Chaos Unleashed by Drew Karpyshyn

city safe.”
    “Every man and his brother’s an Enforcer now,” she purred. “I start giving you all discounts and I’ll be out of business.”
    Orath had decided the necessity of trying to reach his liege was worth the risk. He needed Daemron’s council. But to power the ritual he’d use to reach across the Chaos Sea and make contact, he’d need a sacrifice to draw on.
    “What if I give you half now?” the man offered. “And the rest next week?”
    “By next week I might have joined the Enforcers myself,” the girl countered. “Won’t need your money then.”
    Drawing on the Chaos flowing through his veins, Orath uttered a single word to focus his power. Hearing him, the girl spun around.
    Her eyes went wide on seeing the inhuman creature stalking her, and her mouth opened wide to scream. But Orath reached out with a single clawed finger, his arm striking like a snake, and touched her shoulder. Her features froze in place, the scream dying in her throat as every muscle in her body was instantly paralyzed.
    The man was slower to react; he had only half turned by the time Orath’s touch left him immobile.
    Orath took a moment to savor the helpless terror of his victims, the girl’s dark brown eyes darting back and forth in confusion and fear. Extending his arms out at a forty-five-degree angle, Orath let his wrists go limp so his long fingers dangled loose and free. He twiddled the fingers of his right hand and the girl’s body shuddered. Then she slowly lifted her right foot and pivoted on her left leg so that she was facing away from him, a barely audible whimper of pain escaping her lips as she did so.
    Wiggling the digits of his left hand, Orath forced the soldier to also turn away from him. Though physically stronger, he offered less resistance to the unspoken command than his companion.
    Fingers flickering and dancing, Orath marched his puppets quickly down a side street where the shadows swallowed all three of them up.

J ERROD GLANCED UP at the sky, studying the fading light as dusk approached. The farther west he, Keegan, and Scythe traveled, the stronger his supernatural awareness became. They had left the Frozen East behind and crossed over into the Southlands, where he could once again feel the faint echoes of Chaos in the firmament of the mortal world that fueled his abilities. Yet though his Sight had returned, it couldn’t block out the light and color bombarding his functioning eyes, and the double vision was still disorienting enough to leave him feeling queasy and off-balance.
    Closing his eyes did little to solve the problem. Keeping his lids shut wasn’t natural; it was something he had to think about constantly, and it drew focus away from his other perception. And even closed, his eyes still registered changes in the intensity of the outside world’s light, drawing even more focus away from his otherworldly perception.
    Even so, he was able to reach out far enough ahead of their path to sense they weren’t going to find any traces of Southern civilization before nightfall. He’d been hoping they would at least stumble across an isolated farmhouse today, but Keegan’s strength was fading and Jerrod had been forced to slow their pace to keep the young wizard from overexerting himself.
    “We’ll make camp here,” the monk declared.
    Nobody spoke as they settled in and finished off the last of the rations. As they’d been doing for the past week, both Jerrod and Scythe gave most of their share to Keegan.
    He’s so frail,
Jerrod noticed.
If we don’t find a farm or village soon, he might starve to death.
    The idea that the destiny of one of the Children of Fire could be snuffed out by something so mundane as a lack of food was unsettling.
    After all we’ve overcome, and all we’ve lost, is this how it ultimately ends?
    Jerrod shook his head and tried to push his doubts to the back of his mind. Keegan could still last a few more days before things became desperate.
    “I’ll