Kings Game

Chapter 79 - Fog of War

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Kell blew through the streets like a gust of lethal wind. After ensuring Dez was barricaded inside the bathhouse, she had fled through the streets as quickly as her feet would carry. With the enhanced strength provided by her etchings, her speeds were inhuman.

She cleaved through any enemy soldiers that so much as got within reach of her ax. She wasn't prone to the same mercies as Roran and showed the invaders nothing less than the sharpness of her blade. When one tried to run, she hurled the ax into their back, sending them tumbling to the ground in a pool of blood. She picked up their sword and kept running.

She had to get back to Darling. She didn't know the details of what was happening, but she knew Uhlaran armor when she saw it and she knew they would be coming for Darling's life. Kell had to get back to protect her sister and her wife until the Kings and the Army could clear out this invasion force.

Kell ran into another group of soldiers. They stayed in rank, blocking a street that led to, of all places, the Crucible. A ship overhead was lowering a pile of crates held in cargo netting. The crates were descending so fast that it was more of a controlled fall. Upon impact, one of the crates shattered and spewed weapons across the ground.

Arms. The ships were lowering arms down to the soldiers. Judging from the size of the boxes, there was likely armor mixed in there too. Kell slowed but didn't stop. The soldiers weren't directly blocking her way. She could skirt around the Crucible with ease, but something was nagging at her.

She wasn't Roran, putting together facts and settling them into place like a giant puzzle wasn't her idea of a good time. She was, however, smart enough and battleworn enough to see when the fighting conditions were about to change. The Uhlaran soldiers blocking the path to the Crucible saw her but did not engage, they held their line. They were waiting for something.

That something came only moments later. A second pile of boxes was descending from the sky, landing in time for a roar to ring through the city. It was the sound of hundreds of raw and angry souls escaping the confines of hell. Beyond the soldiers holding the line, beyond the few houses and buildings blocking her way, and down at the Crucible that had forged Kell and Roran into Champions, hundreds of people were piling out of the arena and into the streets.

They were battered and worn. They looked half starved and fully feral. They were dirty, disheveled, and savage. The prisoners of the Crucible had been released. The 'refugees' were no longer trapped in their dungeons, they were free and they were rabid for revenge. Figures clad in the blue armor of Uhlara led them away from the arena, leading them towards the stockpile of weapons falling from the sky.

The invaders had spent the better part of a year sneaking into the city, stockpiling weapons, and—apparently—stealing flying ships and the fairy rock to power it. They didn't need to march an army into the city, they already had one ready and waiting. Now that savage army had been freed, given arms, and was being turned loose to wreak havoc on the city.

Kell swore. Then she swore again, louder this time.

She took off running, her feet slamming into the ground like hammers, launching her through the streets. The entire city was about to devolve into chaos and she was on the wrong side of it all.

Kell had hoped to circle around the Crucible and avoid the worst of the uprising army. Even if they were half starved and half dead, a hundred men with swords was still a hundred men with swords and she was alone.

She was halfway past the Crucible when a mob surged into the mainstreet before her. Kell didn't slow down. She sped up, threw herself into the mob like a missile from a catapult, and slammed her prosthetic fist into the first person that moved to stop her.