God of Broken Things

Chapter 36

I stared in horror as Walker smiled at me and then broke the wards between his teeth.

Light.

Burning heat.

Roaring in my ears as the shockwave ripped me from my feet, tumbling and bouncing and screaming until I slammed into the wall of a ruined building in a tangle of bent armour and fallen beams. I rolled in the dust and rubble, screaming, frantic to put out the flames until a moment of clarity pierced the terror. I was not on fire. I was fine. Fine. I had been far enough away to escape the worst of the blast.

It took me a few tries to get to my feet, the world and city walls spinning as I blinked away tears and tried to focus on Walker.

A huge crater in the earth smoked where he had been locked in dreadful mental battle with the enemy, their hand around his throat. I could not see anything moving. The defenders on the walls grew silent, expectant and watchful.

What was left alive of the daemon horde started screaming. Some began choking, vomiting up dying Scarrabus before perishing themselves. Others turned tail and fled in terror. Had… had Walker won?

The defenders atop the walls stared in silence, bows and magic at the ready as the billowing smoke gradually cleared. Ballistae cranked round to take careful aim.

I limped towards the crater. I had no weapons left but then I didn’t need any; I willed magic into my hands, making them hard and strong as steel. If anything but Walker moved I would punch its accursed head right back into the Clanholds.

Metal crunched underfoot, shards of black iron. Fragments of bone and blood splattered across the churned earth. Tattered ribbons of cloth, the rich silken robes of the enemy and grey wool from Walker’s coat…

The smoke thinned, cleared. Walker was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the enemy. A groan of relief erupted from the walls.

I searched in vain for any sign of life, expecting at any moment to see Walker rise from the earth to spit mud and make a bad joke. Instead, in a pile of jellied flesh and blood, I found a finger bearing the darker skin of Abrax-Masud, ripped free by the explosion.

Nausea rose as I spotted something else in the crater.

I fell to my knees in the red baked mud, staring at the partial remnants of a man’s jaw with white bone and broken teeth. Ragged scars ran down through the stubble.

There would be no more bad jokes.

Edrin Walker was dead.