"If you are not found in the next minute, I will kill them all," the woman said.
Merrin froze, just in time, as Moeash spewed out from the final wall of bodies, staring, eye locked on the sunBringer. The man who had saved him, the man he had saved... Merrin searched for the boy who had dabbed him with a wet cloth, but he found nothing. He found nothing; only a hateful creature, a beautiful thing that had now fallen.
Was the Moeash he remembered anywhere inside there?
"There you are!"
And Merrin saw, at that moment, the man-child drenched in a rain of black feathers. Familiar. He had seen this before—a symbol, no doubt, meant to represent something. A fall? Moeash…
His eyes widened.
He knew now: Moeash had fallen. The man-child was no more. Yet, why the wings?
What did that symbol represent?
What was Moeash to do?
The man-child leaned in, solemn, and kissed him on the cheek. "This is for at least saving them."
No!
He stepped back, retreating from the crowd. Was that it? Merrin touched his cheeks, his fingers smudged with something. What was it? He looked down and found a stain of red on his thumbs.
Moeash had marked me!
Fear came!
"WE WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO TAKE THE SUNBRINGER!" one screamed from the crowd, their bodies charged with a certain frenetic energy, a willingness to end it all.
No!
Moeash lowered his gaze, tears streaming down his cheeks. "See what you have done to them."
What? What is he talking about?
The sense of fear burned….
Something was co—
The woman released her bow. Bright. Light. It came like the swiftness of a flash. Instant…and it tore through the crowd. In a moment…a slow passing of time…red rained into the sky!
Eh?
Merrin turned. Bodies fell, blood bursting from their skulls, arms, and legs. Some shredded into fumes of bright red. Blood. So much blood.
So much…
He had counted them—passively, as the caster's mind did. In the moment, they swarmed him. Twenty-one of them. Twenty-one souls lost in a moment.
How?
Now he was no longer surrounded by a teeming horde of living things; no. He stood in a sea of flesh and blood.
Bodies and legs strewn across the earth like garbage. Their blood burning, steaming off the earth in an imagined fog of crimson. It was sudden. Too sudden. Too abrupt to be real. Impossible.
Yes, I must be dying at the hands of the bastard, Merrin thought. He laughed. No way this is real.
A roar boomed through the space, a loud, bestial cry. He looked. There, Ron gritted his teeth, straining against the massive chains that held him down. He was red. Blood crimson. Fur poking out from the pores of his skin, sharp talons extending from his once-pristine fingers. He was changing. Becoming the beast Merrin had made him into.
The chains ruptured, and Ron grew, his back hunching as a scarlet tail extended. Eyes sharpened into a monstrous gaze. A beast. In just a moment, where an elegant man once stood, there was now a beast—a wolf the size of six men.
Oh, what they could call him.
They look upon this red monster and call it the Beast of Nightfell.
It lunged toward the female caster. The mine caster torn to shreds before he could attempt any casting of sorts. Brutal. Ron had been unleashed, his maw opening wide to claim the female caster. Merrin knew, however, oh how accurately he knew at this moment: Ron would fail!
A white light erupted from the caster's bow—thunder that smashed into the giant beast, crashing it into the side of the wall. Not dead, but unconscious. The red creature slumped down, compressing back into the form of a naked, aging man.
He still lived, good.
Just enough.
Merrin held the face, the head of a woman, in his palm. He knew her, passively, as the caster's mind had the fondness of inputting bootless data. What a bane that was now. Here, covered in blood, wide-eyed, that lifeless face that had once smiled. Once laughed. Once prayed to him as some god.
He chuckled. What a god I am. What a fraud I have become.
The woman disregarded the jumbled, devoured body of the mine caster. How unimportant he seemed in the stream of events.
Useless.
She walked up to him, her eyes glowing with that violent light of the heavens. "I am Morgan."
Merrin lowered his head, caressing the face of his witnesses. Ah, no. Now he was their witness.
Is this what I was fighting to return to? He thought. It hasn't even been an hour, and all this death has happened.
Shouldn't you have died?
Shouldn't that beast have done a better job?
Could Orvane not have done better than lose to me?
Mist you all!
Morgan's voice flowed into his awareness; he could not restrict it. "You will come with me now."
"Why?" he said. "Wouldn't it be easier to kill me now?" He wanted it.
"No," Morgan said. "You seem capable enough to become a Nightsailer, so that is what you will do."
He recalled the word; an excubitor had mentioned it. Supposedly, it was a thing worse than the fate of a miner.
Perhaps that is what I deserve.
"If you refuse," Morgan said, "more of your witnesses will pay the price."
Never.
Merrin looked up to her. "Will there be torture? Pain for me?"
"Yes."
"And my people will live if I leave?"
"Yes."
He smiled. "Then you are doing me two favors."
He lowered his head, closing the eyes of the severed head.
And so it repeats itself. More death, yet only the El'shadie must live.
He laughed. The El'shadie lives too long!
I pity the one that remains... The one with many names. I pity the son of a mother and the bringer of the sun. I pity the man of shadows and his disciples. I pity the one who will call himself Preservation—Written by Saint Adalbert.
Ivory walked alone, pondering the end results now determined within the King's room. What would they do? What would they do to Kabal? How desperately she wanted to know. Too many questions bordered on the edges of her mind. Annoying.
Then there was the matter of stopping it—which she couldn't. How frustrating that was. She looked down at her fingers: pale skin, not as white as Adara, nor likely as pallid as any of the Fray Clan. Not that it was a competition.
She trailed her fingers down her hair, felt the hard metal links fitted into them—a sign of her virginity. All gone now. Some would despair at that fact; not her. Ivory smiled.
I need to save you, Kabal.
A voice snapped into her awareness—male. No, not one voice, but a multitude of masculinities. She started, noting the room she had stumbled into. One of the many training grounds within the Looming—the Castle of Valor. The space was vast: a trigon-shaped chamber with walls like countless granular boxes placed atop one another. Around the chamber, many doors led inward.
Turning, she realized her emergence had occurred through one such door—a sliding, proximity-triggered door. As expected, the room was full of sweaty, shirtless men, most of them DarkCrowns—trained guardsmen for the Clan. A collection of such rooms existed in the castle. Some were created every day—such was the might of the Looming.
A figure approached her—a tall, muscular man, a sense of unimaginable superiority present in his features. Prideful. His hair was silver, pure silver, cascading down like the fur of a fur-lion. Behind him, a black cape trailed.
He smiled, strangely. "Greetings, Princess of Valor."
"Greetings..." Ivory searched her mental archive. "What are you doing here, Salinor of the redCoats?"
"Perceptive. Good," he said. "Still, I suggest you think harder. There is no point in wasting my words."
"You came here with Adara?"
He said nothing.
"You are her consort?"
He laughed. "She is not worthy of it."
"Protector?"
"Hmm," he mouthed. "Though I must say, you were almost impressive in that display of yours..."
"Such is the way of the Bladesworn."
He smiled. "If you say so."
Ivory startled. Does he know? No, that's impossible. Even the delegate from the Vale had no idea. He couldn't have.
He glanced at the training guardsmen. "Your soldiers are almost worthy of my attention," he said.
"Perhaps that word 'Almost' is the reach of your vocabulary."
He said nothing. "I see." He turned to her. "Now, for the important matter, why do you, princess of Cintry, smell of the silver?"
What?
"I asked a question."
"And who are you to demand anything from me?" What does he mean by the scent of silver?
Salinor chuckled. "Ah, Navani would be overjoyed to hear such words from you. Mist the clan, she would have dragged you away without a care."
Ivory was stunned. This man, this impossible man, was talking to her with disregard for her status. Was he mad? "Salinor of the redCoats, I appreciated your presence at my coronation."
"A failed one."
She frowned. "Mind your tongue."
He smiled. "No creature has been born yet that can assure that." His eyes narrowed. "Now I ask again, why do you reek of the silver?"
Ivory paused. "I do not know what that is. Perhaps you are drunk on moss. Perhaps this would be revealed to your Highness." Who is he?
He rubbed his chin, still disregarding her. "Hmm. I see. What I mean is the silverAssurer."
What? Ivory quelled her internal emotions. His words, however, held no meaning in her awareness. Outside Adara of the Fray, no silverAssurer has been mentioned.
"Do you mean Adara?"
"I am no fool, Ivory of Valor... I know that scent."
"I have no relation to Fray."