Page 163 of Of Empires and Dust

Dayne grabbed the dock and lifted himself from the water as the guards scrambled to kill the flames.

He drew his breaths in slow through his nose, settling himself, clenching his jaw tight so his teeth wouldn’t chatter. The winter air was bitter and he was soaked to the bones, but he needed to move quickly. He crossed the wooden planks, dipping into the shadows between two buildings that overlooked the docks. Soldiers rushed past in the streets, carrying buckets, screaming and shouting.

“The flames won’t die!” a voice called.

It didn’t take long for Dayne to feel the tingle of the Spark running down his spine. He moved so he could get a clear look at the jetties to which the ships were moored. Six Lorian mages stood amidst the chaos, black cloaks draped over their shoulders, threads of Fire, Water, and Air weaving about them.

Just as planned.

A screech sounded overhead, echoed by another, and another, and then the wyverns swooped through the raging flames, the Wyndarii on their backs dropping the last of the Godfire over the docks after having drawn the mages in.

Dayne held his breath for half a second, watching as a piece of burning sail drifted downwards, slowly, twisting and turning. It landed, and the flames caught the Godfire and swept over the docks like a blazing wave. Men and women screamed as they jumped from the jetties, the shrieks growing louder when they rose from beneath the surface to find the water itself had caught fire.

The Battlemages had not been so easily swept aside. From where Dayne stood, he saw one lying in a burning heap, but theother five had shielded themselves with the Spark and shifted to face the attacking Wyndarii.

An arc of lightning streaked from a mage’s palm and caught a wyvern in the side. The creature dropped without a scream or a howl, smoke billowing as it crashed into the port town.

Dayne drew a knife from his belt and charged from the side street, keeping his heart still. He’d told them not to fly low. The wyvern’s scales had been dark blue. Not Audin or Rynvar.

As Dayne stepped from cover, a soldier shouted to his left and lunged, only to go limp mid-run and collapse into the dirt. Dayne threw a glance upwards and spotted Belina leaping from roof to roof, staying low, steel glinting in her hands.

Two more soldiers spotted him in the chaos. The first never got his sword from its scabbard. Dayne leapt towards him, flipped the knife in his right hand, then drove it down into the man’s neck, blood gushing as he pulled it free.

The second soldier thrust a spear at Dayne’s head as his companion fell. Dayne twisted, grabbed the shaft, and yanked the soldier in close. The man stumbled off balance, and Dayne leaned in, ramming the knife through his right eye, the hilt clicking against bone. Abandoning the knife lodged in the man’s socket, he tossed the spear into his right hand and launched it.

Before the spear connected with its target, Dayne was running, slipping a new knife from his belt. The spear punched into the back of the closest Battlemage’s head, bursting out through his face in a cloud of shattered bone, blood, and brain, the force dropping the body forward.

For all a Battlemage’s strength and power, their greatest weakness was their unbridled arrogance. They believed nothing could stand in their way, that the Spark was theirs to command and theirs alone. Centuries of little opposition emboldened this belief. They never expected to be hunted, never for a secondimagined there might be bigger predators in the world. And that made them easy prey.

Four left.

A woman bearing the yellow skirts of House Thebal, a bucket in one hand, spotted him out of the corner of her eye and lunged. She threw the bucket and drew her sword.

Dayne planted his front foot, stopping dead, the bucket soaring past him. He twisted at the waist and closed the distance between himself and the Thebalan in a heartbeat.

He grabbed the wrist of her sword hand mid-swing, then drove his knife into her belly. One, two, three times, then once into her throat. Blood flowed free as she slumped to the wood.

Dayne kept moving, leaping over a still-burning corpse. The remaining mages hadn’t spotted him yet. They continued to weave threads of Fire, Air, and Spirit about themselves, looking towards the sky for wyverns. One had even resumed attempting to quench the fires blazing on the ships. They were lions believing they stalked deer, stumbling their way into a wyvern’s Rest.

Dayne slipped past a group of soldiers dragging their companions from the flames, the Godfire clinging to everything it touched.

He stepped up behind the first of the remaining four mages, wrapped his hand around her mouth, and slit her throat. The mage to his right twisted, calling to his companion, eyes widening as he saw Dayne striding through the flames while she choked on her own blood.

The mage pulled on threads of Fire and Spirit, whirling them around himself and funnelling them into his right hand, a red glow emanating from the pendant that hung from his neck.

Dayne opened himself to the Spark and drove a whip of Air into the side of the man’s knee, bones snapping. The mage screamed, his eyes wide with shock. Those eyes were still widewhen Dayne reached down his throat with that same thread and pulled the air from his lungs. That was always the same with the Battlemages. So sure in their own power they rarely ever thought to defend themselves.

Dayne walked through the flames, his attention fixed on the two surviving Battlemages – one launching arcs of lightning into the sky, the other pulling the air from around the ship fires.

As he moved, he pulled on threads of each element, weaving them through his hand, the power of the Spark burning in his veins. Light streaked from his hand, his níthral taking the shape of a gleaming white spear that trailed along the wooden dock.

The first mage noticed him in her periphery and stared in disbelief as she fumbled to free her sword from its scabbard while unleashing a column of black fire from her hand, drawing on the power of the Blood Moon. Dayne split the flames with threads of Air and Spirit, stepping through and driving his níthral into her chest. She twitched for a moment, her gaze meeting his, then fell back and off the edge of the dock, the water taking her.

When the last mage finally realised that all her companions were dead, she looked at Dayne, mouth agape. “Who… what are you?”

Dayne wove threads of Spirit around the woman in a latticed web, encasing her, feeling a thrum when the final thread clicked into place, cutting her off from the Spark.

She let out a gasp but immediately reached for something beneath her breastplate. The red gemstone she produced had already begun to glow when Dayne snatched it from her grasp with a thread of Air and pulled it into his hand.

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