Dawn Of The Blood Sovereign

CHAPTER 9: THE CROWNS OF ASH AND IRON

The black arrow was not like Kaelen’s other, earth-shattering divine strikes from the past. The god could not afford to spend from a full reservoir of celestial energy. This time the arrow hissed through the air, vibrating from the rough, jagged friction of a god running solely on pure spite.

Thwack.

The arrow punched through the front rank of the imperial shields. No golden shockwave exploded from the collision, only the raw kinetic force of the Sun-Cleaver obliterating three overlapping iron bulwarks and sending the heavily armored spearmen somersaulting into the mud, their bones shattering beneath the impact.

“Kill him!” Malakor roared, his white stallion whinnying in sudden terror and rearing backward. “He’s weakened! Cut off his head!”

The gold-and-black wall of the Emperor’s Guard charged. One hundred of the Emperor’s finest cavalry pushed forward, lances lowered straight at Kaelen’s chest, hooves churning the wet ground to a scarlet mud.

Kaelen did not flee. He dropped from his saddle, abandoning the stolen horse to its own whim in the haze, standing alone on his own two feet in the center of the Red Basin-a single black silhouette against the bloody red sky.

He did not draw another arrow. He couldn't; his veins felt like they were filled with shards of broken glass and the dying remnants of his divine bloodline were screaming for rest after executing the Warden.

He swung the heavy dragon-bone bow like a greatsword.

The first rider came rushing toward him, the tip of his heavy steel lance pointed at Kaelen’s throat. Kaelen spun on his heel, his movements a fraction as fluid as his mother's grace, and the lance zipped past an inch from his face. With a savage two-handed downward chop, Kaelen drove the silvered tip of the Sun-Cleaver down onto the horse's skull.

The beast buckled and went down instantly, its rider tumbling to the ground, a pile of mud.

Before the soldier could stand, Kaelen drove his boot onto the man's chest, crushing his gorget with the iron-reinforced rim of his heel, his golden eyes locked onto Malakor in the center of the line.

Kaelen fought like a madman. He did not use magic, he used the physics of leverage, momentum, and the terrible weight of his celestial weapon. Every swing of the bow left a stream of shattered iron and mangled bodies. But for every imperial soldier he killed, three took their place. A jagged spear point tore a ragged path through his sovereign robes, opening a deep red gash across his shoulder. A heavy mace slammed against his ribs from behind, and he dropped to one knee with a sharp intake of breath.

“He bleeds!” Commander Vance shouted from the back, still holding the small boy Yuri by the arm. “The outcast is mortal! Finish it!”

Yuri watched his father collapse from the mud.

The boy’s tiny hands were shaking and his golden eyes were wide as he watched the Sovereign of Aethelgard being ground beneath the sea of black and gold.

Father, the boy's mind screamed, a single, sudden frequency of raw thought that pierced the noise of the battlefield.

Kaelen heard him, though the sound was not a sound-it was an unbearable burst of heat in his chest. He looked up from his knee and his molten gold eyes flared to life with a sudden, unnatural brilliance. The blood running down his shoulder was no longer just common fluid-it was steam rising off the freezing earth.

He scrambled back to his feet, tightening his grip on the black bone of his bow.

But before he could propel himself back toward the fight, a shrill whistle pierced the thunderous beat of the drums from the southern ridges.

Shriek.

A storm of a hundred sleek, green-feathered arrows descended from the high cliffs, striking the imperial cavalry from the side. These were not the dull, clumsy bolts of a peasant militia, they were the sharp, needle-like armor-piercing arrows of the House of the Jade Falcon.

Kaelen glanced back towards the ridge.

Vanya no longer stood on the high ramparts, but was seated upon her white mare at the summit of the southern hill, flanked by five thousand personal mercenaries-all master archers. Kaelen did not meet her gaze; his was not a look of sympathy nor of regret, only the cold calculation in her eyes could tell. She had told him that she would not die with him today, but the knowledge was still in her gaze that when Kaelen's head had fallen Malakor's trade empire was the first thing the High Kingdom would tear down.

“Break the bottleneck!” Vanya’s voice boomed from the ridge top as she raised a silver dagger, pointing it at Malakor in the center of the line. “Protect the investment!”

The mercenary vanguard slammed into the Emperor’s Guard like a wave of silver and iron, fracturing Malakor's flawless formation into a chaotic three-way slaughter.

“Betrayal!” Malakor hissed, his white stallion lashing out as the battlefield began to collapse around him. He stared at Vance. “Kill the boy! Now!”

Vance raised his greatsword high, a brutal sneer on his face as he swung down for Yuri’s bare neck.

Kaelen did not think; he did not check his reserves. He tore away the last vestiges of his own mortality from his very soul.

The sky overhead did not merely turn red, it tore apart as a single catastrophic bolt of golden lightning descended and struck the tip of the Sun-Cleaver directly out of the vortex above. The sheer heat instantly vaporized Kaelen's dark robes from his forearms, revealing a skin glowing with the raw, exposed veins of a sun god.

He didn’t draw an arrow; he didn’t need one.

He drew the string back with a strength that cracked the black dragon-bone. The golden lightning was gathered between his fingers now as a single, screaming bolt of pure solar plasma.

“Vance,” Kaelen roared, the full weight of a deity's anger in his voice.

He let the string fly.

The beam of light didn't travel; it just was where Vance had been standing. The explosion was silent, a brief flash of white-hot light that completely disintegrated commander, horse and the three steeds standing behind them, leaving only a perfectly round, glassy crater in the mud.

The blast wave knocked Yuri back and sent him tumbling into the dirt covered in the blinding white ash but unhurt.

Everything on the battlefield was completely and utterly still. Both armies had dropped their weapons and covered their eyes with their hands from the searing afterglow of the blast.

Prince Malakor sat astride his horse his helmet removed his face entirely white as he stared at the smoking crater in the place of his captain stood one second before. He turned to look at Kaelen.

Kaelen stood fifty paces away, his Sun-Cleaver cracked directly in the middle the celestial gold inlaid dead and dulled. Kaelen’s arms were scorched black from the elbows down and he was heaving breaths, ragged bloody and ragged. He had no magic, no power, and no weapon.

But he had eyes that were burning with pure flame.

Malakor's fear instantly morphed into pure psychotic opportunity. He drew his gilded royal broadsword shifting his weight on his white horse, "You are empty," he whispered the sound tremulous then booming, "you used the last of your blood on a slave you have no more lightning Kaelen!"

Kaelen did not move. He did not even raise his arms to shield himself. He stood and watched as Malakor spurred his horse toward him sword raised for a final run down decapitation. His brother watched him with eyes devoid of mirth, a smile that was humorless and made Malakor's gut churn.

As the white stallion sped toward Kaelen five paces out the ground beneath Malakor did not crack it split open. A single massive hand made of jagged obsidian and flowing red magma erupted from the ground, grabbing Malakor’s white stallion by the midsection and crushing the beast into a pile of white horse flesh and iron instantly. Malakor shrieked, falling from the horse's back he tumbled through the dirt until he was at Kaelen's boots. The Warden's faceless black iron helm broke through the mud behind Malakor the slit burning with a fresh flame. The frozen titans along the entire valley floor then blinked and began to glow gold, pulsing perfectly with the Warden's appearance. Kaelen's first Warden wasn't the leader it was the scout.

Malakor scrambled up out of the dirt his royal armor coated in horse flesh and ash staring at the demon looming behind his brother with his eyes wide with horror, "Kaelen...help me...we are brothers...the bloodline of Buyeo..." Kaelen looked down at the prince without drawing his sword or lifting a finger.

"The bloodline of Buyeo is dead Malakor," he said softly. He turned his back to the prince and began walking through the chaotic cross fire toward his son Yuri waiting for him in the crater. Behind him the obsidian Warden raised its magma blade, its eyes fixed on the screaming king cowering in the dirt.