Page 76 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Blood rained over my face.

I found myself looking up at Brayan from atop his horse, his sword skewering my attacker’s throat.

“Take the axe,” he rasped, before his horse, too, went down.

I grabbed my attacker’s axe from his death-stiff hands, abandoning my sickle. I didn’t like axes—they didn’t move as fast as I did—but at least the thing was sharp.

I whirled around just in time to catch the shoulder of a man swinging for Brayan. He screamed. The force of the blow nearly took off his arm.

Yes, this would do.

I bought Brayan seconds to get to his feet, barely avoiding the thrashing hooves of his panicking horse.

“Get over here,” I panted. The two of us naturally fell into position—easier, now, with us both on foot. We couldn’t rely on sight, not with Wielders in play. So we had no choice but to make sure we left no slivers of vulnerability anywhere.

Fifteen years, Brayan had trained me.

My broken mind had understood this in a distant sort of way, but it was only here, in action, that I realized exactly what it meant. It meant that his fighting style and strategies were tattooed as deep into me as the Stratagrams all over my skin—deeper, even, because while there was no doubt in my mind that I would have been utterly screwed if I had been magic-less by myself, Brayan and I fit together so well that we became a machine of pure, efficient death.

Our fighting styles complemented each other perfectly—Brayan’s movements powerful and definitive, all sheer strength, while mine were lighter, faster, more precise, even with my ill-suited weapon. We found a rhythm, three of my strikes to one of his, protecting each other in our vulnerable seconds.

We began to move, pushing our way forward through the forest, still maintaining our formation and staving off our attackers.

One final swing from Brayan’s sword, and block from mine, and another body fell to the ground, joining the growing pile of corpses around our feet.

I finally allowed myself to think,We’re actually going to make it out of this.

Then, the ground trembled.

Brayan and I, as we ran, exchanged a glance—one that mutually asked each other,Did you feel that, too?

It came again, this time harder. My eyes scanned the darkness. There was nothing out there.

Until, suddenly, there was.

A flash of light arced across the sky, blinding me. My back slammed against something hard—a tree, then underbrush, then the ground.

For a moment, everything was hazy. I was somewhere else, in a field of flowers, nostrils burning with the smell of citrus.

Get up, May-oocks.

My back was definitely fucking broken. I couldn’t move. My chest rattled when I inhaled.

GET UP GET UP GET UP—

My eyes snapped open.

For one second, I saw a person—creature? Thing?—so horrifying that I thought I had to be hallucinating.

And then I forced myself to leap out of the way just in time to avoid a streak of lightning.

I fell back into the shadow of the trees, looking for Brayan. The creature turned, and my stomach roiled.

Holy fucking hell.

The first thing I noticed was the legs. It had four of them, long, spindly appendages of vein-covered, bone-white flesh. Those legs alone were taller than any man, even by a margin of several feet, and had several joints that bent the wrong way back.

They all culminated at a single point. A… person. Or maybe something that had once been one. Because it looked more like a corpse than a living being, dangling there as if hanging from its flesh-colored stilts. It was naked. One arm was missing, torn off at the elbow, as were its feet. A massive, singed wound tore from the base of its throat all the way down to its pelvis, like an incision that had not been allowed to heal. Within it was simmering white light, lightning cracking at its edges.

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