been through this before, this fugue of hurting and being hurt, of being marched out, barely coherent, to fight enemies greater than himself. That had been in Krul, when he’d been a gladiator, battling for the amusement of the vampire aristocracy. Now he was in a different hell, woken at odd hours, sent out to slay the dying before they became something worse.
Anticipating blacking out, Cross suspended all other thought. They dropped him onto his bed. He blinked at the ceiling, cold concrete laced with cracks that spread like a dismal constellation. Everything started to spin.
He tasted death in the air. He’d been there for barely ten days, but already it felt like years. Blood and ash and smoke, wading through ankle-deep remains. Tasting every soul as it was released, watching recognition blossom on people’s faces as he ran them through with his blade. He was exhausted, having spent hours wading through the remains of the almost dead, hewing through blistered flesh and praying that what he did for them was something good, but he doubted it.
They’d brought him there for some other purpose, though sometimes it was difficult for him to remember what it was.
The swords. They need the swords.
Were they testing him? Did this grisly clean-up duty have something to do with the Raza’s analysis of the artifacts, or was it just for their amusement? Another way of hurting him, when they’d already taken everything he had.
No. That’s not true. Not yet.
Because she was still alive.
He healed as he rested, but it was a painful process. The blades weren’t gentle, and as he laid on that uncomfortable cot in the small and dingy room – a room that reminded him far too much of the hovel he’d owned back in Thornn, in a time when his sister was still alive and his spirit was his own, when Graves was always at his side and he was too young to understand how much pain awaited him – his wounds cracked together, blood cleansed, skin forcefully closed, the filth in his lungs expunged as if by a bilge pump.
The world faded. He lost time.
He’d expected to be sent to Fane; instead, he’d wound up Night, a small and creaky city-state at the edge of the Ebonsand Sea, a place once known as a haven for wastelands refugees yet still possessed of a strong sense of order. Sailors, nomads, farmers, traders and criminals all called the place home. The buildings were tall and irregular and the citizens possessed a somewhat dismal state of mind, but at least the city was relatively safe. A council of ex-soldiers allowed people to do what they wished, provided they followed a few simple provisos of law in order to minimize bloodshed. The harbor was full day and night with ramshackle ships, shanties, iron-clad war boats and converted yachts retrofitted with armor and rotary guns, and the streets overlooking the black-gold waters were lined with merchants, booksellers, even a garden. The place was dank and smelly and always green, as if the sky had been flushed with algae, and the people were unkempt and rough, set in their ways and isolated.
That was how Cross recalled Night, from the few times he and the team had passed through the remote city-state on away missions for the Southern Claw. Everything had changed under Wulf’s rule. The city had fallen quickly, he was told, and it had been transformed into another outpost for the so-called East Claw Coalition’s continued campaign of conquest. The air seemed darker than when Cross had been there last, and the people’s eyes were filled with fear. The council had been executed on the steps of the small manor they used as a government building, and just in case anyone had any doubts as to Wulf’s authority his Raza swept through and eliminated every mage in the city.
The world was already mad before he and Danica had been exiled to Nezzek’duul – now it was completely insane.
Cross tried to drown out the sounds
Anticipating blacking out, Cross suspended all other thought. They dropped him onto his bed. He blinked at the ceiling, cold concrete laced with cracks that spread like a dismal constellation. Everything started to spin.
He tasted death in the air. He’d been there for barely ten days, but already it felt like years. Blood and ash and smoke, wading through ankle-deep remains. Tasting every soul as it was released, watching recognition blossom on people’s faces as he ran them through with his blade. He was exhausted, having spent hours wading through the remains of the almost dead, hewing through blistered flesh and praying that what he did for them was something good, but he doubted it.
They’d brought him there for some other purpose, though sometimes it was difficult for him to remember what it was.
The swords. They need the swords.
Were they testing him? Did this grisly clean-up duty have something to do with the Raza’s analysis of the artifacts, or was it just for their amusement? Another way of hurting him, when they’d already taken everything he had.
No. That’s not true. Not yet.
Because she was still alive.
He healed as he rested, but it was a painful process. The blades weren’t gentle, and as he laid on that uncomfortable cot in the small and dingy room – a room that reminded him far too much of the hovel he’d owned back in Thornn, in a time when his sister was still alive and his spirit was his own, when Graves was always at his side and he was too young to understand how much pain awaited him – his wounds cracked together, blood cleansed, skin forcefully closed, the filth in his lungs expunged as if by a bilge pump.
The world faded. He lost time.
He’d expected to be sent to Fane; instead, he’d wound up Night, a small and creaky city-state at the edge of the Ebonsand Sea, a place once known as a haven for wastelands refugees yet still possessed of a strong sense of order. Sailors, nomads, farmers, traders and criminals all called the place home. The buildings were tall and irregular and the citizens possessed a somewhat dismal state of mind, but at least the city was relatively safe. A council of ex-soldiers allowed people to do what they wished, provided they followed a few simple provisos of law in order to minimize bloodshed. The harbor was full day and night with ramshackle ships, shanties, iron-clad war boats and converted yachts retrofitted with armor and rotary guns, and the streets overlooking the black-gold waters were lined with merchants, booksellers, even a garden. The place was dank and smelly and always green, as if the sky had been flushed with algae, and the people were unkempt and rough, set in their ways and isolated.
That was how Cross recalled Night, from the few times he and the team had passed through the remote city-state on away missions for the Southern Claw. Everything had changed under Wulf’s rule. The city had fallen quickly, he was told, and it had been transformed into another outpost for the so-called East Claw Coalition’s continued campaign of conquest. The air seemed darker than when Cross had been there last, and the people’s eyes were filled with fear. The council had been executed on the steps of the small manor they used as a government building, and just in case anyone had any doubts as to Wulf’s authority his Raza swept through and eliminated every mage in the city.
The world was already mad before he and Danica had been exiled to Nezzek’duul – now it was completely insane.
Cross tried to drown out the sounds
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