Steven Montano - Crown of Ash

Danica lashed out at him with her sp irit. Fiery razor s raked Creyzak across the chest, but he leapt back in time to avoid the full force of the blow.

She struggled to her feet. H er face was numb, and the rest of her body burned with pain.

Her spirit fused to her forearm as a jagged shard of razor light. Danica’s vision had gone blurry, but her spirit helped guide her actions.

The Vuul was silent as he swung the pipe again. Danica sliced the metal apart and sent it smoking to the ground. She leapt up and kicked Creyzak in the face. G rey-green blood spurted from his mouth as he fell onto his back.

“Dani!”

The car creaked in the hole behind her. Black sent her spirit into the pit. She felt him strain as he wrapped round the falling car and held it.

Creyzak leapt up. His supernatural metabolism fused his wounds together. She watched sickly black veins pulse and throb as he charged. Without her spirit, she was unarmed, and the grey-fleshed killer had two feet of height and at least a hundred pounds on her. She tensed, bent her knees, and readied for the impact.

Her spirit strained. She sensed Lara try to escape, felt her climb out and grab onto the pit wall, but the earth was dry and loose. The car slipped.

Creyzak jumped at Danica, and though she managed to twist out of the way at the last moment he still reached out and grabbed her arm, right where the bullet had struck. She screamed in pain.

They tumbled to the ground. The Vuul’s weight smothered her as they rolled over each other.

“Dani!” Cole yelled. “Dani, please…”

Lara screamed. B lack’s spirit grabbed Cole. The car fell and crashed into the darkness.

Creyzak was on Danica, and he punched her in the face with his rock-hard fist s. S kin split and blood flew everywhere. H er head smacked against the rock.

Danica’s spirit tore into the Vuul’s face like a knife. Creyzak fell back with a cry. Cole ran over from the edge of the pit, grabbed the Vuul from behind and threw him to the ground.

Danica could barely see. Blood ran into her eyes, and the bones in her face ached. She heard cheers and calls in the distance as the crowd roared it’s appreciation of the battle.

Her spirit pulsed dully at the edge of her thoughts. He had little power left. With no time to recover and with as much as she’d ask ed of him during the race, it was a wonder he’d been able to pull Lara to safety.

Cole kicked and clawed at Creyzak as he rose. The Vuul took Lara by the throat.

Black struggled to her feet. Her vision pulsed and faded. She channeled her spirit into a smoking blade and cast it at the back of Creyzak’s head.

It was too late. The Vuul snapped Cole’s neck with a swift twist just seconds before the arcane weapon cleaved through his skull. The bodies fell to the ground almost in tandem.

The distant roar of the crowd faded. The strength drained from Black’s body, and the breath left her lungs. She stumbled forward a few steps and fell to her knees.

She couldn’t breathe. Hot t ears flooded her eyes, and her mouth moved soundlessly. Her arms shook as she took Lara in her arms. Cole’s eyes were open and full of fear. Her pale skin was warm, and her dark hair was pasted to her forehead.

Danica couldn’t hold herself still. Something cold welled up inside her, an emptiness. A void. The wail she released didn’t even seem to come from her, but from somewhere else.

She held Cole tight, hugge d her, smother ed her, hoping, wishing, for her to be okay. She muttered something into Cole’s ear over and over again, and she wasn’t even sure what it was.

Her spirit faded. She heard engines approach, and she smelled the rot of carrion corp ses. Her legs had gone numb. Her t ears had run all over Lara’s dead face.

“You’re all I ever wanted…” she sobbed. “ All I ever wanted…”

Geist pulled her away. The half- Doj was too large and too strong for her to even consider putting up a fight.

R ake and Raven looked on in silence. Their dark cloaks rippled in the subterranean wind. Scarecrows gathered up the bodies and unceremoniously cast them into the pits.

Danica watched Cole fall into the dark. She seemed frozen there for a moment, trapped in black stasis. Her body was so frail, so temporary.

And then she was gone.

Do you?

“I’m impressed, Dani,” Rake said. “I guess we’ll use you after all.”

She looked at him. She felt nothing. She knew that she hated him, but at that moment all she wanted was for him to kill her. Her spirit was gone, shielded off by Raven. She had nothing left.

Not true, she told herself. You still have Cross.

But that knowledge did nothing for her pain.

Lara, the love of her life, was gone.

They enter a wasteland of broken stone.

The forest fades behind them in to a shroud of black ice mist. Steep hills made of shattered shale and loose plates of granite lead to bitter peaks that resemble teeth. The sky is flat and still, and the air is bitterly cold.

He walks with the small army of Grey Clan. The black wind batters them mercilessly. T heir clothing is weighted down with shadows.

The land slopes up. T he climb through the Burned Hills is arduous. H is muscles ache. H e uses whatever cracks and crevices he can find to haul himself up the rock face.

The stones grow tall er. Mov ing through them is like navigating a path of knives. The path is riddled with pits and flaws left by acid shower s.

The land is sharp. Blood sluices down his hand as he crawls through the razor peaks.

The Burned Hills are vast, and they are covered with caustic stains and burns.

The dark mountains fade into the endless dusk. There’ s nothing to the north or south, but to the west, many miles away, stands a mountain.

I know that mountain. I’ve seen it before.

The Black Citadel wait s on that distant peak. It holds the entrance to the Carrion Rift, and the way home.

The trek across the Burned Hills is riddled with hardship.

The mist on the ground conceal s dark crevices, wounds in the stone that lead to underground sea s of void darkness.

Several Grey Clan d ie. They don’t see the cracks until it’s too late, and they scream and fall and are gone before anyone knows what happened.

The sky bleeds liquid. It’s been so long since he’s seen rain he almost forgets what it’s like, but he know s it wasn’ t like this. The substance is b lack and viscous, like tar and honey. It paints them dark, makes their feet stick to the ground. Its touch is ice cold and stings the flesh.

They move on.

Vast worms slither across the landscape. Like the other creatures of the Whisperlands they are more shadow than real, smelted charcoal forms that writhe and twist across the Hills. The worms are halfhumanoid: slimy torsos with gangly arms and sharp talons and rows of razor spines atop massive inchworm bodies.

The travelers try to avoid these horrors, but can’t. More Grey Clan fall in an onslaught of blade s and poison-tipped tails, chewed to bloody bits or thrown against the rocks and reduced to blood stains on the stones.

He kills one of the beasts on his own, and with Kyver’s aid he kills another. Shadow skin reinforced with chitnous bone plate makes the beasts difficult to destroy.

After a time, bone-tired and covered in blue-black blood and worm remains, he and the survivors finally reach the far side of the Burned Hills.

There are only ten of them left now, where before there were over twenty.

The y stand at the edge of a poison glade.

Pools of briny water release bursts of vile yellow slime. Viscous pools churn with slithering grease. S tones shaped like coffins stand on the other side of the pools, near a small forest of dark trees at the base of the mountain.