Page 131 of Of Empires and Dust

Spear.

In the same breath, Vandrien’s sister, Cala, snatched Salara’s sword and tossed her a thick-shafted throwing spear in return. Salara judged the flight of the weapon, glanced at the riders, then snatched and launched the spear in a single fluid motion.

The spear caught the leftmost rider in the face, tearing open their cheek and mouth before punching through their skull in a cloud of gore and bone. The force of the blow, combined with the horse’s forward motion, sent the rider soaring from the horse’s back. They crashed to the ground while the horse scampered away to the left, letting out a high-pitched scream.

Poor creatures. The humans loved using them as fodder. Their souls were too beautiful for such savagery.

Both surviving riders paid their fallen companion the briefest of glances before urging their horses on faster. One attempted to weave threads of Earth beneath Salara’s feet while the otherdrew the heat from the air around her with threads of Fire. Both manoeuvres were snuffed out by threads that came from behind Salara – Vandrien and the others.

Salara glanced back and Vandrien gestured for her to continue, giving an acknowledging nod. The humans had broken the rights of Alvadrû and the city would burn for it, but these deaths belonged to Salara.

The two riders drew their swords, glowing red light emanating from beneath their breastplates. They were only a few feet away.

She pulled threads of Air through her, then launched them at the charging Lorians. She split the threads, thinning them and slamming them into the riders’ chests. The two men let out violent howls as they were ripped from their saddles.

It would have been simpler to burn them, but the horses did not deserve that fate. And she could have pulled the air from their lungs or crushed their chests, but these men had ridden away from the city with the sole intent of ending her life. They had deemed her death worthy of theirs, and so she would look into their eyes as she pulled the light from their souls.

The men scrambled to their feet as their horses scattered. A moment of hesitation flitted between them: stand and fight, or run. One plucked his sword from the ground, and they moved towards Salara.

Fight it is.

The two men closed on her, one moving left, the other right. The man on the left walked with a limp, likely sustained from the fall off his horse. The one on the right had a steady hand, and a number of knives glinted on the baldric across his chest. He would die first.

She caught a glimmer of a smile on the knife-wielder’s face at the sight of her empty hands. She’d left her sword with Cala and her spear in the chest of the dead mage.

The two men circled until they stood at the periphery of her vision. A moment of wind and silence passed, then they launched themselves at her, wheeling threads of Fire, Spirit, and Air about them.

Salara pulled threads of Spirit through her, sharpening them like knives as she sliced the Lorians’ threads. Both men swung their steel, one at her head, the other at her shin. She took the higher blow on her vambrace, catching the steel and redirecting it, while lifting her left boot and slamming it down, pinning the second sword to the ground and snapping it free from her attacker’s hand. They moved with the speed and strength of souls augmented with Blood Magic, but they lacked the skill to make it matter.

The man on her left staggered, his injured leg unable to support him. Salara rammed her armoured knee up into his face, the crunch of bone audible. As he flailed to the ground, Salara twisted, narrowly avoiding the swing of the second mage’s blade, its tip almost scraping her breastplate.

Tendrils of something unseen wrapped around her, serpents wrought of Efialtír’s darkness binding her. The coils of Blood Magic pulled her arms to her side and tightened. It had been centuries since she’d last felt the tainted touch of that dark power. She pushed threads of Earth outwards and into the two mages’ breastplates, pushing the metal inwards. She wasn’t sure which of the two held her in their grasp. Better to be certain. Within a heartbeat, the unseen bonds holding her evaporated as both men scrambled to cut through her threads of Earth before their armour caved in.

Salara launched herself towards the closest mage, and as he swung his blade, she pulled on a thin thread of Air, ripped one of his throwing knives from his baldric, and sent it plunging into the wrist of his sword arm.

He released the blade with a howl. Salara caught the weapon mid-air with her left hand and opened his throat in a single motion. As he stumbled forwards, blood pouring through his hands, Salara wrapped her fingers around his opened throat.

“Din haydria er fyrir,” she whispered as the man choked on his own blood.Your honour is forfeit.She plunged the Lorian blade into his belly, then tossed his lifeless body to the ground.

The mage with the limp stood behind her, having regained his blade and risen, his hand shaking around the hilt.

“You call yourselves Battlemages,” Salara said in the human’s Common Tongue, taking slow steps towards him. She looked into his eyes, shaking her head. “You are but shadows of what came before you.”

The man limped backwards, his eyes fixed on her, his sword extended outwards in an entirely useless position. “Stay back.”

A glowing red gemstone pendant had come loose from its nook under his breastplate. He reached for it, but Salara wrapped the pendant in threads of Air and snapped it free, pulling it into her own hand.

It was then she saw it in the man’s eyes: he was nothing more than a child. Perhaps twenty summers, and he’d not known the feel of a blade in his hand for many of those. He was but a fawn staring into the eyes of a starving wolf. The Lorians were growing desperate, sending half-trained children into a war they could not comprehend.

She looked down at the glowing stone, staring into its depths. Something within called to her, urging her to open herself, to welcome its power into her blood.

She pushed threads of Earth and Spirit into her hand, then clenched her fist around the stone. Wisps of red light burst from the gaps in her fingers as the gemstone cracked and shattered, a shiver running through her. She turned her hand sideways and poured the crushed remnants of the stone into the dirt.

“Such a waste of life,” Salara said aloud, sighing as she moved towards the young man.

His eyes widened, and he made to draw from the Spark, but Salara encased him in a ward of Spirit before it answered him.

The fear that had made its home in his eyes now visibly spread through his body, and he turned to flee.

---