«Ellysetta, nei! »

The man's hands closed around her wrists. His bare skin, wet and cold from the river, touched her own. Agony like nothing she'd ever felt poured into her, and she screamed.

The High Mage's lash bit into Shan's side just as something else bit into his soul. Bitter black agony screeched up the link between himself and the girl in Celieria, overwhelming all physical torture with something far, far worse.

Dahl'reisen. Soul lost. An emotional wasteland devoid of all but despair, pain, and the remnants of wrecked dreams. Once it had almost claimed Shan's soul, but Elfeya had saved him. Now it loomed again, pulling him in, an irresistible well of blackness.

Connected to him as she had been since the day of their bonding, Elfeya's shriek overlapped his, her fear and pain echoing and amplifying his own.

Rain plummeted out of the sky. He'd begun the Change back to man-form as he started his descent, but the sudden onslaught of pain wrenched away his control. His body melted helplessly into human form and he crashed to the ground, slamming down hard, feeling the jarring crack of bone as several ribs gave way. He let out a short cry, but the pain of his injury was nothing compared to what he felt through Ellysetta. The howling bitter emptiness of the soul-lost, the anger without focus, the dead dreams and grim despair.

Time and reality shifted in a dizzying rush, and suddenly he was a young, fierce Tairen Soul, winging over a battlefield, raining deadly tairen flame upon the enemy, battering their protective Mage-shields. The battle was fierce and bloody. Fey warriors fell by the hundreds, but so too did the enemy. A desperate call alerted him. To the south, a troop of vicious Merellian mercenaries, led by three shrouded Demon Princes, were decimating Celierian infantry and Elvish bowmen at an alarming rate. Rain dispatched twenty-five quintets to aid his embattled allies even as he swooped low to scorch a small knot of Mages. The Mages threw up a shield in time to avoid death and managed to hold it despite the punishing fire he rained down upon them. Hissing, Rain banked left, flew high on an updraft, and circled around for another pass.

That was when the Mages' true battle plan was revealed. Three dahl'reisen demons coalesced into lethal, shadowy life, directly in front of the Fey line Rain had just thinned by his command to aid the Celierian and Elves. Soul-poisoned demon blades cut through the lines of seasoned Fey warriors like farmers scything wheat, and Mages followed in their deadly shadow. Within moments, they had broken through to the tents erected behind the battle lines, where shei'dalins worked to save as many of the wounded and dying as they could.

Sariel was no shei'dalin, but she had some minor healing talent and she could weave peace on any man, a skill that had its own special value in a place of death. A gentle girl, whose laughter was stolen by the ugly brutality of war, she'd not had time for more than a split second of horror and a single brief call before Fire and a black Mage blade claimed her life.

«E'tan! », Husband. Lover. Protector. Friend. Mate, but not truemate. Abruptly, not even that. Not protector either. He was the one who'd thinned the ranks and left the women vulnerable to attack. Left Sariel to face her death.

Trapped in his memories, reliving the madness, Rain watched helplessly as the scene repeated itself. Only this time, as the Mage lifted his black blade, it was not Sariel beneath the knife. This time it was Ellysetta who stared up in horror as the sword descended upon her all too vulnerable neck. Ellysetta who screamed, "Shei'tan!"

Shadows flashed with glints of steel as scores of Fey warriors raced into the small park, weapons drawn. Bel was in the lead. He saw his king, his friend, fallen on the ground, shouting for Ellysetta, eyes locked on some scene visible only to him, a swirling cloud of magic gathering about him like a storm as he summoned the Change.

«Marissya, we need you!» Bel summoned the shei'dalin on a blast of Spirit, then barked commands to the five quintets, ordering them to surround their king. «Weave your strongest cage around him. We can't let him fly. No matter what it takes to stop him. »

Bel sprinted past his dearest friend, racing to aid the woman he'd pledged his soul to protect. She was on the steps, clutched in the grip of a dahl'reisen Bel knew and had once admired. She was screaming, a shrill wail of torment and terror.

«Vel Serranis! Release her! »

Dahl'reisen though he was, Gaelen vel Serranis was still Fey. Any Fey who took Gaelen's life would lose his own soul.

Bel never once paused as he pulled two wickedly sharp, red-handled Fey'cha free of their sheaths and leapt forward to kill the dahl'reisen who had laid hands upon Ellysetta Baristani.

Behind him, Rain's shouts changed to the chilling, full-throated roar of an enraged tairen.

Held in the viselike grip of the man she'd thought to save, Ellysetta's consciousness wavered uncertainly in a mirrored hall of madness. She was Ellysetta Baristani, yet not. She was a man, naked and howling beneath an Elden Mage's lash. She was a woman screaming as tears of blood poured from her eyes. She was Gaelen vel Serranis, descending into madness as he watched his sister, the person he loved beyond all others, die in one swift, shocking moment at the point of an Eld assassin's blade. She was Rain, locked in an agony of old memories and new nightmares, teetering on the brink of destruction.

She was herself, shrieking from the horrors that battered her mind, even as a violent rage swelled within her, fierce as any tairen's fury.

The pain must stop. Would stop.

Bel was in mid-leap when Ellysetta's screaming abruptly ceased and a fist of Air slammed hard against his chest, batting him to the ground. All breath left him, and the red Fey'cha flew out of his grasp.