Chapter 60
The moment I charge through the entrance, chaos erupts.
Arrows spray, but words are already gusting from my lips, churning the air into a violent swirl that snatches every bolt. Like Clode just spawned fifty hands, giggling as she whips her deadly treasures about.
“Lui, Clode. Luísh eín shashtú-de wha! Plúin, plúin!”
She dances for me—punching each arrow through the necks of those who fired them. Something I might feel bad about, except most of these fuckers have been felling Moltenmaws, filling the sky with grieving dams.
They can rot.
Eyes bulge and blood sprays, getting caught in the churn of wind, painting the room red.
Painting me red.
I sprint a jagged line through the chaos, dodging spears of stone that shoot up from the ground. Messy orders drudged from the lips of others.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Kaan’s lessons to Elluin so far, it’s that Bulder favors care and precision. Numbers are nothing if nobody respects proper pronunciation.
With a single busting sentence, I rip Bulder’s attention from everyone else in the room. I swear I hear a chesty sound—like grunted approval—before the mezzanine explodes.
Chunks of stone propel through the air, bodies flung like floppy dolls.
I pull Clode within, requesting she drape around me.
A shield to buffer the storm of debris and soldiers.
Though she gripes about her hate for my newfound trick, she lets nothing past. Not even when a hunk of rubble strikes so hard she squeals, then flings every curse word I’ve ever heard her use in one shrieked sentence.
More blood trickles from my ears, and I wonder if she’s wishing she’d mulched my lungs instead.
Probably.
I charge free of her shell of protection amidst the last of the falling debris, tossing a blade toward the throat of one of the few still standing. It slots through a thin gap in his white armor.
Shock blasts in his eyes.
He drops.
Before he hits the ground, three other Fade soldiers endure the same fate, falling in swift succession. Victims of my half-emptied sheath.
Clode squeals in subtle warning—a good sign she doesn’t hate me. I spin in time to avoid getting beheaded by a white sword whipping toward me.
Bothaimian ore.
I charge the beaded guard blocking the entrance I came through. Dodge the three daggers he tosses, one skimming so close it slits my shroud.
He cracks out an order that shakes the ground, sending a hairline fissure darting toward me like a lightning bolt. The first whisper of a chasm preparing to pry open and gobble me up.
But I’ve already flung a blade.
It sinks into his eye the moment he finishes his busty order. At the same time, I leap—blasting a dense crush of words.
“JU AATH GRUH!”
The ground—now yawning beneath me like a grumbling maw—snaps shut as the final word leaves my lips.
Gravity grips me.
I roll across the still-shuddering stone. Come to a halt before the guard even hits the ground, his body jerking through its final motions.
I get behind him and take his dead, crumbling weight, using his body for a shield as a hissing, flaming command tries to shake my nerves, spat from someone across the way.
But I’m too far gone, dunked in the icy mindset I lived in for phases. When my existence revolved around a tiny cell, Fallon, and a battle pit where I fought for her food.
Her water.
Bloodstone to keep her from withering from sun starve.
Flames gush at me like a blow of dragonflame, plugging the air with the reek of fried flesh and hair. I choke it back, fill my lungs, then blast a barrage of suffocating words.
A strange, seething voice cries out against my eardrums. Something that sounds a lot like brokenhearted yearning before the flames wither. I imagine I hear that same voice scream in pain before they evaporate in a puff of smoke.
Then … nothing.
Lacking the time and patience to mull over the oddity, I shove the heavy body off, refusing to look at the guard’s blistered face as I stand, breath held.
Savoring the air in my lungs, I stalk through the bloody carnage, stepping over bits of stone and crooked limbs poking out from beneath the mess.
My mental sound snare is still so wide open that when I come to a lone survivor—a Bothaimian guard twisted on the ground, eyes bulging as he gasps for breath—I don’t hear a thing beyond Bulder’s and Clode’s riotous clamor.
But those bright-blue eyes, they plead with me. Like gnarled hands clawing at me, nails scratching.
I crouch, retrieve a white sword from the rubble that I set against his throat, puffing a single word.
Clode blows breath within the room, into the guard’s lungs.
He gasps, some of the redness easing from his otherwise pale, freckled face. The reek of piss fills my nose, a golden puddle growing beneath him.
I put a little less pressure through the blade, tighten my sound snare, and block the Creators’ songs. “Who were you waiting for?”
“N-not you.” The words are jagged and abrupt. Pitchy, like his voice has not long cracked. “We’ve been here on T-T-Tri-Council business.”
“And the Fade soldiers?”
“Their captain got a lark just after feasting,” he rushes out, speaking so fast he stumbles over the words. “Orders from Bothaim to c-catch and imprison the king. That he’d be here.”
I push more weight down the blade, dimpling his flesh. “Which king?”
Any remaining color drops from his cheeks. “Th-the Burn King. Kaan Vaegor, ruler of the north, traitor to his family name.”
All the warmth leaves my veins, an itch flaring at the tips of my fingers as I look around, scanning the carnage. The blood. The bodies.
They weren’t waiting for me.
They were waiting for him.
My gaze snaps to the doors ahead, blood dribbling down the rays of sunshine carved deep into the wood like the flow of a ruddy river.
A knot in my mind begins to unravel.
Suspicion mounting.
“Please d-don’t kill me. I-I have a little sister. She depends on th-the bloodstone I send her. She’s sick.”
I drop my chin, looking into the boy’s bloodshot eyes. “I need you to pass a message on.”
His nod is so frantic he almost slits his own throat on the sword still pinned against his flesh.
“You will return to Bothaim immediately and tell the Tri-Council that if they lay a single finger on Kaan Vaegor, I will personally blow their precious Citadel to rubble,” I say, a low tremor in my voice, born from the rumble of words on the back of my tongue.
I may not yet be equipped to sculpt as well as Kaan, with anywhere near the precision it would take to construct something so grand as the Citadel, but Creators know I can fuck it up.
“Their prized arches may protect them from the moonfalls, but they will crumble beneath my wrath. Just like every bone in their bodies.” I rip my shroud away as my Other rises, perching just below my skin.
Probably contemplating taking over for a swift mastication we certainly don’t have time for. “Tell me you understand.”
The guard flinches. Nods again, taking me in with slow sweeps of his wide eyes, his next words blasted with puffs of milky breath. “I-I understand. I’ll pass the message on. I promise.”
My Other recedes.
I lift the blade and wait for him to scramble up. Though he stands a head above me, something about his posture makes him seem so much smaller.
Wiping some of the blood from his cheek, he glances over his shoulder toward the sunshine doors, seeming to hesitate.
“What is it?”
“I— Please don’t hurt Ahvi. He’s a really good kid. He’s had it worse than most.”
Kid?
Another piece of puzzle slots into place.
… I think I’ve found the protégé Kaan’s looking for.
“Do I look like a monster?”
He opens his mouth to speak—
“You know what, don’t answer that.” I toss my sword amongst the gory rubble. “I swear on the Creators, I won’t harm Ahvi.”
Relief loosens the Bothaimian’s face. “Your, ah— Your message.” He clears his throat. “Who do I tell them it’s from?”
“Prisoner Seventy-Three,” I mutter, charging for the red-splattered yellow doors, drenched in so much blood it drips off me with each stalked step. “Tell them the dragon shat me out real angry.”