Black-clad men led the reptile through a stone labyrinth. Slits in the crumbling mortar allowed blades of gilded light to weep through the ceiling.
Kruje jogged along behind the creature as it moved towards a massive black oak portal rimed with iron and steel. Strange glyphs Kruje didn’t recognize had been burned into the wood. The chamber before the door was enormous, a foyer linked to several side-corridors filled with more black-clad soldiers armed with longbows and curved blades. The assembling soldiers wore crimson cloaks and used weapons of the same make and style as those of the men he and Dane had fought during their escape from Black Sun.
Chairos and his masked lady marched through the chamber to the head of the troops. Boots crushed mounds of dusty bones, which covered an ancient mural dominating the floor. Kruje twisted his head as the lizard came to a stop and tried to get a better look at the faded image of a great and twisted tree with large bulbs of rotting fruit. Something about the mural was hauntingly familiar, but before he could study it for more than a few seconds the massive doors opened and the lizard jerked forward, dragging Kruje along with it. A cold blast of dry air pushed into the chamber from a field of ice-white mist.
Kruje kept his eyes on the floor as they walked with the ranks of darkly armored soldiers, and at last he caught full sight of the mural under his feet. The tree in the image stood against the backdrop of a gigantic eye that leaked light; in the foreground, at the base of the tree, were a number of human females clawing their way out of gigantic bulbs of fruit. A second tree extended from the base of the first, growing underground in the opposite direction, not a root but a dark and twisted twin, a black mirror to its white sibling.
Kruje recognized the image as the Janus Tree.
By the J’ann, if these idiot humans worship the tree that means they know the secret behind Chul Gaerog!
That truth had been entrusted to the Voss at the end of the Rift War, and as far as Kruje knew only his kind were even privy to knowledge of the Tree’s existence – the Arkan couldn’t be trusted, and the Tuscars were ignorant when it came to magic.
What was going on? Everyone was frantically chasing this Dream Witch, and now it seemed that Chairos also knew of the inner workings of the Black Tower.
The Skullborn
, Kruje realized.
The woman Dane is chasing must be one of the Skullborn.
A strange calm settled over him in spite of his realization that the world might be doomed.
At least I know where we stand....
The lizard dragged him forward, but Kruje didn’t bother to resist. His shoulders ached in their sockets, and every time the beast lurched the shackles scraped flesh from his wrists and made him wince in pain. The troops around him swelled to a score as they left the confines of the fortress and stepped onto the pale field. High tower walls appeared through gaps in the fog. The air was crisp and cold as they marched through a gargantuan courtyard.
It was a grim and silent procession. Kruje considered singing the Hymn of the Damned, the Voss’ death song. He didn’t want to be unprepared if this march should prove to be his last.
They approached a
cutgate,
a large and blinking portal of blood red light that shimmered like a pool of broken glass. Stone cast with dark runes and screaming gargoyle visages circled the gateway, and piles of icy dust were everywhere. The soldiers filed through one-by-one, voiceless and unafraid as they vanished into the folding crimson light.
Kruje smelled acid smoke and white flames and tasted dirty cold in his teeth as the lizard moved through the barrier, which pulsed and bubbled like molten metal. The giant closed his eyes and held his breath. The fluid was dry, a wash of pinpricks against his skin.
They must be stopped
, he thought.
And if it falls to me, then so be it.
He felt himself hovering over nothing, and then he was gone.
Forty-Nine
He swims in blood. It congeals around him, hardens like armor against his skin. The gory carapace warms his body and makes him strong. Power barrels through his veins, and his lungs swell with caustic fumes.
Through crimson eyes of muted glass he sees plains of knife rock and acid-washed trees. He hears the wolves, feels the collective pulse of their blood and the beating of their hearts as they scour the wastes. There are coiled intestines smoking in the cold, the twisted remains of moose and elk brought down with a level of fury and violence unusual even for the monstrous pack.
A thought tugs at the edge of his mind, a warning.
This is wrong
, it says.
This is not who you are.
He ignores it, and howls.
Hunger rushes through him like a dark tide. His fur bristles in the glacial wind and stands on edge as vapors ice against his leather-hard skin. His muscles burn with tension.
He bursts forward with a deep cry, a razor sound that cuts through the flesh of the towering night.
Fifty
The air smells strange, like heady wine laced with sweat and the sharp dog-blanket stench of animals. He takes it in, lets it fill his nostrils.
His wounds have healed. His senses are sharp. His blood races through his veins, and he feels his heart hammer against his ribs.
The chamber is distorted, like looking through a lens of shattered crystal. Chain links lie scattered on the floor. His arms are layered in fur and blood. Some part of him reviles in horror from whatever it is he’s become, but that feeling only lasts a moment before the instinct to run takes over.
Boundless hunger surges through him. He snaps his jaws and sends an ear-shattering echo through the empty air.
He throws himself at the door. His strength is immense. Wood and metal shatter beneath his onslaught, a shower of splinters that rain into a curved hall layered with tapestries and rugs.
Men with curved swords come at him, and they smell much like those he just killed in the chamber. Knife-fangs bite through armor and skin. Blood splashes across his vision as pulpy meat explodes between his jaws. Razor talons punch into leather and bone.
Howls of anger and fear. More men rush towards him as he enters a labyrinth of night-dark tunnels. He breathes bloody fumes. Powerful limbs crack through bone. He smothers bodies and pulls apart flesh in a storm of intestines and grime. Meat slides down his throat.
He has to hurry, has to save the giant.
His nostrils flare with anger and man-scent as he races down the hall, slashing stone walls and ripping through artwork and furniture. His massive lupine body rushes past a frightened slave girl and sends a pair of black cats fleeing in terror. The air is heavy with blood and sex. Many have died in the halls of this grim keep, especially young girls, but even through that miasma of discordant odors he pinpoints the giant’s heady underground stench of iron and stone. Once found it’s easy to follow.
The keep is alive with mercenaries. Another collared slave girl sees him and screams. Black-clad soldiers appear from the narrow halls as he races through a parlor filled with elegant shivans and bowls of ripe fruit. He makes for an iron-bound door.
He glances back when he smells her, recognizing the sweetly sick smell of his blood on her armor: Drakanna, her eyes red with anger. Blood Knights follow her with their weapons
brandished. Drakanna holds a pair of curved short swords, and the
vra’taar
is slung across her back.
Flashes of metal and claw. He ignores the Blood Knights and plows through the black-clad mercenaries, crushing them under his weight and smashing their heads against the stone. His talons rip away the doors and he takes the stairs down five at a time, out into an open courtyard surrounded by high walls capped with spikes and skulls. The air is ripe and fatty, and the thin pale sky is littered with carbon clouds.
Men gather at the bottom of the steps, spears and swords held high, arrows nocked into bows. He dives into them. Faces splatter, bones break, bodies fall away. Screams and crashing metal wash over him as he tears through their ranks. Blood soaks his edged fur and drips from his jaws.
He cleaves through the dark soldiers, tossing men aside as he barrels to the nearest tunnel leading from the courtyard. He senses the Blood Knight on his tail and turns to glimpse Drakanna running after him. He isn’t sure why, but he doesn’t want to face her.
The wolf’s body moves with powerful grace as he runs through the network of halls, slicing through every soldier he sees. He pulls away from the slave girls, even though the instinct to consume their flesh is strong.
He doesn’t stop to feed. He runs.
Bolts and arrows fly into him from down the halls. Pain burns down his arms and back. He doesn’t stop moving.
A crossbowman jumps out from around a corner, but the wolf is faster and tears the man in two. More soldiers attack, and he smothers them with the crossbowman’s corpse.
Down another hall, past open doors filled with disheveled bedchambers and soiled sheets. Wine and meat, women and boys. Strange blue gases and green vials make everything taste heavy and thick.
He comes to a wide chamber, a great foyer with the semblance of harlequin trees cast across the floor. Another massive door waits there, black and sealed with arcane iron, and glittering light pours in through crystal windows set high in the stone walls. He hesitates, sensing something at his back.
Drakanna comes at him, running with such speed and fearlessness the wolf is taken by surprise. She soundlessly dives at him.
He barely dodges the first sword, but not the second. Edged steel slashes into his chest, and his blood sprays across her mask. Cold shoots through his body. He drives his curved talons into her torso, crushing intestines and ripping through leather and steel, but she fights on, jabbing her blades into his forearms, tearing through fur and muscle.
Stamping feet, the stench of sweat and adrenaline. More soldiers race towards the room. He flings Drakanna aside and rips into the new arrivals. Red rain falls around him.
Something cold waits beyond the door, a presence like a tang of iron and death. Fear slams into his spine as he dives away from ranks of panicked and bleeding mercenaries and into the frosty mist. He senses the open sky, feels the pulse of the rising moon.
He keeps going. He has to reach Kruje.
Blood Knights wait with more soldiers. He rips open stomachs and tears out throats. His jaws close around faces, and blood juices burst into his mouth.
Swords blaze against him. Razor pain knifes through his limbs. He circles around fast, tearing his attackers down before moving deeper into mist, stumbling over bodies as he goes.
He moves slower. The pounding of his raw and unclean heart echoes into the sky. Everything blurs to discordant edges. He sees the ground smoke, feels something sharp punch through his body, not a blade, no weapon, but something pulling inside as the world grows large, as his heart slows, as he shrinks down and his jaws recede and his hands pull back even as he stares at them, the talons vanishing, his skin going pale.
Fifty
-One
The transformation ended. Dane stood in a circle of bodies surrounded by folds of ghastly smoke. The ground was slick with gore. Nausea welled up in his stomach, and a few moments later he doubled over and vomited.
Dane’s already flushed and freezing flesh was hammered by the icy wind. He tried to stay upright as he wiped muck from his lips.
The hunger was gone, as was his strength. Dane was naked and covered in blood, but he was unharmed, somehow having been fully healed upon his transformation. Memory of the slaughter he’d just committed as he’d raced through the halls of Chairos’ fortress were vague, like a colorless and half-remembered dream, but his fingers still ached from hacking through Phage soldiers.
He saw Drakanna closing in with his
vra’taar
; how she could even move with such critical wounds was beyond him, but she was just twenty paces away and had help at her back.
Dane grabbed a curved sword from a corpse. He knew how ridiculous he must have looked standing naked and bloody in a field of the dead with nothing but a discarded blade to protect him. He sensed the raw power of the Veil hidden in the mists, and for just a moment he glimpsed a glittering mass of red and black light, like a frozen sea hanging in the air.
He reached for the Veil. His muscles tensed and his heart hammered in his chest, but he found the gelid power there, open to him at last.
Drakanna came at him with the
vra’taar
held high. She adjusted at the last moment, seeking to take Dane off guard, effortlessly guiding the blade towards his throat. He twisted and clanged the weapon aside and the Blood Knight crashed into him, her momentum and armor slamming his body painfully to the ground. Sick-spiraling blackness raced across his eyes. Her mask was over him, dripping his own blood onto his face as Drakanna brought a greaved leg up into his ribs.