Warren blinked, his eyes stinging. It wasn’t the first time he’d spent a night like this. In some ways, he preferred it to sleeping. Every morning, he woke up knowing he had slept through someone’s death, and he hated it. But daylight had come, and the kellnox had vanished with the night. Their destruction left him with a lot of work.
Exhaling, Warren moved back into the tower. He smiled at Isabel, still balled up on his pillow. Once it got later in the morning, he’d try to have someone take her.
Movement in the stairwell drew Warren’s attention away from the child. Heavy steps climbed to the door. He grabbed his blade from the weapons rack and placed himself between the door and Isabel. Anything coming that far up the tower had to be trouble.
The door creaked open, and he tensed.
Ruben, the head of the search party, stood on the threshold.
Warren exhaled, sheathing his blade. “Apologies, Ruben. Where is Emron and the others?”
“Quite all right, one can never be too careful these days,” Ruben said. “Vallerie and Cassidy were losing Methril to the kellnox. Emron went to help them escape.”
So, Fortitude really is the last city. Warren remembered the ocean-side city as a prosperous merchant city, steeped in culture. Now it too was lost.
“Where’s the rest of your team?”
Ruben paused at the table. For the first time, his age showed. His sharp brown eyes faltered. Eyes that, despite magic power flowing through them, were weary beyond comprehension. Eyes that had watched men and women he had raised die.
“We lost them.”
Warren eased into the chair at the table, eyes locked on the aged wood. Four years of chasing myths, and ten more soldiers dead. All of them good soldiers too.
Warren dropped his head into his hands. How had it come to this? He once had legions under his command. Now only Ruben, Emron, Vallerie and Cassidy were left, barely enough to make a team. Warren’s armor felt heavier than normal, collapsing inward on him. Still, Ruben’s appearance meant there had to be some news worth reporting.
“What have you found?”
Ruben laid a large parchment across the table and placed a smaller one next to it. The smaller page was written in an unfamiliar language, so Warren focused on the larger one. He recognized it as an outline of North Maridon. Far to the southeast were the Black Mountains. To the north and south grew thick forests that surrounded the Mori Forieton marshes. Near the bottom of the map lay a small island in Wisdom Bay where Ruben’s home in Valendril once stood. Methril overlooked the northernmost coast of the Ancient Sea, one hundred miles from Fortitude. Warren’s eyes were drawn to an unfamiliar mark. Near the peak of the Black Mountains stood a castle-like structure—the symbol for a city.
“That,” Ruben said, pointing to the castle, “Is Lith Kolem. One of the oldest surviving kingdoms from days of yore. According to my research, there is an ancient source of light there.”
Warren nodded, his brow furrowed.
“And that?” Warren gestured to the smaller parchment.
“This document, along with the map, are the only existing relics Akokios left before his murder. It translates as follows:
The location on this map is the only xellic settlement of the Ajoiner Realm. At the heart of the settlement is the beacon. It has power beyond comprehension. I fear, in this highly diverse realm, balance may be lost. If ever this should happen, the beacon must be activated to return the Ajoiner Realm to its proper order.”
Warren frowned. He knew he shouldn’t have expected the dead god of the Ajoiner Realm to detail exactly what any of this meant, but he had hoped for a little more.
“The beacon”—Ruben tapped the castle—“can restore the realm, push the Darkness from our home, and save our race.”
“How certain of this are you?”
“Enough to bring it to your attention.”
Even though his mind raced, Warren gave only a sharp nod. “Ruben, I need you to stay here and protect Fortitude. Make an announcement about the beacon to the people tonight. They could use a little hope right now.”
“What about the girl?”
“Keep her safe. And Ruben,” he said, turning his head to where the girl slept, “if you can, find her a home.”
“Warren, this journey will be the hardest yet. If this map is right, you’ll be heading to land long held by the Darkness. Move quickly, and be mindful of spies. Through my search, I’ve learned the Darkness is more treacherous than we believed. It’s turning the land into black wastelands, infecting the wildlife, and turning our brothers and sisters into kellnox. If you fail, this will be the end of the Ajoiner Realm.”
Even with the odds stacked against him, he had to try. Warren’s eyes lingered over Isabel’s sleeping form. He couldn’t save her parents, but he had a chance to save her. For her sake and everyone in Fortitude, he had to try.
“I won’t let that happen.” A fire Warren had long presumed dead returned to his voice and filled his soul with hope.
2
W arren slung a saddle over his horse’s back and ran an ungloved hand over the coarse, white hair on Noble’s neck. The stallion hooved the ground of the city’s stable. Warren smiled. He wasn’t the only one ready to return to the war front.
Fire crackled inside Warren’s chest: he would end this war.
“Are you leaving?” a small voice squeaked from behind him.
Isabel stared at him with her lip quivering. How did she get past Ruben?
“I thought I told you to stay in the tower,” he said.
“I want my mommy.” Tears welled in her eyes.
Warren shifted, air caught between his lungs and mouth. Isabel clung to her doll as if it were the only thing that mattered. He rubbed his neck, unsure of what to say.
Explaining her mother was dead seemed cruel, but lying to her seemed worse.
“Isabel...your mommy—she’s gone.”
“Where? When’s she comin’ back?” A string of brown hair fell over her forehead, which she pushed away with her palm.
This wouldn’t be easy. When he rescued other orphans, they, at least, understood death. Isabel was so naïve, so young, so hopeful. He couldn’t bear to think of her eyes growing cold like everyone else’s. But lying to her, even to protect her—Warren couldn’t do it.
“She’s...not.”
“How come?”
“Isabel, your”—Warren took a deep breath—“your mommy’s dead.”
“What’s that mean? Why can’t she come home?”
The rough palm of his glove irritated the skin on the back of his neck as he rubbed it. He knelt and looked Isabel in the eye.
“Remember when I told you your mommy was sleeping?”
“Is Mommy awake now?” Isabel lifted her chin, her eyes sparkling like a brook.
“No. When someone dies, it’s like they go to sleep, but they don’t wake up.”
The sparkle died.
“Why won’t she wake up? Am I going to sleep like Mommy?”
“No,” he said comfortingly, reaching out to the girl. She jumped into his arms and sobbed.
“Why won’t Mommy wake up? Can’t you wake her?”
Guilt ripped through Warren. If only he had been faster.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Warren whispered, his voice trembling.
“The monsters, they gonna make me sleep too. Aren’t they?”
“Shh, it’s all right. We found a way to kill the monsters.”
Isabel jerked her head up and gazed into Warren’s face. “You mean, you can make it all better?”
“Yes, everything’s going to be fine.” Warren smiled and hoped he wasn’t lying to her.
Isabel stared into his eyes.
“Here,” she held out the doll.
Warren eyed the doll, then the girl, shifting his gaze back and forth several times. She grabbed his arm and set the doll in his hand.
“So you won’t get lonely.”
Warren’s mouth opened, but never formed a word. Noble snort
ed and hooved the ground, pulling his attention away from the girl. Figures cast their shadows on the stable floor. Warren’s stomach clenched.
“Stay down!” Warren ordered, putting the girl behind him.
He rose just high enough to see out the window. Drevics edged through the streets, wildly sniffing the air. They must have smelled him and Isabel. A bloodbath would ensue if they found them.
A drevic smashed through the thatched roof of the stables, landing less than a foot from Warren and waving its four arms. It screamed, rancid breath making him gag. Between the time it took for the first to land and Warren to draw his blade, two more beasts had crashed through the roof behind him, separating him from Isabel. The first drevic threw itself from the ground, its upper two arms reaching for Warren’s face. He caught the beast on his sword. Tearing the blade free of armor, the corpse fell to the ground. Two more wails howled behind him, and two more corpses fell from his blade.
Drevics burst through the doorway and the ceiling. Isabel screamed in terror, clamping her arms over her head and balling up on the ground. Throwing the doll into a saddle pouch, Warren scooped Isabel up and hauled himself onto Noble’s saddle.
“Hang on!” he shouted.
Noble plowed through the stables, trampling everything in his path. Warren chopped the arms off the monsters that dared reach for Isabel. Out in the open, Warren had room to maneuver. He steered Noble away from a group of drevics and through a wide street.
As they rounded a blind corner, something smashed into him, tearing him from Noble’s saddle. He rolled several dizzying feet, then pushed himself to his knees. A drevic crashed into him. Warren jabbed at the beast’s eyeless face, but the attack didn’t do much.
The drevic bore down on him. His armor shrieked with each claw that raked over it but didn’t break. With a grunt, Warren threw the drevic off him. The creature attacked again. A quick sweep of his sword left the beast tripping over its horned head.
Still more of the fiends pursued Noble and Isabel. Drawing a dagger from his boot, Warren hurtled it into the neck of a drevic. The beast wailed, taking a few staggering steps before falling to the ground.
With a collective shriek, the pack turned back on him. Twirling his blade, Warren exhaled. In one fluid movement, he cut a diagonal gash across the chest of a drevic while ducking under another’s two left arms. His sword glimmered—a spectacle—rendering the receiver dead.
Isabel’s scream stole Warren’s attention away from the battle. Pressed into the corner of a building, she wailed.
Four drevics closed in on her. Heart pounding, he dashed to her and slammed himself against the wall next to Isabel. Furiously hacking, he shredded the beasts.
Warren kicked the last gurgling corpse off his blade, the body hitting the ground with an unceremonious thud. Something latched onto his leg. He almost stabbed it on impulse, but realized it was just Isabel.
Noble broke free from the mob and raced away from his attackers toward him. Warren tore the girl from his leg.
“Hold on!” he shouted, jumping on top of a nearby crate and forging a stairway up a fence and onto a low roof.
Out of breath, and half-deaf from Isabel’s screaming, he calculated each second with fierce precision. He leapt from the rooftop moments before the stallion reached his position, landing in the saddle with a thud. The sudden weight jolted Noble just enough to allow Warren to persuade the horse to follow his lead.
Warren could handle the drevics on his own, but he needed to get Isabel out of there. He couldn’t lose Isabel. He’d promised.
Warren steered the horse through back alleys and streets to the tower. His knuckles whitened as he crushed Noble’s reins, and his legs gripped the steed’s sides. Just before the tower, he leapt from his horse with Isabel still clinging to his armored collar. Noble clopped away as Warren raced inside. He slammed the lock closed as drevics crashed into the door. Isabel balled up in a corner and wailed.
“Get upstairs!” Warren braced the door with his shoulder.
Drevics beat at the door. With each blow, the barrier grimaced in agony.
“What happened?” Ruben asked, sword ready in one hand, swirling blue magic in the other.
“Drevics!”
Another wave of drevics hurtled against the door, cracking a plank of wood. Ruben moved to help Warren, but he stopped him.
“I’m fine, get her out of here!”
Ruben tried coaxing the girl to him, but she pulled her head tighter into her knees. Giving up, he scooped her into his arms and headed for the stairs.
Wood splintered as another massive crash assaulted the door. Flinging the bolt free, Warren tore it open, blade stabbing at his enemies. Drevics clambered over each other, trying to rip him apart. He slashed through the bottlenecked beasts, slaying multiple with each stroke. The work progressed barely beyond a standstill. His muscles burned and sweat ran into his eyes, but he refused to give up.
The final Drevic fell with a scream, leaving Warren panting in the doorway.
He had to get to his team in Methril. Ruben would figure out where the creatures had breached the city wall.
Stumbling over the heap of stinking flesh, Warren searched for his horse. He whistled twice, but the clop of hooves on cobblestone never rang. He hoped Noble had returned to the stables. Of all the times to deal with an attack, right now had to be the worst.
It only took a few minutes to return to the stables, but to Warren it felt like hours. Horses were in short supply. Horses trained for battle were even scarcer. If Noble had fallen in the attack...Warren prayed that hadn’t happened. Swells of nervousness battered him as he entered the stable. Noble munched hay. How had the animal evaded the remaining drevics? Warren smiled and shook his head.
Mounting the steed, Warren charged through the city. A few half-starved citizens watched as he charged past, but he didn’t have time to explain. He’d leave that to Ruben. Warren pictured Isabel staring after him from the tower window and prayed someone would adopt her.
He hardened his stomach as he neared the city gates. On the other side of the wall lay mounds of bodies. Creatures of the Darkness, hung skewered on massive spikes intended to keep the evil out of the city. The wall reeked—the spikes claimed recent victims every night, perpetuating the foul stench.
Even worse were the swarms of flies breeding in the carnage. Bugs pinged off the side of his helmet as he raced through the open graveyard. Cleaning up the outskirts of the city would be his first priority when he returned.
The countryside was riddled with depressions from catapults and scorched by flames of war. Shattered war equipment hid tucked between patches of grass as far as twenty miles from the city. He wanted to forget the horrors of war, but the images wouldn’t leave. The smoke that rose from burning flesh on the battlefield and the cries of death around him still raged in his mind.
Warren shook his head, the path in front of him blurring between the battle of years ago and the present. He raised his blade and shouted to his phantasmic men as they drove back the Darkness.
Burning pain washed over his side, and he fell to the ground.
Warren gasped for breath. Blue sky and Noble stared at him. Noble whinnied. Sitting up, Warren touched the scar from the kellnox that had nearly killed him. He pulled himself back into the saddle.
So many had died in that battle. And what good had it done? Bought a little more time? Isabel’s hopeful expression flashed forward in his mind. Warren ground his teeth. It did more than buy a little more time. It bought them just enough time.
Spurring Noble, Warren resumed his journey, putting the pain of old battles behind him. The Darkness hadn’t attacked in full force after that battle, but almost half of Fortitude’s population had been killed in the night raids since.
Ruben’s magic was better suited to combat the Darkness than Warren’s single blade. If Ruben weren’t the only person who could translate ancient texts from when Akokios still lived, Warren would have placed him in charge of prot
ecting the city. Warren pushed aside the guilt of his shortcomings. He had a chance to do better now.
Warren’s thoughts swirled until they landed on the beacon. Where had it come from? How was it supposed to destroy the Darkness? Did Senkaar know of its existence? If so, Warren and his team were at a severe disadvantage. It might destroy the last friends he had left. The thought chilled him.
The farther away from Fortitude he got, the less the rolling fields reminded him of past battles. The path led him through the warming autumn morning, and into the heat of the cloudless afternoon. Atop a hill, Warren stopped breathing as he spotted a massive column of smoke rising from Methril.
No, please, no.
His hands tightened around Noble’s aged reins, and he rode onward. Two miles from the city, Warren still hadn’t seen survivors fleeing—or his companions. Where were they?
A grim feeling crept into his gut as he thought about the possibility that they, like so many soldiers and friends, were dead. He drove Noble harder. Someone had to be alive in there.
What remained of Methril slumped against the edge of the cliffs, above the Ancient Sea and surrounded by fields of reedy grass, suffocating in flames. The city burned with a fire so intense Warren flushed from the heat fifty feet away. But the fire didn’t deter him. He would find his friends. He ducked low to Noble’s neck and charged past the broken gate into the war zone. Racing through the city, he searched every corner, every charred corpse, dreading it might be his friends. After a full hour of searching, he still saw nothing but corpses and the drevics that fed on them.
Warren screamed his friends’ names, his voice barely rising above the crackling roar of the flames. His metal helmet burned the back of his neck, but he searched on.
As Warren searched the market district, he saw Emron ridding down the northern street on his midnight warhorse, Onyx. His plated armor wore scratches, and his war hammer dripped with the blood of demons. He caught an overzealous Drevic by the throat as it leapt at him and hurdled it at a nearby building. The goliath of a man spotted Warren and steered Onyx in his direction.
Cassidy, riding Dusty, raced behind Emron. His leather armor, scorched by flames, smoldered He strung his bow with an arrow as Vallerie charged behind him, bouncing expertly on her dapple-gray mare, Echo.
The Ajoiner Realm (Defenders of Radiance Book 1) Page 2
