Chapter 22 Blorjorn
TWENTY-TWO
BLORJORN
The grenade shatters at her feet, and my heart stops.
Dark-red light erupts from the broken glass, shadow magic boiling upward in a column of flesh-rotting poison. I’m already moving—throwing myself toward Kielyne, toward the death spreading across the flagstones.
Grothak is closer.
He crashes into her from the side, tackling her clear of the blast radius, his massive body rolling them both across the cathedral floor. The blight cloud expands behind them—eating stone, dissolving a soldier too slow to flee, filling the air with the sweet-rot stench of magical decay.
But it doesn’t touch her. Doesn’t reach her.
Grothak saved her.
Relief hits me so hard, my knees nearly buckle. Then fury replaces it—white-hot, consuming, the kind of rage I haven’t felt since Glasha died in my arms years ago.
Hadrin tried to kill her.
I find my axes on the blood-slicked floor. The handles fit my palms perfectly—Grief and Reckoning, my oldest companions, the weapons that have carried me through a century of war. I raise them toward the altar where Hadrin stands watching his trap fail, and I roar.
The sound shakes the ancient stones. Cracks what remains of the stained glass. Echoes off the vaulted ceiling until it sounds like a dozen orc war captains screaming in unison.
Then I charge.
The cathedral explodes into violence.
Soldiers swarm from every shadow, trying to intercept me before I can reach their commander.
I carve through them without slowing—axes singing, blood spraying across broken stained glass, bodies falling in my wake.
Each strike is fuel for the next. Each kill brings me closer to the man who tried to take her from me.
I’m not fighting to win. I’m not fighting to survive.
I’m fighting to destroy.
A soldier lunges from my left—I take his arm off at the elbow, spin, bury Reckoning in his chest before he can scream. Another charges from the right—Grief opens his throat, and I’m already past him, already moving.
Behind me, the war band fights. Grothak’s battle cry shakes the rafters.
Vekra moves through the chaos with cold efficiency, her two-handed sword carving through soldiers without hesitation.
Fenrik—barely recovered from his wounds at Waypoint—fights with the desperate energy of youth, his voice cracking as he screams orc battle chants.
They’re holding the line. Keeping the soldiers from overwhelming us. Buying me the path I need.
And somewhere in the chaos—Kielyne.
I catch glimpses of her between kills. She’s found herbs in her healer’s pack—dried rosemary, sage, something else that burns with purifying smoke when she throws it at the blight soldiers.
They shriek and recoil, the cleansing fire scorching their twisted flesh, buying precious seconds for the orcs fighting beside her.
She’s not running. She’s not hiding.
She’s fighting. My woman is fighting.
Pride and terror battle in my chest. I want her safe, want her far from this slaughter.
But I can’t deny what I’m seeing—she belongs here.
Not because she’s a warrior, but because she refuses to let others die while she stands idle.
Even exhausted, even drained from breaking my chains, she’s saving lives.
That’s who she is. That’s who I claimed.
The thought drives me forward. Faster. Harder. Cutting a bloody path toward Hadrin with every ounce of strength I have left.
The cathedral floor runs red.
Bodies pile against the pillars—human, orc, blight soldier, all jumbled together in death the way the Bonefields jumble their dead. The fighting has turned into a grinding melee, brutal and desperate, neither side able to gain the upper hand.
But we’re not losing.
Hadrin’s forces weren’t prepared for this. They expected to overwhelm two prisoners, not fight a war band. The blight soldiers are strong but mindless, unable to adapt to changing tactics. The human soldiers are disciplined but hesitant, unsettled by the ferocity of our assault.
I gut a blight soldier who gets too close, kick the body aside, and find a moment to assess.
Grothak holds the left flank with three others.
Vekra anchors the right. The center is chaos—orcs and humans locked in close combat, weapons flashing in the eerie red light bleeding through what’s left of the stained glass.
And Hadrin—
Hadrin hides behind the altar, flanked by his remaining elite guard, his scarred face twisted with something I’ve never seen on him before.
Fear.
The general who’s spent thirty years building a reputation on orc corpses, who’s calculated every battle and won more than he’s lost, is afraid.
His perfect trap collapsed. His torture devices failed.
His army is dying around him, and the monster he tried to chain is carving a path straight toward his throat.
Good.
I want him afraid. I want him to feel exactly what Kielyne felt when he threatened her brother, exactly what I felt when his brands burned into my chest. I want the last thing he sees to be my axes descending.
I push forward. Twenty feet between us. Fifteen.
His guards move to intercept—elite soldiers, better trained than the rabble I’ve been cutting through.
The first two die in three heartbeats, but the third scores a cut across my ribs that makes me stagger.
The fourth nearly takes my head; I duck under his swing and bury Grief in his gut, then tear it free with a spray of blood.
I’m slowing down. The blight chains left their mark—my muscles burn, my breath comes ragged, and every movement costs more than it should. Blood soaks through my clothes from a dozen wounds, makes my grip slick on the axe handles.
But Hadrin is right there.
Ten feet. Five.
I cut down the last guard. Surge forward, axes raised, ready to end this—
Hadrin’s gaze flicks past me. Over my shoulder. Toward something behind me.
And he smiles.