Page 132 of Of Empires and Dust

Salara pushed a thin thread of Earth into the ground and formed a small lump at his feet. The man’s boot connected, and he hit the ground like a sack of stones, his face taking the brunt of the impact.

He scrambled onto his back, his eyes flitting between Salara and the ground around him as he searched desperately for the sword he had dropped as he’d fallen. She could feel the fear in him as he tried frantically to push through her ward of Spirit.

“Please…” His voice trembled.

“Please what?” Salara asked, genuinely curious.

A voice called from behind her – Vandrien’s – and Salara lifted her gaze momentarily to see a curtain of arrows stretching across the sky.

“I am sorry,” she said to the young Lorian mage, whose jaw slackened at the sight of the arrows loosed from his own walls. “There is no honour in this death.”

The man’s hands shook and his breaths grew rapid. “For the…” he stammered. “For the empire. Efialtír will take you with me.”

“No,” Salara replied. “He won’t.”

Salara raised her hand and pulled in threads of Air, forming a wedge before her while holding her ward over the Lorian mage. She gave him a tender smile and inclined her head. “Må du alura i’il rhyním un Heraya.”

May you rest in the embrace of Heraya.

As the words left Salara’s lips, the arrows fell, slamming into the ground like steel rain. The hail split around her wedge of Air,leaving a patch of untouched earth where she stood. The young Lorian mage was not so lucky. He thrashed as arrows plunged into his flesh, piercing his legs and arms, ripping into his torso, and turning his face to ribbons.

When it was all done, Salara stood unharmed, a touch of sorrow in her heart at the sight of the body that now comprised more steel and wood than flesh and bone.

An eerie silence followed, holding until dirt crunched beneath footsteps.

Queen Vandrien and her sister, Cala, stopped at Salara’s side, ten members of the Sunguard spread about them, along with High Paladin Thryn Erimal and Warmarshal Luilin.

The queen cast her gaze over the two dead bodies, both studded with arrows, the earth looking like the back of a spined anditar. “They sought glory,” she said, her gaze lingering on the younger mage. “But it was death who came to meet them.” She looked to Salara. “Begin.”

Salara pinched her thumb and forefinger together and whistled, augmenting the sound with threads of Air and Spirit.

Two roars answered her call.

Moments later, the thump of wingbeats carried on the wind and shadows fell over Salara and the others as Nymaxes and Baerys soared overhead. The pair were two of the smallest surviving dragons from the Cuendyar, but even the smallest dragons were enormous creatures in their own right. They swirled around each other, their movements intimate, black scales blending with blue, dark green wings striking against pale cream.

Another hail of arrows loosed from Catagan’s walls, but the two dragons simply rose above the rain of steel and wood, the arrows falling harmlessly to the ground.

Beside Salara, High Paladin Thryn lifted his horn to his lips and blew.

More horns answered, followed by the thunder of footfalls as the army began its march. The dragons descended on the walls, rivers of fire pouring from their jaws.

Less than two hours later,Salara stood at the centre of a wide street beyond Catagan’s second wall, her blade buried in the gut of a woman who had died well, her foot resting on the neck of a man who had not.

Shadows danced across the white stone walls, cast by the flames that consumed the city, accompanied by the screams and shouts of those who prepared to enter Achyron’s halls.

Salara slid her sword from the woman’s gut and let the body slump to the cobblestones, her gaze fixed on the blood-stained white walls. This city had once been home to the Evalien kingdom of Quelyin. She remembered their story well. They had survived longer than most after the Cuendyar, won many battles, sent many Dragonguard into The Traitor’s arms. But like all those before them, they eventually fell, barely a handful surviving to find shelter within Lynalion’s limits. And now she stood in their legacy: a burning husk of a city awash with Lorian blood.

She turned her gaze from the walls to the fighting around her. Though, in truth, ‘killing’ was a more appropriate word. The Lorian soldiers that remained in this area of the city were stragglers left behind by those retreating to the keep, and the Onarakina were brutal and savage in their dealing of death.

All about her, the armoured elves with bands of blue cloth at their arms and waists tore into Lorian soldiers like starved wolves. They hacked limbs and stabbed corpses until nothing but a mush of diced organs and skin remained. For generations, these elves had been forced to work the northern mines until their bodies gave way or their minds broke. Now they had beengiven a chance to unleash all that rage, all that agony and despair. And though Salara understood their pain, respected it, she found the sight difficult to witness.

The thump of armoured boots sounded behind her.

A column of Numillíon warriors marched through the street behind Salara, their burnished golden armour marred by still-wet blood. They moved in step, crisp and precise, only stopping to drive a sword or spear through the belly of a moving body on the ground.

The column ground to a halt before Salara.

“Draleid.” Captain Undrír stepped from the ranks and removed his helmet. Dried blood flecked the skin around his eyes where the helmet did not cover, and his sweat-soaked hair clung to his face. Another elf moved with him, the ornamentation of golden tree roots on her armour marking her as a galdrín.

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