Chapter 63
Alora
Exhaustion weighed on Alora’s shoulders like a shroud by the time she returned to Karag D?r. The war chamber seethed with voices, deep and rasping, guttural and cold as warlords and Dominions argued across the crescent table.
The Harbingers stood like carved statues against the wall, features sharp in the torchlight above them.
The warlords were Wrath Court demons forged for battle, their armored red bodies plated in bone and blackened steel, eyes burning faintly like coals.
Opposite them, the Dominions draped themselves in silks and jewels like courtiers rather than soldiers, though the power that hummed in the air around them was no less lethal.
Lady Zinnia was present as well, observant and silent. Two Midland paladins stood closely behind her seat, eyes as sharp as their ears, armor glinting in the candlelight.
And at the head of the crescent table sat Rune. His glowing gaze lifted to hers, and the agitated shadows writhing in the corners of the room settled. He leaned back in his chair, the visible tension in his shoulders relaxing, albeit a little.
Demon eyes landed on her, then shifted to Commander Caelum and Lord Zuma who flanked her. At her silent nod, they moved to stand with the Harbingers. All bowed their heads as she crossed the chamber and took her seat beside Rune.
You were gone a while, he said through the bond. Did the escort pass without incident?
It went well. She took a breath. For now, her brother and people were safe. What did I miss?
More of the same. A muscle in his jaw flexed. Strategies are formed and dismantled. No one can agree on the best method of attack.
The crescent war table stretched before Alora like a living thing.
Shadows coated its surface with a reflection of Argyle, taking the shape of valleys and passes, rivers and ruined keeps.
And sigil markers dominated the board. Each one represented a force of thousands.
She had learned the numbers quickly, faster than she had ever wanted to.
Ten thousand demons bound to every carved piece. Seven Dominions, each marked by a different sin, each representing ten thousand at their command. Together, it was an army enough to raze kingdoms.
Her gaze lingered on the dragon first.
Pride.
Rune’s sigil stood apart from the others, wings spread, jaws open as if it would spit fire any second. The weight of it settled low in her chest.
Nearby, the other sigils waited. A spider etched so finely it appeared ready to crawl represented envy. Lord Sal’vathar’s host.
The mermaid with gold-scaled tail and hollow eyes represented Greed. A richly beautiful host for Lady Nexia.
A faceless female form carved in exaggerated curves, with dainty horns and thin tail. The Lust sigil looked exactly like Lady Morvenna.
Crossed hammers for Wrath. Straightforward like Lord Ira.
Lady Segrith’s sigil was an hourglass for Sloth, its sands frozen mid-fall, as if time itself had grown weary.
The sigil for Gluttony were monstrous jaws wrenched wide like an endless pit. Much like Lord Balgor now as he alone gorged himself at the table as if this were a mere dinner party.
Then there were the others.
A single silver sigil lay to the east, representing the Midlands. A briar rose wrought in thorns and bloom, delicate and deadly, its polished surface catching the torchlight. Six thousand fae. Fewer than the demons, but sharper and with the magic of the earth at their fingertips.
Argyle’s marker looked small beside the rest. Oak wood with green banners bearing Argyle’s white stag painted into the grain. Two thousand, at best. Mortals. Fragile as kindling surrounded by stone and shadow.
One final marker sat apart from the rest. Unlike the others, Zuma’s marker was the tip of a pale horn bone.
It represented five hundred Minotaurs. A horde rather than an army. Too few in a war of this scale, yet five hundred ferocious creatures to be unleashed where brute force was required.
It was clear then why Rune had not dismissed them. Some forces were not meant to hold ground but to break it.
Alora rested her hands on the table as the weight of it settled on her bones.
She was no longer a piece to be moved.
She was the reason every other piece would move at all.
“Have you decided on the best position of engagement?” Alora asked.
Rune’s brow furrowed as he studied the lay of the land. “If I can assume where Vorak will emerge, it will be wherever you stand.”
Alora nodded, ignoring the tightening in her stomach. Then she must be far away from Argyle, but close enough to defend it.
“Here.” She pointed to the Hydell Hills. “The ridge gives us the high ground and summits the everglades. We will lure him there.”
It was free of any population, at the center of the kingdom, between the mountain, the Midlands, and Argyle. The perfect place for their destructive forces to clash.
If Vorak wanted her, then she would decide where he would bleed.
“No matter how we look at it, this battle will cost us,” Lady Nexia said, twisting a necklace of pearls around a clawed finger.
“It would cost more to tuck tail and run,” Lady Morvenna said teasingly and pinched Nexia’s siren’s tail.
Nexia hissed, bearing her translucent sharp teeth.
“You waste your breath,” Balgor slobbered through a mouthful of food. “Vorak is Primordial. A Titan. To march against him is folly, though none of you care to hear what I have to say.”
“When do you ever have much to say?” Ira snorted. “Most of the time your mouth is brimming with fodder.”
Tapping a claw on the tabletop pensively, Sal’vathar leaned back in his chair.
His long hair gleamed like threads of white silk, his carapace armor catching the torchlight with an iridescent sheen.
She tried not to stare at his spidery limbs.
It unnerved her the way they twitched at his back, lightly clicking against the wall and floor.
“Now, let us be civil, Ira,” he said smoothly. “Balgor is as seasoned on the field as you are, even if his court prefers to dismember and swallow their enemies.”
Alora winced.
She still clearly remembered when the demons sided with them during the siege against Calveron on the shorefront and it had been gruesome.
Sal’vathar’s eyes, as black as oil, landed on her with quiet amusement. “My queen, what news do you bring us from Argyle?”
She lifted her chin. “The humans will fight. The armory grows fuller by the day.”
“Ah.” He linked his hands together, playing with a few spiderweb strands. “Brave souls, if not unfortunate.”
“You don’t think we will win?”
“Perhaps if we had a miracle, my queen, I may deign to hope.” Sal’vathar smiled with faint indulgence as he slipped web bracelets fashioned into chains around Nexia’s wrists.
They glittered like silver silk, and she squealed happily.
“But some things,” he added mildly, “require a delicate hand.”
Rune’s presence pulled the air around him, shadows coiling lazily around his claws. “Those who rely on miracles rarely live long enough to see them.”
Sal’vathar conceded with a slight bow of his head.
Sighing, Alora’s gaze drifted to the end of the table, where Segrith’s small form sat in silence. She looked like a phantom, a black veil over her face, wrapped in a black shroud. Though sightless, she seemed to be looking right at Alora. The touch of that phantom gaze sent a crawl down her spine.
“Lady Segrith,” Alora called. “Do you have any council to offer?”
Deimos had belonged to her court once. They shared that quiet demeanor that never rushed.
He enjoyed lingering in the dark, circling, measuring, deciding when the moment was ripe to strike.
If the Sloth demons were anything like him, they were not slow at all.
They were deliberate. And once they moved, it was because the outcome was already decided.
Segrith paused. Her hands settled on the table, palms up. The center of both were scarred hollows, reminding Alora of how they were lost.
Lady Morvenna cackled. “She can no longer see the future, my queen. What value does her council hold now?”
The dismissive tone made Alora’s jaw clench.
“If this way is merely a matter of pride, then bend the knee and spare what remains,” Segrith said plainly.
The chamber quieted, everyone falling still as they looked to Rune. The fervor of his anger coiled through the bond.
“Bend the knee?” Rune repeated. He spoke softly, but the words cracked like split stone. He leaned forward, crimson eyes searing. “To a bound Primordial left buried in the Abyss while the world forgot his name?”
Segrith drew invisible shapes on the table. “I have not forgotten,” she replied idly. “As I have not forgotten the Devourer’s power. Our numbers are trivial. Our strength further still. Even against the least among the Primordials, your strength alone is not enough.”
Rune’s shadows coiled upward, licking the ceiling and Alora tensed. His quiet wrath made the mountain shudder. Dust and debris rained from the vaulted ceiling, scattering across the war table.
The temperature in the chamber grew scorching.
Alora feared for the tiny Dominion, but she had asked for council and Segrith spoke honestly.
Beneath the table, she rested her hand over Rune’s. His fingers tightened once, a silent tether, then his shadows stilled.
“You may be able to contend with him, sire,” Sal’vathar said, breaking the silence. His voice was smooth, almost humorous, though what he said next was not. “But I must remind you, he is not the only threat. Once Vorak rises, he will bring the Wild Hunt with him.”
An awful chill crept into Alora’s bones. The Primordial army.
How many? She sent through the bond
The Wild Hunt is a host of a hundred thousand. Rune gripped her hand when it shook, but his expression did not change. “I have not forgotten,” he said aloud. “We are well aware of what comes.”