Novels by Ozzy Mqn Solace

CHAPTER 6: Frost and Fang Kyran's POVThe frost on the grass crunched beneath Magistrate Vanya’s boots as she cleared the remaining steel from her scabbard.The blade was narrow, forged from cold-rolled starmetal that hummed with a thin, sharp ring in the midnight air. A pale blue aura gathered along its length, condensing the ambient moisture into a cloud of freezing mist that drifted around her knuckles and trailed along the dirt. She stood with the upright, rigid posture typical of the lower sect disciples, her chin raised and her weight balanced high on the balls of her feet.“You have five breaths to drop to your belly, mortal,” Vanya said, her voice dropping into the flat, detached cadence cultivators reserved for vermin in the fields. “Tell me who sacked the camp, where the surviving guards fled and who hired a common freight wagon to haul imperial crystal across provincial lines.”“You ask too many questions for someone with such sloppy footwork,” I replied.Her pale blue e

CHAPTER 5: Ash on the Wind Kyran's POVGreasy black smoke rose three hundred feet into the afternoon sky, twisting like a dark spear against the slate-gray clouds that choked the upper peaks.Down in the valley floor, the main crushing sheds, the sorting yards and the timber barracks burned with a low hungry roar. The heat was immense, radiating outward across the gravel yard and baking the remaining pools of blood into dry, cracked crusts that flaked under the mountain wind.Near the shattered southern gates, three heavy freight wagons stood lined in a row. They had been thoroughly searched and packed with iron discipline.. sacks of hard winter grain, wheels of salted rind cheese, bundles of dried beef, crates of heavy iron picks and forged steel broadswords and two massive iron-bound chests carrying the unrefined stabilizing crystal extracted from the deep veins.Around the wagons gathered forty freed men. They had cast aside their broken shovels and rusted wrist-irons, taking up

CHAPTER 4: The Summit Keep Kyran's POVThe stone stairs leading to the summit were broad, carved straight from the mountain’s gray granite and at the top stood the keep’s outer courtyard ringed by a six-foot parapet of rough masonry.Twenty mercenaries in leather and iron scale formed a tight overlapping shield wall across the entrance and behind them stood two handlers holding leashes, straining against the lunges of four war hounds... massive gray-furred beasts bred for hunting runaway slaves witb their jaws dripping foam against iron-spiked muzzles.Standing on the raised stone balcony overlooking the courtyard was Overseer Malakor.He was a thick,square-jawed brute with a scar running from his ear down into a greasy beard and draped in a wolf-pelt mantle that failed to hide the broad paunch of a man grown fat on stolen rations and bribes. In his hands rested a heavy iron-bound arbalest with the thick steel prod already cranked back and notched with a broadhead quarrel.“Halt rig

CHAPTER 3: The Mountain Path Kyran's POVThe rhythmic clang of the valley’s brass alarm bell echoed off the high slate cliffs, scattering crows from the dead trees above.Down in the pit, the remaining slaves stood frozen in the dust, staring at the three dead guards with wide and hollow eyes. None of them reached for a fallen weapon. Years of starvation, iron collars and daily lashings had broken whatever will they once possessed.. they were cattle waiting to see which way the herd would be driven.Only the scrawny youth who had spoken to me stayed close with his fingers nervously picking at the fraying hemp rope around his waist.“My name is Ris,” he stammered, following two paces behind as I stripped the bracers from the dead spearman and strapped them over my thin forearms. “We slept in the third bunk of the lower trench, Drax. You came in three moons ago from the southern marches. You didn’t speak to anyone.. you just worked until your hands split.”“The man who did that died t

CHAPTER 2: The Slaver’s Toll Kyran's POVThe stench of stagnant water, sweat and copper filled my nose before my eyes even opened.My lungs seized, drawing in a sharp breath of dry mineral dust that set off a coughing fit. When I tried to push myself up, my arms shook and buckled. There was no divine buoyancy in this frame and no hum of celestial marrow sustaining the weight of bone and muscle. My limbs felt leaden, hollowed by hunger and bound in stiff dried grime.A rough leather boot slammed hard into my ribs, flipping me onto my back over sharp shale.“Get up, Drax!” a voice ordered. “The wagons are rolling in twenty minutes. If your bin isn’t filled with ore by midday, I will skin the soles off your feet!”Standing over me was a broad thick-necked slave camp overseer in iron mail with his greasy brown beard stained with tobacco juice. In his right hand he held a five-tailed whip tipped with jagged lead beads with the leather dark and stiff from old blood.I looked down at my ha

CHAPTER 1: The Blood-Stained Sanctuary Kyran’s POVThe weight of a continent settled into my limbs with every step across the flagstones of the inner sanctum. My armor was split from collar to hip, caked in black gore from the abyssal front and the venom of the Void Serpent had settled into my marrow, burning like a fiend fire. I could barely draw air without my ribs grinding against one another.The arched doors of my private chambers lay ahead and beyond them stood the only peace I had known in three centuries of slaughter.. my wives. Cressida whose frost arts could cool the fire eating my blood.. Morwena whose cauldrons held the draughts to mend meridians and Nyssa whose wards could unravel the curses still clinging to my flesh. I had torn the heart out of the Star-Iron Realm to bring Cressida the frost core she needed to survive. I had sacrificed half my cultivation sight to secure Morwena’s relic and bled my own veins dry to break the blood curse on Nyssa’s clan. They were th