Nightlord: Orb Read Free Page B

body.  He’s been having tons of sex, and not just with Tort and Lissette.  I’ve had repeated glimpses of Malana and/or Malena, and single instances of at least a dozen others.  I don’t know if he’s that charming or if it’s hard to argue with the person they think of as their king.
    Hmm.  That’s my body he’s using.  If he’s sired any children, technically they’re my children.  Awkward.
    There are also a number of non-repeating faces who are having a much less pleasant time.  Generally, they’re busy dying in agony.  I can’t always tell what the circumstances are, though.  Many of them are obvious; being cut in two isn’t ambiguous.  Others are being ripped apart with bare hands—well, taloned hands; the fingernails are like steel blades—or are being subjected to a variety of unpleasant and usually-bloody circumstances.  Maybe they’re criminals being fed to the King; maybe they’re people who had the bad luck to cross him when he was in a bad mood.  Maybe they’re random snacks.
    A number of other scenes have crossed my vision.  I’ve seen several cities.  What might be the grand hall is better furnished.  There seem to be more knights.  We have a sizable army.  There are also flashes of smoke and fire and molten metal.  Things like that.
    As far as I can tell, though, he hasn’t laid eyes on Bronze.  That makes me wonder if I’ve seen her down here.  I think I have, but it’s dark out there and it was both long ago and far away.
    Is she in my mind, looking for me?  Can she be here?  Firebrand is psychic, or telepathic, or something, and I haven’t heard from it.  Bronze is less psychic and more a part of me.  For all I know, she can go anywhere she wants, either physically or otherwise.
    I miss her.

Extraction
     
    Things are going well.  I venture out of my head, kill some nasty Things, scrounge and scavenge amid the ruins, put out some fires, sort through piles of junk, and generally put another area into a semblance of order.  There’s only so much you can do with piles of rust and garbage, but at least I’ve got the area around my head all laid out neatly.  My neighborhood is still a trash heap, but it’s the difference between a dump and a recycling center.
    Is my OCD showing?  Excuse me.
    I’ve even killed two more harpies—the ones with the faces of Shada and Sasha.  The bow works pretty well, but I’m an indifferent archer.  Shooting them dead on the wing was out of the question.  Bringing one down, on the other hand, just involved persistence and a lot of lost arrows.
    Once I had them on the ground, though, I proved I’m much more proficient with mace and spear.
    The fiery representation of my hatred for the Mother of Flame still shows up unpredictably.  I’ve shot it/her a dozen times, even gotten close enough to ruin a spear by sticking it in her leg.  She doesn’t like any of that, but that doesn’t stop her.  She’s shifted from a pursuing presence to a lurking one, though.  I think she’s afraid to let me get close to her.  She still to shows up unpredictably to mock and distract me, and I put arrows into her for it, for all the good it does.  She just won’t go down.
    Typical.
    Apparently, I can hate more thoroughly than I can fear.  Maybe it’s because I have more reason to hate.  And, since I don’t like hating things, I’ve done a good job repressing it until now.
    The tall, handsome guy is also following me around, but he’s kept his distance ever since I stopped running.  Maybe he has a better instinct for self-preservation than other manifestations.  He needs a good one.  I’m in no mood to take any crap from a psychological personification.  He could probably tell from the glare I shot at him whenever I noticed him in the shadows.  The arrows were probably a clue, too, but he’s fast and he always keeps close to cover.  He’s more resourceful than I am, damn him.
    I was reaching for another arrow while he