At high noon, the streets and alleys of Karen City were draped in an unnatural silence. Merchants had shuttered their stalls early; ordinary citizens had bolted their doors and windows, huddled in their homes as they listened to the occasional, distant echoes of violence.
Bang.
Ceciel kicked open a set of ornate, aristocratic gates. He waved a hand with cold indifference. "Seize him."
Dozens of armored city guardsmen streamed past him. Moments later, they dragged a tall, heavily intoxicated man from the inner courtyard. Two stout soldiers pinned the man's arms behind his back, forcing him to his knees before Ceciel with a brutal kick to the back of his legs.
"Adjutant... sir..." The man's stupor had not yet cleared; he let out a long, wine-scented hiccup. "What is the meaning of this theater?"
Ceciel reached down and grabbed a handful of the man's matted hair, yanking his head back with enough force to nearly tear the scalp. He studied the knight's face with clinical precision.
"Sss—stop! That hurts!" the man cried out.
"This is the one. Take him," Ceciel said flatly.
"Yes, sir!" The soldiers hauled the man up, shackling his wrists and ankles before shoving him into a waiting prison carriage.
They did not rest. They immediately moved to the next target.
Over the past two hours, this scene had played out over a dozen times. First, the thirty new recruits Hektov had left behind were disarmed and executed in secret. Then, the Leyndell Knights remaining in the city were hunted down one by one.
Most of these knights were retainers of the House of Ofnir; the rest were veterans who had followed Hektov since the Second Liurnia War. They were his inner circle, his most trusted blade.
Perhaps it was because Ceciel's movements were so lightning-fast, or perhaps these noble knights had grown so decadent in their peace that they had lost their warrior's edge. Regardless, there was almost no resistance. The only hesitation came from the common soldiers who were initially afraid to strike their betters: a problem Ceciel solved by personally decapitating a knight on the spot.
By twelve-thirty, the seventeen surviving Leyndell Knights were marched to the central citadel. Ceciel gathered the remaining soldiers and announced that these knights had conspired with the rebels to leak intelligence, leading the Governor and the main force into an ambush. By the laws of the Golden Order, they were to be executed immediately.
Within five minutes, the knights—still dazed and confused—were forced onto the block. They didn't even have time to figure out who had framed them before the heavy axes fell.
Ceciel then promoted a new set of junior officers to maintain martial law. He forbade anyone from entering or leaving the city, and he stationed a team of elite snipers on the walls.
It was clear that both the Adjutant and these "elite" soldiers were Clavell's hidden insurance. For a year, the Perfumer had used his aromatics to subtly erode their wills, turning them into puppets who answered only to him. In Clavell's plan, even if Hektov somehow escaped the gorge, he would have found the gates of his own city barred and a thousand bolts aimed at his heart.
But at this moment, deep within Sunset Pass, none of that mattered to Clavell.
He looked down at the dirt. Hektov's head sat in the crimson mud, the eyes still wide with a terror that refused to fade. In the face of sudden death, the high-born Baron looked no more noble or heroic than the peasants he had spent his life despising.
"Vengeance is yours. How does it feel?" Turak asked, sheathing his blade and walking forward with a grin. He casually kicked Hektov's head into a pile of cooling corpses with the toe of his boot.
Clavell let out a long, shuddering breath but gave no answer. There was no joy in his eyes: only a quiet, hollow sense of relief and an abiding sorrow.
After a long silence, he scanned the demi-humans and misbegotten picking through the spoils. "Krug should be arriving soon, shouldn't he?"
He knew the old priest's health was failing, so he had felt no suspicion when the elder hadn't appeared on the front lines.
"Ah, the old man," Soreto said, stepping forward with a unit of Misbegotten warriors. "Before he died, he gave us a special message. Once the mess here is cleaned up, we're to take you back to our camp to discuss the transfer of supplies."
"The camp?" Clavell's instincts flared with sudden alarm. "The details were decided weeks ago. If there is more to say, why can it not be said here?"
"Tsk, look at you," Turak said, spreading his hands with an air of innocence. "That's just what he told us. Why would we lie?"
"Look over there," Turak pointed toward the collapsed northern exit. "Our camp is only thirty miles past that ridge. It's a short walk. Don't be so difficult."
Clavell instinctively turned to look where the mercenary was pointing. Behind him, Soreto's face twisted into a mask of sudden violence. "Yes... quite a short walk."
Without warning, a sense of lethal danger erupted in Clavell's mind. He spun around just as Soreto swung a massive warhammer with bone-crushing force toward his ribs. Simultaneously, the surrounding Misbegotten warriors drew their blades and lunged.
The air exploded with the sound of clashing metal. Clavell's War Fever had not yet worn off; he managed to parry Soreto's hammer and strike back, sending several warriors flying. But before he could recover, a surgical blade hissed through the air. Turak's Kaiden sword collided with Clavell's blade, the impact numbing the Perfumer's hand.
Soreto didn't give him a chance to breathe. The giant threw his entire weight into a shoulder charge, slamming Clavell into the jagged rock wall of the gorge. Soreto leapt high, his hammer descending like a falling star. Clavell raised his sword in a desperate horizontal block, but the weight pinned him to one knee, locking his blade in a struggle of raw strength.
"Quickly! I can't hold him for long!" Soreto roared, his face turning a deep purple.
A dark shadow blurred past the giant. Turak's blade, sharp and merciless, lunged directly for Clavell's heart.
The midday sun was warm, yet as he faced the steel, Clavell felt a cold that reached into his very soul. He looked at the blade with a flicker of resignation and closed his eyes to greet the end.
Clang.
The sound of vibrating metal was followed by a horrific screech of grinding iron. Turak's blur of a form came to a dead stop, as if he had run into a wall of solid gold. A youth with ash-grey hair and crimson eyes had appeared out of thin air. He stood between the three men, his hand casually extended, gripping the naked edge of Turak's sword.
Fine, grey-white scales rippled across the boy's palm. The cold-forged steel of the Kaiden blade crumpled like wet parchment under the pressure of his grip. Turak and Soreto tried to speak, but a titanic pressure suddenly slammed into them: a primordial weight that gripped their hearts and forced their bodies to tremble. Their animal instincts took over, dragging them toward the dirt in a desperate act of submission.
"Who... are you..." Turak managed to wheeze. He forced his head to turn, his peripheral vision catching the sight of two massive, leathery wings unfurling from the boy's back.
The youth gripped Clavell by the shoulder. Together, they rose from the ground in a localized storm of wind and dust.
Within the pass, thousands of rebel warriors looked up from their looting. One moment they were drunk on blood; the next, they were paralyzed by a shadow that blotted out the sun.
High above, a colossal, terrifying silhouette descended from the clouds, casting a pall over the entire valley.
In all the ages of the Lands Between, there has only ever been one creature that possessed such a blend of grace and ferocity, of the divine and the monstrous. They were the beacons of the first civilization: the avatars of absolute power.
"Dragon—"
The scream echoed through the gorge, just before the first wave of golden fire turned the world to ash.