Chapter 36
VALANCE
It took two days to reach Autumn. A long flight of cold winds, rain, and the raging ocean below. The water seemed to reflect my anger, my frustrations at the slow crawl of time.
I considered enchanting myself to move from one place to another within seconds but stopped myself. Even the thought of such a spell hurt my insides, instinct telling me it would be far too dangerous even for an undying creature like me.
Undying did not mean a lack of suffering.
My body thrummed with potent vengeance, ready to bring the end. I hungered for the coming destruction as if it were a thick, blood-rich steak.
Up ahead, the north of the continent of Autumn came into view. Smoke billowed toward the azure morning sky. The Gentry forges, working hard to produce more weapons for their new king.
I hope you are hurting over Lasair, Florent.
Once again, my instincts told me he probably wasn’t. What did he really care about his queen? Nothing. She was nothing but a tool, much like I would have been if I’d married him. Florent wanted nothing more than power, to perch his buttocks on the Faerie Throne.
As I approached the northern shore, bells rang out to sound the alarm. I imagined the faces of those below, horrified by two dragons coming toward them.
There, the metals boxes—the tops of the underground forges—spewing smoke from chimneys, an army of tiny specs running around outside on the vibrant green grass, getting inside those gray structures for shelter.
A network of railways connected around twenty of those forges, an industrial stain not seen anywhere else on Faerie.
They were scars on this world, a result of too much intrigue, too much ingenuity I at once loathed and harbored some jealousy of.
What a fascinating and terrifying thing metal could be.
Images of Kormac dead came to me in endless reminders.
Below, in these forges, the skills were there to make that happen again and again.
This wretched continent could make his life a series of endless agonies where I gave him life, and they took it away again.
The rest of our endless days spent trapped in a morbid circle we could never be free of.
Life and death.
Death and life.
That’s what they wanted, what they would do. There were monsters down there.
Just as there were monsters up here.
Upon my command, Aeveen and Cyrus descended, roaring as they plunged toward the forges. I roared with them, air whipping at my face.
Aeveen unleashed her flames first, swooping over five forges, engulfing each one in a vicious stream of fire. It burned through metal, scorched the earth. Done, she curved away, ready for the next five.
Cyrus took his turn, his fire swallowing three forges.
The screams, the bells, the series of explosions. Balls of fire spat upward, with each boom, carrying with it great plumes of smoke.
Aeveen destroyed another six, Cyrus another three. Their fire spread quickly, destroying the surrounding greenery as a flood of heat. Gentry fae, humans, whoever worked down there were all consumed by the onslaught. Before long, the bells died, and the remaining forges were wiped out.
“Well done!” I called over the chaos to my magnificent beasts.
They roared in unison.
And we continued south.
I spared villages, towns, shepherds in their fields, the lives of the normal folk just wanting to make a living, to exist as happily as they could.
A moment of conscience I would soon take away should they try to fight me.
The moment an arrow was fired or I heard that unmistakable crack of a gunshot, I would kill without discrimination.
Only fear and bells rang from below as we swooped over the lands.
Let them look. Let them tremble.
Spring Keep was a different story. Anyone within or around it would be destroyed. The last time I’d been inside that terrible place, my family gathered there with the Autumn lords, the courtiers, a plethora of scum under one roof to doom me.
You all die today.
The journey to the southern coast of Autumn took no time at all, the sun still in the sky when I spotted gray and black of the metal and rock keep, its lower half embedded into the cliff it stood atop. It was a cube shape with two tall and symmetrical towers, fires burning at the top of each.
The bells of Spring Keep rang, Gentry fae gathered in a sea of glinting copper armor and an arsenal of weapons ready to take me down.
Three elaborate canons pointed at the sky, copper filigree swirls adorning them. The conduits of the iron fire?
Voices. The call of ‘fire!’ and three coppery green beams that had destroyed Winter Keep hurtled toward me, fizzing and spitting its flare for destruction.
All three missed.
I laughed and Aeveen’s first burst of fire broke the cannons.
The resulting explosion was unexpected, an enormous ball of copper-green fire tearing upward. My dragons wailed as iron fire crashed into them, the heat incredible even for them.
Thrown from Aeveen’s back, I hurtled through the air, consumed by the fire myself. It burned through the leather armor quickly, then my skin, reducing me to smoldering bone. It took my voice, my capacity to scream. Rendered me living pain as I plummeted toward the angry waves of the sea.