Eberron: The War-Torn, Book 04 - Blood and Honor by Graeme Davis

Author:Graeme Davis [Davis, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-4069-1
Publisher: Fanversion Publishing
Published: 2017-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The Assassin

Olarune 21, 999 YK

The cadaver collector towered over the three of them, peering down with small, luminous green-white eyes. Then it looked up at the top of the hill—or rather, at the place where the top of the hill had been. Finally, it looked down at them again.

“Run!” screamed Brey.

Mordan hurled himself aside as an immense clawed hand reached for him, but he was a fraction too slow. The metal claws struck him a glancing blow, sending him cartwheeling across the ground. A beam of light stabbed out from Tarrel’s wand, striking the monstrosity directly in the face—and bouncing back to hit Tarrel himself, knocking him off his feet. Ignoring the fallen half-elf, the construct lumbered over to Mordan, picking him up in its massive fist. As he writhed in its grasp, it lifted him over its head, directly above the blood-encrusted spikes on its back.

“No!” With a cry, Brey leaped onto the creature’s back, swinging from spike to spike like an acrobat. Bracing her feet against the metal carapace, she reached out for its wrist—a column of metal and stone as thick as a tree-trunk—and pushed upward with all her strength. For a moment, she held the limb back, but a long, jagged spike was only inches away from Mordan’s body. He struggled in the thing’s iron grasp but could not free himself.

Tarrel struggled to his feet, smoke rising from a charred hole in the front of his coat. He clutched his chest, his face distorted in agony, and staggered a few paces toward the great construct. He stared at the impasse between construct and vampire, as if dazed and unsure of what he was seeing.

Brey had begun to shake with the strain of resisting the thing’s titanic strength. Its other arm was reaching over its back, trying to find her, but she was protected for the moment by the spines and corpses around her. Mordan’s struggles were becoming weaker as the metal fingers slowly crushed his chest. Brey’s lips drew back in a snarl of determination as she fought to hold the huge arm, but Mordan’s body was inching closer to the tip of the spike, a hair’s-breadth at a time.

Tarrel heard the sound first—or rather, he felt it before he heard it. It began out of the tremors of the collapsing hill, and rose in pitch until it became a rumbling, grinding sound like a rockslide. Then it struck.

The ground at the huge construct’s feet heaved and split, and a rushing column of debris vomited up from the earth, slamming into the cadaver collector with the force of an avalanche. The metal beast swayed backward and was forced to lower its arms to steady itself. Its fingers opened, dropping Mordan to the ground. Brey flung herself from the creature’s back and scooped up the wounded Karrn as the two huge beasts squared off.

The earth had taken a rough form: two stubby legs supported a thick body with no discernible head. It flailed at the construct with massive arms made of earth, stone, and bone.

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.