The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  Greyson’s head wagged back and forth, muttering garbled noises of discontent. “No, no, no!” he shrieked, leaping toward her, and bridging the gap between them in one mighty jump. In midair, he rolled into a ball before unfurling at the last moment to swallow her in his back maw. She watched this with stoic calm, raising her hand at the last instant to freeze him like a statue. He crashed to the ground, body rigid and toppling over like a felled tree. Saliva dripped from his teeth, pattering onto her feet.

  “Foolish creature. Did you believe I would bequeath you such gifts without instilling a measure of control?” She chuckled. Horns resounded from the Purists tower and men could be seen lining up along the balustrades, taking up arms. She saw the glint of spear tips and extended arms gripping what must’ve been bows. Greyson’s tongue lashed from his cavernous mouth, stopping at an unseen wall of protection. “You waste energy you could be using leading the charge I commanded,” she said, grunting in frustration.

  Greyson’s second set of eyes blazed with rage, flickering alight and glowing like torches. “Why? Why me?” he hissed. She stepped on his tongue, slowly driving the ball of her foot into its center. He howled, his demonic eyes screwing shut.

  She placed her hands on her hips, wondering if this was how it felt to possess a child. “I’ve rewarded you for helping me take Midgaard, and you question my gift. Is this how you regard all your benefactors?” Her tone went dark. “I let you have your sister and me together, and you did enjoy it, but do not forget your place. If you disobey me again… I will not be so kind.” She jabbed a finger into his upper back, drawing a bead of blood, and slowly dragged her talon down over his ribs and around his second face, slicing through flesh. Greyson clamped his mouths closed, stuffing his pain down deep. “Do not question me again. Do you understand your place, my child?”

  He frantically nodded, and she let him move that much. “Good. Go on then.” She flicked her hand toward the tower, foot lifting from his bruised tongue. “This should be easy for us. Try not to kill them all.” She set her gaze on Larissa, who obediently lowered her eyes. At least one of them knew her place. “And you. No more surrogates. I had to slay your last bunch in Midgaard, can’t have any competition. I do hope you understand.”

  Larissa reddened, and to her credit, her eyes never lifted. “Yes, Master, sorry… I didn’t think you’d care,” she squeaked.

  The princess released her telekinetic hold on Greyson, who stumbled backward from her grip. He shook like a dog, tongue spilling farther out from his second mouth like an unrolling ream of paper. Greyson gave a grunt of resolve, bounding like a charging animal down the path, tongue lolling over his shoulder. Larissa gave the Shadow Princess a parting nod before she launched into a sprint, joining him at his side. The horde of Shadow snakes trailed behind them, spilling out from the portal from Midgaard.

  The Purists weren’t much of a challenge. Without Terar to lead their defense, they were easily taken, most so mindlessly focused on their tasks she thought Terar had transfixed them with a spell. The defenders were quickly swarmed by Shadow snakes, bodies ravaged by Greyson’s fury and Larissa’s strength.

  Those who resisted were invariably choked by squirming snakes, but not before they were bitten. Greyson and Larissa dispatched the most resolute of Terar’s defenders, men and women he’d gifted with unnatural strength. Greyson tore their limbs from their bodies with fearsome chomps of his second mouth while Larissa’s deft hands tore out throats and genitalia with abandon. They darted around the winding balconies, throwing men over the edges by force and some pushed by their own terror.

  She meandered along the path to the tower while her forces blanketed it in a wriggling mass of gray. She held her hands behind her back, closed her eyes, and breathed deep on the crisp mountain air. She adjusted her wings, trailing along the ground.

  “I told you not to kill them all,” a man’s voice said, his tone colored by disbelief. Her wings twitched in surprise, a gasp slipping from her mouth. “You.” She sighed. She didn’t have to look to know it would be Prodal, scenting his presence. The air around him smelled like an odd mix of sulfur and roasted meat.

  “You don’t own me,” she snapped her eyes open to glare at him. “And you never will.” She jabbed her talon into his arm, drawing a bead of black blood.

  “That hurts, you know.” He shifted back, brows drawn as if he felt pain. Could he even feel such a thing?

  “Yes. But not here,” he muttered.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did I ask something?” A sense of losing control fell over her, trees spinning into a blur of colors. The duplicates, Annoyance and Courage, appeared behind Prodal, grinning to show their abyssal throats.

  “You’re going to have a hard go of it taking the Tower without Equalizers and men to bear them,” Prodal said, crossing his arms. “There is a part of me that sees you want to fail.”

  She slowly shook her head, eyes feeling hot. Words were suddenly hard to form, each dragged from her chest. “My strength grows with their assimilation. They become me, and I them.” A faint aura of violet light emerged around her body, drifting on the breeze as if it were steam. She felt like an overfilled water skin with someone trying to force the cork in. She had to let some of it go lest she burst.

  “What are you doing? I hope that isn’t meant for me.”

  “No,” she whispered. “Just… gathering the Equalizers.” A portal opened at her side and from it came a lumbering humanoid. It was a conglomerate of flesh and steel bound as one. They were her ultimate creations, each a champion in their own right. The first wore an executioner’s hood with chains crisscrossing over a muscular torso with some of the links mended in his flesh. Its rusted over chains went around its biceps and dragged on the ground from long ape-like arms, legs squat and lined with wriggling violet veins. It swayed its body to and fro, scanning the grounds before marching up the path. “This is Corbyn, modeled after my father.” She gestured at the hulking figure.

  “Naturally,” Prodal sneered.

  “And this is Indra.” She nodded at the one coming after.

  Indra had a feminine shape, broad hips and a narrow waist, body covered in hard organic shells. From her back was a quartet of horns spanning four feet, her eyes glowing like furnaces. Her legs had the shape of a dog’s, fingers and toes adorned with talons like hers. From her head were two enormous curved horns pointed for ramming. Running down the center of her back was a channel of violet fire. Indra belched, and with it came a burst of violet flames. She scratched her head with her foot, then dropped to all fours and bounded up the path with a wolfish gait.

  “Step back,” she grunted with the effort of widening her portal. It grew and grew so large it could hardly fit under the Midgaard Blood Gates, spanning maybe thirty feet in height and twenty in width. “And this… my most prized creation, is Sanur.”

  She thought she saw Greyson gaping at her from the upper ramparts of the Purists tower. Perhaps she had put more of herself than she intended into him. A Purist painted in bright streaks of reds and greens leaped from the topmost level, daggers raised in each hand to strike him down. The poor man had apparently missed his second mouth, jumping directly into it legs first. Greyson’s jaw clamped down and sliced through his legs like they were made of air, sending his severed torso tumbling to the earth far below. Greyson spat the legs from his mouth, starting toward a woman brandishing an axe.

  A four-fingered fist the size of a door emerged through her portal, its flesh armored in what appeared to be slabs of granite. The fist became an arm the length of a spire, arm connected to the colossal torso. On Sanru’s elbows were giant spikes the size of men, its shoulders the size of houses. Sanur lacked a neck, head set at the top of its chest, a slit-eyed mound of stone with a mouth as broad as a portcullis. The stone covering his shoulders wrapped down over his front, textured like waving sand dunes. Sanur emitted a long and deep growl, the sound traveling deep in her chest. Sanur dragged the last of his thick legs through the
portal, and the princess let the portal hiss shut.

  “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she asked, smiling like a mother admiring the achievements of her child.

  “He is… something. It’s impressive. I thought you spent the majority of your time bedding the princeling. I took you for granted. You’ve been far more industrious than I’d anticipated.” Prodal nodded with a frown. “Where did you learn to create such a thing? And from where do they hail?”

  “Tigeria. Their scholars had tablets containing the scripts for spells my father once knew, his memories broken after he was imprisoned by the witches in Zoria. Had he remembered them upon his return, maybe things would’ve been better for us. Maybe we’d be less alone.”

  “And Sanur will go ahead and collect Equalizer crystals the size of my fingertip?”

  She threw her head back with laughter, snakes wriggling on her scalp. “Don’t be silly, Betrayer. The others will get those. Sanur is just for fun. Don’t you like to have fun?” Could he be seduced? Could she take him in her grip? It couldn’t hurt to try.

  For a terrifying instant, Prodal’s human form glimmered, revealing his gangling limbs, smoldering eyes, long and narrow face. Her heart thundered in her temples. His mortal’s face returned with a full and knowing smile.

  “S-sorry,” she felt herself stammer. Her eyes were drawn back to the tower, thankful then to have something to naturally settle her gaze upon.

  “Will you help us?” she forced herself to ask.

  “No,” he said, drawing out the word. “I can’t. I only dabble in the world of men. My strengths have limits.”

  Paranoia appeared behind him, shaking her head. “Lies,” she mouthed. The Shadow Princess pulled her gaze away from him to watch the ensuing spectacle.

  On the ramparts, men and women blazed like violet fireflies as Indra worked through the remaining rebels. Corbyn wasn’t far behind, smashing the heads of two women together in a spray of blood, then throwing them over a section of scaffolding. Shadow snakes swarmed around them, seeking flesh to infect with her touch. They were all extensions of her, requiring a sliver of her concentration to occasionally nudge them in the right direction. Like marbles, once the course was set, they could continue upon it by means of their own momentum, but sometimes they needed help.

  Eventually, her champions emerged from the tower about twenty minutes later while Sanur patiently waited. Sanur shifted his stance and rolled his shoulders. Remaining still for this long had grown uncomfortable for him. Bits of stone flecks rained down his body as jagged armor rubbed together. Larissa, Greyson, Indra, and Corbyn trampled down the path, kicking up pine needles.

  “Where did you keep them? Why have I not seen them before?” Prodal asked, starting to pace with his arms held tightly across his chest. He seemed disturbed, eyes flickering from color to color.

  “Despite what you might think, Betrayer, there are things I can keep from you.”

  He responded with a weary grunt, licking his lips. He came to an abrupt stop, finger rising. “In the dungeons, I presume?”

  Worry appeared on the ground, groveling on her knees with hands clasped. “He knows! He knows, kill him!” she simpered.

  Prodal raised an eyebrow at her, snickering under his breath.

  Her champions returned, their breaths puffing out white on the frozen air. They each held hundreds of glittering Equalizers draping over their arms, proudly displayed for her, and all splotched with blood. Each crystal was set in a silver chain, their edges rough cut.

  “See?” She snatched an Equalizer from Greyson, rubbing a bit of blood off between her fingers. The crystal had an unearthly warmth to it. “If every tenth or so snake is bound with one, it should make crushing the tower a fool’s errand.”

  “There were other Blood Eaters, more like me,” Larissa blurted, cheeks flushing.

  “I presumed as much, given your… condition,” the Shadow Princess answered.

  “Why do I do what I do? All of my work, gone,” Prodal scoffed. “You might as well finish the job then.”

  “I intend to, Betrayer.”

  “That name does grow on me.”

  “Good.”

  Every man and woman was either bitten by her snakes or slaughtered, some both. It seemed each of her champions had returned injured. Greyson had a notch removed from his ear, Larissa favored one leg, and Corbyn had a grisly slash across his belly, though she knew he didn’t feel the pain. Indra licked a cracked talon, blood weeping around the base.

  “Well done, you may rest now,” she said with an approving nod, shifting her eyes only to glimpse Prodal’s reaction. He revealed nothing, watching the spectacle with abject boredom. She suppressed a forceful sigh. “Sanur, destroy!” she shouted.

  Sanur started into motion, a long growl issuing from his cavernous throat. He plodded for the Purist’s tower, instilling enough terror in those still hidden to send them leaping from its great heights. Three figures plummeted from the tallest tier, hitting the ground with a gentle thump.

  Sanur ravaged the tower like a toddler to a toy house, smashing his enormous fist through the woodwork in splintering swathes. He stomped his legs through support beams and drove his shoulder into the main body of the building. It was apparently not built to withstand the onslaught of a colossal giant. In minutes, it was done, the Purist’s great creation reduced to a shattered jumble of broken timbers and ruined bodies.

  Prodal watched all of this without blinking and finally turned to speak to her. “I thought you were to convert them to the Shadow?”

  She shrugged. “Some will rise again, and some will not. It makes no difference to me. I have all that I’ll need to claim the Silver Tower.”

  He slowly nodded. “I hope you’re right about that.”

  SIXTEEN

  New Arrivals

  “Don’t destroy an enemy when they could be employed as an ally.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield

  Nyset licked her lips, split at the corners from repeated lickings over the past day. She forced her tongue back into her mouth, drawing on a touch of the Phoenix to mend her wounds. She rubbed her hands and saw her knuckles were raw with irritation.

  The sun was a pale orb, obscured by a haze of thin clouds. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the Far Sea, watching from the top of the crags circling the bay as hundreds of Tigerian ships were unloaded at the docks. A sea breeze grabbed her scarlet robes, drawing them around her lithe torso and flapping at her side. Tufts of grass whispered secrets. The cliff side was hewed from Dragon fire when the Tower was built, its side pocked from the ravages of the sea and dotted with lichens and moss. A few gulls coasted on the breeze, raining the dockmaster’s huts below with a few additional wet turds. Cranes and newly constructed warehouses crowded the shore with the advent of safety at the Tower’s bowl-shaped port.

  The Tigerians fled with only what they could carry. Most of the catfolk groaned under overstuffed backpacks and satchels. Nobles hefted suitcases, their once pristine outfits stained with sea salt and blood. Some carried nothing but the clothes on their backs and expressions of despair, eyes downcast. According to Crugen, more than half of the population of Ashrath perished.

  The Shadow Princess’s onslaught did nothing to stifle the enmity between catfolk and man. If the catfolk thought their lives were harried now, it only got worse as they came ashore. Among the disembarking Tigerians were pairs of wizards about every ten feet, eyes threateningly glowing to indicate they held either the Dragon or the Phoenix. Tower Armsman patrolled the lines of downtrodden catfolk, suppressing rabble rousers with blows to the guts and thumps to the head. Grimbald stood on a few stacked crates overseeing the chaos, shouting orders over the din of complaints.

  At least a third of the surviving Tigerians were wounded by Shadow snake bites in their escape. Those bitten were destined for extinction, corralled into lines of carriages like livestock. She couldn’t risk infecting the Tower. They hadn’t resisted, believing the lie that they were bei
ng hauled off to their accommodations. Maybe the histories will call her The Great Liar too, she thought with a grim snicker.

  To add to the humiliation of fleeing to their sworn enemies for help, they were stripped bare for all to see while they were inspected for bites by guardsman and wizards. It was a laborious process due to their fur-lined flesh. Understandably, more than a few of the guards were far rougher than they had to be, nudging along nude catfolk with their spear butts and hard kicks. Zorians were well aware how most Tigerians regarded men.

  Carriages trundled up and down the winding road leading away from the docks and around New Breden and the Tower for the northern forests. The catfolk would be prodded and dragged from their confines, huddled into groups, and unceremoniously scorched to ashes. Dark times required dark deeds. They didn’t have the time or resources to bury so many at once. Regrettably, she knew of a few wizards who were dead inside after the Shadow war, no task too grisly for their Dragon fire. Isa oversaw the executions, volunteering for the grim work. She often wondered how he and men like him could carry such burdens. Maybe he was just good at hiding it from the world.

  “Where do you propose we’re going to put them all?” Claw asked with a sniff, feeling his gaze at her side. She forced a smile, pulling her eyes from the scene below to meet his. They were tired eyes, yet bright as sapphires with the Phoenix’s glow. He seemed to always be holding it, using it as a crutch. His whitish-gray hair fluttered on the air, beard grown in thick after the last few weeks. Claw wore dark hunting leathers, a long sword draped across his back.

  She unclenched her jaw, unaware of how tight she’d been holding it. “It won’t be comfortable, but we’ll have to make do. Comfort won’t matter if the realm falls to the Shadow.”