You can learn a lot from history books in the cities of the East. They say people were brave and strong when they settled the Sylvan Frontier. The books do not talk about the storms with sulfur in 1782. They do not say what happened when the air became bad and guns stopped working. Nobody knows why the gunpowder became unstable and exploded before it could be used. The people who lived on the frontier found a way to adapt. They stopped using guns. Started using swords. For fifty years the law of the woods was kept by the strength of a persons arm and the weight of the sword they carried. Captain Robbin Vance knew this history well. He had a scar on his face and neck that reminded him of it. Elaine said, "The air smells like pennies." She was talking quietly. You could barely hear her over the sound of their boots on the ground. Robbin stopped walking. He put his hand on the handle of his sword without thinking about it. He took a breath. Smelled the air. It should have smell

The world turned white. The blast hit Robbin like a punch to the chest. Sent him flying backward. He crashed into something maybe stone or the edge of the well. The air was knocked out of him all at once. Robbins sword was gone. He knew this before he even opened his eyes. He could feel that his hand was empty. Far away he heard metal scraping against dirt. Everything was black. Then he heard a sound. It was high and thin like a needle stabbing into his skull. Someone was calling his name. "Captain. Robbin." He felt hands on his shoulder pulling him. Robbin opened his eyes. He saw snow and dust everywhere. Elaines face was above him looking worried. Her blades were out. "Are you okay?" she asked. Robbin coughed. He tasted blood. He nodded. He pushed himself up with one arm. Looked around for his sword. He found it. A shape half-buried in the slush near the wall. Robbin crawled to his sword. He grabbed it. Stood up. The gate was gone. It was not broken or damaged. It was just

The cellar reeked of old rot, damp earth, and something else something sharp and metallic. The Ironborn. Juliana clawed at the air, her feet kicking uselessly inches above the stone floor. The officer's iron fist was wrapped around her throat, and he held her like she weighed nothing at all. His short-sword jagged, vibrating, humming with that low, bone-deep sound pressed against her ribs hard enough to slice through her wool coat. The blade's buzz echoed off the walls, like a swarm of angry hornets. "Drop your weapon, primitive," the officer said. His voice came out layered, mechanical, grating. Robbin's knuckles had gone white around his cavalry saber's grip. Elaine stood frozen behind the wine casks, twin short-swords raised, her eyes darting between the three scouts flanking the room. The Ironborn watched them with cold blue eyes, eyes that held nothing. No fear, no pity, no humanity at all. They weren't soldiers. They were weapons. Walking, breathing weapons built to kill. "R

The air now not merely cold, but animate, heavy and wrong. Robbin’s boot came off the muddy floor, and he was lifting inches into the air along with shattered pine branches, clumps of frozen earth, and the heavy iron hulls of dead hounds. General Thorne’s immense great-sword gave a low, bass hum that vibrated right through Robbin’s skull. His vision swam, and his teeth began to ache as the localised gravity field began ripping the surroundings apart, pulling the survivors to the lip of the one-hundred-foot, vertical cliff face. "Hold onto something!" Robbin roared over the weightless suck. He lunged through the air and grabbed onto a huge, exposed tree root jutting from the cliff face, then caught Juliana around the middle of her coat, tethering her as her feet lifted from the ground. Juliana whimpered, holding the steaming brass device in her arms like a shield. Elaine and Cedric, meanwhile, struggled against the weightless horror next to them, Elaine driving her short sword deep

The air inside the dark vault became cold and wet, and it smelled terrible like things that had been dead for a very long time. The iron door groaned upward. A pressurized hiss, almost alive. Nobody moved. The hundred Ironborn stood frozen mid-stride, blades half-raised toward Robbin's crew. Their eyes are usually steady, almost bored with violence flickered now. erratic. Uncertain. The arm-fused weapons trembled, and somewhere deep inside each puppet, gears ground against something they couldn't name. Robbin's hand found Juliana's elbow. He didn't remember reaching for her. From beyond the door, a sound. Not breathing exactly. Something with rhythm, with weight. It pulled at his chest like a hand pressed flat against his sternum. He could feel it in the soles of his boots, humming through the stone and into his bones. Then the first tendril emerged. Not iron. Not stone. Flesh, but wrong, thick and slow and glistening with something too dark to be blood. Purple, almost black,