Chapter 137
Riding on a wave of withering heat, the putrid stench washed over Connor. He’d come to identify that as the imprisoned alien’s manifestation, something he could use as the precursor to Selen’s return.
She didn’t disappoint.
While he gagged on the filthy smell, the sliver of shadow he’d seen through Elise’s eyes became not just a wall but a cube—a section of the room that simply reappeared, draped in shadow.
That shadow was immune to the light coming from the artifacts and to the light coming from Connor’s armor.
As quickly as the shadow appeared, it collapsed, leaving behind Selen.
But Connor Had barely seen her—felt her—before a thunderclap radiated through his new perceptions, nearly knocking him back.
Darkness wasn’t a thing. It was the absence of light, nothing more.
Yet this darkness had expanded then imploded.
What was this alien doing? What was it capable of doing?
Anything, he realized.
That included changing its physical avatar.
In Selen’s case, her armor and clothing were gone. In their place was a chitinous shell—a glossy black carapace that ended in pointed digits. This new armor was heavily articulated, with reinforced overlays at the joints.
There was a hunched quality about her—animalistic, like a predator ready to pounce.
She drifted sideways, her legs barely seeming to move.
Connor set Mosiah down. “Stay low.”
The old man grunted, but he sounded weak, and his breathing was wheezy.
Still, he had cover behind the reliquary, Despite Selen’s imposing new presence—the sense of power pushing out from her—Connor was sure the artifacts were safe for now.
Elise, though…
He took a step out from the dais. “Selen? Are you still aware?”
Selen’s fingers clacked together. “She exists within.”
It was her voice, hauntingly sweet without the anger and intensity that had marked her behavior in the last months.
Connor drew his swords. “I’m going to do everything I can not to hurt her.”
“The host means something to you. The intimacy you knew is a bond connecting you forever. The bond is blinding.”
“It can be. I made mistakes. I didn’t see things I should have.”
Selen—or the thing using her—crouched lower. “The champion missed everything.”
The black armor shimmered as Selen launched at him, arcing through the air with frightening speed.
Connor got a sword up in time to awkwardly block one of her hands, but the other raked across his chest, shredding his armor.
Her weight bore him to the ground, then he skidded across the rough surface.
She rode him, her armored toes digging into his thighs.
Pain shot out from every part of him: his bleeding chest and thighs; the bruised back of his head; the twisted elbow of his sword arm.
Instinct guided him: She was off-balance, leaning forward, readying another blow.
So he bowed his back and swung his good arm at her leg.
She must have sensed the blow coming, because she leapt away.
In the process, she gouged deep into his flesh.
He rolled aside, teeth gritted against the pain, and got to his feet.
Blood slicked his chest and spread across the front of his pants.
Selen’s possessed form landed, bounded again, then came to a stop on a wall, feet somehow finding purchase in the composite materials. It was as if she were squatting on a vertical surface.
Don’t let yourself get caught up in the how, Connor scolded.
If he relied upon what he saw, he wouldn’t understand his enemy. Already, the appearance of Selen and the connection that brought to mind worked against him.
He detached from Elise’s eyes and drew on the sensations that were his alone.
The thing that was using Selen’s body was indeed on the wall. It was an energy every bit as black and wicked as the K’luuta relics were bright and welcoming.
It drew on death and misery, sickness and poison. It focused on self to the exclusion of others.
Selen was less than a host: She was a tool, a weapon.
She would be tossed aside when it was done.
A thing that hated life only saw such a vessel as a means to an end.
Connor shrugged off his ruined armor, then waved the monster in with his swords. “Let’s finish this before Selen realizes she faces the same fate as Gu Li. If she understands that she’s not special, that you only mean to use her like you did him, she might fight back, right?”
Bug-Selen chittered.
Then black tentacles oozed from the carapace. Rather than suckers, beaks lined the whipping limbs.
It launched at Connor again, flailing wildly.
He flipped through the air, rolling away from it and slashing at the tentacles.
When he landed, he smiled. Severed tentacles writhed on the floor.
But the smile evaporated when he sensed the true intent of the attack: Selen now stood beside Elise.
Dark gore dripped from the severed limbs, but the remaining ones whirled over the archaeologist’s head.
Then they wrapped around her throat, and she shrieked.
Connor charged, blades extended.
Selen released the other woman and spun around, clawed hands reaching for him.
Once more, Connor jumped, flipping over this thing that had once been his captain and lover.
He blocked out the memories of their times together, of holding her—it—in his arms.
This wasn’t her anymore, he told himself.
And as he arced down behind her, the monster turned, the tentacles flopped around uncertainly.
Connor called upon the knowledge of the alien jailers.
He called upon the power of the amulet.
That power was like a geyser erupting from his center, filling him to bursting with energy gold and pure.
The energy guided his aim. It drove his blow like a shot fired from a cannon.
And his blade came down with the force of a meteorite strike.
Piercing brightness sliced through murky gloom, and a deep bellow shook the chamber.
Connor was shoved back. His gut flipped and he had to fight off nausea.
But he stood.
A few meters away, Selen crumpled to her knees. The chitinous shell cracked first at the shoulders, then spiderwebbed out and exploded, shattering into a million particles that transformed into tendrils of smoke.
Only a strange pendant remained, something he’d never seen on her before.
She glanced down at her arms, barely hanging on by sinew where the blades had cut them from their shoulder sockets.
Then she collapsed.
But there was no time to celebrate the victory or to lament the horrific injury he’d dealt to his captain.
Because all around him, the tendrils of smoke were raining to the floor.
And everywhere they touched, they bubbled and writhed.
The imprisoned alien wasn’t defeated. It was only just beginning.