Sons of Ironstorm - Book 1: Griffon's Rise

Chapter 41: Final Gambit

"To allow an enemy to strike with his final strength,

To make a final assault from out of the heart of Failure,

Is to embrace failure and destruction of power for oneself.

Yielding the advantage and opportunity in the last moment

When your strength should be its greatest and most potent."

- from Hagen's 'The First Elf: Making of a Warrior'

Bushes rustled and, with a groan, Ciramax pushed himself to his hands and knees.

<<What the frosty hell happened?>> he rasped hoarsely, wincing against a sharp, stabbing pain pushing insistently into his back. It didn't take a healer to realize its source: the wound site from the assassin's attack in Elvenfast. His rough landing had aggravated the partially healed tissue and he could feel blood, warm and sticky, oozing down his back and side.

Blood streaming from the sting marks on his face, KeLarion struggled to sit up.

<<The portal,>> he managed past rapidly swelling lips. <<Something managed to interfere with the portal.>>

<<And what?>> Looking more irritated than anything, Xanedra stood and brushed off debris from her clothes. <<Dumped us on our collective head out in the middle of nowhere?>> She looked around at the dense forest, cloaked in inky night and silver-brushed by a swollen Rimnor in the west, which surrounded them.

<<Speaking of nowhere, does anybody have a frosty clue where we landed?>>

<<In deep trouble,>> Bentain hissed as he watched Ciradaan climb uncertainly to his feet, a brightly glowing Sword of Aesthegon in his hands.

For a moment all seven elves stared hard at the ancient sword, its blue glow pulsing in time to Ciradaan's rapidly beating heart. Then they were staggering as the ground underfoot began to heave and shift uncertainly.

<<Now what?>> Xanedra muttered, her hand never straying far from her weapon as she looked this way and that at the ground beneath her booted feet. Her answer wasn't long in coming.

As the elves shifted uneasily with the earth's discomfort, the ground only a handful of spans from where they landed abruptly heaved upwards with a deafening roar and the snarl of ripping wood as trees were twisted from their beds by the roots. Staggered, those that had reached their feet found themselves back on their hands and knees, knocked off their feet by the ripple of force that washed past them, turning solid ground to putty as it went by.

Then, the ground continuing to grumble loudly, the bulge heaved again before splitting open to vent sulfurous steam with a loud hiss into the air. As the stunned elves looked on, a huge, clawed hand ripped out of the split, throwing stones and dirt in all directions, to take hold of a great oak standing nearby. Tightening around the thick trunk, the hand began to pull, bending the sylvan giant nigh in twain with the exerted force.

<<What sort of monstrosity is this?>> Ciradaan breathed disbelievingly. Nearby Halen could only stare, none of his Var Ethisdil training preparing him for, or telling him about such a creature as the one that seemed to be pulling itself clear of an earthy shelter.

The ground snarling in protest, two spikes of jet black tore free of it, almost three full spans apart, coming out at an angle almost five spans from where the hand bend the oak. The bruised turf between the spikes heaved and split itself before a massive head, dark and covered with stringy hair, pushed free of the clinging soil in another rain of dirt and rock. The spikes, now obviously horns as they freed themselves, were man-thick at their base; squat turrets of ebony menace as tall as a man. Then, with a deafening roar, more of the titan body ripped free and pushed upward, showering the glen with more rock and debris.