The Scorched Earth (The Chaos Born)

H
E PEERS OUT
from atop the battlements of his castle across the small, squat buildings of the city. The empty streets are cramped and twisted, lined with single-story hovels built from brown mud and gray stone. Dwarfed by the magnificent castle, they huddle against the high walls, stunted and misshapen. There are no other structures on the bleak horizon.

After seven hundred years in exile the number of his followers has grown tenfold, but the city has not. The land of their banishment is a nether realm—an empty shell of a world. Resources, even simple stone to build with, are scarce. Most of his subjects now live in the subterranean caves and warrens that dot the landscape like pockmarked scars.

There are no animal herds wandering the ashen plains, no flocks of birds in the sky. His followers subsist on a barely edible sludge concentrated around a few scattered underground pools of dank, stagnant water. Storms are frequent, the gray sky turning black in an instant to unleash a torrential downpour. But the rain is as foul and polluted as everything else in this forsaken land.

None of his subjects remembers the glorious wonders of the world left behind. Unlike their God-King, the mortals are countless generations removed from those who originally followed him: descendants of descendants many times over. Stories passed down tell of rivers and oceans, of hills and fields and forests brimming
with life. But to his followers these tales are little more than myth and legend; the beauty of what was lost has faded over centuries in exile.

As has Daemron’s own power. Trapped for centuries in this nether realm of his own creation, the divine spark of Chaos that sustains him has slowly petered out. Now only a flicker of his past glory remains.

Even an Immortal can die
.

But he is not dead yet. And once the Legacy falls and he reclaims the Talismans—if he reclaims them—he will be reborn. The power of the Old Gods still burns strong within the artifacts: he can feel them in the distant land he once ruled. First came the Crown, a beacon calling to him across the Flaming Sea, guiding the spell that sent Orath and his other Minions into the mortal world.

The Ring has also been found. Only days ago he felt its fury unleashed, a storm of magic so terrible it summoned dark clouds and scathing rains that fell over Daemron’s kingdom.

His subjects felt it, too. They know the time of their possible return draws near. And he knows some of them doubt whether their God-King will live long enough to see it.

They might not be wrong. Eventually, he will run out of time, and there are many questions still unanswered. Why and how has the Ring awakened? Was it the actions of one of the Children of Fire? Have the seeds from the ritual so many years ago finally borne fruit? Or was it the work of Orath and his ilk?

He has not heard from his Minions since he sent them into the mortal world. The ordeal of that ritual drained much of what was left of his power. Trying to reach across the Burning Sea to communicate with Orath again might be too much for him now. He must be patient. Bide his time. Conserve his strength.

He slowly turns away from the battlement, his serpentine tail swishing softly as he extends his massive, batlike wings and rolls his shoulders, frustrated with what he has become.

Once he was fearless. Champion of the Mortal World. Bold. Brave. Even reckless. He dared to challenge the Old Gods themselves … only to be cast into exile when he fled the final battle like a coward.

But he survived, and they did not. Now he is the last of his kind, the only true Immortal left. His life is too precious to risk in a fool’s gambit.

He walks slowly toward the heavy wooden door leading back into the depths of his castle, his cloven hooves scraping over the rough stone wall. He reaches out a clawed hand but pauses before opening the portal.

Someone is lurking on the other side.

He can sense the dim spark of Chaos that exists within all living things. Like the Talismans, it calls to him. Narrowing his focus, he concentrates on the space beyond the closed door. Three of his subjects but none he immediately recognizes.

Trespassers. Assassins
.

As rage rises within him, he steps back from the door and lifts his hands to the sky. Tilting back his horned head, he whispers words of dark power. A second later he throws his arms down to unleash the spell and the door explodes inward.

The force of the detonation sends a deadly shower of sharp wooden splinters into the stairwell beyond, ripping, slicing, and impaling the flesh of the assassin standing closest to the door, ending his life before he can even scream.

The other two hesitate only a second before rushing forward, weapons drawn. They carry short blades marked with arcane runes: relics forged in the mortal world, passed down from generation to generation in exile. The magic daggers have enough power to wound or even kill him, but the same cannot be said of those who wield them.

They are more canine than human: wolves with prehensile paws clutching their weapons. Brother and sister, united in their
desire to slay the despot who rules them. Brave enough to strike against a God. Bold enough to die.

Growling and snarling, they attack with reckless desperation: a savage blur of fur and fangs and enchanted daggers. But he is their God, and they are nothing before him.

He meets their charge head-on. One clawed hand slaps aside the sister’s blade, the other wraps around her throat. The brother is impaled by the barbed tip of Daemron’s tail, lashing out to puncture his heart.

The brother falls to the ground, blood pouring from the gaping wound in his chest. The sister struggles in his grasp, feebly stabbing at his arm with her dagger as he slowly tightens his grip.

Ignoring the cuts and slashes to his arm, he carries her to the edge of the battlement, supporting her weight effortlessly in one hand. At the edge he flaps his wings several times, struggling with the extra burden of his would-be assassin. He only manages to rise a few feet into the air, but it is enough.

With a flick of his wrist he casts the sister over the edge. Her scream sounds like a howl as she falls, until the sound cuts off with a distant, wet thud when she strikes the ground below.

His arm is bleeding from several deep wounds, but none is serious enough to give him concern. Instead, he returns to the brother’s still-breathing corpse. He doesn’t speak but pauses to look into the dying eyes, and he sees sheer terror as the full understanding of what they have done dawns.

The rebels dared to strike against him. They tried to kill a God and failed. Now it is not just their own lives that are forfeit. Their allies; their friends; their families—all will suffer for what has happened here.

Satisfied the failed assassin realizes the terrible retribution that will fall upon all those he cares about, Daemron raises a heavy hoof and brings it crashing down on his skull.

F
ERLHAME WAS IN
ruins. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Danaan were dead; burned by fire, or crushed beneath the crumbling debris of the great wooden towers that had once lined the streets. But there was only one casualty that interested Orath.

He’d entered Ferlhame alone, ordering Gort and Draco to wait in the forests outside the city. In the gloom of the night, Orath could pass for one of the Danaan—the men and women running through the streets were too shocked by the carnage to notice the batlike features beneath the shadow of his hooded cloak. The same could not be said for his companions.

The dragon’s corpse had been obliterated by the power of the Ring, the beast blown into a thousand pieces. Gruesome chunks of gore-covered flesh were scattered among the corpses and debris, and everything within a hundred yards of where the dragon had fallen was covered in a warm black ichor.

The remains of the Chaos Spawn still trembled with magic. He could feel it as he wandered the dark streets. It lingered, like the acrid clouds of smoke that choked the night air. Even dead and ripped apart, Orath could sense that the dragon had been magnificent.

And what did that say about the mortal who had defeated it? Orath had assumed that once he and the other Minions located
the Talismans they could simply take them by force. But the gruesome aftermath of Ferlhame forced him to reevaluate his plan.