Page 142 of Blood Fist
As they fought, Cyrill crowed with victory. His fingers raw from digging through the rocks, he reached into the hole he’d excavated, pulling something free. The void behind him grew in size, crawling down the magician’s arm toward what he held in his hand.
Ridan groaned as Krait’s blade skated across his, knocking into his guard. He held it back, pushing off his back foot when Krait let go with one hand and sent a punishing right hook into Ridan’s jaw.
Stars exploded behind his eyes as he dropped to a knee. Tasting blood, he tried to keep his defense up, but it fell, blade swinging past him to dig into the meat of his shoulder. Ridan screamed as pain lanced down his arm. It felt like someone had dropped his right side into a fire.
With his eyes watering, he threw himself to the ground, shoulder jarring where it hit the ground. Blinded by pain, he tried to ignore the fresh waves that throbbed with every beat of his heart. His entire right arm was slick with blood as he picked up his sword again, jerkily getting to his feet. Just squeezing his fingers around the hilt made his knees weak.
Flashes of his mother lying on her deathbed burned into his mind as he struggled to lift his sword. His arm ached then, too, but for a different reason. The sword had been heavy, unwieldy to an arm that wasn’t used to the responsibility.
I just wanted to be like dad.
His eyes dropped to the sword in his hand. The point was barely hovering above the ground, unsteady in his hand. Over Krait’s shoulder, something glinted in Cyrill’s hand. Held in his two palms, it shone even under millennia of dust. Oblong and golden. The void raced toward it, reaching for the giant crack down the center of the scale.
Your father was the greatest man I’ve ever known.
Blood dripped from his fingers, sticky and warm. It soaked into the leather hilt, squelching between his fingers. He watched as it dribbled between the molars wired to the hilt, worn with time and use. Beside them, a new ornament had been wired to the hilt. A plain stone, just above where his thumb sat. He ran the digit over its smooth surface.
You will be even greater than him.
Ridan’s jaw unhinged as he screamed, using all his strength to lift his sword. The blade was steady as he met Krait’s next blow. His blade was faster, edge meeting edge as he threw Krait’s strike off. He jolted as his blade ripped through skin, stuttering as it struck bone and plunged through Krait’s chest. With his entire weight behind the stab, Ridan couldn’t catch himself. He fell with Krait, his sword piercing through the man’s body to burst out his back in a spray of blood and gore.
Hitting his sore jaw on the ground, Ridan gasped in pain as he rolled off Krait. Blindly he grabbed for his sword. It was stuck between Krait’s ribs. Leaving it, he lunged for Cyrill.
The magician had disappeared behind Sinestrus as he reared back. Ridan could just see Artrax’s broken scale between the waves of the void. He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop moving his legs. He reached for the scale.
Behind him, he heard someone scream his name.
Bloody fingers extended, he shoved through the darkness and grabbed the scale, the edges of the crack digging into his palm before a white-hot heat exploded under his hand, knocking him back.
He was caught by Sinestrus. His cold fingers grabbing Ridan, choking his life. The void reached for his hand. Icy tendrils ripped at his fingers, trying to peel them away from the hot, golden scale. He gripped harder, dragging it to his chest so he could clasp both hands over the scale. Sinestrus shrieked, his voice so loud it rattled Ridan’s brain. His very bones shook with it.
Fingers slick with blood, he ignored the raging pain as Sinestrus ripped at him. Ducking his head, he curled around the scale as it pulsed under his hands. Power buzzed along its slick surface, older than time itself. Itwas neutral. Neither evil nor good, just existing, ripe for the taking.
Ridan focused on that as Sinestrus buffeted him with his limited power, desperately trying to get inside Ridan. To warp his mind like he’d done with so many others. But there was a pull, a faint pulse of hope against his chest. Head screaming, blood pouring from his nose and ears, Ridan blindly began feeling along the scale. His fingertips brushed against the ragged edge of the crack.It needs to be fixed.
With what strength he had left, he wrenched his arm from Sinestrus’s grasp and covered the crack with both hands. He didn’t know what to do! He fumbled along the fissure, desperate for something to?—
Sinestrus’s tendril pierced through his chest. There was no pain. There was no blood. Just the inky blackness ripping through him, reaching for the scale. Cold seeped through his chest, racing along his skin until his breath fogged up in front of him in smaller and smaller plumes until he couldn’t draw any more breath to exhale.
It was as if there was nothing. Avoidin his chest, growing larger as it fed from him, tearing him apart from the inside.
The tendril wrenched free only to pierce through Ridan’s left hand, yanking it back and away from the scale.
. The scale was unprotected in his right hand. He couldn’t risk Sinestrus grabbing it. He pulled the scale to him, burying it in the hole in his chest.
Closing his eyes, Ridan nearly sighed in relief when he felt the warmth of the scale. Without knowing how, he reached for the ancient magic. It lifted at the touch of his consciousness, slowly waking as he drew the last of it from where it had been resting in its golden bed.
The last sluggish beats of his heart reverberated against the scale.
Destroy yourself.
Artrax’s final golden scale, Sinestrus Voidsoul’s prison, and the last vestiges of pure magic, disintegrated in the bloody hands of a Stone Blade.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
BLOOD FIST
Everything was gold.