Chapter 53 Faron
FARON
T he walls of Racliffe fell, and with them, the morale of its defenders.
Faron led the charge across the narrow streets of Bridgetop, a dozen of his finest soldiers at his sides, all howling and wielding blood-soaked axes.
What defenders remained crumpled, lines breaking and panicked men and women fleeing into homes or down wooden stairs to hide in the dark of Underbridge.
“Scour every inch,” Faron ordered his soldiers, pointing his sword at one of the entrances. “No cockroaches shall be stabbing us while we sleep.”
The men charged with wild abandon, eager to follow his orders.
Faron was not concerned with such ambushes, though.
He only wished for privacy as he crossed the last remainder of space leading to the entrance of the Tower Majestic.
There were no doors or gates to close, but a distant row of some thirty soldiers stood ready with their shields to defend the tower with their lives.
Most dangerous among them were the three Wise and their hulking focus carrier.
“I hope you weren’t planning on entering without me,” Aylah shouted, dashing to catch up with him.
Blood painted much of her face and breastplate and stained her hair.
Behind her trailed Eist in their pristine gold robes alongside a wide-eyed Calluna, who had painted her face with long blue streaks from her eyes and lips down the sides of her neck.
“Enter the Tower Majestic without the Crownbreaker?” Faron asked, and grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I have given orders for the soldiers to hold the entrance to Bridgetop,” Eist said as they approached, their every step punctuated with a clack of their staff hitting the hardstone. “If we enter the tower, we enter it alone.”
“Good,” Calluna said. “That’s good. No one else needs to confront Sariel but us.”
Faron nodded in agreement. So far, despite the collapse of the walls and the fierce initial fighting, there had been no sign of their brother. As the Crownbreaker’s forces overran the city, there was nowhere else he could be lurking but somewhere within the ancient tower.
“What about Eder?” he asked, and nodded at the tower. “Is he in there?”
Calluna briefly closed her eyes.
“Yes,” she said, her voice suddenly quiet and distant. “Somewhere in there. Somewhere dark.”
“Then let’s not wait any longer,” Faron said, readying his shield. “I’ll open the way.”
He sprinted, not caring if his siblings kept up with him.
His blood was pumping, and he could smell the stink of desperation in the air.
That thin, quaking line of defenders would collapse before the rampaging might of the Wild Rage.
He bellowed to announce his arrival, and a spray of blood followed as his sword removed limbs and opened throats with each swing. No one could resist his might.
Aylah arrived in his wake, her sword gleaming, her each movement lethal.
Together, brother and sister, they stood back-to-back as the soldiers surrounded them, knowing their numbers should grant advantage but failing to find it.
Aylah’s sword chopped through armor. Faron’s sword cleaved off heads.
They needed to be quick, for Sariel’s appointed Wise had their arms raised and their radiance growing.
The Wise, their brother had named them. Red-robed men and women dedicating their entire lives to the cleansing laws.
As reward, Sariel taught them to wield radiance, but they could not channel it on their own.
No, they needed a focus, and that came from the enormous muscle-bound man standing in the heart of the trio.
His face was covered like a headsman’s, and his body wrapped in black.
He carried an enormous gibbet on his back, a naked criminal held captive within the iron cage.
The three Wise lifted their hands as they chanted, and the captive man thrashed and howled as rivers of golden light tore from his body, leaving black welts and bruises upon his exposed skin.
The vile practice sickened Faron’s stomach, and he pushed onward, his disgust adding strength to his swings.
“Cleanse the unclean!” one of the Wise shouted as all three pointed.
Sickly yellow fire burst from their fingertips, and it lashed the hardstone road.
Faron roared as he crossed through it, enduring the burns.
It would not twist and warp him like it had hundreds of rebel soldiers outside the walls of Racliffe during the initial siege.
It would not leave him as a twisted hulk with remade limbs and skin turned to scales and feathers.
He pushed through, side by side with his sister, to slay the last of the soldiers.
And then Calluna and Eist arrived, both eager to share in the fury against the Wise, who released a second burst of flame, to the great torment of the imprisoned criminal.
Calluna lifted her hands and bellowed out a wordless denial.
A silver shield rolled outward from her breast, encompassing their family, and against it, the sickly fire withered and died.
“Cease this torment,” Eist shouted, slamming their staff to the ground.
Reverberations traveled unseen across the hardstone and then erupted at the feet of the gibbet carrier.
It was a shock wave of pure force, and it turned the bones of the giant man’s ankles to jelly.
He howled and collapsed as the Wise chanted louder, demanding obedience with the mad furor of those facing death.
Faron was all too happy to give it to them.
He broke through Calluna’s shield, lopped the head off one Wise, and then buried his sword to the hilt in a second.
Aylah claimed the third, her shield breaking his nose and ending his concentration before he might summon another foul attack of radiance.
She cut his throat, and as he died, she turned her attention to the whimpering gibbet carrier and the naked prisoner within.
“There is no forgiveness for this,” she said, and thrust her blade into the skull of the weeping giant.
Then, for mercy, she ended the life of the prisoner.
There would be no saving him, not after what he had endured.
His skin was almost entirely black from bruises, and his eyes wild with madness as his blood leaked out his cut throat.
“Come on,” Faron said, wiping a bit of an opponent’s blood from his face. What pleasure he’d taken from fighting a victorious battle drained out of him. “I’m sick of this already. We need it to end.”
The greatest collection of buildings within the Tower Majestic was at the very entrance, along with the many platforms rising to various levels circling the sides.
Forming a line of muscle and steel where the street was narrowest were the last of Sariel’s ardent defenders.
Fifty men, armed with spears and swords.
Faron approached them with the confident walk of a predator.
“One chance to surrender,” he said. The sunlight through the gargantuan windows did not reach them, and so he grinned in the flickering flames of lanterns burning from lampposts. “Otherwise you will witness the Wild Rage.”
“Our life for Sytha!” one of the soldiers shouted, lifting a spear.
Faron swooped his sword lazily through the air. “So be it.”
This time, it was Calluna who led the charge.
The soldiers tensed, confused by the approach of an unarmed little woman dressed in black, but then she opened her mouth to scream.
It was wordless, without explicit command, but it was bathed in the power of her radiance.
It carried a cacophony of desires; to laugh, to cry, to cower, flee, or fight to the death.
All fifty soldiers were locked in place, their minds overwhelmed as the Banshee’s wail slammed into them with the subtlety of a battering ram.
Eist followed up with magic of their own.
They pointed their staff, and a blazing silver flame leaped from its tip to strike the center of the formation.
It splashed like liquid and burned like fire as it melted through their armor to sear flesh.
Screams followed, pained and frantic as what few men still possessed of their faculties tried to wipe away the burning silver only to have it coat their hands and fingers.
It was into this stunned, panicked line that Faron and Aylah charged, and they broke the ranks in seconds. When half were dead, Calluna let loose a second scream, its volume seeming to shake the very air.
“FLEE!”
The rest obeyed, sprinting past them toward Bridgetop. Faron let them go. He had no desire to punish those conned into service of his brother. The blame, so far as he was concerned, rested solely on Sariel’s shoulders.
“Many ways to go,” Eist said, pausing beside Calluna. “Where to now?”
Calluna bowed her head to concentrate. Her eyelids fluttered as she peered into darkness.
“So close, and yet…” She snapped her eyes open. “Down. We go down.”
“Down it is,” Faron said, and led the way.
They passed homes locked tightly shut. Frightened citizens of Racliffe cowered within.
He heard the cries of children and the frantic prayers for safety from their parents.
Faron did his best to ignore them as he led his own family down the long platforms that formed steps to the ocean at the far, far bottom of the hollow tower.
At last, they reached the final descent.
A braced wooden wall with a locked door blocked the way, and Faron smashed it open with a single kick.
Beyond loomed the last dozen feet of hardstone, barren but for a large slab of stone near the edge.
Beyond that, emptiness, and the distant roar of the ocean. Still no sign of their brother.
“Are you certain Eder is here?” he asked Calluna.