Dawn Of The Blood Sovereign

CHAPTER 6: THE RIFT OF THE ANCIENTS

The bellowing roar from the chasm sounded nothing like an animal. It was more like the earth himself was coughing, the grinding of tectonic plates mixed with molten iron.

The crack split the throne room clean down the middle. The three-foot-wide jagged fissure ran straight through the base of the black granite throne, tearing into the silver-inlaid floorboards and swallowing the great oak map table whole. A plume of thick, sulfurous heat erupted from the deep and a rhythmic pulsing vibrated all the way into Kaelen’s very bones.

“Get her out of here!” Kaelen roared over the deafening boom, his voice already infused with divine power.

Oi didn’t hesitate. He lunged across the vibrating floor and grabbed both Ye So-ya and the child, Yuri, shielding them with his own body as the great oak table behind them began to tilt. A piece of ceiling tile the size of his own torso broke free and smashed down exactly where they had stood seconds before. Along with half a dozen Jade Falcon guards, Oi herded the sobbing mother and the silent, terror-stricken child toward the reinforced service tunnels behind the dais.

“Logan! Evacuate the lower barracks!” Vanya’s voice was a sharp lash against the deafening noise. She was already braced against a load-bearing black pillar, her white fox fur cloak peppered with grey plaster dust. “Get the men to the northern ridge! Now!”

Logan gave a curt nod, drawing his broadsword to use as a stabilizing staff on the buckling floor and sprinting down the crumbling steps toward the main exits.

Kaelen did not run. He moved toward the edge of the shattered glass wall, his boots treading carefully over the growing fissures. The wind howling into the room was thick and hot, reeking of old ash and ozone.

Below Aethelgard, the valley was a scene of absolute pandemonium.

The scarlet vortex in the sky had enlarged and bathed the land in an unearthly, bloody glow. Malakor’s fifty thousand heavy cavalry were no longer a proud and terrifying war machine; they were a broken herd of humanity, throwing away heavy iron breastplates to sprint faster, horses bucking off riders and trampling their own infantry in a desperate flight from the valley floor.

The royal army wasn't even glancing back at the fortress. They were fleeing from the rifts.

A colossal canyon opened in the very center of the valley, devouring siege engines by the score. From the blinding, malevolent golden light pouring out of the canyon rose monstrous figures, the age-old automatons of black stone and glowing gold veins. Dormant since the age before the gods, the towering titans carried no swords or spears. Their own stony limbs were their weapons and as they dragged themselves onto the land, they systematically began to crush everything that moved.

“These aren’t Malakor’s men,” Vanya said, appearing beside Kaelen at the shattered wall. Her face was stark white, her jade eyes wide as they watched the ancient abominations tear the royal army to shreds. “What are they Kaelen?”

“The Firstborn of the earth,” Kaelen whispered, molten gold eyes burning with a deep, ancestral knowledge that he knew did not belong to him, but his father’s bloodline. “The entities the gods warred for this land against. My father did not destroy them. He just imprisoned them.”

“And the fortress woke them,” Vanya’s voice dropped, sharpening into a cold accusation. She turned to him, her knuckles white around the silver dagger in her hand. “The weight of our stone, the drawing of your divine power, it broke the crust of the deep rifts.”

“It doesn’t matter who woke them now,” Kaelen said, swinging the great Sun-Cleaver from his shoulder. The black dragon-bone bow was vibrating in his hand with such force it hummed a high, thin note of pure terror. “If these things clear the valley they will not stop at Buyeo. They will burn this continent to ashes.”

Suddenly, the tremor stopped.

A stifling, oppressive silence fell over the throne room. The air grew thick, hot, and completely still.

Kaelen’s eyes were fixed on the crack in the floor. The golden light began to recede under the floorboards, turning from a violent glare into a dull, pulsing crimson.

A grating, wet, metallic sound echoed through the silence.

The edge of the chasm was grabbed by a gigantic gauntlet of black, obsidian-like armor that dug its razor-sharp fingertips into the granite floor. On the opposite side of the crack, another gauntlet slammed down, and slowly, something else began to rise from the black abyss.

It was a monstrous creature nearly seven feet tall, clad in armor like cooled volcanic glass held together by glowing red veins of magma. Its helmet was a solid, faceless mask of black iron, and in the center was a single horizontal slit that burned with a blindingly hateful crimson flame. It was no automaton. It was a Warden, a general of the deep.

The thing turned its blank, blazing eyes toward the throne, then slowly shifted to stare directly at Kaelen. The words did not issue from a mouth, they resonated within the very air of the room in a grinding, metallic rasp that made the remaining panes of glass vibrate.

“The blood of Hae Mosu… still crawls upon the dirt.”

The Warden raised its right arm, the obsidian plate sliding and reforming around its knuckles into a massive, jagged blade of solid, smoking glass.

“Vanya, go,” Kaelen commanded, his voice eerily calm as he stepped between the merchant queen and the creature.

Vanya did not hesitate; she knew her daggers and silver were useless against a demon of the deep. Three steps back, her eyes locked on Kaelen as he notched a great, black-shafted arrow into the Sun-Cleaver.

Kaelen drew the string back to his ear. Golden light flared within his irises to an unbearable intensity as the divine bloodline within him roared for battle. The air around the bow singed the nearby tapestries.

“You should have stayed in the dark,” Kaelen said.

The Warden launched itself forward with impossible speed, the obsidian blade whistling through the air, aimed directly for Kaelen’s throat.

Kaelen loosed the string.