SSS Primeval Devourer: Every Path I Devour Becomes Mine

The culvert smelled of mud, rust, and old animal bones.

Vhar crawled through it with both scabbards flat against his back. Water soaked his knees. Ahead of him, Nyra’s boots pushed through the dark in short, careful movements. The pipe shook once when a wagon rolled over the road above them.

THUMP! THUMP!

They reached the far grate at dawn.

Kessendrel’s lower settlement lay beyond it: a mill yard, six low houses, a grain shed, and a road blocked by two freight carts chained wheel to wheel. House fighters moved between the carts with oil jars at their belts. A cable ran from the mill roof to a rock shelf over the eastern houses.

Nyra looked through the grate. "People in the mill. At least twelve."

Vhar saw the braces under the shelf. Fresh-cut timber. Iron pins. A counterweight hung behind the mill wall where the civilians could not see it.

"They are waiting for us to use the road," he said.

"We did not."

Vhar pulled the grate free without making it ring against the pipe. They crossed the drainage ditch and reached the shadow behind the grain shed before a shout broke from the carts.

"There!"

The House fighters scattered from the fire loads. One ran for the mill door. Two raised crossbows. Another man stepped out from between the chained carts with a blade in each hand.

Corvain Talvern wore no armor heavier than a black breastplate and plated sleeves. His two swords were straight-backed, single-edged House blades, short enough to move inside the narrow yard. Their guards curled inward like hooks. He held them low, tips angled toward Vhar’s knees.

Thronebreak shivered in Nyra’s hands. A slow, dense beat moved under Corvain’s skin. A fresh split across his knuckles closed while Nyra watched, then reopened when he tightened both grips.

"Ironblood Frame. Fifth Bloodmark," Nyra said. "Do not let him set both hooks."

Corvain heard her. "You brought a reader."

"Vhar Blackvein," Corvain said. "I expected you on the road."

"You built too much for a roadblock."

"I built enough." Corvain glanced toward Nyra. "House Severin’s heir beside you. That will be useful in the report."

Nyra’s spear point rose. "You can write with your left hand after I break the right."

Corvain did not answer her. He looked at Vhar’s crossed scabbards.

"Two blades. I wondered whether the stories had made you precious with them."

"Keep wondering." Vhar stepped forward.

One of the crossbowmen on the mill roof fired before Corvain’s feet moved. The bolt struck Vhar’s chest, flattened against his shirt, and dropped between them.

TINK!

Corvain’s eyes went to the bent head. He did not waste time staring. His right blade cut down for Vhar’s knee while the left came high for the throat, both hooks ready to catch a scabbard or a wrist.

Vhar turned his hip. The low blade scraped across the outside of his trousers and cut cloth instead of knee. Corvain’s high blade met Vhar’s raised forearm. Steel squealed against skin and skipped away without drawing blood.

SKRRNG!

Corvain’s first clean exchange had taken nothing. His next breath came hard through his teeth.

Corvain’s left blade cut for Vhar’s throat. His right hook tore into the leather strap of Vhar’s lower scabbard.

Vhar caught the high blade against Radrazh’s scabbard. The hook bit and Corvain yanked with both arms.

Vhar’s rear heel drove a trench into the packed yard. He did not give a step. Corvain’s shoulders jerked forward instead.

Vhar rammed his forehead into Corvain’s nose.

CRACK!

Blood burst over Corvain’s mouth. Vhar turned his hips and buried an elbow in his jaw.

KNOCK!

Corvain’s teeth cut his lip. Before he could turn away, Vhar closed his right hand around Corvain’s right wrist, the hand still locked around the hooked sword.

| TITANFOLD |

DOOOOM!

The right wrist inside Vhar’s fist detonated. White fragments of bone tore through Corvain’s sleeve. Blood struck the cart boards. His fingers stayed knotted around the hilt, but the ruined hand hung below an arm that could no longer pull, parry, or keep the hooked guard on Vhar’s scabbard.

"HHRRAAGH!"

His knees struck the dirt. Vhar wrenched the hooked sword from the ruined fingers and threw it beneath the chained carts. He caught the front of Corvain’s breastplate and hurled him into them.

BANG!

The cart planks split behind Corvain’s back. The crossbowmen fired late. Two bolts struck Vhar between the shoulders and snapped apart.

TINK! TINK!

| TWO ENDS UNSHEATHED |

Corvain’s remaining left hook came up for Vhar’s throat. Vhar rolled both shoulders at once. He pulled Radrazh from the left scabbard into his right hand and Ulqor from the right scabbard into his left. Vhar raised Ulqor’s scabbard under the rising hook and kept its edge off his neck.

Vhar swung Radrazh down. Its edge struck beneath the curled guard and cut through the House blade.

CLANG! SHRAK!

The severed half spun into the mud. Vhar turned his left wrist, cleared Ulqor from the scabbard, and thrust its point through Corvain’s left shoulder plate, left upper arm, and the cart board behind him. The pinned left arm could not lift a blade, while the hook that had threatened Vhar’s throat lay in two pieces at his feet.

SPLURT!

Corvain’s left arm jerked wide on the pinned steel. Vhar slashed Radrazh from the captain’s left collar to the top of that shoulder. Black plate split. Blood sprayed the cart boards.

SHRAK!

Vhar smashed Radrazh’s pommel into Corvain’s mouth.

CRUNCH!

Teeth broke. Corvain folded around the pinned arm, gagged blood onto the dirt, and staggered into the gap between the carts when Vhar tore Ulqor free.

Corvain’s blood ran down both sleeves. His right wrist was destroyed. His left upper arm had been pierced through and cut open at the shoulder. When Vhar tore Ulqor free, the left arm dropped at Corvain’s side. He could still close the left hand near his belt, but he could not lift that shoulder to fight. He was already beaten. Vhar saw it in the way the man kept looking past him toward the mill wall.

Corvain spat a broken tooth into the dirt. "You keep looking at the steel. That is why people die around you."

"No." Vhar shifted Radrazh so the edge covered Corvain’s throat. "They die because you put them under your traps."

The captain’s eyes moved once toward the mill. That was answer enough.

"Now," Corvain said.

Something clicked beneath the grain shed.

The role-only specialist had been crouched under the carts where the shadows hid him. He pulled a release pin free from a brace and rolled toward the drainage ditch with a cable looped around one wrist.

CLACK!

The rock shelf above the eastern houses dropped three inches.

People screamed inside the mill.

The specialist jerked the cable. A counterweight rose behind the mill wall. The shelf began to slide toward the roofs.

Corvain ran for the gap opening behind the carts.

Vhar could take him in two strides. His blades were already out. Corvain’s back was open. One cut would end it.

The shelf moved again.

GROAN!

Nyra vaulted the grain shed and landed beside the mill door, driving Thronebreak through the lock bar. The door burst inward.

"Out the west side!" she shouted. "Leave the sacks! Move!"

The first person through the doorway was a woman carrying a flour-dusted infant. A mill boy with one shoe missing followed her. He saw the rock shelf scrape over the roofline and froze. Nyra caught the back of his shirt, shoved him toward the west door, and faced the next person.

Vhar put both swords back into their scabbards as he ran for the houses.

The first roof was already under the shelf. He caught a support post with one hand and drove his shoulder beneath the sagging beam. Stone dust filled his mouth. A woman crawled from the doorway with a baby under her coat. He shoved the beam high enough for her to get clear, then kicked through the rear wall.

BOOM!

The wall burst into the yard. Light opened behind the trapped family.

"Go!"

They ran.

A second woman stumbled from the same house with one arm around a boy whose ankle had been caught under a fallen stool. The shelf ground across the roof above them, dropping plaster into the doorway.

Vhar held the beam with his left shoulder and reached down with his right hand. He snapped the stool leg, lifted the boy by the waist, and passed him through the broken rear wall to his mother.

"Can he run?" Vhar asked.

"He can limp."

"Carry him."

She did. The woman took the boy onto her back and disappeared into the yard through the opening Vhar had made.

Vhar crossed to the second house. The shelf’s front edge crushed its chimney. Bricks poured through the roof.

KRAK!

KRAK!

He seized the falling chimney base, twisted it away from the doorway, and threw it into the empty yard. The bricks smashed across the ground where three children had been standing a breath earlier.

Nyra came through the mill with the last of the workers behind her. Her spear haft pushed an old man forward when his legs locked.

"The cable!" she called.

Vhar saw it now, stretched from the mill wall to the rising counterweight. He reached the wall in one leap, caught the cable with both hands, and pulled.

The cable cut a bright line into his palms. The counterweight rose another foot.

He planted his feet through the packed yard until the ground broke beneath his soles.

THOOM!

The cable stopped moving.

Vhar hauled it down. The counterweight slammed into its housing. The rock shelf settled against the two empty roofs instead of finishing its slide over the street.

Corvain’s bloody bootprints crossed the rear gap, passed the snapped brace, and disappeared down the north slope behind the carts.

Only the specialist remained, sprawled beside the drainage ditch with the release pin still in his hand. Nyra put Thronebreak’s point against the man’s throat.

"Where does he go?"

The man looked at the wrecked shelf, then at Vhar holding the dead cable in both hands.

"North yard," he said. "He has the fire teams."

Vhar looked down the north slope where Corvain’s prints cut through the wet dirt. Blood marked every other step. The captain had lost a tooth, a sword, half a shoulder plate, and the yard beneath his plan. He had run anyway because the counterweight gave him the seconds he needed.

Nyra searched the specialist’s belt with Thronebreak’s point. She found three release pins, a folded wrench, and a small brass whistle.

"He gave the signal from under the carts," she said.

"He will not give another one."

The specialist kept his hands open in the mud. "I only built the braces."

Nyra picked up the wrench. "The braces were holding houses over children."

"Corvain said the mill was empty."

"You heard people inside." She set the wrench beside his face. "You pulled the pin anyway."

Vhar looked toward the north slope again. "Bind him. The settlement needs the braces he knows how to find."

Two mill workers brought a coil of rope. Vhar handed it over. They bound the man’s wrists and ankles themselves.

Vhar let the cable fall.

Corvain had escaped because people had been under the stone.

The settlement was still standing.

That was enough for the moment.

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