KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Thirty One

Karux had waited for days in fear of the horn. When he was outside, he wished he were back in Jomel's tent, drinking chaia and trying to stay warm. When he was inside, he wished he were out checking the barrier. With each passing hour he grew more certain the horn was about to blow so that each time Jomel sat down his bowl of hot chaia a little too forcefully on the table, he would jump and have to remind himself to relax. The moment it did sound, Karux, Jomel and Brakus all looked at each other, rose without a word, grabbed their spears and left the tent.

They and the other tacarchs had continually challenged their own plans seeking some way to improve it. But now the enemy had come and Karux felt he was being swept along, caught in the currents of a fate beyond his control. The battle is about to begin, Karux told himself, trying to break out of a curious sense of unreality. Keep your wits about you.

Karux tossed a log on a watch fire and kept one eye on the picket, praying the structure would hold. He watched the first black wave smash against the picket, claws and fangs flashing white in the firelight and relaxed a bit when they were beaten back. The defenders cheered, then watched in horror as the drwg leaped over the barricade to savage them while the angorym crashed through. In seconds the battle had turned against them and everywhere Karux looked he saw the drwg running down both men and dwerka, mauling them where they fell.

Karux shifted his awareness to the world of shapes and tried to focus on the drwg, but it was like attempting to catch lightning in one's hand. He looked to the angorym whom the men were trying with some success to keep contained near the breech. Remembering the incident with Eiraena and the runaway schema, he began to summon the elemental shapes of the Void.

"Kenos! Akuros! Kenos! Akuros!" Karux chanted, and the crisscrossed spirals began to appear in his vision, each a hole in space linked to the Void. He directed them with his awareness, attaching them to the bodies of the angorym, building up chains of symbols on each enemy, though the chaos of the battle made it hard to do. More than once the symbols would attach themselves to a human or dwerkan defender as if hungry to destroy any and all living things.

"Kenos! Akuros! Kenos! Akuros!" As he chanted, that same dark presence he saw in the maelstrom at Korion-Doulon and felt near the gold-covered stone at Korion-Crusomosc grew until the weight of its awareness fell heavy upon him. He heard the cynical laughter echo in his head and felt the pull of the elementals inviting him to glory in their power.

As the bronze knives fell, the blood spilled and the men died, he uttered the final command to collapse the patterns he had built.

"Ataeros!"

The schemas snapped backwards, pulling inwards, coiling around and through each other in a churning funnel of self-destruction. He felt the slap of force as the patterns which had comprised the angorym exploded, knocking him to his knees and forcing him back into the world of light and shadows.

Jomel caught his arm as he fell and held him upright. Karux looked up at the green mist rolled over them and tiny chunks of flesh fell hissing into the snow. The reavers all stopped and gaped in horror. Then, one by one, they turned fearful looks on him.

-=====|==

Haydonae hid in the smallest corner of her home, cold, tired and hungry. It was her turn, she knew that, but she'd rather starve to death than go outside where the men with the knives waited. She hoped, by making herself scarce, they might somehow overlook her and forget it was her turn, but then her door opened with a blast of wintry air and two men came in.

"Now Haydonae, don't be like that," Temnein said. He was a large man with long black hair pulled back from a high forehead. "We've all taken our turns and now it's yours."