Page 436 of Of Empires and Dust

“For asking you to leave this place.”

“This place is nothing to me. Not without you in it. I was brought here because I had nothing else, and I stayed for the same reason.”

As Rist stared into Neera’s eyes, an enormous explosion sounded and the room shook violently. The candle on the desk hit the floor, the flame catching on the cotton blanket Rist had left folded by the bedside.

He reached out with the Spark to snuff the flames when the room shook again, the walls cracking, dust falling from the ceiling.

“Rebels?” Neera stared up at the falling dust. “Again?”

Shouts and screams sounded from the yard, followed by a strange clicking sound, like thousands of steel spear tips bouncing off stone.Click-clack. Click-clack.

Rist grabbed Neera’s hand. “We need to leave.”

He allowed Neera to take a moment to pack whatever she needed before the pair of them headed for the door.

Rist had never quite seen anything like what awaited them when he stepped into the yard. Hundreds of stone-like spiders as large as hounds swarmed over the ground, leaping onto anything that moved, black-tipped claws slicing through leather and flesh. Threads of all elements whipped through the air as the mages of the First Army gathered themselves and tried desperately to save the soldiers, who were like sheep to wolves.

Where the stable had been, now an enormous hole gaped up to the sky, as though the world had caved inwards. More of the spiders flooded over the lip of the hole.

“What… what are they?” Neera stared in horror, the Spark pulsing from her.

“Kerathlin.” Rist had read of them inDevastating Creatures: Claw, Tooth, And Fang,by Vace Entura. There had been no illustrations, but Vace had described them as spiders carved from stone, each leg tipped with claws sharp as steel and black as coal. They were native to the deep tunnels below the mountains in the dwarven realms. But what in all the gods were they doing here?

“Rist?” Neera tugged at Rist’s shirt. “We need to move!”

Arcs of lightning left Neera’s hand and smashed into three of the kerathlin who charged them. Both Neera and Rist broke into a run, pushing past soldiers as they made for the barracks gates.

“Dragon’s Maw!” came a shout, and a column of fire ten feet across consumed scores of the stone spiders with hissing shrieks. A score of mages stood near the yard’s centre, soldiersgathered behind them wearing nothing but smallclothes or linen shirts and trousers.

The kerathlin were swarming around them, threads of Air, Spirit, and Fire keeping them at bay. Rist could see clutches of the creatures scuttling up the buildings and across the rooves.

“Brother Havel!” Exarch Gurney called out, waving for Rist and Neera to run to them. “Sister Halar!”

For a fraction of a second, Rist’s heart was torn. It was not these souls who had lied to him, not these men and women who had hurt his mam and dad. These were good people, people who had treated him with respect, who had fought beside him and broken bread with him. Even in that moment, they called to him to stand together.

Rist’s choice was snatched from him when a creature unlike anything Rist had ever laid eyes on smashed through the barracks wall, sending chunks of stone hurtling through the air, crushing men, women, and kerathlin alike. This creature was not in Vace’s book.

The monstrosity tore through the gathered mages and soldiers as though they were nothing. With one swipe of a spike-covered tail as long as four wagons, half the souls in the group were extinguished, blood, bone, and shattered limbs decorating the yard.

It stood on four legs with large interlinked, stone-like scales covering the entirety of its gargantuan body, as though it had been carved from a mountain. The crest of its back rose almost as tall as the buildings around it. Its head was flat and angular – like that of an arrow – with sharp slits for eyes that pulsated with a streaming yellow mist. Two ridges ran either side of its neck, sweeping across its back and then down into its long muscular tail covered in vicious-looking spikes.

“Rist?” Neera’s voice was a mixture of panic and awe.

“I have absolutely no idea. Run!”

As the kerathlin and the enormous monster tore the surviving mages and soldiers apart, Rist and Neera sprinted through the open gates, only to be greeted by the same carnage in the streets.

Kerathlin were ripping apart everyone and everything. The stone spiders skittered from holes just like the one in the barracks yard that had appeared throughout the city, collapsing buildings and causing the earth to depress inwards.

“Garramon said he went to the tower!” Rist shouted over the screams of the dying and the clicking of the kerathlin claws. He looked through the gaps in the building to where the High Tower rose above everything.

“Rist, that’s further into the city.” Neera looked from the tower to the northern gates. “We’ll never make it there and back.”

“He wouldn’t leave me, and I can’t leave him.”

A shriek sounded from above, and a swarm of kerathlin leapt from the windows of the buildings on the far side of the street. The creatures hit the ground with a crash, then bounded forwards with impossible speed, scuttling across the debris and bodies in the street.

Rist pulled on threads of Earth and Air and pushed them into the kerathlin. Shrieks pierced his ears, blue blood squirting as he crushed the creatures inside their own stone shells.

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