Steven Montano: Crown of Ash

Rake was too fast, and his spirit was too strong. B lue fire burned around his shield. He narrowed his eyes and moved towards Danica. H is spirit shimmer ed like a moving glass cage.

Ronan tackled Rake from behind. He found a hole in the warlock’s shield and rammed his katana through the Revenger’s shoulder. Rake cried out and backhanded Ronan with a fist covered in cold fire, but the swordsman held on and twisted his blade.

Danica lumbered to her feet. H er eyes caught on Kane’s corpse where it lay on the ground.

She thought about Cole.

Sickness welled in the back of her throat. She fought the whispers, the lunatic vampire dirge that lingered at the edge of her thoughts.

Maur screamed for her to watch out.

The Scarecrow came at her with its c laws. Danica leapt back, and h er spirit pulled her into the air. She barely felt hi s presence. Nothing seemed real. S he moved as if in a dream.

She barely dodged the Scarecrow’s attack. A cold arcane blade grew out of her false knuckles and hacked away a giant limb. Black puss oozed to the ground. The Scarecrow bit at her with blunted teeth. Its blackene d skull rammed against her body and knocked the wind out of her.

She felt nothing. Without even realizing it, she was back on her feet. Her blade severed its massive head. The Scarecrow sank to its knees and crashed to the floor.

Cross was tethered and tied to its back, unmoving.

Maur ran over to them. E xplosions erupted from out of the tunne l. Dark fumes and shrapnel filled the icy air.

Danica looked at Cross, and she looked at Kane.

You don’t have to lose them both.

Ronan screamed.

Rake had drawn a Bowie knife and pushed it clean through Ronan’s forearm. Energy leapt from the Revenger’s fingers and poured into Ronan, whose eyes filled with bloody light.

“No!” Danica shouted.

T he ceiling exploded with a deafening blast. B urning cinder s fell like red snow. A small airship crashed outside, just over their heads. Jets of fire seared down like blades. She saw red sky filled with fire and caustic fumes.

A flaming Black Scars tank rolled across the hole in the roof and blocked out the world. It hovered, impossibly, before it fell down through the crumbling ceiling. The groan of metal and stone filled the air. The steel juggernaut twisted and crashed to the floor with a deafening boom that shook the entire structure. Chunks of granite and rebar fell in its wake. Waves of dust and debris filled the chamber in a rolling cloud.

Maur threw his body over Cross to shield him as w ar wights and kaithoren ripped through the walls. A sickly mass of soldiers made of grave flesh and boiling rot flooded the chamber. Whirring blades and tentacles lashed everywhere.

Ronan somehow pushed through Rake’s arcane assault and head-butted him, brea k ing the other man’s nose. He pulled away and kick ed the Revenger in the st omach.

Overhead, g argoyles and vampires and Killraven s twisted and fired and tore at one another. Bullets and hexed fire roared back and forth. The sky was filled with screams.

Danica blasted undead soldiers with streams of ghost fire and acid ice. She dodged through clouds of crackling flames and blue-white explosions.

A massive and armored Razorwing twisted its way through the gap in the ceiling. Its barbed wings and hook ed claws scraped against stone. I t opened its mouth and released a horrendous howl. A vampire armed with a double-blade d axe rode in a massive saddle on its back.

Danica looked at Rake. H e stared right back at her. His eyes burned white and gold.

Rake shaped his spirit into a tendril of slithering light that he lashed around Danica’s ankle. It burned through her boot and into her flesh. S he threw a lash of razor ice at Rake, but his spirit deflected the attack, and the frozen shrapnel flew straight into the Razorwing ’s chest. The beast howled as obsidian magic pierced its dull heart and killed it instantly. It fell towards the tower of skulls.

“I’m gonna eat your fucking heart!” Ronan howled. H e leapt forward and tackled Rake. They flew over the pit and into the pillar of glass. T he Razorwing landed on it from above.

The world filled with the sound of a glacier breaking. The pillar shattered as if in slow motion. The flying beast fell through it one layer at a time. Green and white glass shattered around the draconic corpse in a hail of crystal shards. Its body writhed and twisted, and the brittle explosions eviscerated its rider.

The Razorwing plummeted into solid darkness. Thick fumes of green smoke billowed up around the dead beast and pulled it down to oblivion.

Rake and Ronan fell with the glass shards. They plummeted behind the Razorwing’s corpse, followed it into the void below.

The line around Danica’s ankle tightened and pulled her body backwards. Rake still held the other end of the arcane whip.

H er head struck the ground. She felt blood i n her hair. She slid across a field of sharp rock and shattered glass bones, out of the madness of the melee and into the open pit.

She falls. Blackness rushes past her. She’ s pulled into a shaft of midnight.

A hole fades in th e distance above her. Soon it’ s gone, obscured by yellow gases and frozen steam. She smells the age of worlds. H ollow screams and carbon wails surround her. She sees cracks in the jagged stone, holes to a bitter and smoke-filled landscape, a wasteland of bubbling iron pools and twisted flesh mountains, smoking blood geysers and pits of iron teeth.

She knows what she sees is the Carrion Rift: a twisted zone of unfinished transformations, a place of becoming, of things undone and never to be.

She sees herself fal l, a pale angel made of flesh and blood and steel. She plummets through crumbling barriers and breathing skies. Her body sinks closer to the darkness, then ascends, pulled back up towards a pocket of sanity, a place still bound by reason and solid walls.

Something hard slammed into her back. Danica’s breat h shot out of her. She twisted her body and looked around.

They were in the wide stone shaft, the Shadow Lord’s vertical portal to t he Whisperlands. They’d landed in some pocket of safety, a space unaffected by the shifting bonds and temporal winds.

She reach ed out and grabbed something. At first s he thought it was a jutting stone, and she panicked when she realized it was actually a massive talon. The surface shifted beneath her and scraped against the broken walls of the shaft. Greasy smoke hung overhead, and the hole emptied into a frosted void below.

Danica stood on the underbelly of the Razorwing. Its leather leash line and the chains that dangled from its platform saddle were w rappe d around a protrusion in the rock above, which had snar ed the plummeting corpse. Now the beast hung belly up like a massive and dead puppet, its four feet held straight up in the air. The tethered corpse banged against the side of the shaft.

T he hardened skin o n the Razorwing’s underbelly was slick with dark blood. The dragon was the size of a bus. T he chains tense d, and bits of rocks snap ped loose from the outcropping overhead. Rocks bounced off the walls and fell out of sight.

T he reptilian body shift ed beneath her. S he grasped one of its upturned hind claws and pulled herself closer to the middle of its long abdomen. Its dead tail dangled down below, and she heard it smack against the stone.

“ Danica!” Ronan shouted. His head poked out from the out cropping overhead. “Look out!”

Something slammed against her back. Danica flew forward and her face hit the stone wall. Her feet slipped, but she reached up and gripped the rock with her steel hand.

Rake came at her from behind. His fists were covered with corrosive energy. Sparks of green light licked the air. Blood ran down his broken nose and into his teeth. H e snarled with rage.