BLACK NIGHT RUN

CHAPTER 2

Tyrune pierced through the thick green leaves the size of mammoth ears and ducked under a shaggy snaking branch before he found himself along the grass-covered cliffs of a sultry Sabahli Jungle. His back stood against the woody wall of trees, a few stray vines eased against his face and he irritably slapped them away like a bothersome bug in his wild-eyed view. On the bright side, his hair was free of the leafy tangles that could have snared the many fat locks that once snaked from his scalp. For his head was now shaved free of those dreadlocks, his red hair mapped in complex symbols like occult poetry completing his perfectly round skull.

He lifted his right hand and busied his tattooed fingers. The petite letterings of exquisite curves, loops, and shapes ran eternally black upon every digit like a second skin. The symbolist did a fine job, and Tyrune couldn't help but ogle his hand briefly, and put on a wry grin. The silent droll was fleeting. There was no time to play narcissist. He cast his red speckled golden cat eyes into the jungle below and calculated his profound descent. The jungle before his feet was as dense below than it was at his back, and just as he thought he had his fill of jungle crawling did he discover he had more to tangle himself into.

And miles beyond the mass of trees and spires of edged stone, waited what looked to be a city hidden in the trees, and a golden pyramid larger than life, glistening high in the sun.

The great monolith was as great and bright as the smile that plastered upon Tyrune's pleasured face...

Then a plump white wasp buzzed wicked in his face.

Tyrune's quirky-sudden eyes followed the dire-sized bug like a child intrigued, or a curious animal until it drifted too close for comfort. He snapped the bothersome thing, miraculously by the wings, between his index and thumb finger. The bug squirmed its mini strife and wiggled its black needle stinger in an attempt to prick his captor's finger. Tyrune lifted it before his acute gaze, tore its threatening stinger with his teeth, and after hocking a loogie stinger into the jungle below, he stuffed the doomed wasp into his hungry mouth.

The acrid wasp went down easy.

While it wasn't the best thing he has eaten since his stay in Coldmarsh, his choice of sustenance was a spur of the moment, and for the sake of edible curiosity.

He smacked his lips harshly and cleared the cliff, leaping into the jungle and booking it towards the golden pyramid—the Sabahli Shrine Palace.

|★|  

"Push forward! Falter and die! We are the Ravenscorn. Scions of the Stone Nords! Brothers of blood and rebellion! I will not be stopped by the jungle queen's faithful dogs!"

Vethorn Lodebane pinned his big sandal foot on the gory chest of a downed shrine guard and thrusts his bloodstained great sword ahead. His grisly stance a bloody king of beasts, and his primal roar mightier than the frightened screams of millions blaring wild among the chaos of swords and savagery tearing through the streets of Sabahli Shrine's jungle boroughs.

As the leader of Ravenscorn, a threatening faction of barbarian elites emerging from the deep of Sabahli's wild jungles, power was everything. Honor included. To some extent. His men were warriors born from the earth, raised in the stone. Bred to dominate the greater of beasts and men combined. Stone Nords were their calling, a hardened race of men and women with a cruel past. No warrior force in all of Nine Nations seemed to rival their might, but the rebellious faction of barbaric savages was but a frictional dissension from Sabahli's ancient ways—partially explaining their current confrontation.

The burly Vethorn led his barbaric throng through the shrine city's west gate and, after a tedious charge against a host of spear-wielding Sabahli soldiers, managed to stand unscathed running miles away from the golden pyramid's great gate of gilded arches entrapped in vivid blossoms and snaking vines.