Chapter 6
CRUMBLING DOWN
The rimeshade spun but she was too late.
Steel flashed in the glowing light as a Morsythian struck.
More of the elite fighting orcs flooded in behind him.
Frost coalesced as Lady Sanj’s icy blade formed in her hands.
Before she could defend herself from the attacks, however, a white hawk flew through the crowded hallway of rebel soldiers.
Venrick’s shock at seeing Cheyanne’s attack bird a split second before its talons raked at the rimeshade’s face forced a conclusion.
This was Haven’s Edge, the town Cheyanne had planned to lead her troop of Morsythians to on their next mission.
They must’ve come in after him under the cover of the storm and forced their way into the chambers under the collapsing building.
Cheyanne, Venrick thought, his hope skyrocketing as the elf rushed in among the Morsythians. She held a bow in one hand. Her eyes were glossed over as warged into her hawk.
In ducking away from the hawk, Lady Sanj avoided the swinging blade of a Morsythian as well. She palmed the blue orc’s chest, instantly freezing the hulking Morsythian into a statue of ice.
The ground shook and stones shifted loose from mortar as the scales continued to emerge.
The more the building shook, the more glass containers filled with distilled magical energy rattled off the shelves and shattered on the heaving floor.
Each time a jar broke, it returned draconic energy to the veins of the awakening dragon.
“The foundation can’t hold!” Lady Sanj shouted, her tattoos blazing so brightly that they seemed to burn. “The entire building is going to collapse…”
An arrow struck her shoulder, the tip gleaming with something that caused her tattoos to flicker. She staggered, her frost sputtering. Cheyanne emerged from among the Morsythians, another brismil-tipped arrow already nocked.
“Cheyanne, why didn’t you tell me this was your mission?” Venrick said.
“I tried to, but you wouldn’t budge. There isn’t time to discuss. Now go get Yarla,” Cheyanne commanded, not taking her eyes off the rimeshade. “I’ll handle this creature.”
Venrick didn’t hesitate. He broke through the door at the back of the cellar, following lines of blackness now glowing with blue and green light. A tunnel opened, leading elsewhere beneath the town. Venrick let his instincts guide him away from Lady Sanj.
He passed through more cellars, their shelves also lined with the jars, all glowing with the light of syphoned magic.
When he reached what seemed to be a central chamber beneath the heart of the town, Venrick slowed.
Ice grew thick around the stoney arch of an entryway.
Lines of crystalized rimeshade corruption, now pulsing with reabsorbed magic, coalesced here.
They drew his eyes to the figure that hung in the center of the room.
Yarla dangled from the ceiling, suspended with chains clasped around her arms and crusted over with rime ice.
The darkness that filled her veins was spreading, turning her skin deathly pale.
The rimeshade’s corruption curled around her legs, connecting her with those coalescing on the floor under her.
“Yarla!” Venrick rushed forward, but a barrier of solid cold stopped him. A frigid energy had formed a ward around the elf. He noticed the same symbols etched on the floor of the chamber that he’d seen tattooed on Lady Sanj’s skin.
Yarla’s eyes fluttered open. “Ven... rick?” she said, in a weak voice. Despite the effects of the magic, her eyes showed a flash of recognition. Then fear. “Behind—”
He spun, his blade rising to meet the swing of an axe. A snarling green, battle-scarred orc with yellowed tusks growled as their blades rang out from the impact. Two more Nordraven orcs emerged from the tunnel, weapons at the ready.
Above them, the ceiling groaned from another shift of the dragon beneath Haven’s Edge. Time wasn’t on his side. At most, Venrick had minutes to free Yarla before the whole town crumbled down into the network of cellars.
Venrick adjusted his grip on his sword. He needed to rely on the steel and his skill to beat three orcs, down the barrier of rimeshade energy, and escape with Yarla. Behind him, the elf’s life was quickly ebbing away.
The first orc charged again, axe sweeping in a deadly arc. Venrick slipped aside, letting the weapon’s momentum carry his attacker forward. Venrick’s sword flashed, finding the gap between armor plates. The orc roared, more in rage than pain.
The other two pressed in, trying to pin him up against the magical barrier. Venrick ducked under a swinging blade, feeling it whistle overhead. He’d trained for this, fighting multiple opponents in close quarters.
“The barrier,” Yarla called in a moment of lucidity. “It’s connected to the floor. The patterns—”
She broke off in a gasp as the darkness connecting her to the rimeshade corruption shuddered. Her face grew gaunt as more of her life force was drawn away, feeding into the dragon that was now drinking in any and all power tied to the rimeshade corruption.
Venrick feinted left, then spun right, his blade catching torchlight. One of the orcs fell back, clutching his bleeding arm. But the largest of them pressed forward, forcing Venrick to step back. His back hit the magical barrier, its icy cold burning through his clothes and biting into his skin.
The ceiling cracked wider. Dust and fragments of stone rained down. The whole chamber shook.
“It’s collapsing!” a familiar voice shouted from the corridor. Cheyanne was calling to her troop of Morsythians. “We need to move!”
The enemy orc grinned at Venrick, raising his weapon for a killing blow.
This was the moment Venrick had been waiting for.
Instead of dodging, he dropped and rolled forward, under the orc’s guard.
His sword found the back of the creature’s knee.
The orc cried out as he tipped into the solid barrier of magic.
Venrick sprung up, forcing the orc’s body deeper into the frosty ward barrier.
The orc’s skin crystalized with ice as the charged runes pushed rimeshade energy up from the carvings in the floor.
This upward flow of power split around the orc, creating an opening in the same way an object thrust into a stream diverts the water around it.
Venrick planted his foot on the fallen orc’s back and launched through the opening.
With his sword aimed, he came down directly onto the overlapping veins of corruption.
His blade pierced the point where the veins converged. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the symbols on the floor flared brilliantly. The winter barrier around Yarla and the icy chains holding her up shattered.
Yarla fell forward. Venrick caught her, his sword clattering to the ground.
Her body was cold, so cold, but she was alive.
The dark fluid in her veins retreated slightly as the corruption around them pulsed once more, then disappeared.
The quaking ground stilled for a moment and Venrick thought or wished that the giant dragon that was stirring might’ve gone dormant again.
Then, stones began to shake loose of their mortar again.
“This whole network of cellars is going to fill with rubble,” Cheyanne’s voice carried through to him.
When he saw her there in the archway, her bow was gone, replaced by a bloodied elven sword. “The rimeshade?” he asked, stooping to pick up his sword and adjusting a weakened Yarla draped over his shoulders.
“Fleeing,” a Morsythian reported, as he emerged from behind the elf. “But that’s not what we should be concerned with now. There’s a dragon under the foundation that is waking up. If we don’t get out now, we’ll all die down here.”
“Right, we ask questions later,” Cheyanne said, helping Venrick back out into the tunnel. “Right now, we run.”
They raced through the collapsing underground network.
The widening cracks in the mortar proved challenging for Venrick while carrying the limp elf on his back.
Whole sections of the cobblestone street above collapsed in ahead them, providing daylight overhead as they dodged the refuse.
Humans at street level fled from Nordraven orcs.
“The surface exit is ahead,” Cheyanne called, dispatching an enemy orc blocking their path.
A thunderous crack split the air. The ceiling buckled, forcing Venrick to dodge falling debris.
Through a gaping hole above, he caught a glimpse of something large rising from one section of the town.
Buildings shifted and collapsed as their foundations were pulled apart to reveal the resurrected dragon.
A massive paw broke free of the earth, destroying the marketplace Venrick had recently walked.
“They’ve been syphoning the dragon’s blood,” Yarla managed, her voice now just strong enough for Venrick to hear over the sounds of collapsing buildings. “Years of deception, syphoning off the dragon’s blood to create a connection with—”
Another violent tremor shook the passage. The walls groaned, stones grinding together.
They reached the cellar steps just as the building over the workshop behind them collapsed.
“Move!” Cheyanne shouted as they emerged into chaos.
The blizzard that had been held at bay by the magical barriers now raged in town.
Snow began to pile up in the streets. Screams filled the air as people fled, real townspeople mixed with the once-disguised orcs, all sense of deception abandoned in the panic.
Through the swirling snow, Venrick spotted Lady Sanj emerging from the cellar of a collapsed building.
Her tattoos blazed bright blue as she iced over sections of the rising foundation in an attempt to contain the creature they’d unleashed.
“The gates!” a Morsythian shouted.
“Ash, they’re sealing them off,” Cheyanne cursed. “And the rubble piled up around the edges is too tall to pass through easily.”
The town gates were being held by black and silver streaks of magic and were closing quickly. Beyond them, Venrick could see more refugees fleeing into the storm.
“We won’t make it,” Yarla said as Venrick measured the distance to the gates.
“Yes, we will.” Cheyanne countered. She took up her bow, selecting an arrow from the quiver on her hip and nocked the arrow. “We’re not the only ones who came prepared,” she said with a cruel smile.
A horn blast cut through the chaos. From the shadows of a nearby alley, an elf and dwarf emerged. Both carried powder kegs with several Yogo Sapphires fixed to the lids.
“Breaching charges,” Venrick gasped.
“Courtesy of your friend Ezra,” Cheyanne said. “Now run!”
They sprinted for the gates as Haven’s Edge continued to tear apart around them. Behind them, the rimeshade’s voice rose with a command that shook the air. Whether she was trying to stop the awakening dragon or control it, Venrick couldn’t tell.
When they reached the gates, they were nearly closed and sealed from the outside. Cheyanne’s Morsythian companions moved rubble, quickly wedging the explosive kegs into the frosted-over hinges.
“Fire in the hole!” Cheyanne shouted. As she drew the arrow, Venrick saw her whisper a spell. The Yogos on the kegs drained at her words and she let loose the arrow.
Venrick turned, shielding Yarla as the charges detonated. The explosion was deafening, but Ezra’s kegs did their work. One section of the gate blew off its ice-coated hinges.
“Go!” Cheyanne commanded, raising her bow to cover their escape. “We’ll hold them here!”
Venrick hesitated for a heartbeat, but Yarla’s cold weight in his arms helped him decide his next move.
He ran through the gap, into the howling snowstorm beyond.
Behind them, Haven’s Edge crumbled under a fully exposed dragon.
Ice glittered off its metallic gray scales as it roared.
The ear-splitting sound shook the ground.
The giant spread its wings, creating a shadow over all of them.
Beneath the gargantuan creature, Venrick spotted a trail of dark-veined frost darting out away from the rubble.
Lady Sanj fled into the storm. Just before she disappeared into the white-out, she paused to stare back at Venrick.
In that look he knew he’d just become an enemy for life of this rimeshade from the North.
And though he had his suspicions, Venrick hadn’t been able to confirm which magus of the Magi Order Lady Sanj was working with.
A final tremor shook the ground as the freed dragon launched off the ground and disappeared into the storm.
The rimeshade was gone, leaving behind questions that burned in Venrick’s mind.
Still uneasy about letting the creature escape, Venrick adjusted his grip on Yarla. They’d made it out safely with Cheyanne and her troop of allied Morsythians. He breathed a little easier knowing he was no longer alone.