Troy Denning - The Titan of Twilight

“There, Awn see him!” yelled a fomorian. “Maybe kid, too!”

Awn was so close that Avner could hear the stones clattering beneath the hunter’s feet.

“Give me strength, Hiatea,” Avner gasped. “For Kaedlaw.”

Without removing his sword from its scabbard, the scout used it to push himself to his feet. Awn was less than twenty paces down the mountainside, his eyes fixed on the ground beneath his feet as he clambered up the ridge. A dozen more misshapened silhouettes were a fair distance below at timberline, and beyond them the forest was swimming with shadows.

Avner glanced at Kaedlaw. “Too many,” he gasped. “Just too many.”

Leaving Kaedlaw behind, Avner hobbled down the hill to the largest boulder he could find. He shoved the tip of his sword scabbard beneath the uphill side, turning it edge-on so the blade would not snap as he pried at the rock. He let the whole of his weight fall on the pommel. The ridge was steep enough that the stone did not need much encouragement. It tipped forward and went bounding down the slope.

The boulder did not strike Awn, nor did it unleash a landslide, as was Avner’s desperate plan. It simply bounced fifty paces down the mountainside, sending a crashing boom across the canyon each time it hit, and sailed into the avalanche gully.

Awn stopped and looked up. “Stop, you!” he said. “Awn hurt you good, him!”

Avner hacked up a mouthful of bright, frothy blood, then staggered over to the next boulder. The fire had left his body, and now he felt only cold. There was such a rushing in his ears that he could barely hear Kaedlaw’s growling, and his vision was fast narrowing into a black tunnel. He slipped the tip of his sword under the rock and collapsed over the end.

The stone rolled away. It hopped once, then bounced toward Awn. The malformed warrior cried out, not yelling but whimpering, and the last thing Avner saw were the fomorian’s arms rising to catch the bounding boulder.

The shadowroc’s monstrous talons sank a dozen feet into the mountainside. Again, the gloomy wings beat the air, blowing Brianna and her rat-child against the slope. The enormous bird backed away. His shadowy claws tore huge masses of stone from the trail, leaving the queen trapped between two gaping chasms. He circled off to release his burden, and untold tons of rock and earth plummeted through the frozen surface of the tarn below.

Brianna gathered herself up and raised the decoy over her head, determined not to allow the shadowroc’s deafening screech to stun or disorient her again. She ran to the chasm and waited until the immense bird turned back toward her, then raised the rat-child over her head.

That was when the first bellowing giant-kin voices began to reverberate up the canyon. Brianna faltered, worried for Avner and Kaedlaw, and the shadowroc dipped a wing to turn toward the sound. The queen let out a loud, mournful wail to draw the bird’s attention, then hurled her burden into the chasm.

The rat-child shrieked in terror, then thumped off the rocks below and fell silent. The shadowroc folded his wings and dived, giving voice to a watery screech that did no more than send a shiver down Brianna’s spine. She sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands, wailing in what she hoped would be a convincing imitation of grief.

More bellowing echoed up the canyon, followed by the boom of tumbling boulders. Brianna resisted the temptation to look down the valley. The crashing was caused by giant-kin trying to dig their fellows from the avalanches unleashed by the shadowroc’s screech. It had to be.

After his dive, the shadowroc did not pluck Brianna from the trail, did not screech at the loss of his nephew. He remained silent, and the clatter of falling rocks continued to reverberate up the canyon. Finally, the queen opened her hands.

The shadowroc was not in the chasm. In his place stood Lanaxis, once again fully cloaked in robes of purple gloom and holding a blood-soaked mass of pulp and rags in one hand. His damson eyes were turned down the canyon, and Brianna saw no sign of either despair or anger on the profile of his murky face.

The titan tossed aside the rat-child’s pulverized body, then turned to Brianna. “Enough of this nonsense,” he rumbled. “Your son has need of us.”

Lanaxis plucked Brianna from the trail, then descended the slope. It took him less than a dozen strides to pass the tarn and reach the top of the waterfall. Not far down the canyon, dozens of twisted silhouettes were clambering up a ridge, and Brianna heard her son’s voice growling in the wind. There were no other sounds: no more clattering boulders or bellowing echoes, no clanging steel, no hint that Avner was anywhere near.

“They have killed your servant.”

Brianna let a groan slip past her lips and felt warm tears streaming down her face.

Lanaxis made no move to descend the waterfall. “What do you wish me to do?”

“What?” Brianna gasped. “Can’t you save my son?”

The titan nodded. “There is still time. The fomorians have not reached him yet. But I cannot save your son from you. A child needs his mother, or so I have heard.”

“Save Kaedlaw!” Brianna ordered. “Kill the fomorians!”

“Then there will be no more of your willfulness?” Lanaxis pronounced. “You accept his destiny?”

Brianna had no idea where her son was, but the fomorians were already well above timberline. Assuming Avner had been trying to circle around them, she doubted the young scout would have climbed much higher than that.

“I want Kaedlaw to live,” the queen replied.

“So do I-but it will take both of us to accomplish that,” Lanaxis insisted. “There can be no more escape attempts.”

Brianna looked toward the distant figures of the climbing fomorians, then swallowed once. “There’s no other safe place to go. I am done with escaping.”

“Then let it be so.”

Lanaxis’s words kindled a cold tingle deep within Brianna’s core. The sensation seeped up through her stomach and into her heart, and she knew that she was as bound to her word as any firbolg was to his.

Lanaxis muttered a few syllables in the ancient language of his magic, then took a long deep breath and spewed it down the canyon. A howling cloud of purple murk shot from his mouth and billowed over the fomorians, sweeping their disfigured silhouettes off the ridge and hurling them into the ravine beyond. The titan jumped down from the waterfall as easily as a man would leap off a meadow fence. He walked calmly down the valley, his steps booming off the walls, the bedrock cracking beneath his immense weight. He waded through the debris of an avalanche fan and climbed the ridge, sending the warped shadows of a dozen fomorians scuttling back into the thin forest.

Lanaxis set Brianna near Avner’s fallen body. “Gather up your son. I will see to our enemies.”

The queen had no trouble finding her growling son. He lay on the lee side of a boulder, swaddled in blood-soaked wool. Brianna unwrapped the child and found him cold and hungry, but otherwise uninjured. She bundled him up and turned down the slope.

Lanaxis was standing at timberline, glaring into the trees. As Brianna climbed down to Avner, the titan plucked a spruce out of the ground, then tossed it over the forest. Embers of violet fire danced among the boughs; then the tree burst into amethyst flame and shattered into a thousand blazing splinters. Wherever the slivers fell, geysers of purple fire shot high into the sky. All that lay beneath their light erupted into damson flame.

Holding Kaedlaw beneath her arm, Brianna knelt beside Avner’s body. The young scout lay facedown in a pool of frothy blood, with his sheathed sword beneath his body. The tip lay over a hollow where a boulder had once rested.