Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [68]
He couldn’t see Vali anywhere. The undead had snatched him inside the tower.
“I’m coming for you, Vali!” Levac screamed.
He sliced at the legs of the tower. The scythe hewed straight through them, and the tower fell, toppling dozens of undead in the process. The creatures fell in a writhing pile, each one getting up to face him in hunger.
Vali stood up in the center of the dogpile. His eyes had rolled up in the back of his head, and his skin was grayish and sallow. Then Levac saw that a zombified humanoid had his mouth clamped onto the back of Vali’s neck.
“Vali, no!”
The boy roared, an inhuman sound born of hollowness and a thirst for death.
No, Levac thought. Not him. Anyone but him.
The boy’s pupils rolled into view, and focused on Levac. The experience was horrible.
Malfegor, the demonic general, marched into view behind the wreckage of the tower, and dull terror washed over Levac’s mind.
“Time to go, Levac, let’s go!” shouted a soldier.
Levac dropped the scythe and ran. He pushed or leaped over anything that got in his way, and tore through the crowd.
He leaped into the tunnel entrance and slammed the metal door behind him.
Salay clutched his shirt and shook him. “Where is he?” she shrieked.
“He’s gone.”
“No! You go back and get him! I’m not leaving without him!”
“We’re going. He’s gone, Salay.”
Salay slapped him across the face.
Three heartbeats passed.
She turned her back to him, and marched down into the tunnel.
“I … I couldn’t,” said Levac. “I was too late. Salay, I’m sorry.”
The only answer was his own echo, and the sounds of her footsteps on the tunnel floor. He picked up the satchel and followed after her.
JUND
It was night on Jund, and the tight, sweat-slicked abdomens of the warriors shone in the bonfire. One warrior hoisted a pair of effigies and hung them over the fire: one a long-haired man with a dragon-skin cape; the other, an older woman painted with a shaman’s stripes. Both lit immediately, and the warriors cheered.
Their cheers sounded thin to Kresh. In his long, blood-stuck braids he wore trophies of some of the warriors who had fallen at the lair of Malactoth. Ever since Rakka had betrayed him, since she had used the clan as bait for the dragon while casting some destructive spell of her own, his brain had burned. It was an obvious matter for revenge. As the effigy of Rakka crackled in the fire, he felt an easy hatred.
But it was the new betrayal that had him perplexed. Sarkhan, the stranger who had accompanied them to Malactoth’s lair, had seemed driven to seek out the hellkite. He was a powerful ally in that fight against the dragon—and yet, just days ago, he had seen Sarkhan leading a flight of dragons of his own, riding astride one of them like some kind of god. Sarkhan’s pets ravaged the low-lying areas, where dragons rarely fed, and expelled their hot breath on several valleys, razing them to the blackened ground.
Kresh had lost eleven of his remaining clanmates in the conflagration that followed.
So there they were, the thinned-out remains of his once-noble clan. They still had pride in their eyes and ferocity in their hearts, but their numbers were so few that the clan was in danger of dying out. Kresh knew something would have to give soon, or his clan would die the ignoble death of old age, shivering in some cave surrounded by goblin dung.
No, he thought.
If the clan’s fate was to face death, then he would lead them headlong into it. Vengeance for the shaman Rakka? A fitting downfall of the dragon-lord Sarkhan? Those needs burned inside his heart, yes. But he would hold them inside his ribcage, and smother them in his corpse-scream, if it meant he could give his people the ultimate gift: a death worth being born for.
He was ready for the final hunt, the pursuit of that enemy called death, and so was his clan. As they cheered the cinders from the effigies, and watched them float up and join with the rage-coughs of the volcanoes, he felt the readiness in their hearts.
He only needed a sign, some way to know in