The Box Read Online Free PDF

had the darkness spell—and the lethal spores within. Simple; diabolical; and if it weren’t for the stupid greed of Donal Carent feeding Kostin information about such a tempting prize, he would have never been involved in this business.
    “We need acid!” Aeventius was shouting at Taldara as Kostin regained focus. A creature leaped over the back of its fellows, spear leveled at the wizard’s heart. Aeventius flicked a finger at it in midair, and a force equal to one of Gyrd’s hammer fists smashed it in the chest and flung it back the way it had come. “Ask the imp!”
    Shess was at his side, slashing with enthusiastic abandon. “Aevy!” she admonished, sounding wounded. “After all we’ve been through!”
    “Acid?” Kostin asked Taldara, as they both danced out of the way of a flailing creature. “To kill the mold?”
    “Well I don’t know any acid spells either,” Shess piped above the din. “I don’t like that sort of thing!”
    “Tal—what else do you know? How do we kill it?” Kostin was acutely aware that Aeventius’s holding spell on the door wasn’t going to last much longer, and they would soon be trading one set of enemies for another.
    Taldara caught the spear of a charging creature in the crook of her axe blade and pried the weapon from its hand before driving her fist into the creature’s face. Mordimor leaped and slashed around her feet, his oversized claws ripping through fibrous flesh with ease. “Acid and daylight are the best ways—real light, not Aeventius’s ring.”
    “Not fire?” Kostin asked, driving the point of his sword through the midsection of one of the monsters.
    “No,” Taldara answered. “Daylight. Acid. And… alcohol. But something hard, high proof stuff.”
    With a barking laugh, Kostin remembered the leather skin he had confiscated from Gyrd. Judging from the smell of it, it was strong enough to strip paint. Without hesitation he sheathed his weapon and sprang for the box in the corner, wineskin in one hand, the other holding a cloth over his nose and mouth.
    “Don’t get close!” Taldara shouted behind him, but Kostin saw no other choice. Muttering a prayer to Cayden Cailean, the god of drunks and heroes, he moved in, skin held out at arm’s length, the black box that had been the cause of all his problems fixed in his sight.
    When he was close enough to see the reddish stuff—clinging to what looked like a clay shingle sitting serenely in the otherwise empty interior of the box—the world suddenly exploded in a cloud of dust.
    “The only thing worse than fighting one of these things is becoming one.”
    Spores. Kostin screwed his eyes tight against them and held his breath beneath the cloth. It suddenly, stupidly occurred to him that this just might be the last thing he ever did.
    Not only that, but he might just get everyone else killed in the process. Everyone that was here because of him.
    Moving by memory, he lunged forward on his wounded leg, ignoring the bolt of pain that shot up his thigh and the blood squelching in his boot. Reaching what he hoped was the right spot, he upended the strong spirits into the box. For what seemed an eternity he squeezed the skin, lungs hot as forge coals bursting in his chest. The skin of his face and hands tingled unnaturally.
    The jack was empty and Kostin dropped it, staggering away while waving his arms and slapping his face and clothing to rid himself of any spores that might have clung to him.
    He opened his eyes. The dead creatures all lay heaped in still mounds around his exhausted friends. Kostin smiled, a ready quip on the tip of his tongue, just as the door banged open at the other end of the room.
    His smile evaporated as the vanguard of the Shoanti mob poured into the sanctum. But a crazy notion seized him in the same moment, and he rushed to meet the gang, arms spread wide and teeth bared.
    “Behold the vengeance of the Night Scales!” Kostin bellowed in a voice that sounded like the arrival of a