This story is protected under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. Please remember to donate to Nifty if you're financially able to do so.
MY WEBSITE: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/books.html
My email: kavrik@hotmail.com
Pictures of the characters in this story: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/my-artwork.html
Full story chapters and discussion: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html
For those of you who can't wait for new chapters, please visit my forum where I'm a couple weeks ahead. The chapters are bigger there than they are on Nifty. To see for yourself please go to
http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html
and find the folder that says "The Orb of Winter" and then open that up to view the chapters. Please note that the chapter order here will differ from my forum because I cut the chapters into smaller chunks for Nifty's audience. Also, if you aren't on my mailing list and want to be, please shoot me an email.
Please check out my books on my website.
Chapter Fourteen
The pounding in Kian's head finally drove him awake, and he tasted blood in his mouth. Weakly, he pushed himself up from the frigid muck, and snow slid off his armor like white dust. He heard the rush of the river, and his teeth clattered in the cold. Then the pain started; it came in from every limb, and he realized all too soon that he was not waking up in Elysium, but had managed to do the impossible and survive.
"Fuck me," he whispered, trying to get his bearings. At first he had difficulty not seeing two of everything, so he didn't move much. To stave off the biting cold, he pulled his knees into his chest and huddled in the fetal position for a while.
There, shivering in the cold, Kian never felt more alone.
After twenty minutes, he tested his right limb by limping a couple of feet. He inspected it in the darkness, and didn't think it was broken. But when he tried to get any real use out of it, he had to shift most of his weight onto his left leg as the strength simply wasn't there.
"Tethyr's teeth...that bloody hurts," he uttered between ragged breaths.
Kian turned and looked at the bank where he'd lain unconscious for god knows how long and realized he'd washed up near the edge of the forest almost a thousand yards downstream from the bridge. Cyryalayeth was nowhere in sight. Near him, Bloodbane lay tangled in reeds and mud, hilt sticking up to catch Mondath's rays just right.
The sword is yours to wield and no other, he recalled. Tethyr had said this to him on the day he became a Black Dragon Assassin. As if I could lose you if I wanted to. He limped over to it and grasped it by the handle, managing to sheath it before it could insert hypodermic veins into his wrist.
"I just need to take it slow," Kian said, choking back the agony of internal injuries that had most likely covered his thin body with massive bruising. Part of him wanted to strip nude and take a look, while the other part of him feared to do so. After a few moments, the intense pain coupled with the realization that Cyryalayeth was probably dead, became a drowning tide of "all the feels."
The boy he was on the outside displaced the man he'd become on the inside.
Kian crumpled into the snow and mud and sobbed his heart out. "Tethyr, I-I can't do this. I'm trying, but I just can't," he said, sucking snot down his throat. But of course, there was no answer from the woods, or the dark star-filled sky above.
Just a profound silence occasionally shattered by the wind through the trees and the sound of water tumbling over boulders in the riverbed.
After five minutes of feeling sorry for himself, he dried his cheeks with one glove.
"Fucking stop it," he said to himself. "You're a goddamned assassin. You can't stay here or you're dead. You made a promise to Luminara, now keep it," he said, trying to psych himself out of despair. He slammed his fist into the icy black mud and pushed himself once more to his feet.
Kian looked around for a place to sit and spied the old twisted root of a willow tree nearby. He invoked the quantum sidestep, flickered, and reappeared there with his feet dangling over the edge just above the water. Scooting his back against the trunk, he pressed his fingers to the armor around his neck, found the latches that secured his helmet, and released them. Then he pulled it off to take a closer look at it.
"Why won't you work?" he asked to no one in particular. He looked at the visor and saw where Tomoluk had struck him. The blow had left a dent in his helmet (no small feat) and spider-webbed the glass, some of which he felt he could push back into place. Gently, he applied pressure to those areas until they popped even with the rest of the visor. When he did this, the helmet systems lit up. "I guess I can't take a blow to the head anytime soon," he said. "But this is better than nothing."
Mindful that he needed to keep up his strength, Kian opened a pouch on his belt and produced an elvish ration. A dried tasteless cake, these things nourished his body for up to twelve hours, and he had six left. He chewed on it for a long time, hoping that the fogginess and double vision would subside. Kian also just enjoyed the almond flavor in his mouth.
Next, he opened a second pouch and took out a small vial containing a clear liquid. In that same belt pouch was an all-metal syringe he could assemble. The drug was called `Trance,' and Kian desperately didn't want to use it, because it was so fucking addictive. But he knew he had to, or he wasn't going to be able to do anything. Not with this level of pain.
He popped the cork on the vial, and filled the syringe with shaky hands. Then he put the vial away. Next, he injected it into the webbing between his fingers. "Fuck...," he whispered, choking back the sting. But then the drug took hold and warmth filled his body. Slowly he pulled out the syringe, took it apart, and put it away. Within a minute, he felt good as new. And that's all that mattered.
Kian donned the helmet when he spied the saddle pack where he stored the majority of his belongings. It had washed up on the far side of the river near a stand of aspen trees. He teleported over there, grabbed a hold of it, and saw it had bits and pieces of Cyryalayeth's fur on the outside. He checked the mud and snow for tracks but didn't see any.
"Please, old boy. Give me some sign you survived that fight," he said, crouching on his haunches while transferring the belongings to a magical backpack he owned that had twice as much volume on the inside as it did on the outside (although the weight of the contents would remain unchanged).
This small pack had nice shoulder straps custom-fit to his arms and a belt that he could tighten above his hips. Kian managed to squeeze half the contents of the saddle bag that normally sat on Cyryalayeth's rump into its gaping hole. Now he had to choose between a tent and the most gorgeous suit of Timeron knight armor anyone had ever seen. There simply wasn't room for both.
Over a thousand years old, and hand-crafted by the goddess of beauty, Eilustriel, the suit of armor fit only Kian and was unalterable. Its contours were meant for only a male body with perfect proportions to be able to wear. Of course "perfect" in this case was completely subjective to the goddess of beauty's own ideals. And it just so happened that Kian fit the bill, but he never (not even once) considered himself perfect. In fact, right now he felt like a complete and utter failure of a human being for two reasons. First he was weak; second he was afraid. Add to this the fact that he still didn't know how to read, and Kian also felt stupid. These conditions made him feel ugly, and because of this he felt unworthy of anything, even love.
"Maybe this is why I'm always alone," Kian whispered.
As for the armor, legends said that it never lost its luster—even in battle—because Eilustriel would not suffer a creation of such beauty to ever be marred. Of course Kian had never tested it. His only memory of wearing it was a bad one, and he was half tempted to just let it drop into the river. But, in the back of his mind, he knew it could come in useful if he ever needed to impersonate an evil knight, although explaining its mint condition might take a convincing lie. It also didn't come with any spurs, a thing he was going to have to correct if he wanted the ruse to stick. I keep forgetting to grab some, he thought.
At long last, he made up his mind and stuffed the armor into his backpack and tossed the tent.
"Time to hunt down a minotaur," Kian said with conviction in his voice. He slung the pack across his back and secured it tightly to his shoulders and waist. I can't have this thing flopping around, he thought. Then he broke into a run, following the edge of the river toward the Bone Wall, and teleporting across narrow gullies and swampy areas as needed. When he reached the granite bridge, Kian stepped gingerly over the dead bodies of the hell crows and scanned the ground for clues as to what direction Tomoluk might have taken. The fresh snow that blanketed Kian while unconscious (and probably saved his life) also worked to conceal his quarry's tracks.
"I could use a break, please," Kian said to the sky, stomping his foot angrily in the snow. Even high on Trance, pain shot through his body like fire. "Fuuuck!" he screamed and limped around for a few seconds.
As the burn subsided back into a dull throb, he ran his toe through the deep grooves Cyryalayeth's claws had made in the granite span, knocking some snow and ice free. Then he tightened his jaw, wracking his brain for any inspiration that might help him here.
Think, think think, you bloody idiot. I know he went to the Bone Wall so let's start by looking there, he thought. Please, Tethyr, don't have my suit crap out on me.
The readouts on his heads up display sputtered a little, but for the most part gave him the lay of the land in a green-tinted night vision. He tapped on the nose pad, adjusted the view to detect heat, and that's when a small red dot appeared on the horizon. To Kian it looked like it stood atop the Bone Wall itself.
He switched back to normal vision and then put the suit on maximum magnification. The cracks on the glass were a bit of a distraction but sure enough, there atop the Bone Wall, Kian caught the gleam of silver moonlight from Tomoluk's axe. The minotaur had managed to scale all one thousand feet, and was busy laying out a rope to help him descend the far side. He was miles away. But, there was also a silver lining: no other signatures showed up, which basically meant that all the hell birds had been killed in this area.
Kian was willing to bet that even at this distance, he could still catch up with the minotaur if he could just get to the base of the wall.
A thousand feet's a long ways, Kian thought. Tethyr warned me never to jump that far. But I've got to try. Eph's life depends on it. Maybe I can take it in two or three parts, but jumping to places in the dark is going to be tricky, especially with all of the stabby things jutting out from this side.
Kian grimaced and started off on foot, racing toward the Bone Wall. He wanted to save his mental strength for the challenging teleports to come, and give a little more time for the drug he'd taken to completely banish his headache. Blazing fast, Kian managed to sprint four miles before he had to stop. He estimated twelve or so minutes had passed for him since he'd stood on the bridge. Slowing to a walk to allow the fire in his blood and the stitch in his side to subside, Kian's heart still pounded away in his chest and clean sweat froze on the outside of his armor. The Bone Wall was only a few hundred feet more to the west.
He paused to stretch when he heard the thunderous crack of bone. At first, Kian stared at his knees and wondered if it had come from him. But then it happened again, and he realized the sound originated with the wall itself. This side of the Bone Wall lay in the shadow of the silver light from Mondath, and because of that it was so pitch black that he could see nothing without night vision. But Kian didn't have to look through his visor to know he'd committed a gross error: he'd strayed beyond the invisible line he'd staked out over several days of reconnaissance up and down the entire length of this thing. By using the finger bone of a necromancer floating on a leaf suspended in water, one could tell where a strong necromancy ley line started and ended. If you stayed on one side, you were safe. But just on the other and you called forth a guardian from the wall: a necro-terror linnorm.
"Tethyr's teeth," he swore, throwing his eyes all around, zooming in and out with his helmet, and turning on the motion tracker to help him see what was going on out there. Kian whipped Bloodbane from the sheath and the sword slid corobidian veins into his wrist. Almost immediately it started to moan.
"I wish you'd stop that," Kian said to the sword.
"Why?" Bloodbane responded. "It's more sinister, don't you think?"
"Because it gives us away. Stop it."
He felt rather than saw Bloodbane's disdain, but the sword stopped moaning and the runes darkened.
Kian's eyes swarmed over all the details he could pick out in the shadows at the base of the wall, and his mouth fell open in awe as a great dragon made mostly of bone, yanked itself from the massive barrier. The enormous creature possessed gargantuan jaws, a sinewy neck, and razor-sharp teeth. It roared in his direction, and a long, serpent-like tongue dangled from between its slavering mandibles. Its eyes glowed and gave off wisps of smoke. Its tail whipped around with a stinger dripping poison on the end. The great necro-terror linnorm was covered here and there in gobbets of cold rotten flesh and scales. But Kian spotted something warm there too: a beating heart some six-feet in diameter.
Multiple body lengths away from the creature, Kian thought himself safe when the linnorm suddenly pounced into the field before it and shot out its tongue. To Kian's surprise, the thing covered the gap between them in a split second, slamming into his killsuit cuirass, sticking to it with some kind of adhesive, and then recoiling with such power he flew through the air like a rag doll. He would have dropped Bloodbane were it not attached to his wrist.
Reflexively, Kian tried to teleport but the quantum sidestep failed because it never worked while he was essentially held by animated flesh.
So, a moment later Kian hurtled into the jaws of the dragon and sparks burst from his armor as the thing bit down on him. Kian managed to keep the jaws from completely crushing him for two reasons. First he kicked out with his feet and military pressed the roof of the linnorm's mouth with his palms. Second, Kian was quite strong, and the armor of his killsuit nigh impregnable to piercing weapons. But it still hurt, and he screamed through his helmet as a rib broke from the pressure of those awesome jaws. As quickly as he could, Kian thrust Bloodbane through the upper skull of the undead monster and managed to shear the maxilla and nasal bone in one blow. With a punch, it fell off the dragon's head, leaving its tongue exposed. Then Kian cut through that at a place near the throat, sending the slimy thing tumbling to the ground in a spray of ichor and blood.
The linnorm screamed at him and smacked him into the air with its lower jaw, much like a paddle slapping a ball. As he flew into the air, the linnorm tried to hit him again with its tail. Kian teleported, landed behind its rear right leg, and cut through that with one slice from Bloodbane. As the bony leg crashed to the ground, it bent its head around and unleashed upon him with a breath weapon that reduced everything in its wake to rot. However, Kian was not there to get slammed as he'd quantum sidestepped a split second earlier onto the linnorm's back. Atop the hide covering the spine, Kian swung Bloodbane in a downward arc, completely severing its tail so that it fell free and flopped uselessly in the muddy snow.
The monstrous creature reared upward to toss Kian off its back. He teleported again and drove his sword through the ribcage and into the beating heart. All at once the eyes of the necro-terror linnorm darkened, it continued to fall backward, and then crashed like a thunderclap into the ground. Kian pulled his sword free and hopped down from the dragon's ribcage. Then he fell to one knee, panting heavily, and pressed his hand to the left side where all the pain originated every time he drew a breath.
Kian opened his visor, panting heavily, and sweat dripped from his face on the snow. He balled his fist and punched the ground several times because it hurt so much. Breathing shallowly wasn't an option at this point. Not until his heart stopped racing.
"Don't do it," Bloodbane said.
"I don't have a choice," Kian told the sword. Then he sheathed the weapon and opened up his belt pouch again to grab the metal syringe. He filled it with another dose of Trance, and then gave himself a shot directly into the meaty part at the corner of his eye. Kian hated to do that, but the pain was becoming intolerable and this was the fastest way he could get it to work.
First burning pain, and then warm, comfortable heat filled his sinus cavity and spread throughout his body like a gentle caress; the pain fled before the drug like sand before a tide. After ten seconds Kian felt good as knew, even though nothing had physically healed. He blinked tears from both eyes, blew his nose, hocked up some spit, and then stood on wobbly legs.
But he felt super, and that's all that mattered.
Kian replaced the killsuit helmet, lowered the visor so that it sealed on his face, and stared up at the summit, which seemed so very far away. Rubbing his tongue piercing on the roof of his mouth gave him an idea. He ran over to where the monster's own freshly severed tongue lay cooling on the ground and started gathering it up. While "alive" the slimy thing was about as thick as his thigh. Now that he'd killed it, the sinewy organ had shrunk down to a more manageable two inches in diameter. He stepped on one end and pulled.
Yup, it's still got its elasticity, he thought, as he coiled the thing up.
Hoisting it over one shoulder, he jogged over to the base, trying to pick out handholds and protrusions in the dark that he could grasp onto after he translocated. Doing so in the black of night would be very tricky.
He said a quick prayer to Tethyr and then launched himself into the sidestep.
Kian aimed for a bone protrusion halfway up the escarpment. That was a distance of about five-hundred feet, and the farthest he'd ever jumped. This time it wasn't instantaneous, and that scared him to death. He experienced a delay in the quantum sidestep, and Kian found himself floating in a never-before-experienced inter-dimensional haze. It lasted a full three seconds, filled him with anxiety, and then expelled him within reach of the huge white bone. He grabbed onto it, right as a monstrous headache exploded in his brain. It hurt so badly, for a moment he couldn't even see. Despite the drugs he'd injected himself with, he felt intense pressure behind his eyes pounding over and over like a war drum. Sweat broke out on every portion of his body, and even dripped from out his armor.
Holding on with one hand, he checked himself, accounting for all of his anatomical parts before swinging his body up onto the massive bone that he now knew to be a gigantic antler. Inside the wall itself he could barely make out the skull of an impressive elk, its eye sockets staring blankly into the night. The wind this high up blew cold and chilly against his body, taxing the killsuit's ability to keep Kian warm. The damage it had suffered didn't help as his visor cut out yet again. Kian slammed his fist into his head to try and get the visor to work again, but it only worsened his headache. The readouts he depended on, as well as the night vision, were at the moment completely dead.
He popped the visor open and drew in a sharp breath as the bitter wind hit his sweaty face. The shock of it almost made him lose his grip on the wall.
Staring up into the clouds that now scudded over the moon, it was impossible for Kian to make out any details. If he jumped here, he would be doing so completely blind. He set his jaw, and took a leap of faith, using the sidestep to take him another five-hundred feet.
Kian entered into this kind of purple limbo that surrounded him like thick soup. He made the mistake of breathing some of it in, and his lungs started to burn. Then he saw a shadow in his peripheral vision, a tall black thing, and it reached out to him with an immensely powerful mind but couldn't get a hold of Kian because of his immunity to psionics. "Who are you?" it asked in a deep, visceral tone. It did not sound friendly.
When he popped back into reality, Kian fell and barely caught hold of a jawbone jutting out from the top of the wall. Up here, snow pelted him and fierce winds swung his body back and forth like a pendulum suspended from a pair of gargantuan canines. He risked a glance down, and couldn't see the plain because the whole of it was lost in shadow and swirling snow.
He scrambled up onto the top of the wall, and fell on his knees for a moment, blood dripping from his nose. The migraine was pure agony, but Kian knew he couldn't take any more Trance. He needed to look no further than himself to find fault. His reckless use of the quantum sidestep, and whatever he saw in that other dimension that now knew of his existence were the cause.
After five minutes, Kian forced himself to stand and looked over the edge into the abyss. At first, all he saw was darkness on the other side of the Bone Wall. But then, he saw a distant light. It looked a few miles away, but Kian's vision was fantastic enough to make out the outline of a keep in some kind of shallow valley.
"The outpost," Kian realized with relief. "Eph and the others will be there."
Kian limped along the top, picking his steps carefully, and looking for anything he could tie the giant linnorm's tongue to when he spotted a huge skull, much like the one that he'd caught when he first arrived. The object protruded out from the correct side of the Bone Wall and its eye sockets already filled up with snow.
Wasting no time, he tested the skull to make sure it was firmly attached. Its spine inserted itself into the Bone Wall itself, and looked about as thick as his waist. Kian nodded approvingly and tied one end of the dead monster's tongue to the skull, threading it through the eye sockets and then securing the end with an antler as a makeshift grappling hook. Then he wrapped the other end around his ankles three times (making sure to rub most of the slime off the thing) and then secured it with a bowline knot. Then he stepped out onto the nose of the thing, balancing himself perfectly in the strong wind, and leapt into a swan dive.
The rush of air hitting his face and the feeling of butterflies in his stomach almost left him breathless as he fell. Kian glanced at the tongue as it grew taught and then grinned smugly as it started to slow his descent. It expanded into a long flexible cord. Lower and lower it dropped him, finally slowing his fall to a mere crawl. At some 150 feet above the ground, he swung his sword through the tongue, cutting himself free and quantum sidestepped to the ground, which he could now see by moonlight. He landed without incident at the base of the wall in a cat-like crouch and then pushed himself to his feet.
Kian sheathed Bloodbane and took a look around the woods that loomed a few hundred feet to the west. He knew he needed to keep going, so broke into a run to the southwest.
"Don't worry, captain," Kian said out loud as he ran, leaping over ditches and scrambling up slippery hillsides. "I'm on my way to save your bloody arse yet again."
Chapter Twenty-Six is now available to read at http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html under the label "The Orb of Winter" if you care to read ahead.
Are there any artists out there willing to draw some pics for my story? If so, please email me. There is an "Orb of Winter" map now in both the NEWS section of my website and in the FORUMS of my website.
If you go to my website directly from this posting, you will want to begin with "CHAPTER TEN" in the forums.