another exclusive look at the epic fantasy sequel, We Battle
Available today.
** spoilers abound. you’ve been warned **
Letting go Shadar’s hand, he took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the alley they were passing. “It’s about to get messy, I don’t want you to get caught in it. Get out of town by whatever means, I’ll find you in the countryside.”
She only went a step before turning back to him stubbornly. “If we’re friends, then we stay. Friends don’t turn their backs on each other, especially not when things get bad.”
There was no time for arguing: the soldiers were in sight, bearing down on him. They had seen him too or seen the people he meant to protect from them. He had never once in all his life been ashamed of what he was—his mother hadn’t raised him to regard the outside world in terms of what it expected of him—but as he tipped back his head and raised his hands to the height of his chest, it crossed his mind to wonder how Shadar would feel about him once she had actually witnessed what it meant. He was Vexatious, son of Lucinda, a Warlock-Baron of the line of Navine, and little in this world could compete with him.
The cavalry was closing at a canter, a dozen soldiers in the white and gray that denoted a Samusal family. He closed his eyes and reached out with the inhuman parts of him. The parts that had not been severed from the natural world, that were akin to it and could call out to it for help. The sky above him boiled, the day darkening so the sun seemed to reverse its course. A gust of fearsome wind swept across Marchelus, sending up a wave of startled cries he could hear even above the roaring of blood in his ears. Shadows deepened, then blackened and became liquid, dribbling out of alleyways and from under eaves, coalescing in a dome around Vex and the soldiers menacing him.
Then they came alive. As a tornado of ravens descended from the sudden storm in a cawing fury to peck out eyes, the shadows reached for them. A bump in the night, a stir of motion from the corners of the eyes, a sudden sense of menace that woke people shaking beside a burned-out fire. The fears they attributed to indigestion, to oldwives’ tales, to overactive imaginations, and pushed beyond the borders of the civilized world. But they were real, for a certain value of real, and independent beings in a sense, and now Vex called out to the bogeymen who were his kin.
Around him, the soldiers were shouting in confusion, their confusion swiftly shading into fear as they fought an enemy they couldn’t comprehend. They slashed at the shadows with their swords, and he saw their horror bloom as it accomplished nothing and their friends were dragged screaming from their saddles. He registered how little he liked hurting them, how much he would rather be hurting the person responsible for sending them to menace his friends, but then a horse bumped into him and he nearly fell.
A soldier loomed out of the darkness in front of him, on foot and sword raised, and he wasn’t looking at Vex, did not even seem to notice him. The darkness writhed around him as a tar-black man-shape, glossy and featureless, stepped up at his shoulder and embraced him. He screamed, and it was water, pouring into him and drowning him. He fell heavily at Vex’s feet, and the ravens exploded outward as suddenly as they came, returning to their business now their work here was complete.
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