Ashenveil Chronicles : Embers Of The Godless Age

Chapter 6: First Blood

"A monster does not care what rank you are. This is either terrifying or liberating, depending on your perspective."

— Ozymara Kell

The Cyclops appeared on the eleventh day, two hours from the capital gates, on a stretch of open road where the forest had thinned to scattered oaks and the city's towers were visible on the horizon — close enough to be real, far enough to be cruel. It was not the lumbering, simple-minded creature of children's tales. This one wore armour — old Greek-style bronze, corroded green with centuries, the single eye above the nose-bridge too large for the face in the way of something divine rather than something merely large. Its grimoire was not a book. It was a stone tablet strapped to its back, covered in runes that bled orange.

It had been waiting for them specifically. Kairu understood this with the cold certainty of instinct when it looked past Thorn, past Ozymara, directly at him, and said in a voice that moved the dirt under their feet:

"Ashvane blood. I smell it. The old promise."

"What promise?" Kairu asked.

The Cyclops did not answer. Monsters of divine origin rarely bothered with explanations. It simply swung its stone-tablet grimoire off its back like a club and brought it down with the particular conviction of something that had been waiting a long time for this specific moment.

Thorn moved first — roots erupting from the road at his gesture, wrapping the Cyclops's legs in thick arterial tangles, slowing but not stopping it. Ozymara was already gone, reappearing six metres to the Cyclops's left in the fold of space she had rerouted between one breath and the next, slashing at the back of its knee where the armour gaped.

The Cyclops barely flinched.

"Interesting," said Ozymara, from her new position, in the tone of someone making a scientific observation while also running very fast.

Kairu hit it with everything he had.

Not carefully. Not controlled. He was past careful — the thing knew his name, or his blood's name, and that was terrifying in a way that bypassed rational thinking and went straight to the place where fire lived. The Grim Flame came out not as a volley but as a column, wider than his shoulders, silent and dark and absolutely relentless, hitting the Cyclops in the chest where the bronze armour had rusted through in a long diagonal c***k.

Grim Flame · Ashvane Style: Funeral Pyre

Rank Pending · First High-Output Release · Mana Cost: Unknown

The Cyclops went backwards. Not falling — stepping back, the way something very large and very old steps back when surprised. The single eye fixed on Kairu with an expression that was unmistakably recognition, even across the gulf of species and divinity.

"There it is," it said. And then, strangely: "Run, boy. You are not ready. Neither are they."

It retreated into the earth with a sound like a mountain settling, roots and road closing over the gap it left, and was gone.

Silence. The three of them stood on the road with the capital's towers on the horizon and the smoking scorch marks of Kairu's fire on the road between them, and no one said anything for a long moment.

"It knew your blood," Thorn said finally, in the careful tone of someone who is not saying I told you so because they hadn't, in fact, told him specifically this, but who feels that the general principle has been vindicated.

"Yes," Kairu said.

"And it told you to run."

"Yes."

"Are you going to?"

Kairu looked at the scorch marks. His hands were shaking — the physical aftermath of putting out more fire than he'd ever attempted, his body catching up to what he'd asked of it. He closed them into fists and waited for the shaking to stop.

"No," he said.

"Obviously," said Ozymara, and they walked the last two hours to the capital gates without further incident, which felt, under the circumstances, almost worse.