SSS Primeval Devourer: Every Path I Devour Becomes Mine

Corvain’s fire teams reached Kessendrel before the dust from the rock shelf settled.

The first oil jar broke against the eastern grain shed.

WHUMP!

Fire climbed the dry boards. A second jar struck the alley between the mill and the cookhouse. House fighters dragged corded barricades across the north exit while civilians poured from the western houses carrying children, water buckets, and whatever food they could hold against their chests.

Nyra stood in the mill yard with Thronebreak braced across the lane.

"West ditch is open," she called. "Take the children first. Leave the carts and furniture behind."

The route worker with torn palms from the freight wagon shoved a handcart toward the ditch with two older boys beside him. "The grain store is burning!"

"Leave it," Nyra said. "Get the people out."

Vhar looked across the settlement.

The square sat in the middle: well, mill, cookhouse, grain shed. Six House fighters held the north barricade. Eight spread along the east street with burning jars and hooked spears. Nine more came through the south gate behind Corvain’s fire carts. Three archers stood on the low roof of the abandoned tannery.

Twenty-six men had entered the settlement with weapons raised and fire in their hands.

None of them had come to take him alive.

"Nyra," Vhar said.

She did not look back. "The west ditch and the mill. I have them."

"Keep them moving."

"Already am."

Vhar ran for the south gate.

The first arrow came down from the tannery roof. He caught it between two fingers, snapped the shaft, and kept running. The second struck his shoulder. Its head flattened and fell.

TINK!

The third archer dragged his string to his jaw. Vhar stood thirty paces from the tannery roof. The man had one breath to loose it.

| SLAUGHTER’S END |

Slaughter’s End folded the open lane into three steps. Vhar cleared the burning cart, struck the tannery wall hard enough to kick from it, and landed on the roof before the archer finished drawing. The arrow left its string after Vhar had already arrived and buried itself in the empty alley. Vhar’s fist drove through the archer’s sternum, heart, and back.

THOOM!

The body hit the roof hard enough to break the shingles beneath it. The third bow fell unused beside him. The roof had lost its firing lane. Vhar took the second archer by the ankle and swung him into the third.

CRACK!

Both skulls struck the roof edge. Neither moved again.

Below, the south-gate fighters had stopped long enough to look up.

Vhar dropped among them.

THUD!

The packed dirt cratered under both feet. His elbow crushed the first man’s throat. He caught the second by the face and drove him backward into the fire cart. The man’s skull split against the iron rim. A spear came from Vhar’s left. He seized the shaft, pulled its owner close, and broke the man’s neck with a short turn of his shoulders.

CRACK!

Four fighters tried to spread around the cart.

Vhar drew Radrazh with his right hand.

He cut the lead fighter from collarbone to hip. The edge split leather, ribs, and spine.

SHRAK!

Vhar pulled the edge free. The two halves fell apart. Blood and broken armor slapped across the cart wheel.

The next man put up a shield. Vhar cut through the shield, the arm behind it at the elbow, and the chest beneath. He pulled Radrazh free as the body folded.

The other two ran for the north barricade.

Vhar caught one by the back of the coat and threw him into the second. Their heads met the well curb.

KNOCK!

The first slid down with his neck hanging wrong. The second tried to rise. Vhar stamped on the base of his skull.

CRUNCH!

Two fighters rose from behind the fire cart with short axes, trying to reach the open gate while Vhar faced the well. He raised Radrazh’s flat under the first axe, then cut through its owner’s neck. With his left hand, he drove Ulqor’s point through the second man’s eye.

SHRAK!

The south gate was open. Nine attackers lay across its dirt and cart ruts. Vhar had killed all nine himself. The fire cart still burned beside them, but the road beyond it was clear.

He turned east.

The eight fighters there had reached the grain shed. Two poured oil under the door. Three held hooked spears across the lane. One had a child pinned against his chest with a knife under her chin.

"Stop!" the man shouted. "One more step and she dies."

Vhar stopped.

The man’s hand shook. The knife did not.

Behind Vhar, Nyra’s spear cracked against a barricade post.

THWACK!

The north exit opened another arm’s width. Women and children squeezed through the gap into the ditch. The route worker and the boys dragged the corded logs aside with hooked poles. They had their own fight. Vhar did not need to be there for it.

The hostage-taker backed toward the grain shed.

Vhar looked at the oil under the door, the burning roof, the six men behind the spears, and the child’s bare feet kicking against the killer’s thigh.

Vhar drew Ulqor with his left hand.

The knife hand was physically reachable across the width of the lane only if he crossed it first.

He did.

The first hooked spear came at his chest. Vhar knocked it aside with Radrazh, stepped through the gap, and cut the shaft in half. He drove Ulqor’s point through the hostage-taker’s wrist from the outside of the arm.

SPLT!

The knife dropped. The child dropped with it. Vhar caught her under the ribs and threw her toward the open lane behind him.

"Run to Nyra."

She ran.

The wristless man screamed and reached for the stump. Vhar cut through his neck with Radrazh. His breath stopped in a wet cough.

The seven remaining fighters closed at once.

One spear entered from high, one from low, two hooks aimed for Vhar’s arms, two men ran for the grain shed with their fire jars raised, and the last fighter raised a short sword behind them.

Vhar walked into them.

Vhar cut the high spearhead off with Radrazh, then drew the edge back through its owner’s throat. With Ulqor, he severed the low spear beside the wielder’s hands. Vhar drove the broken shaft through the man’s chest. His knee burst the nearest hook-man’s ribs inward. His heel drove through the other hook-man’s foot and into the road, then crushed the man’s skull when he fell. He caught the swordsman by the throat, lifted him, and smashed him face-first through the grain shed door.

BOOM!

The door burst inward. The oil jars spilled across the man and the grain sacks. Vhar kicked the nearest burning jar through the doorway after him.

The fire rolled inside the shed instead of out into the lane.

WHUFF!

Two fighters tried to flee through the east alley. Vhar ran down the first and drove his shoulder through the man’s spine.

CRACK!

The second got three steps farther. Vhar threw Ulqor. Its point entered beneath the man’s shoulder blade and came out through his chest. He struck the ground face-first and stayed there.

The remaining fighter stood ankle-deep in spilled oil with no weapon left. He looked at the bodies, at the burning shed, then at Vhar.

He dropped to his knees.

"I surrender."

Vhar left him alive.

The north barricade broke.

KRAASH!

Nyra drove Thronebreak’s butt into the final cord post. The logs rolled into the ditch. Civilians flooded through the opening while she held two House fighters at spear length, keeping them away from the escape line without waiting for Vhar to save her.

One of the fighters lunged through the gap with a hooked knife. Nyra stepped off the spear line, knocked the hook down with the shaft, and smashed the butt into his mouth.

CRACK!

He dropped to both knees. Her spear point punched through the other fighter’s calf and pinned him against the log pile. The children reached the mill corner while he clawed at the shaft.

The woman from the mill pulled the spear-free boy behind her and kept moving. She did not wait to thank anyone. Her hands were full of people.

The two fighters Nyra had stopped at the north barricade lay alive in the dirt: one with a ruined mouth, the other pinned through the calf by Thronebreak. Four attackers remained on their feet. Three threw down their weapons after they saw the south gate empty and the east street covered in their dead. The fourth climbed onto the last fire cart and whipped the draft horse toward the settlement center.

Vhar met the cart at the well.

He caught the horse by the harness, planted his feet, and stopped the whole charge before the cart reached the children crossing the ditch.

THOOM!

The horse screamed and reared. Vhar tore the harness free, grabbed the driver’s vest, and threw him over the well curb. The man’s back struck stone. He did not rise.

No one chased Corvain from the settlement. He had used the north slope while the fire teams died in the streets.

The danger signal from his ridge had gone with him.

By dusk, the grain shed was a black shell. Four houses had burns along their roofs. The mill still stood. The cookhouse still stood. Every civilian who had started the fight inside Kessendrel stood in the west ditch or the mill yard, coughing smoke and counting one another.

The route worker with torn palms found the surrendering House fighter sitting against the well with both wrists tied. He set a water bucket down just outside the man’s reach.

"You do not get any until the children drink," he said.

The fighter looked at the bucket, then at the bodies across the square. He said nothing.

The worker picked the bucket up again and carried it to the ditch.

Vhar walked the streets once.

Twenty House fighters were dead by his direct action. Four had surrendered. Two were bound by Nyra at the ditch. The bodies lay where they had fallen: south gate, square, east lane, grain shed, well.

The settlement had survived because its people had escaped through the ground Nyra and the workers opened while Vhar killed the force trying to burn them in place.

He found Nyra beside the mill door, wiping soot from Thronebreak’s shaft with a strip of ruined cloth.

"He left north," she said.

"I know."

"We could follow tonight."

Vhar looked past her at the people carrying water to the blackened shed, at the worker with torn palms sitting beside a child he had pulled out of the ditch, at the bodies still waiting for somebody to identify them.

"We stay until this place stops burning."

Nyra nodded once. Her hand closed around Thronebreak’s soot-blackened shaft. The next decision could wait until the living had water, the dead had names, and no roof still carried fire.

Beyond the settlement, Corvain had taken the north road with whatever force he had left.

He had not taken the Kessendrel Pass.

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