Page 60 of Children of Fallen Gods

And even here, even now, with him half a country away. I felt it here, in the words he did write and the ones he didn’t.I love you, you wonderful idiot.

Of their own accord, my fingers wrapped around the butterfly necklace at my throat. My chest ached, with affection, with longing, and with the wound of his absence.

I went to the desk, grabbed a blank piece of paper, and started to write.

Chapter Eighteen

Max

We set up a barricade around the city. All roads leading in were blocked by my soldiers. No traffic in, no traffic out. Antedale was compact, with tall buildings, narrow roads, and little in the way of space for farming or livestock. Thus, the vast majority of their food production happened in the fields beyond the borders, then shipped the short distance into the city.

“If the goal is to starve them out,” Essanie said, when I made this order, “it won’t work. It will take far too long, and they have enough food sources within the walls to keep their population alive.”

She wasn’t wrong. They would have grain stores, certainly enough to keep everyone fed.Fed, sure. But not happy. Antedale was a prosperous city. The population was not used to going without variety, even for short periods of time. Add onto that the fact that these volunteer men were choosing to be separated from their families to do nothing but stand idly out in the cold for weeks on end — well, morale would be starting to fall. And with it, attentions would be growing slack.

But many of the soldiers shared Essanie and Arith’s trepidation. Every night, I listened to action-starved young men lament. “Hell, we could have them in the ground in two ‘Scended-damned hours,” I heard one of them grunt, taking a swig out of his beer. “Never would’ve expected Farlione to be such a pussy. The man who won Sarlazai!”

Indeed.

Still, I waited. Soon, the time began to take its toll. It was visible even from a distance — the soldiers beginning to wander around instead of standing in rigid lines, the space between them widening as they tried to hide their thinning numbers. They were distracted, they were tired, and their numbers were fewer. Perfect.

I called upon Essanie and Arith to assemble teams of their strongest Valtain, especially those who were skilled in illusionism. I was presented with a group of thirty — more than enough, for what we needed.

We made our move early in the morning. A thick fog had rolled in. Some of it was natural, common in this part of Ara. But our Valtain Wielders helped thicken it, too, lowering visibility until the city and the soldiers that guarded it were little more than misty silhouettes. The air was so thick it hurt to breathe, and everything was uncomfortably damp. The dawn was silent. The city had not yet awoken.

Then I gave my command, and the silence shattered.

Screams punctured the air. Soon they were joined with shouts, and the clash of metal upon metal, and the telltale blue-white flashes of Lightning Dust. This was the sound of a slaughter. It was the sound of a district falling.

It wasn’t coming from the main gates. No, the sounds came from thesoutherngates of the city.

The Antedale soldiers sprung to panicked action. Most bolted back into the city, no doubt headed for the southern gates, where the screams and sounds would be loudest.

They left less than half of their comrades behind, staring out into the fog as they clutched their weapons. They would not be able to see us at first. But the sight, I’m sure, was something to behold once they could — hundreds of us emerging from the soupy grey.

We outnumbered them many times over.

My men could capture or force surrender from these guards, rather than kill them. Little fight remained in them. We practically strode through the doors whistling with our hands shoved into our pockets, marching into the city like a solemn parade.

I gave strict instruction to avoid lethal force if at all possible. Unless someone’s blade is at your throat, I told them, yours should be far away from theirs.

Some of my men were clearly frustrated by this directive. Resolve was tested, and it began to unravel as we made our way to Gridot’s keep on the east end. His personal guards were more vicious and skilled. By then, the soldiers that we had distracted had realized their mistake, and had begun rushing back into the city.

This was when the fighting grew thick: as we wound through the narrow streets that led to the elevated keep. There was no choice but to fight through the men that stood in our way. Gridot’s estate was perched on the top of a rocky overlook that loomed over the rest of Antedale, with two winding sets of stairs that led up to its golden, arched entrance. Those spiraling stairs were known as the Twin Serpents, a striking but horrifically impractical Antedale landmark.

They were horrible to fight through. We had no choice but to slice through whoever stood in our way. The stairs were so narrow that only a maximum of three men could stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the best of circumstances. Fewer, of course, with swinging weapons.

Despite my best efforts, my staff grew slick with blood, which covered my fingers, my hands, my face.

If I’d been willing to kill recklessly, I could have set my weapon alight with fire and flung opponents over the edges of the stairs. Easier still, with the help of the Valtain wielding winds in our favor.

But I wasn’t willing to make those sacrifices. I fought twice as hard — three times as hard — with my staff split in two and flames carefully controlled, my strikes aiming for legs and limbs instead of throats and hearts. Still, I began to slip into a version of myself that I’d hoped to never see again. Soon, I was not given a choice. Our opponents were vicious. Death became unavoidable. The battle around me blended with the past.

By the time we fought our way to the top of the stairs, I must have looked like a demon. I was drenched in crimson, my hands and blades ignited with flames. My soldiers were just as terrifying, the Valtains’ white hair smeared with red, all of our uniforms drenched. When I pushed open the doors of the keep, I left bloody handprints on the beautiful chestnut engravings.

The inside was eerily quiet.

Guards stood at attention, their spears held firm and unmoving. Maids clasped their hands in front of them and bowed their heads, watching us with wary eyes.

---