Blood and Ash (The Chronicles of Estria Book 1) by Stuart Thaman

Author:Stuart Thaman [Thaman, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Keyword 2, Keyword 1
Publisher: Nef House Publishing
Published: 2017-09-22T22:00:00+00:00

“PERHAPS A POISONED JEWEL refers to a piece of your corrupted skin,” Lina said sometime around dawn on the second full day of her excavation. She was tired and her body ached, and still she had not come any closer to finding the enclave that potentially held her cure. Her sword was significantly blunted by the all the work it had done serving as her shovel, and the cut it made on Ayrik’s arm was jagged and gruesome. Lina sawed back and forth with the dented blade until she held a layer of tainted, blackened skin in her fingers.

“Is this your poisoned jewel?” she shouted at the copse of trees. She threw the bloody piece of meat at one of the trees and waited. The man, clinging to life, groaned beneath her.

Nothing happened.

Lina paced back and forth through the copse, her frustration transforming into fury. She screamed at the trees, and when they did not respond, she stalked back to the barely-conscious Ayrik and grabbed him viciously by his throat. “You led me here to die!” she yelled in his face.

She shook him violently, and his eyes opened ever so slightly, revealing nothing but black ichor staining his sclera. “Is this your poisoned gem?” she demanded. Her blunted sword rested in the dirt nearby, just in the corner of her vision. She snatched the weapon from the ground and held Ayrik’s eyelid open, revealing his jet-black eye underneath. The corruption had tainted his entire face, and Lina could see the unsated bloodlust of his vampirism doing its work on him as well.

The rough blade made garish work of Ayrik’s face. Lina hunched over the man’s head as she pried and cut, and the black eye was in the palm of her bloody hand before long. “Is this your poisoned jewel?” she screamed at the crown of trees. She hurled the gooey morsel into the pit she had dug and stomped her foot. “Take it!” she yelled over and over.

The ground beneath her feet shifted, silencing Lina at once. She felt the rumble slowly at first, then building to get stronger and stronger. Some of the dirt she had piled on the edge of the hole shook violently enough to fall back into her pit.

A staircase down into the earth presented itself before long, much to Lina’s disbelief. The woman stood at the precipice, gawking at the spectacle. Creeping vines wove their way over the stairs and grew up to Lina’s feet as if inviting her into their midst, coaxing her down into some ancient tomb known only in legends, folklore, and a single riddle.

Before she descended the stairs, Lina returned to Ayrik and her horse with a grim task on her mind. It had been several days since she had eaten, and she could keep the bloodlust at bay for a while longer, but not forever. She was famished and far from full strength.

Lina went first for Ayrik with her sword in her hand. She was the only one who

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.