Page 68 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

I heave another sigh. “Let’s finish the work.”

Father lifts his sword, which burns with the fire of our order.

All the Mera cry out in unison, “Thak ak ail kuav!” This is our day! Their call echoes across Vallendor, stirring up red dust to swirl across the sky. But this realm answers with her own war cry—quaking beneath our feet, a demand that we win her at all costs.

The Raqiel guard hold the perimeter, and they focus on the soaring resurrectors above us.

Shari lopes over to greet me, and we nuzzle our noses. “I love you, too, Shari. Will you fight by my side again?”

She licks my cheek.

I wave my hand over her, forming a shield of protection.

Then Elyn waves her hand over the wolf—another shield.

Father pats the wolf’s head. “Shari, I remember your mother, Riya. She was part of my litter on Mera.” Then he offers the wolf a final protective shield.

“Kai,” Elyn says, pointing to the north.

Danar Rrivae looms over Gasho. He wears a red-and-gray breastplate and his amulet of dark metal with crossed swords and compass points tipped with blood-like thorns.

The pendant shines with the sickly red light of TERROR, the second gem we need.

That jewel brightens as Selenova continues her ascent over Vallendor.

Although the traitor can’t set a single toe upon this land, he is not untouchable.

Flanked by four Raqiel sentinels, Elyn marches to the front of our battle line.

At her god-size, she is splendid and commanding in her platinum armor and blue cape.

Justice crackles in her hand. “I am Elyn Fynal,” she says, her voice hard as stone.

“As Grand Adjudicator of Vallendor and the Nine Realms, Sentinel and Divine Mediator, with the approval of the Council of High Orders, I sentence you, Danar Rrivae, Seeker of All Truth, Veil Breaker and Destroyer of Realms, to death.” She pauses, then adds, “Will you yield?”

Danar Rrivae stares at her, then smiles. His gaze moves past her. To this traitor, she doesn’t exist.

I need no introduction. I march out to stand beside the Adjudicator. “Will you yield ?” I shout.

Danar Rrivae glares at me, then flicks his eyes at my father. “No.”

Well…

I lift my sword and shout, “Thak ak ail kuav! Dawn belongs to us.”

There’s no turning back now.

All around me, Mera warriors lift their swords and spears.

We, too, are rows upon rows of fighters.

We, too, are not of this world—yet we stand here to protect it.

Fire and wind swirl around our weapons. One more cry— “Yekaa!” —and we charge straight into those undead giants, whose hollow eyes now burn with crimson light.

Danar Rrivae’s eyes, once green, are now cold and gray. Two resurrector beasts with skeletal wings flank him while other creatures prowl low to the ground or soar overhead. All move with deadly purpose, their claws and fangs dripping with life-giving light.

Devourers meet Destroyers in a thunderous clash. Swords clang against swords, flames eat through bone, and the earth reverberates with the sound of heads of the fallen toppling to the ground. Devourers fall, but light soon swallows them, and then they rise again with mended flesh and mended bones.

Resurrectors at work.

Cruel Dawn and I make quick work of those Devourers lunging for me. We step and thrust, step and swing. Yekaa! I strike a leather-winged resurrector, knocking it to the ground without mercy. I then chop off its head.

Elyn and her guard fight as one, methodically cutting a path through the gerammocs and sunabi, the worupines and cursuflies, and advancing closer to our primary target, Danar Rrivae.

Shari fights beside me, clamping hands and legs in her jaws long enough for me to chop off their heads. She’s a good girl, a deadly girl. Just like her momma, Rivya, and now me.

But the Devourers keep pouring forward. There are so many of them—rising, falling, and sometimes rising again.

The Mera, though, don’t flag—this is what we do. We gain strength not from this realm, but from the power of the Aetherium.

Yekaa!

My father calls forth more wind and fire. Tempests and firestorms incinerate hordes of Devourers, reducing them to smoldering ash.

Elyn and the Raqiel guards close the distance to Danar Rrivae, who is enraptured with the destruction of my favorite place on Vallendor. There is so much quaking and shifting: new lakes where there were only oceans of sand. Another meadow, another valley, another new plateau.

The Mera sever heads and leave the fallen in mounds across the land.

Hope surges in my veins.

But Danar Rrivae remains, and he hovers above the ruins of his scattered and slain otherworldly. He lifts his hand, and shadows rise and twist around that hand, taking form as a massive, double-bladed scythe that pulses with a nauseating green-orange gleam.

With my eyes fixed on the traitor, I approach. Cruel Dawn blazes bright with lightning and eternal flame.

A far-off screech from the skies stops me in my step.

A meteor burning blue and lavender explodes from the clouds and crashes into the space between Elyn and me and Danar Rrivae.

Jadon!

He rises to his feet, demigod size now. He’s not as big as Mera Destroyers, but he’s big enough.

The nightstar shines now at her fullest. She would be glorious any other night. On this night, though, she’s just one more beautiful villain.

We’re out of time.

“Supreme has fooled you all,” Danar Rrivae spits, his voice ringing across Doom Desert.

“The false god has forsaken me and allowed my family to be captured without any explanation, without care or apology.” He points to me, his lips twisted.

“You’re a fool for returning to the fold, to the liar, that so-called loving and merciful… ”

He sneers. “Supreme allowed your beloved mother to die by your hand! Taken from you by you because of the lie told to you by your own soldiers and counselors, including the one you just slaughtered.”

I stumble backward. “Zephar?” I gasp.

The traitor Danar grins. “You surely had to know that, Kaivara, or did you not want to believe your lover hated you from the very beginning? Everyone around you has lied to you. The Adjudicator, Miasma—they stand with you now, but they’re both liars.

Why is that? Do they think you’re stupid?

Or do they know you aren’t valued? Do they know that you are the great experiment?

Hmm? Maybe it’s all those reasons, which makes you the most pitiful being in all the realms. I find it disgusting what they’ve done to you and what they’re still doing to you. ”

“Kai,” Elyn says, “don’t listen to him. He’s wrong about everything, including Zephar. He was never my choice for you, but he didn’t know about your mother. He—”

“Is this what you want? Is this what you came for?” Danar snatches his amulet from his neck. “I don’t need it.” He throws it at me.

I duck, wincing, as TERROR flies over me, its heat singeing my skin.

The pendant instead smashes into the Destroyer standing behind me. Those compass points impale the warrior’s neck, and he falls to the desert floor, dead.

“I will never bow down to Supreme,” Danar Rrivae shouts, “nor will I ever heed the verdicts of the Council of High Orders. I will take this realm as my own just as they took my life from me. You may have slain my four children, but my strongest child remains.” His eyes slide from Elyn to me and finally settle on Jadon. “I have one love left.”

No unmarked patch remains on Jadon’s chest, and his ink has now crept down to his left elbow. He turns to me, bloodied from battle, eyes glazed over from being consumed. “We were wrong,” Jadon now says, his voice hoarse, his legs trembling. “That isn’t TERROR in his pendant.”

Elyn shouts, “What?”

“TERROR…” Jadon says. “TERROR lives deep within—” He lifts his tattooed right hand. In his left hand—still unmarked and guarded by Veril’s fox amulet—he holds that toothed greatsword. He drops to his knees, thrusts out his right arm, lifts the sword…

“No!” Danar shouts.

Jadon’s right hand falls to the dirt. His blood, red and black, splashes across the dirt as he falls to the bloody ground.

Danar Rrivae screams, “What did you do?”

With that bond between father and son severed, Elyn and I rush the traitor now gaping at his dying weapon, his dying son. I take to the sky and hurl handfuls of fire and wind at Danar Rrivae.

Elyn joins me, cardinals and moths lifting us both higher and higher. Together, we aim for the fallen god mourning the son he cannot approach. Elyn glides behind the traitor. She is the dagger to my broadsword.

I stand before Danar Rrivae, blocking his view of the child he created with the empress of Brithellum. “I’m here for a purpose,” I announce. “The realm cries out for mercy, and I must offer relief. That means you die today.”

Danar Rrivae’s eyes widen as he realizes that no one has stopped for his grief.

“Tell me now,” I demand. “Who runs this realm?”

He scowls and says, “I—”

“Wrong answer.” I drive Cruel Dawn through his heart.

Elyn drives Justice between his shoulder blades.

I pull out Cruel Dawn from that dying heart, and I sever the traitor’s head from his body.

Mera flames consume the rest of him, and the ashes of the traitor rain down upon Gasho.

I am Kaivara Megidrail, Grand Defender of Vallendor, and this realm and her people are safe once more.