Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Lliferock by Jak Koke Read Free Book Online Page A

kept the rain from blowing into the temple. There were no windows, but flashes of lightning flickered through the two-foot gap between the walls and the roof. Many bright glow crystals, set into the floor at regular intervals, bathed the chamber in pure white light.
    Pabl examined the petroglyphs on the wall, running his broad palm across the engravings of Reid Quo’s legend. These particular pictures told the story of a time before the Scourge when Reid was in Parlainth with Garen Dne — the Elder from whom Tepuis Garen took its name.
    As Pabl’s fingers brushed along the stone, tracing the gold and silver lines of the engravings, Ganwetrammus reached 40
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Jak Koke
    out to him. His fingers merged with the legend of Reid Quo, sinking into the finely cut lines in the rock wall.
    Pabl found the liferock’s memory of Reid’s life filling his consciousness. Parlainth rose around him, its trio of huge pyramids reaching into an azure sky. Beautiful music of horns and harps came to him, the like of which he had never heard.
    Strange smells, sweet breads and incense floated on the air.
    People were everywhere, speaking in a foreign tongue as they passed him by. They held themselves with arrogance, tall and stately, oddly symmetrical.
    Pabl stood in Reid’s body, dressed in gaudy robes of bright pink and yellow. A small jade carving of Mynbruje hung from a bronze chain around his neck.
    Garen stood beside him, guiding them to a semi-secluded space in an alleyway. The older obsidiman’s craggy form slouched somewhat from spending long hours in the libraries of Parlainth. “Hold out the item,” Garen said, as they pressed up close to the pillar of a monolithic citadel. “Focus on it.”
    Reid unclipped a metal scarab from his robes. It was shaped like a beetle, flat and oval with iridescent wings of green-black and a body of golden hue. It fit comfortably in Reid’s palm; he had been working with the enchantment for many, many years. And now, he would use it for its intended purpose.
    Reid focused on it, peering into astral space to see the scarab’s pattern and the two filaments of brilliant pink thread which connected its pattern to his.
    “Put your vision into its eyes, and let it fly.”
    As Reid moved his sight into the scarab, his vision fractured into a hundred separate images of the world around him, then adjusted slowly to integrate into a composite view.
    He took flight, the metallic buzzing of his scarab wings vibrat-ing through him.
    The narrow alleyway banked and jerked uncomfortably This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 
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    underneath him as he flew up over the crowds toward the wide boulevard of Thom Edro Way. Vertigo gripped him and he nearly pulled his sight back into his body. The disconnection from the ground frightened him, but Garen’s words in the background kept him focused. “Concentrate on your destination. Hagnit’s merchant shop.”
    The scarab banked around a corner and passed a crowded square with a massive fountain in the center. The fountain’s glorious music was distant through the scarab’s senses. Buildings and statues towered around him, impossibly huge, as the item fluttered past the square. It flew down another street and through a wide door into a shop.
    Hagnit sat in a stone chair behind the huge expanse of a desk. He was small for an obsidiman of the brotherhood, com-pact and young with skin as smooth as if it had been polished like rocks in a stream. Hagnit’s coloring was not russet like Reid and Garen, but light gray marbled with veins of emerald green. Hagnit did not look up from his work as the scarab alit on a crate stacked near the entry.
    Garen’s voice was distant. “Now, cast your illusion through the item.”
    Reid cast the spell, and watched through the scarab to see Hagnit react.
    The merchant looked up from the scrolls. “Reid,” he said.
    “When did you come in?” He stood and