Page 71 of The Cruel Dawn
“Defender!” Separi shouts.
I freeze right before my hand lands on the man’s windpipe.
Another man leaps onto the porch with a howl, brandishing his broadsword.
Vinasa screams, clutching his belly and the sword now impaled there. Blood gurgles from his lips. Separi shouts, “Vin!” and rushes over to him.
Another man leaps at Separi, his spiked club ready to beat her down. I throw Ax-Man’s hatchet at the club-wielder, and it slams into his forehead.
Separi reaches her brother in time to catch him before he hits the ground.
Someone else entangles the man who killed the Renrian in a web of lavender lightning.
I ram Tempest into the gut of a woman swinging a meat cleaver at me.Another woman tries it with a hoe, but that’smytrick; her blood soon wets Tempest’s blade.
The sea of angry city-folk swells and roars with wild energy, and the bloodthirsty tide rolls toward us.
Philia’s first golden arrow sinks into the face of a man an arm’s length away from me.
Separi hoists a woman from the ground and thrusts her skyward on the end of her staff. Another wreath of crackling lavender coils around a woman’s throat, and her skin turns purple as she struggles to breathe.
I pull Justice from my back, ready to dispense it. These people aren’t fighting me because I stole their houses or their goats. They aren’t rebelling because I’ve forced them to bow and worship me. No, they’re fueled by hatred and distrust and belief in a strange new god. They’ll kill not only me, but Philia and the Renrians, too, if I let them.
Justice lands her first kill. But tides of hatred bear more angry townspeople toward us. They fight like we stole something of value from them, like their very lives depend on killing us.
I can’t hear myself think over their cries and curses nor can I see clearly, not with all the sizzling lavender light glinting off metal, blood, and stone.
“You’re dying, bitch!” A man wielding two curved swords rushes toward me.
I can barely see him through the curls melting into my face. I slide Justice into his gut and push my hair from my eyes. Then I shout, “Enough!”
The ground quakes again.
“Enough!”
Everyone, including the Renrians, freezes. Two men hold torches to the foundation of the inn, which starts to burn.
I thrust my hands at them, blowing out their torches with a gust of wind, and then I send the arsonists flying into the building next door with a violent blast. I throw a ball of fire at that storefront, followed by another fireball, and another and another…
“Lady,” Separi shouts. The blood of her enemies and her brother streaks her breastplate. The sight stays my desire for destruction. I nod to Separi and turn to the mob.
“Hear me now! I don’t know who or what you believe in now, but I don’t need you to believe in me to save you or to destroy you. Icandestroy you. Your homes, your shops, your lives—” I lift my right hand, and fire swirls from one finger to the next. “I can become the maelstrom you call me. Leave, now, and do not test me further.”
A little girl with messy blue ponytails scampers from behind the crates closest to the fire. She hides behind the skirts of the woman holding a battle-ax, the same woman who’d shouted just moments ago, “Kill the dirty whore and rape her corpse.” Standing with them is Dalbald, the boy with the bow, my would-be assassin. A sour-faced Renrian man holding a sword made of luclite stands behind this woman, the girl, and Dalbald.
Another young boy peers at me from beneath a cart, and other faces peek from windows that look down upon this square: young mothers nursing infants, Renrians holding frightened children. Elderly, stooped Renrians whom I’ve known since Vallendor’s creation.
If I destroy Caburh—burn this place down to new dirt—I raze a town founded by the forebears of Veril Bairnell and Separi Eleweg. I would destroy a hub of industry and alchemy, of thought and education, a town polluted by outsiders who came and saw its greatness and claimed it for themselves.
I would destroy Nosirest, now named Caburh because of Leward Caburh’s lies and violence.
I can’t destroy this town, the home of those I love. Nor can I kill those who harbor hatred against those I love.
The angry townspeople closest to me retreat, their gazes still fixed on the burning men who attempted to destroy the Broken Hammer on my watch.
“Loyal Renrians of this city,” I shout, “hear me now. In the name of the gods who watch from above, I shield you with eternal love, with my sword and my light. I cast my protection upon you so that nothing else will harm you in this town. You shall no longer fear any outsiders’ blade.”
A glimmering sheen of bloodred-and-gold light envelops each Renrian, who bow their heads in reverence. I’m relieved that it works, that my gift, this aura of protection, has been restored to me by my father.
