Page 339 of Of Empires and Dust
She let go of the hilt and leapt backwards as a downstroke threatened to relieve her of her arms. Coren drove her back heel into the dirt, slid a knife from her belt, and rammed it up between the ribs of the woman who had swung the blade. She twisted the hilt, angling it upwards, before ripping it out, flipping into reverse grip, and driving it into the woman’s neck.
The body dropped, and two more arrows flitted past in quick succession. Two more Lorians dead.
Coren pulled her sword from the corpse she’d left it in and carved a path to the tunnel mouth. These Lorians were green as newly ripened fruit. They were clumsy, hesitant, and fought as individuals. She felt guilt at the thought of slaughtering so many who were so young, men and women dying in a war that had started before their grandparents had been born. But that guilt did not extend to the blade in her hand.
She dropped low and sliced a furrow along the thigh of the nearest soldier. He screamed and fell, his lifesblood pouring into the rock as Coren moved past and opened another soldier’s chest from clavicle to hip.
A soldier roared and charged at Coren, swinging a two-handed blade over his head. Coren stopped the sword mid-swing with a thread of Air, and as the shock spread across the man’s face, she jabbed her blade into his neck, just enough to slice through the flesh and into the spine, then pulled it free.
The soldier choked on his own blood, dropping his blade and grasping at his throat. Coren stepped over him and stared into the tunnel mouth. The thing was black with shifting bodies, only the thinnest strands of light piercing through, voices and crunching dirt echoing.
She gave a soft sigh, then pulled threads of Earth into herself and spread them through the rock above the tunnel.
She felt mages within probing at her threads. That must have been how they’d gained entry, by searching for hollow points in the rock with the Spark. It was a clever tactic, but they were too late now. As they tried to sever her threads, Coren pulled on the elemental strand of Fire in her mind, its warmth filling her bones and sweeping over her skin.
Aldryn pushed his strength into hers as his mighty wings bore him across the sky. While the mages attempted to stop the tunnel from collapsing on top of them, Coren unleashed a plume of blazing fire from her hand, her heart bleeding just a little as the screams pierced her ears and the smell of burning flesh and leather filled her nostrils.
Those screams were soon swallowed by the crashing rocks as the tunnel’s ceiling broke and the burning Lorians within were crushed.
She turned back and strode towards Suka, who stood on the other side of the chamber, pulling a knife from the last Lorian. As the guilt of snuffing out so many lives at once crept into her veins, she pushed it down and buried it deep. Her master had always told her to hold on to that guilt, lest it be lost, and that was what she had always tried to do. She let it in, then cut it down. These soldiers had come for the people she loved, and so they would die or she would die. There was no middle ground.
“We need to make sure Farwen and the others have a clear path back towards the sally port in case the gates fall. Take these warriors to the other tunnels and set defensive lines. We can’t allow them to get in behind us. I will hunt down any still alive within and make my way back to the gates.”
Suka wiped the blood from her knife and sprinted off down one of the interior tunnels, taking fifty or so with her.
Coren set off through the same tunnel but turned right where Suka had turned left. She gathered any and all souls she could as she passed. They moved from one tunnel to another, through the interconnecting chambers, following the shouts and sounds of crashing steel until they came to the common quarter, a massive cavern ringed with terraces that were split by Spark-carved steps. Buildings of brown stone littered the cavern, and a central plaza dominated the bottom level. Lorians had swarmed in from a different tunnel and were now slaughtering everything that moved. Man, woman, child, it didn’t matter. For a moment, Coren was horrified at the butchery, but then she saw glowing red gemstones that hung from mages’ necks, and her mind flickered back to the carnage the night Ilnaen fell.
Those gemstones twisted people, warped them into things they were not. And beneath the light of the Blood Moon, it seemed that gifted savagery was untethered. A strange sense of relief swept over her, for now there was nothing holding her back.
Coren sprinted forwards and leapt from the closest ledge. She drove her sword down into a Lorian mage’s back as she fell, releasing the hilt as her feet hit the ground and she rolled. Coren sprang up and wrapped threads of air around a spear that lay in the dirt, then whipped the weapon through the air, past herself, and into the chest of a Lorian soldier, pinning them to the rock wall.
She turned and planted her foot into another soldier’s chest, kicking him down into the plaza five terraces below. Arrows flitted past her head, slicing through the Lorian soldiers, but as Coren turned, two Battlemages appeared on the top terrace and unleashed pillars of fire down over a clutch of rebels.
“No!” Coren sprinted up the steps, snatching up a spear as she went.
The first Battlemage whirled threads of Fire and Spirit around himself, flames flickering in his palms. Coren hurled the spear, and as the man turned it to ash and cinders before it struck him, she pushed threads of Earth into his breastplate and crushed his ribs.
He dropped to his knees, coughing blood and choking.
Coren closed the distance between herself and the second mage in a heartbeat. A red glow emanated from beneath his breastplate.
She whipped a thread of Air into his right leg, bones snapping through flesh and blood spraying over the rock. As he dropped, howling, Coren reached out with threads of Earth and pulled shards of broken rock and stone into her fist, softening them with threads of Fire and forming them into a stone spear.
The Battlemage lifted his hand, the red gemstone glowing furiously beneath his breastplate. Before the man could take another breath, Coren drove the stone spear straight down into his open mouth, feeling the slightest resistance as it hit the back of his skull and burst out the other side. She released the spear and let the body fall.
Coren turned to find herself staring at a face she had once known, an Imperial Justicar by the name of Kalirist Mahkar. A red gemstone dangled from a chain around his neck, pulsing with a red glow, and something unseen wound around Coren, binding her tight.
Kalirist held out his sword so it pressed to the flesh of Coren’s neck. “Coren Valmar. I knew you weren’t dead. I’d heard tales.”
The steel stung as it pressed deeper, drawing blood.
“Do you know how many people died when you attacked Berona?” He scoffed, deep blue eyes staring into Coren’s. “You always thought yourself better, but you were only ever blind.” Kalirist’s lips curled at the edges, and the whites of his eyes took on a red hue. He drew back his sword. “Sleep well.”
Ella leaptthrough the portal that Una had opened, her hackles raised, the wolf howling in her blood. The chamber on the other side was all blood and steel and shouting. A tingling sensation ran up her spine, and she twisted at the waist, the wolf within demanding she do so. A sword sliced through the air where her abdomen had been, surprise painting the face of the Lorian soldier whose fingers were wrapped around the hilt.
The red mist fell over Ella’s vision, the wolf within her coming to the fore. But no longer were they two parts of a whole; they were one. She let the creature’s instincts take hold. She swept the Lorian aside with a ferocious backhand, her dark claws ripping through his leather helm as though it were mere paper.
Diango and Aneera rushed past her in their wolf forms, their eyes wild and claws rending whatever Lorian dared approach. Once more, a shiver ran down her spine, and she snapped her head around to find Fenryr holding a Lorian by the throat, the woman’s sword arm still stretched towards Ella.
