"The mind is the last fortress. When it falls, everything else follows."
***
Rhys had almost forgotten about the third creature.
The one that had been hanging back while its warriors did the fighting. The one that had been chanting quietly throughout the entire battle. Its voice a constant drone beneath the clash of steel and the roar of combat.
But now that drone rose to a shriek.
Now that quiet chanting became something that made his skull ache just from hearing it.
The creature raised its bone-festooned staff.
The fetishes hanging from the gnarled wood began to glow. Yellowed teeth. Desiccated fingers that still had scraps of flesh clinging to them. What looked distressingly like human ear bones, strung on sinew that had dried to the consistency of old leather.
They all began to glow with that sickly green light. The color of rot and decay. The color of things that grew in places where sunlight never reached.
The fetishes spun faster and faster around the staff.
