Storm of Chaos by Andy Peloquin

Author:Andy Peloquin [Peloquin, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Fantasy Fiends Publishing Inc.
Published: 2019-02-19T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

Evren didn’t give the Ybrazhe thugs time to carry out Blackfinger’s orders. The word “soil” hadn’t yet formed on the man’s lips before Evren moved, spinning to the left so quickly his right arm tore free of his captor’s grip. His right hand struck out, steel flashing, and blood sprayed in the lamplit air.

He’d needed a way to get at the one dagger the Syndicate thugs hadn’t found; his gibes had earned him a painful punch to the gut, yet his theatrical collapse had given him a chance to slip the blade from its hidden sheath in his boot. Now, he drove the tip into Goble’s throat, slicing the artery and punching deep enough to strike bone.

The huge, scowling thug fell back with a cry of pain. His grip on Evren’s left arm loosened as he clapped both hands to the gushing wound in his neck. In that instant, Evren tore his twin jambiyas free of Goble’s belt and spun to slash at the thug on his right. Cloth and flesh parted beneath the razor-sharp steel and the thug yelped, blood dripping from the wound in his forehead and stinging his eyes.

All this happened between heartbeats, so fast Blackfinger barely had time to open his mouth to cry out. The world seemed to slow around Evren as he leapt toward the Syndicate leader, daggers flashing. Blackfinger fell back and managed to raise his arms to ward off the attack. Evren’s daggers raked twin furrows along Blackfinger’s forearms. The man’s shout cut off in a garbled howl as crimson seeped from the bone-deep cuts.

Evren didn’t follow up the attack; even the slightest delay, and he’d never get out of there alive. But instead of trying to fight his way through the four thugs that guarded the stairs to the main floor, he sprinted right through the mushroom field.

“Get him!” Blackfinger’s angry shout echoed behind him a heartbeat later.

Evren’s gut clenched but he refused to slow. His boots trampled deep gouges into the loamy soil, crushing ear-shaped mushrooms. A vicious sense of satisfaction filled him as Blackfinger cried out in pain and outrage—either at Evren’s escape or the damage to his precious Ivory Brackets, it didn’t matter. The pursuing thugs would only increase the destruction and Blackfinger’s fortune in fungi would be ruined, at least this crop.

“Keeper’s teeth!” Blackfinger’s curse rang off the walls. “He’s headed for the fruiting channel!”

Hope surged within Evren as his eyes fixed on the neat rows of sacks arrayed along the far wall of the mushroom farm. Their sides had been sliced open, revealing rich, dark-colored earth within. The first signs of whitecaps had given him the idea for his desperate escape.

Mushrooms required dark, damp environments, but in order to properly blossom, they needed to be exposed to fresh air and light.

The sacks held mushroom spawn, the pieces of already-fruited toadstools that would dig roots into the soil and grow into new mushrooms. The fact that they were laid out neatly on the far side of

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