Page 115 of Blood Fist

His back hit the tent wall. He whimpered, refusing to look anywhere but at his hands.No, no, he couldn’t have done this.He shook his head, shoving his hands into his hair to pull at the strands until the pain woke him. Jerked him from this nightmare. When that didn’t work, he shoved himself to his feet, running from the tent.

Help. He needed help.

Ridan. He needed to find Ridan. He would know what to do. He always did.

Hitting thetent flap so hard it slapped him in the face, he stumbled into the wet predawn only to be met by the roaring of flames and the stench of burnt skin. His bare feet skid in the sand as he winced against the searing heat.

Several tents were on fire. Others were nothing but charred remains, their poles smoldering. The flames licked up into the sky, bathing the area in light.

Then he saw the bodies.

Strewn across the ground, the bodies of his clan almost looked as if they were moving. Shadows dancing across their faces gave them false life. Corric recognized Osmond first. He was on his stomach, half his face burned. His knives were knocked from his mangled hands, blackened in the dirt.

Niklas was across the way, bow snapped in half. His head was bent at an awful angle, staring lifelessly at what was to be his mate.

Corric stumbled away from their bodies, his throat dry as he inhaled lungfuls of thick smoke. Farther away from the tent, he could smell the rancid scent of burning hair and skin—something he’d only smelled at Chief Restrina’s funeral pyre.

This was so much worse.

Everywhere he looked, he saw familiar faces.Dead, familiar faces—burnt, smashed, twisted, and bloody. Henroen with his axe embedded in his back. Gustall with his throat slashed so deeply he was nearly decapitated.

Corric couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t expand. Uselessly, he swiped at his eyes, trying to rub the grit from them. Surely, he was imagining things. This couldn’t be real.

Stumbling backward, Corric tripped over something solid. It sent him sprawling into the dirt, palmssearing in pain as he caught himself. Hyperventilating, he pushed himself up to glance back at what he’d tripped over.

A jagged line cut through the Maladon’s Aegis where it had been ripped in half. Scales scattered across the ground like a blood trail leading straight to Brune’s body. He was so mangled Corric could barely recognize him. He was reaching out, broken fingers stretched as far as they could.

Corric knew. Without looking, he knew.

Brune was reaching for Ridan. His blonde hair was singed, his face black where the flames had roasted the skin from the bones. Bruises and wounds marred Ridan’s body, but none so much as the sword sticking out from his chest. His father’s sword. Teeth glinting in the roaring flames.

Crawling towards him, Corric cradled his packmate's head. Ridan didn’t stir. His eyes were closed, lashes twisted from the heat. His lips were parted, but no breath stirred in his chest. He’d never been so still. Ridan didn’t do still. He was always moving. It was wrong. Corric clung to him, screaming between ragged breaths as he begged him to justmove.

Boots scuffed against dirt and Corric jerked up, blinking away the tears to see grey eyes staring him down.

Schok was standing between the ruins of two tents. Unnatural flames licked up his arms as he surveyed the damage he wrought, face impassive. At his feet, Buzzard lay dead. His wings torn off so violently, Corric could see parts of his ribs.

“S-Schok,” Corric rasped.

His brother didn’t move, didn’t blink. He just stood frozen with vacant eyes.

Thrall.Had Sinestrus gotten to him?

“Schok, please!” he cried, clutching Ridan closer to him. “Break free! You have to get them out of your head! Please!” his lip wobbled, soot clinging to the tears on his cheek.

“You’re all I have left.”

There was no response. His brother was gone. Dropping his head, he sobbed against Ridan’s bloody hair. He smelled like death. Corric waited for Schok to kill him too, waited for the flames to take him. He wanted the pain to come, to take him away. To let him join his clan under Artrax’s wings.

When the searing heat didn’t come, he looked up to see that he was no longer in camp. Corric was kneeling on the floor of the tunnel on Artrax’s Mountain, looking up at the cracks in the wall. Ridan was no longer in his arms. The only evidence he had been was the blood and dirt smeared across Corric’s bare chest.

A pitiful cry ripped from Corric’s abused throat. Had any of it been real? Was hestillin the mountain or was that all a dream, too? His hands slammed into the ground, the slap echoing around the tunnel.

Sinestrus laughed in his ear, his disembodied voice not echoing in the space. Corric lifted his chin to bare his teeth, screaming as he looked around desperately for the black void.

It was shifting along the ground beside a still Schok. The flames in his palms grew hotter, rising until they were flickering against the damp walls and ceiling of the tunnel. Schok’s skin blackened under the heat. Schok didn’t make a sound as he immolated himself.

Corric stared in horror, his chest squeezing as he watched his brother stagger, knees buckling as he crashed to the ground. The flames grew hotter and bigger until there was nothing that resembled his brother left, just a burnt husk lying on the ground.