Get those people away from the walls,” Kintyre shouts over the building roar coming from outside the room. Foesmiter is already in his hands, and Elgar allows himself one moment, just one small one, to be dazzled by the vision of the Great Hero of Hain, his proudest creation, standing before him in all his battle-ready glory. Forsyth, clever enough to know when his brother’s orders are best followed and when they should be ignored, obeys.

Bevel and Kintyre make a dash for the main doors of the ballroom, waving off those few members of the security team who had taken it upon themselves to investigate. The civilians look relieved to be told to hang back.

“Can I keep this?” Lucy asks, gesturing with the ray-gun prop, and the cosplayer yelps an affirmative before another crescendoing roar sends her scrambling back to the knot of people in the middle of the room.

Because the roaring . . . the roaring is getting louder. Getting closer. It’s a continuous rumble punctuated by a thunderous screech, like a rusty pulley, and the leather flap of what sounds like enormous bat-wings. Overcome with curiosity, Elgar shakes out of Lucy’s grip and moves to stand just behind Bevel, to the side, where he’ll be shielded by the wall.

Kintyre and Bevel themselves open one door, and pause in the threshold. They don’t look stunned, per se, but they look . . . concerned.

“What on the Writer’s green backside is that?” Bevel asks, and Kintyre shrugs, fingers clenching and unclenching around his sword. Bevel slings his bow off his body and nocks an arrow. “In the eye, do you think?”

Kintyre nods. “Quick, before brother’s wife sees.”

Bevel smirks, sardonic and cheeky. “Pip’s soft-hearted, but I don’t think even she’d want to tangle with . . . whatever that is.”

“Manticore!” someone just behind them says, and Elgar glances back just long enough to realize it’s the shorter of the two men who had been playing the card game that had accidentally doused the lights earlier. Todd? Todd, right. “It has the ability to control other creatures.”

“Other creatures?” Kintyre echoes, and Todd points to the abandoned food court. Just past the massive lion with bat-wings and a scorpion’s tail is a parade of monsters working their menacing, slow-paced way across the overturned tables and chairs. One looks like a massive, half-rotted leaf on legs, with praying mantis arms.

“King Reaper,” Todd explains, pointing to that one. His finger shifts to a man-high, deep red saurian quadruped. “Kavu Predator.”

“Are such monsters common in the Overrealm?” Kintyre asks Todd.

“They’re not real,” Todd insists instead. “At least, they’re not supposed to be.”

“I suddenly miss Capplederry, like, a lot,” Lucy shouts, coming up behind Todd to see what everyone’s staring at. “What are you waiting for, Bev? Shoot ’em!”

Bevel and Kintyre exchange another knowing smirk, and Bevel lets fly.

The bolt strikes true, and the manticore howls, tail lashing, pawing at its head before it falls down sideways, dead. The King Reaper stops to inspect the corpse with what might have been eyes, or might have been spiders.

“Good lord,” Elgar says, and though he hasn’t been religious since he lost his Aunty Lilah, he crosses himself and steps back from the door.

“Let me try,” Lucy says, shoving to the front of the group. “I’d like to save your arrows if we can.”

She levels the ray-gun at the King Reaper and fires. The first bolt goes wide. Out of nowhere, the air crackles with a whiplash of gleeful laughter. It is unexpected, high and harsh, and Elgar can’t find the source.

Pip cringes and fires again, the noise grating, but it’s clear her hands are shaking in earnest now, and that bolt misses its target, too. The laughter, now piercing and echoing around the rafters of the hall, crescendos. The third shot hits the Reaper square in the chest, and then Pip stumbles backward as the monster crisps up and turns to leafy ash. She claps her hands to the side of her head and shouts: “Shut up, you mad asshole!”

Elgar’s guts clench as he realizes it’s not one of the creatures laughing.

“Clever toy,” Bevel says, and snatches the ray-gun from her hand. Good thing, too. It only takes him one shot to get used to the kickback, and then the Predator is keeled on its side, howling through a wound that’s eating through its flesh, then ribcage, then internal organs.

The air fills with the acrid, gorge-lifting tang of burnt flesh and curdling blood. Elgar jerks the collar of his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth.

Pip slaps her hands over her ears, eyes screwed shut. “Shut up,” she hisses, over and over again. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

It’s only then that Elgar realizes he recognizes the laughter. Poisonous and sticky, like venom and honey, it’s exactly how he’d written it to be. A shivering, sickly horror squirms up Elgar’s spine. He wraps his arms around himself, shuddering with the way the voice makes the very marrow of his bones resonate, like a humongous gong rung in the deepest canyon on Earth.

“I hesitate to say that that was easy, but—” Kintyre begins, and this time, it’s Elgar who stops him, placing his own palm over his creation’s mouth.

“No,” Elgar says hurriedly, ignoring the way his hand tingles. “No, don’t say that. Ever.”

Which is when, of course, three more flares of acid-green light spark into flames in the middle of the gaming floor.

“Oh. My new pets! Such a shame. No matter!” a voice booms across the echoing, empty cement box of the convention center. His voice. Elgar has only heard it once before, in the hospital, but he knows it intimately. He’s been hearing it in his own