The stone tree-if that was what it was-did not cease its mad growth, and she saw roots curl into the wounds in the city’s flanks. Where the lightning struck the writhing stone, the sound of the impacts boomed deeper than any thunder, but everywhere that wounds broke open stone swarmed in to heal the damage.
All at once the attacks ceased. Sudden heat washed down upon Kalyth and she cried out in pain.
The four Nah’ruk sky keeps were engulfed in flames, reeling away from the gate. The fires brightened, and then, in a flash, burst incandescent white at their cores. As she watched, in horror, in wonder, the keeps seemed to be vaporizing before her eyes. Churning, the towering pillars of fire pitched eastward, beneath them the ground blackening with scorching heat.
Gunth Mach spoke in her mind. ‘Destriant. See through my eyes. Do you see?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Two figures stood upon a torn, ruined ridge to the northwest. Sorcery poured from them in terrible waves.
A boy.
A girl.
He didn’t care. The world could be moments from being swallowed by the Abyss itself, Stormy was finally in the midst of war’s sharpest truths and nothing else-nothing-mattered. Laughing, he slashed and hacked at the Nah’ruk as they pressed in, as the dead-eyed lizards sought to clamber over the Ve’Gath, sought by numbers alone to overwhelm this savage wall of denial.
Gesler’s charge down the pocket had pierced the bastards like a boar-sticker, forcing them into the narrow spaces between the frenzied K’ell and the shield-locked Ve’Gath. They fought with appalling ferocity, and died in chilling silence.
His mount was wounded. His mount was probably dying-who could tell? All these lizards fought until their last breath. But its defences had slowed, weakened. There was blood everywhere and he could feel its chest heaving with shuddering cadence.
A short-snouted maw lunged at his face.
Cursing, he pitched back to avoid the snapping dagger teeth, struggled to draw close his short-handled axe-but the damned Nah’ruk surged still closer, clawing its way up the Ve’Gath’s shoulder. His mount staggered-
He chopped with his axe, but the range was too tight, and though the edge bit into the side of the lizard’s head the wound it delivered was not enough to sway the creature. The jaws opened wide. The head snapped forward-
Something snarling struck the Nah’ruk, a knotted mass of mottled, scar-seamed hide and muscle, savage canines sinking deep into the lizard’s neck.
Disbelieving, Stormy kicked his boots free of the stirrups to roll further back-