44
PENN
Penn has not caught the next camp in time. Six men are dead:
Skin like putty.
Arms out of socket.
Bellies torn from gullet to groin–one long scrape of a Fire Scale talon.
Men bathed in blood, piled one on top of another. And no Fire Scale to show for it.
Six dead, plus three. How many more Champions are dead in the Summer Alps?
One day left, and the Emerging will be done.
One day, and then – one hundred and twenty more years.
Penn curls his hands into fists. He’ll find another camp. He’ll find a new Xerxes.
Not Cody.
He tilts his head back. From above, he hears a scream, thick and curdling. It cracks the dry, cloudless sky like a lightning bolt.
And the Death God runs.
